Brian Conley's News & Notes

PEOPLE. Right now we have a possible new solution to war in Afghanistan, a dramatic rise of the drone war in Pakistan, a collapsing state in Yemen, an opposition leader under assault in Sri Lanka, an election in Sudan that is on the verge of being delayed, a massive rewrite of the common understanding of the “genocide” in Darfur, an explosive situation in Haiti and the threat of a new war in the Middle East. All of these are bits of information I garnered from Twitter over the last few days.

But lets be clear, none of those are going to “change everything.” It will be this fab new gadget and a speech by Mr. Jobs that is going to mark a great turning point in modern history.

Its impossible to imagine that just before Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 the world would have been so obsessed with a gadget that would be accessible only to the wealthiest 1% of the world population that the international media would be more interested in telling the story of such a gadget than publishing the latest gossip about imperial machinations of various world powers.

Perhaps the issue is that we have to low a barrier to access and to high a barrier toward making a living. Shock and Awe marketing and the ability to one up the breaking news of one’s competitor takes precedence over in-depth, contextualized, and investigative reporting.

I’d be more excited about the latest gadgets and gizmos if more was being done to improve the lives of the bottom 10-90%. Imagine if Apple was combining a strategy to engage in social good and increasing access to the digital communications space with their massively hyped presentation of a shiny new object that quite possibly is contributing to war in the Congo and ongiong human rights or labor violations at factories around the developing world.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, part of my point is that there *IS* a wide array of information out there, but it’s being drowned in a sea of marketing, PR, and hype. The question I’d like to see answered is not only why are so many people interested in hype, but how can those of us interested in improving the visibility of important international affairs be more successful? How can we be more effective at drawing connections between the various conflicts around the world and the policies of developed nations, whether they be political, social, financial, or otherwise?

I will probably try to wake early enough to watch the SoU, though let me tell you, I don’t expect much revolutionary world-changing new perspective to be unveiled then either.