The full impact of the Internet has not been truly gauged through out the American experience as of yet. It has been so pervasive it would seem difficult to tally up or even explain in detail the social, economic, educational, and political strides that have been made as a result of instantaneous access to information.
I will how ever endeavor to explore the impact on an average Joe who has an interest in local, national and even international politics and geo-political events. Just a few short years ago if you hoped to keep abreast of such things it required a very large subscription base of various journals that you had to wait for on a daily weekly or monthly basis. Not only were the subscription costs prohibitive so to were the space requirements. Just the daily, two weeklies and junk mail fills my recycling bin to the top. As those natural restrictions were in force so to then was the diversity of opinion a local political or current events enthusiast was exposed to. Inevitably if all you got was the Boston Globe, CBS News and Newsweek magazine then your own opinion was likely to mirror the biases of your data input.
All of that of course has now been dramatically changed. With high speed Internet access at work and a clunky dial up modem at home all the events of the world are at the touch of a keyboard. Not just reporting of events but also the huge and diverse body of opinion that traditional media has to offer but now also the smorgasbord of journalist wannabes (present company included) in the blogosphere.
The choices are so many now that one has to keep nipping and tucking the favorites list on his or her browser just to keep a top list for the purposes of economical use of time. So for the moment I have included two from my current list of “gadfly paradise” sites, which I consider absolute must reads at the beginning of each day and whenever additional recreational reading time is available.
Realclearpolitics.com. This is my pick as the top site for unbiased compilation viewing of political opinion. Everyday the operators of the site provide a selection of opinion pieces from across the nation. The opinions presented seem to represent the political spectrum and frequently feature a point counter point format with distinguished voices being heard on both sides of an argument. In addition to the compilation section there are also selected editorials each day from major publications. This by itself would be worth a visit but the site offers a whole lot more. The talk show section of the site has a daily log of the major opinion programs and the roster of guests as well as the transcripts of the entire program. Did you miss Meet The Press or face the Nation last Sunday? No problem, just go to the site and the entire goings on are right there.
As good as all of that is, the polling data and coverage of political races is even better. The amount of information and accuracy of that information available on the site during the national and statewide races was truly staggering. Every major polling organizations data was placed on the site for the national elections as well as senate, house and gubernatorial races with margin of error and projected results data.
The party convention coverage was equally impressive. Gavel to gavel coverage was available with all of the speakers schedules and presentations available for print out. All of this information was archived and maintained on the site through out the entire campaign season.
Refdesk.com The size of this site and the quality of its information is to immense to even begin to explain. Take a couple of days and surf the contents and you can BEGIN to understand just how much information is available here. For the purposes of time and space I will limit my comments to one simple link that is available. Under the references resources section there is a link, which is titled USA and world newspapers. Click on this section and you are immediately transported to a section that has every state listed and sub-links that connect you to every publication for every community newspaper in that state, which has a web site. Continue further on down and there is a link to each country with sub-links to major publications. Further on down is a list of both domestic and international news outlets. If something is going on in some obscure place in the world. This is the place to find it.
One can only wonder just what the possibilities are for this Internet thing over the time.
