This time, Silicon Valley's technology changed U.S. politics

by Mike Cassidy

It struck me as I sat at the computer in the kitchen the night of Nov. 4, with the TV blaring election results in the background.

I was doing my best John-King-on-CNN imitation, showing my kids a Web-based electoral map while trying to explain why 270 votes was the magic number.

And you know what it was that struck me? That the TV was in the background.

This presidential election was different. Different in profound and poignant ways, yes. But different in mundane ways, too - ways not marked by a milestone or a moment, but rather by the evolution of how we find out what we want to know.

This election and the way we followed it and fought about it had everything to do with what has happened in Silicon Valley in the past decade. The Internet, social networking, blogging, the mobile phone as laptop.

I know. It's way too late to declare the 2008 presidential contest as the first election of the Internet age. But at our house, and I imagine at houses across America, the Internet for the first time became a nearly seamless part of our election experience.

There is more coming, no doubt. By 2012, we'll barely recognize the ways we gobbled up the late-breaking results this year from Ohio and New Mexico while trying to divine the winner in North Carolina by clicking on piles of exit poll data.

Consider how odd it was this Election Day to have CNN's Wolf Blitzer actually tell viewers to take their eyes off him and his coverage and instead feast their eyes on the CNN.com Web site.

By 2012, the television and computer monitor will be one. One big screen. Click on Wolf for his words and wisdom. Click on a corner icon to bring up CNN.com.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/65909-this-time-silicon-valleys-technology-changed-us-politics/