Technology and Politics

Over the weekend I watched the GOP convention on my XBox. Now whatever you think of politics, this was an amazing thing to be able to do. The show was live, streaming, and you could even see how people were responding to what was being said. At the bottom of the screen was a polling system where you could basically "vote" how much or little the current topic interested you and you could see how it was affecting others. There was even a timer going with it to show at what point people were voting. Again the convention itself is neither here nor there but the technology coming to play in things like this is amazing. Think of what this could mean if they perfect it some, the gallop polls could really show more precisely how the country is looking to vote. If they could keep the American Idol type voting from happening you could possibly someday vote from the comfort of your home through a game console. Yes, this would mean two adults would need two different logins that the government could pin point to an exact person who voted and how many times. That could be a huge under taking too, mailing out user id's that you'll forget by the time of the next election, people having to go down to the local courthouse each time for a number, or any number of other issues. Especially for the Facebook generation, this is huge though. The showing how you like something and how you dislike something along with other people during a live event could have huge ramifications. Imagine the next convention where the "candidate" comes in with multiple prepared speeches instead of just one as someone working for him is relaying how much people like what he or she is currently talking about. One of the other big things of this happening is where did this take place? Was it Foxnews? How about CNN? MSNBC? Nope, it was a VIDEOGAME CONSOLE. That target audience is the young crowd but they turned this into something informative for them. Makes you wonder how many of them actually turned it on.