Obama’s inaugural address
January 10, 2009 – 11:15 am by JohnSlate magazine and MixedInk.com have partnered to create the People’s Inaugural Address, in which anyone can register and contribute their own sentences, paragraphs, or entire speeches, and about a week from now the highest-rated speech gets published by Slate as the true “people’s” inauguration speech. This is how Slate describes it:
Here’s how it works: When you click on the link, you will be taken to a site where, once you register, you can start writing your own speech. But you won’t be writing alone. As you compose, MixedInk’s technology will search for similar words and turns of phrase from all 55 previous inaugural addresses, as well as contributions from other users, and tell you if anyone has had similar thoughts. You can then incorporate these into your own speech (or decide to stick with your own words). You’ll also be able to search for useful snippets of text yourself. The technology keeps track of authorship, and when you’re done, you can share your speech with others, who can then borrow (or ignore) your handiwork as they see fit. They can also rate your speech and comment on it.
At the end of this process, which will last about two weeks, Slate will publish the speech with the highest rating.
Since I heard that Obama had plans to run for president, I have sincerely, desperately hoped that if he got elected, he would begin his inauguration speech with, “Excuse me while I whip this out.” That would be so awesome. I would give him a free pass for like the first 6 months…
One Response to “Obama’s inaugural address”
What a watered-down piece of crap that’s going to produce. It’s hard enough writing something with one or two other people, but this is going to be written by hundreds. People forget that in a democracy we elect our leaders to lead, we don’t lead ourselves.
Democracy works well to elect our leaders, but it falls flat in all sorts of other aspects of life. The best manuscripts in Western intellectual history were written by 1 author – or at the most 2 very compatible ones. New ideas are best introduced by great minds who think from a particular perspective. Imagine if the most influential books in Western history were written by a committee.
But it’s this sort of confusion – that democracy is best in all sorts of aspects of life – that leads to misdirected projects like the People’s Inaugural Address.
By kerrjac on Jan 11, 2009