After experiencing the awesome power of the U.S. military for the past six years, the State Dept. is ready to blast the place into cyberspace. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is sending a “new media delegation” to Iraq in an apparent effort to teach and then keep the Iraqis “tweeting” so they won’t have time to blow each other up or learn the ropes of roadside bomb making. It’s a sweet idea.
Twitter chairman-founder Jack Dorsey is among the ten-member group. Others include Jason Liebman, CEO-Founder, Howcast; David Nassar, VP-Blue State Digital; Hunter Walk, Head Product Development-YouTube; Steven Levy, Senior Writer-Wired Magazine; Scott Heiferman, CEO-MeetUp; Raanan Bar-Cohen, VP-Automatic/WordPress and a pair of Googlers Kannan Pashupathy, Director of International Engineering Operations and Ahmad Hamzawi, Head of Engineering, Middle East/North Africa. Another member of the new media squad is Richard Robbins, director of social innovation of ATT. His inclusion is a nice tip of the cap to the new media savvy of Ma Bell. Didn’t know she had it in her.
According to the State Dept.’s statement, the delegation is to demonstrate how new tech communications tools “can foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building.”
State believes the traveling troupe will teach the Iraqis how to integrate new technology as a “tool for smart power.” The hope is once the Iraqis figure out how to be smart enough to keep the country together, U.S. military forces can redeploy to Afghanistan and pave the way for a new media delegation to be sent there.
Old hippie Hillary is updating the '60s phrase of "Make Love, Not War" into "Make Tweets, Not War."
Isn’t technology wonderful?