Dave Winer Visits Microsoft

Dave Winer, writer of the longest running blog in the blogosphere, is speaking here at Microsoft as I type.  Robert points out that he and Dave will be speaking at the .NET Developer's Association meeting tonight at 7PM in the Tahoma room in Building 9 at Microsoft in Redmond.  Note!!! This is a room change.  Tahoma is the publicly accessible meeting room just inside the front doors of bldg 9.

Dave contributed to the technological component of Howard Dean's campaign to become the Democratic party's nominee for President of the United States.  In today's talk, Dave said [paraphrase], 'If there was any doubt that the television media controls who gets elected President [of the US] before this year, there's certainly no doubt any more. It's pretty clear to people across the political spectrum that the television executives killed Howard Dean's chances of winning the Democratic nomination.'   In essence, Dave contends that the American television conglomerates undermine American democracy.

Dave also said [paraphrase], 'One of the things that is so great about blogs is that it is a democratizing medium. An individual's posts appear side by side with a story from a big news outlet and they look exactly alike.'

I wonder... how do you think democratizing technologies like blogs might someday manifest themselves in the television medium?  Can television (or radio for that matter) be “democratized“? Or is it an inherently command and control medium?  For instance, is it completely insane to imagine a world in which people create and consume personal TVBlogs?  Might I someday be able to switch from the MSNBC news feed to the Slate news feed to the Dave Winer news feed?  Is it completely inconceivable that I might someday receive popup-style alerts on my home television (ala Outlook 2003 or SharpReader.NET) that a friend has posted to her blog while I'm watching a sitcom on NBC or ESPN?