After all of the West Coast rains of this past week, including the deluge of bad news around the housing market and the concomitant Wall Street downpours, it's great to be in San Antonio, Texas reporting from the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI 2008) where Henry Jenkins of MIT will be keynoting tomorrow -- I expect that Dr. Jenkins will continue his dialog on the "YouTube University" that can be taken as a complete overhaul of higher education, or as a parallel, albeit, transformational model for higher education and how 'teaching, learning, and research' co-exist and interact.
This week's blog talk - something fairly new for me to scan in this way, that is, as I understand it for this class and program; seemed abuzz with the weekend victory in the South Carolina Democratic Primaries for the Barak Obama for President campaign. Indeed, no longer does this election seem to be a given in terms of the Democrats or Republican candidates. This too seems to resonate with the recent mainstream media coverage, notably the New York Times on a kind of pessimism in the United States amongst voters, and in terms of a possible seachange as American hegemony wains.
So is America - first the Democrats, and then the larger voting population, going with Obama? Clearly it's far to early to tell, and likely the Democratic nomination will be played down to the wire, where Hillary Clinton or even John Edwards could win the nomination due to unforeseen circumstances and certain developments in the weeks ahead. Indeed, it's not clear what the hell is going on out there anymore, and it feels more and more that the institutional foundations below us are quaking and shaking as the word 'change' echoes through the speeches and stumps featuring Barak Obama, and possibly next, more and more, John McCain on the Republican side.
If this kind of upheaval is to be realized in the polls in November, and if indeed the United States is in the fight of its short life to define itself as truly exceptional - then the rains of this month might prove to be an important harbinger for growth in the Spring and Summer. We shall see indeed, and this may prove to be an important unifying force for the next important candidate. Judging from the comments on YouTube, people seem jazzed about prospect of Obama. I checked DIGG for some interesting stories and came up empty. Please share if you have anything on the elections.
Here's a great set of shots and links on the rather stinky Web of 1996 -- enjoy.
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