Lexical Light

A 9-11 Thin Place Story

Jenny Thompson's Thin Place Story is on MaryDeMuth.com

Road Trip

A few weeks ago we celebrated the opening of a short stretch of road. The kids & I went to the grand opening. We thought it would be fun to make a "Thank You" sign. Alexa held it up in the heat, throughout the ceremony. About half way through I had to offer her a $2 incentive, but it was money well spent.  I don't want to take our city leaders and workers for granted. I also want to teach the kids a bit about how our society is run.

The said road is not long, but it's quite important. It's a north/south connecting road that will take off about 10 minutes of several local trips we make. Woo-hoo. It's also makes ours grocery store about 8 minutes closer.Whee!

Google and Politics

Do you want to know "Google's views on government, policy and politics?" I know. You were just wondering about that. Now you can read the Google Public Policy Blog.

Information is powerful. Google is a worldwide distributor of information, granted it has a lot more user control  than traditional information distributors like newspaper & tv, but it's still a huge purveyor of ideas. The user has to be able to critically sift through all they find on Google.

I'm used to thinking of Google as a search engine, a tech company - even a verb. I'm not sure what to do with this new idea of them shaping public policy, but as an observer of how technology affects our lives I had to note it in my blog.

Now that I think about it a bit more, other companies have influence on government, so it makes sense for Google to have a blog focusing

"on issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, and trade" ("just to name a few"). Google's public policy team, who author the blog, say that they hope to foster a "dialogue" with Google users about political issues in order to "do a better job of fighting for our common interests." (from this post
on readwriteweb.com)

Do other big companies, particularly oil, have blogs about issues affecting their business?   

Since my brain hasn't processed this info yet, though I have been thinking, I'll leave you with Josh Catone's conclusion from his Google the Vote post:

"Lobbying and PACs are the more traditional road for corporations to influence American politics. Google's latest approach leverages social technologies (the backbone of web 2.0?) to bypass Washington completely. By creating platforms for candidates and talking directly to the people, Google has positioned themselves as a major force in shaping American political policy (and by extension, have a far reaching global effect). At the same time, Google's political forays will likely strengthen their brand -- not just by helping them get what they want politically, but also by associating their name with yet another staple of American life: the democratic process."

Nothing like a little food for thought with my Berrylicious Oatmeal.