Turns out my earlier post could have come out of a book. The Big Sort, a blog over at Slate, is all about the culture war as viewed through the political lens. You could call it Freakopolitics. The blog is a spinoff of a book by the same name, which I just added to my wish list.

This post in particular jibes with what I wrote two months ago.

College kids who join a conservative fraternity move to the right during their four years in college. Liberals from Boulder asked to discuss some issues of the day, such as global warming and gay marriage, are more liberal at the end of their discussion than before. Racists brought into a room to discuss race grow more intolerant.

The more you interact with people like you, and the less you interact with people not like you, the more polarized you become in your worldview. And thanks to the Internet, no matter who you are, there’s an echo chamber just for you.

And it’s killing us.

We transfer our hopes and dreams and identities onto “our” candidate, talk him up until he is larger than life, swallow all the marketing, and suddenly it’s Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader out there. Our side is the Rebellion and yours is the Empire. You’re a religious nut. I’m unpatriotic. That guy over there is a bigot. She’s a terrorist sympathizer. Get a life already. Go talk amongst yourselves instead of pointing fingers.

The truth is, despite all the hearts and flags and intangibles, the candidates are more alike than different when it comes to actual, hard, cold, boring policy. Most of the difference is imputed by us. Strip away all that and you have two great Americans, either of which I’ll be honored to call President.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a vote to cast.

I normally stay away from writing about politics. I’ll give you two reasons.

• The noble reason: I like to think I’m above the fray, and I’m not interested enough to stay on top of every issue.

However, I don’t really consider this a political post. Because American politics is no longer political, it’s cultural.

For your consideration, here are a few snippets of so-called political discourse culled from Twitter in the last couple of days:

• “Michelle “Shaniqua” Obama Bin Laden Proven To Be A Racist”

• “Please keep coming back to Philadelphia, jackhole”(in reference to McCain)

• “…if Obama was white, he would have been laughed out of the primary runoff.”

• “Talking Barbie said ‘Math is Hard.’ Talking Caribou Barbie says ‘Foreign Policy is Hard.’”

• “…tell me Sarah Palin isn’t a pigf***er.”.

What is wrong with you people? What is wrong with all of us?

Why do we act like soccer hooligans when it comes to politics? There is no civility any more, no critical thinking. Both sides see in black and white. Listen to the pundits on TV or read the bloggers. They cannot say a single good word about someone on the other side. The “strategists” have an excuse; spin is their job. But for the rest of us: has our diet of sound bites made us so intellectually lazy that we just swallow all that?

Everyone on the left is a hippie, a terrorist, or an anarchist. Everyone on the right is evil, stupid, a hypocrite, or just plain out of touch. Are we that different from each other?

Or are we just preaching to our own choirs in our own echo chambers, having forgotten how to have intelligent discourse with someone who doesn’t think just like us? We hide in our red-state or blue-state tribes, and we have lost the ability to relate to people outside of our little boxes. The ideals of those on the other side are lunacy to us, because we don’t know anyone who thinks like that.

We surround ourselves with people who think like us, talk like us, look like us. Thanks to the Internet, if we don’t live near anyone just like us, we can still be friends with them on Facebook. We don’t have to talk to the neighbors next door if we don’t like their bumper sticker. But on Twitter, or the blogs, we can be pretty certain that we’re among “friends” and everyone’s going to agree with everything we say. If not, well, it’s easy to call people names with a keyboard.

So much for the marketplace of ideas.

I promised you two reasons I don’t like to write about politics, didn’t I?

• The honest reason: I’m afraid it would alienate me from 99 percent of the people in my tribe. I have a college degree. I write and I build Web sites. I use a Mac (and you can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers). You tell me who I’m supposed to vote for.

The problem is, I have a few too many Red Tribe values that, as far as I can tell, aren’t shared by the leader of the Blue Tribe.

But you know what? Who cares?

In truth, I’d take either candidate at this point. All four people in the race are amazing human beings with admirable qualities: courage, dignity, wisdom, spunk. Or do you have so little faith in our political system that you think only one side of the machine turns out decent products? George Bush is the worst president ever. No wait, Bill Clinton was. No, I’m pretty sure it’s the next guy, whichever one it turns out to be.

Besides, this country is not a dictatorship (no, not even after the last eight years). One President does not make or break the country. People complain that it’s hard to get things done in Washington. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s why I hold my nose and cheer for the two-party system.

America needs people that stand up for the little guy and make sure everyone gets their fair shot at the dream. America also needs people that want the government to get out of the way so that individuals can achieve the dream.

I swear it’s a coincidence that I started writing this post on September 11, but God help us if it takes another one of those to put us all back on the same side of the fence.

Now that Facebook is the new gorilla on the block, the inevitable backlash is ramping up. I first saw it on Copyblogger. The question asked by the post is: where are you going to put your content, on your property (where you have complete control over your brand) or someone else’s (whose main interest is making money off of your marketing data)?

This is an interesting question, but a bigger issue comes to mind. Are social networking sites a substitute for real creativity, or a bona fide means of expression?

If everyone has one good story in them, tools like Facebook and Twitter let that story come out — even if you don’t happen to be a writer. They let you publish your life to interested readers, if you care to do so. Of course it’s not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, any more than all your regular blog readers and commenters are. I don’t pretend that all the old college and high school friends I found on Facebook are really a part of my life — but I get to follow their adventures and find out things I never knew. For example, Lynn is a really good writer.

Blogging is so 2005, right? It’s all about the social networks now. The blogfading has begun, and according to this post (via AntSaint), that’s a good thing. No one wants 5 articles about my kids’ eating habits cluttering up an RSS feed that they subscribed to because they found one interesting post about startup culture.

What no one seems to have picked up on is that Twitter, Facebook and the rest are great at separating the noise from the content.

I’ve posted before about the unique writing challenge Twitter offers. You can use it that way, or you can just blast your life to the ether. Or you can do both. Whoever wants to read will read. If it’s too much noise, then they can just follow your blog for the deep stuff.

Facebook is the gossip magazine. Twitter is TV. Blogging is books and magazines. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Unless, of course, you spend so much time poking your friends that you don’t get around to writing that blog post. Guilty.

Note: the following rant contains vague, unresearched statistical claims. Feel free to object to any that are in error.

Some big percentage of the population is married. That percentage spends some big percentage of time watching TV and listening to music, and accounts for some big percentage of ad revenue.

The golden demographic is something like 18-35, right? This is the segment of society with the most disposable income, and thus targeted most by advertisers. Some bigger percentage of this segment is married — but you don’t see many of these people on TV. At age 36, according to Hollywood, you should be watching Ghost Whisperer and Matlock reruns while your kids binge on The Real World.

Why is married life underrepresented in television, movies and music? The stories are about teens, singles hooking up, and married people having affairs. I recently saw Lost in Translation, one of the best treatments of loneliness, bonding and self-discontent that I’ve ever seen. The two main characters are married. To other people. And miserable.

I’m not Dan Quayle. I don’t want the media to sell me an arbitrary definition of morality. I’m honestly curious why society’s most complex relationship is a territory unexplored by the audiovisual arts. Is it because the majority of audiovisual artists are young and single and have no experience with marriage themselves, other than what they remember of their (probably divorced) parents?

There is no story without conflict. Anyone who’s been married more than a week can tell you about that part. In Hollywood, though, it’s all conflict. There’s no upside to marriage (unless one of you is rich and dies). If you stay married, the best you can hope for is to become a dull shadow of your former free-spirited self. If you can’t take it any more, you cheat, and then you leave, and then you get your groove back (at least, I assume, until you marry your new fling and start the cycle over). The last good, honest movie about marriage that sticks in my head was When A Man Loves A Woman. That was 13 years ago.

Believe me, being married has its rewards. Beyond children, sex, or creature comforts. Being irrevocably committed to one other person and choosing to love them no matter what is a challenge that will make you a better person. It might even make you a better artist. Bono, happily married rock star, remarked in U2 By U2 that his art lives in the tension between domesticity and wanderlust: “the collision… between being faithful to your art or being faithful to your lover.”

And now it gets personal. Finding time to write when you have to get the kids up in the morning, put them to bed at night, and work in between is a bear. I can see how “pursuing the muse with no holds barred” (Bono again) could lead to fulfilling bouts of creativity. I have also seen how the unrelieved routine of married-with-children can put out the artistic fire. I’m guessing that most screenwriters and songwriters take the first option, fear the second, and are missing out on the gold mine in the middle.

“I’m continually surprised that more companies aren’t willing to consider telecommuters, especially on the job board. My feeling is that you can’t trust the person you’re hiring to get the job done without being under your thumb, you’re probably not hiring the right person.” -From the Signal vs. Noise archives

Fact: I’m expecting my second child at the end of the month. My wife is happy at her job and our family is nearby.

Fact: Less than five people in Columbia, SC have ever heard the term Ruby on Rails. (OK, that’s not necessarily a fact, but it sure seems like one.)

Fact: There’s an amazing series of tubes that can connect me in realtime with pretty much anyone on the planet, anytime. Shoot, I even got me a cell phone and a Starbucks just around the corner.

Conclusion: A guy like me, with ten years’ experience building web applications for startups, on just about every platform that’s ever been buzzworthy, should be able to find someone to pay me to work remotely.

Wrong.

I’ve responded to ten or fifteen posts on the 37 Signals Job Board. The typical reply to my resume goes something like this:

“The resume looks great. Can we do a phone interview?”

“Hmm, 803, what area code is that?”

“So are you looking to relocate to (metro area X), or just anywhere?”

“You aren’t able to relocate? Well, thanks for your time.”

Rails is the best platform I’ve ever built a web application on. It’s the only one that I look forward to using. Before I spent quality time with it, I was ready to give up software development for good. I don’t want to use .NET or Visual Basic again, and I couldn’t work half as efficiently if I did. (Imagine seeing a job posting that read “Designer wanted. Must be proficient with MS Paint.”) Unfortunately, those are the only local job openings.

Relocation isn’t an option for me right now. A year from now, that may change, but that’s hardly the point.

37 Signals is a group of fairly smart and influential guys, half of whom are scattered around the globe. It’s their job board you’re advertising on. If telecommuting works for them, give me one good reason why it won’t work for your company.

What have I been up to for the past month?

• I got sick of writing “I’m a big slacker” posts. No one wants to read those.

• Besides paying work (which I could use more of), vacation, and family time, I’ve been reading the Bible through, following World Cup soccer, and learning the game of go (research for a novel… at least that’s the excuse I use). What’s so interesting about soccer and go? They’re both incredibly elegant. Simple rules, endless possibilities. Americans may tell you that soccer is boring, but they aren’t paying attention to what happens between the scoring. Go is the one game the computers can’t beat us at.

• I haven’t opened my RSS reader in at least a month. If I open it, I’ll find thousands of headlines screaming “READ ME!” with no filter to screen out stuff I don’t care about (that’s why I miss SearchFox). There are feeds I really do want to follow, like Signal vs. Noise or 43 Folders, but even the good ones are gateways to massive time wastage. I’ll end up clicking through to another and another link. If I blow an afternoon on surfing in the interests of “catching up”, there will still be 2000 new headlines tomorrow. “Catching up” is a myth.

I don’t want to contribute to the noise, either. I hate the term “musings” that so many people attach to their blogs. If you ever catch me using it, quit reading. I haven’t had any thoughts that were original enough to post, or worthy of the time. I can’t seem to write a post without spending 30 minutes cleaning it up and messing with links. After I update my site, I have to go check everyone else’s to see if they’ve updated theirs… and, of course, leave a comment so they come back and check mine.

The problem with the blog format is the signal-to-noise ratio. It’s too easy for us digital kids, Generation Soundbite, to crank out (and consume) superficial “musings” like there was nothing else important to think about. I’m writing this post in a notebook. I wanted to avoid even the overhead of turning on the Powerbook and getting distracted from writing.

I got a new book light before vacation. It only really works with paperbacks (so I guess I need to spend even more money on the hardback version… brilliant marketing). So I went to the library in search of a decent paperback to take out of town. I stumbled over two classics I’d never read: East of Eden and Fahrenheit 451. I started the latter first because it’s shorter, and closer to my usual SF/fantasy light reading territory. In 451 (which I haven’t quite finished), books were banned, not because of any subversive or anti-establishment content, but because people just quit reading. Attention spans weren’t equipped to handle anything tougher than TV. Burning the books was just entertainment.

(There are some scary foreshadows of the reality TV trend, as well as people who walk around all day with earbuds or cell phones stuck to their ears.)

Our fascination with “musings” is like crying on TV. Ever notice how, since the whole reality thing started, even the news tries to catch people crying? It satisfies our craving for drama and spectacle, on the surface, anyway. It breaks down the fourth wall (between performer and audience). In 451, a character has TVs on three of her walls and begs her husband to install a fourth.

Am I Thoreau now? Maybe in some ways. I’ve already talked about the problems that come with being a sponge. Another one is the inability to discriminate. I don’t have the free time to chase every rabbit trail that I come across. Not if I want to progress as a writer, developer, husband, father. Not if I want to keep the buzzing out of my head.

So is the blog a distraction or an aid? It depends on how I use it. I can practice my writing fine without it. The blog is for peer review, conversation, and brand recognition. Eventually I need a portfolio to show off.

But. If I’m not writing — and I haven’t, really, in the past month — the blog is an irrelevant distraction. The writing needs to come first; if it does, the blog takes care of itself.

Or is this just another “I’m a big slacker” post?

Signal vs. Noise has (inadvertently? or not so much?) reminded us all of the pitfalls of doing research online. Jason asks readers’ opinions of LASIK surgery. The result? A tangled snarl of a comment thread. “It’s the best thing ever!” “You’ll burn your eyes out!” etc.

The bell curve gets turned upside down on the Web. The extreme negative and positive opinions are amplified by those who have an axe to grind or a horn to toot, while the silent majority just don’t take the time to share their stories.

Apologies to Seth Godin for the title of this post.

One year ago today, Flickr fessed up to being acquired by Yahoo!.

“They’re not going to replace any of us with suits, nor induce us to wear them. Lapel? I don’t know what you mean.”

To celebrate this dubious milestone, here’s a poignant story of one erstwhile Flickr fan’s struggle to get his password back from Yahoo!’s clutches.

• Who does Yahoo! think they are? (Space Age Wasteland)

Callie got me thinking today. She says that bookstores are her favorite places. Now that I think about it, the library has always been a personal favorite of mine. There’s no pressure to buy anything, and no mob of people coming and going. When I was a kid, I’d ride my bike down to the local branch on weekends, or haunt the school library during lunch and recess.

Childrens’ sections at the public library are cozy and inviting. There are mats on the floor and Maurice Sendak posters everywhere. School libraries are similarly friendly places.

Have you gone into your public library lately, as an adult?

It used to be that I’d rush down to the library when a new book I wanted to read was coming out, and slap a hold on that sucker if it wasn’t there yet. Lately, the first thing I do when a new book comes out is put it on my Amazon wishlist. When someone suggests I get that new book from the library, it’s like they’re asking me why I don’t fly to work. The library has lost its mindshare. And it’s only a block from where I work.

Architecturally, the main branch of the Richland County Public Library (image above) is impressive. Green glass rises four or five stories off the sidewalk on two sides. The building’s interior structure is cantilevered outward — kind of an inverted half pyramid — so that each floor is bigger in area than the one below it. When you look in from the outside, the impression is that of a cutaway diagram. Escalators zigzag up through the large atrium. Concrete, light, industrial carpet, and tall shelves are everywhere.

In short, not the least bit cozy or inviting.

My theory on this is that adults are not supposed to read for enjoyment. We’re all too busy with our jobs and our kids and our hobbies. Someone at work reminded me of a statistic that says that, after graduation, some whopping percentage of Americans never open a book for pleasure again.

So no one much bothers to create a pleasurable reading environment for adults. No, if you go to the library at all, you want to find it, check it out, and go home. Or back to work. You’re not going to spend, say, your whole lunch hour sitting around and reading.

Or would you? If there was a comfy place you could go, close to work, and read awhile (or write or work or listen to music), would you? Would you pay for the privilege?

Quick break from vacation to point out this post at Signal vs. Noise:

Enterprise is the New Legacy (Signal vs. Noise)

The sharp kids at 37 Signals picked up on something the Startup Junkie noted awhile ago: enterprise is becoming a dirty word.

Startup Junkie: Mission Statement (Colaspot)

Happy New Year!