Quantum Art's™ work with local governments always provides for interesting contradictions. I was reminded today of a county IT director that was tasked by the CIO to produce a 25-year technology spending and implementation plan. As hilarious as this may sound, there is some reason to it: the same IT director told Quantum Art that he needs to budget hardware purchases a year in advance (i.e. if he wants a Pentium 4, he can only get it next June). Council budget approvals require government IT directors to plan much further ahead then their corporate counterparts. Given such experiences, they should be better at budgeting IT spending. What is interesting to consider is whether such constraints would also make them better at predicting technology evolution.

According to CNN, today's study released by the IRS indicates that "wealthiest 400 taxpayers in the United States accounted for 1.1 percent of U.S. adjusted gross income in 2000." The numbers are striking, not only because of the significant growth in the gross income share of the richest 0.1%, but more so in light of the stagnation in the bottom 10%. The statistics, of course, are reflective of the boom in the nineties, and seem doubly curious as the nineties were dominated by Democrats both in the Executive and Legislative branches.

I was in a meeting today, with a gentleman from Netli, discussing video-blogging (vlogging), and how Netli could aid in the strive towards creating a technologically workable video-publishing network that would be similar in its essence and uptake potential as text blogging.

A few interesting ideas and thoughts on vlogging immediately came out:

• Vlogs are not an alternative to blogging, they are an alternative to television.


• Vlogs, unlike blogs may not focus on bi-directional communication (this seems to be the key differentiator). While blogging, in many respects, treats all network participant as equals, vlogging would create a fine line between publishers of information and its consumers.


• Linking is essential to blogging, frame-in-frame (picture-in-picture) and audio commentary overlays will make or break a vlog.

The point that has not been resolved, however, is the level of expertise that a potential vlogger may need. Producing text, such as this post, is easy enough – for years we have been conditioned to learn how to spill our guts on paper, how to type, how to use a word processor… Only a few have mastered the intricacies of video editing software. So the paradox, and perhaps the reason for the second conclusion above, is in the fact that (i) poor video (“talking heads” in search of their pundit voices) will not draw enough attention, and (ii) there is only a very finite number of people able to produce quality video content.

So after several attempts, a few posts about the beauty of blogging and the precariousness of the same, I have decided to wholeheartedly embrace the medium. This is the first post, and this time it will not be the last.