Revolution is In the Air
David Shamah, The
What he said. What she said. The
way they run things. The way they try to foist that nonsense, these
taxes, this plan, those nonsensical rules down our
throats.
It just makes your blood boil, doesn't it?
It's an old problem; what do you do if you're
dissatisfied with the way politicians are running your life? In a democracy,
the people are supposed to have a voice – but it seems that the people's voice
often gets lost in the cacophony of noise that surrounds government and its
decisions.
People like us, at least, get to vote – which is more
than lots of other people around the world get to do. The problem with
elections, of course, is that they come around much too infrequently for most
people's taste. Between elections, politicians are basically free to do
whatever they want with our money, time and goodwill.
But sooner or later, those elections do come along…
and the season for decision making is upon us. In the
Although I, like you, have very definite, vociferous
political ideas and opinions, it would be unfair of me to take advantage of the
attention you kindly give my writing for its computer info/funny
story/Pulitzer-prize level prose to spew forth my political doctrine. I wouldn't
be giving anything away if I said, though, that, like you, I am unhappy with
what is going on today – about as unhappy as just about everyone else, both
left and right, seems to be.
Other than voting, what options to we have to
influence the decision making process? Is there any legitimate and legal way to
protest government excesses during that long, gray period between elections?
Well, one could always go protesting, but protests don't always have the
desired effects – and people who have families, kids and jobs often can't and
won't assemble in a town square with others whom they would rather not be
identified with, regardless of political stand (i.e. radical, potentially
violent flag waver or burner types, both right and left).
As everyone knows, political change starts from the
bottom up – by getting together with like-minded folks and lobbying for change.
When a bunch of people are on the same page and make their opinions known, as a
bloc, politicians tend to pay far more attention to the opinion in question
than they would otherwise. So getting people organized and involved is a good
way to affect political change.
Computers and the Internet offer a plethora of
political organization methods. E-mail, newsgroups, Web site forums, blogs – if you're looking to get involved in changing
things, there are almost unlimited options out there for making your voice
heard. But "making your voice heard" is actually an inaccurate
description for what's happening; what you’re doing is writing your opinion and
ideas. The written word, of course, is the mainstay of political change, and
the pen is mightier than the sword.
But is anyone reading those opinions? How do you know
whom you’re reaching? Think about it; the people who have the most impact
politically – the ones whom politicians actually listen to – are usually the
least likely to go "blogging." Who has
time? There are lots of interesting things to read out there, but too often you
have to navigate
poorly designed pages and pick through nonsense in order to find them. In
addition, reading is a passive activity in terms of political engagement; you
write your opinion and someone else reads it.
Unless you try and get people to sign up for an
e-mail newsletter, you're not getting them to commit to your ideas by taking
action – which is what you, as a political activist, really want them to do!
And getting people to sign up for yet another newsletter in today's spam-laced
e-mailboxes is a challenge, to say the least. In short, using
a text-based medium, whether Web site, e-mail or blog,
is often a hit-and-miss method for convincing people to get on the political
bandwagon.
The spoken word, on the other hand, can be a much
more effective tool for political organization. A good speech can inspire and
influence far more than a well written e-mail message. And, if you can
electronically deliver your message on radio or television, you can reach an
audience that may be too busy to invest the time they would need to analyze
print ideas.
Obviously, however, you can’t just open up your own
radio or TV station and start broadcasting. But if you're serious about
spreading your ideas and you want to get like-minded people involved in a
political project that will build solidarity and encourage participation, here
is an idea that could really help you make a difference – courtesy of your PC
and a revolutionary idea in Web broadcasting technology.
Peer to peer technology has commonly been used to
distribute digital media files like music and movies, often illegally. But that
technology has other applications, too – such as giving any computer user the
ability to distribute Web broadcasts from one computer user to another over the
Internet, where, thanks to an innovative program called P2P Radio, a community
of politically aware users can get involved in spreading the word, by "rebroadcasting" a Web radio program from their own
computers!
A Web radio broadcast is really no different from a
music file, in essence, or from any other computer file, as well. You could
record yourself a file and use Web broadcasting technology to release that
message to the world.
The problem with Web radio broadcasting is that it
usually requires a lot of Internet bandwidth in order to reach a many people.
When dozens of people try to tune in to your Web radio broadcast, the traffic
may overload your computer, causing it to crash – a recipe guaranteed to
frustrate listeners, rather than engage them. Besides, remember what we said
about getting like minded activists involved in the struggle: How does having
listeners simply tune in to your Web radio broadcast involve them in political
organization more than they would be involved than if they read your Web page
or blog – methods we've already said are
"passive," in the sense that there's no involvement beyond reading
(or, in our case, listening)?
Enter P2P Radio. You download the program, along with
the Icecast server software and a plug-in for Winamp (all available for free at the the
P2P Radio site, http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net), set up the system according
to the site's very easy to follow instructions, and start your Web radio
broadcast – let's say, a talk show you've recorded in MP3 format on your
computer outlining your ideas. Say five people tune in to your Web radio broadcast;
those five people, running their own copy of P2P Radio, can rebroadcast your
Web radio program to others, who can in turn rebroadcast it to yet others –
making your potential audience unlimited in size!
That's the peer to peer aspect of the system; instead
of concentrating the Web broadcasting effort on a single dedicated server
requiring a huge bandwidth in order to reach a large target audience, you
distribute the load among activists, automatically getting all your people
involved in the very important process of recruiting new listeners, while
ensuring that as many people as possible have the opportunity to hear your
ideas – without having them all "gang up" on your computer!
It's all very simple, really. Here's how this idea
would work: You want to spread your MP3 presentation to as wide an audience as
possible. You have a group of people with whom you've communicated in the past,
perhaps people who signed an e-petition you sponsored or people who signed up
for a newsletter. Have them all download and run P2P Radio, rebroadcasting
the Internet radio program you've recorded. The broadcast will have a Web
address that other P2P Radio rebroadcasters will be
able to access with the P2P Radio software, or indeed with just Winamp, if they don’t want to rebroadcast (the P2P Radio
software allows users to just listen to a program and not rebroadcast if they
don't want to).
Now your rebroadcasters can
"spread the word" about your Web radio program on different e-mail
lists and forums: You can assign each activist in your network a Web
"district," where they publicize the broadcast using their own IP
address (the rebroadcast from their PC of the original Web radio program
originating on your PC). Listeners they recruit will hear the Web radio program
by tuning into their PC, making sure that the people they’ve recruited hear
your ideas, while ensuring that your computer isn't overwhelmed by hundreds or
thousands of people trying to tune in to your IP address – while getting
activists who want to contribute to "the good fight" an easy yet very
important task that could help spread your political ideas in a big way. It's
really a brilliant method of spreading the word and getting people who think
like you involved in an important project!
The P2P Radio people, bless their little hearts, have
an excellent tutorial right on the software's Web site – based on rebroadcasting music. In
P2P Radio is free, and is available for Windows
systems from http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/. Mac and Linux users, as well as
Windows users, can use a Java-based version of the software; requires JRE 1.4
or better, also available at the site. Other components required, including IceCast server, Winamp, and Oddcat DSP for Winamp, are all available at the site as well.
ds@newzgeek.com