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Gary Wolf is doing a piece on the Dean campaign and coming up with some fairly interesting stuff. He’s writing a post-facto manifesto in an attempt to capture the magic. I particularly like “You’re not a leader; you’re a place.” Of course, Dean is a leader — that’s in part a clever bit of spin to keep people from thinking of the campaign as a cult of personality. But there’s a nugget of truth to it as well. Community-building on the Internet requires a seed figure for a leader. It also requires that seed figure to make the place comfortable. Good mailing lists have a list mom.

Hm. I think he’s missing the “push” element of the campaign as well. In order for Dean to succeed, he needs to push his message out to non-connected people via his Internet community, which is why you see a lot of exhortations to put up posters and hand out fliers and so on. It’s a vital part of the Internet campaign.

(Via BoingBoing.)

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While Sean Stewart’s web site has been redesigned, there’s not really much new information. Still just the brief note about The Glass Coffin. Alas.

He has added a section on “The Beast,” also known as “That big Web game designed to promote A.I.” There’s a very good introduction to the game. Reading it, I keep wondering what he’s been up to, and I wonder a little if he’ll ever write a novel again.

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For Mashup number fifteen, we’ll return to the classics of science fiction. Our subject today is the Foundation Trilogy, Asimov’s soft-SF series of psychohistory, galactic empire, and barbarianism. I’m more interested in the original three books than the multitude of sequels, but suit yourself for your mashups.

The core concept of the trilogy is Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, with which Seldon predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire and manipulated events so as to minimize the time before another Empire would rise. Add in the backstop that was the Second Foundation — and don’t forget the psionics — and you have a lot of material to work with.

Oh, and this is your sporadic reminder that there’s a game meme announcement mailing list. The only traffic on the list is announcements of new game meme posts; right now it’s just me and Ginger’s WISH.

Now, on to my Mashup.

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