The First Digital President

It was Roosevelt whose “fireside chats” made him the first President of the broadcast age, and later Kennedy with his good looks outmaneuvered an unshaven Nixon as TV came to the fore. With his masterful grasp of the digital age Obama first changed the business model of winning the presidency; by asking for micro-donations he beat the bank and John Mcain. Today, in his inaugural address, I also can’t help feeling there was a real touch of the humility, honesty and recognition for the many who make up the whole which characterises the new forms of communication which are replacing the didactic supremacy of broadcast.

This is a most tumultuous time in history, so much is changing we hardly know where to look. But with events like this, we get a chance to measure our moment in time against the receding past. When you read the text of Obama’s speech you find a plea for a saner more connected world. For me, Obama’s words resonate with the spirit of what the internet at it’s best offer; understanding and insight through connectedness to other people.There is even a specific promise to address the infrastructure needed to make more of technology:

“We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do. ”

Most exciting of all though, is the real sense that an old order finally crumbled as Dick Cheney was wheeled offstage. In our little part of the world, it is marketing which is changing irrevocably and for the better. But that change is grounded in a fundamental shift of power from the broadcast of the few to the narrowcast of the many, which has now resonated so deeply that a black man can become President. As the man says:

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

It would be trite to say the internet created Obama, but the communictions revolution we’re all a part of is certainly bound up in his phenomenon.