Dear Frank,

Yes, people are mean in politics. Reality does suck.

Granted, politics have been mean, and reality has sucked, for a long time. But you’re one of the people to blame for the modern way in which it sucks, the one in which we can rebrand “torture” — and by “rebrand”, of course, I mean marketing, and not the actual red hot irons. Which you would probably call “interrogative probes.”

Not that any of us who were your students at Penn are particularly surprised. You were a great prof, but part of that was the amazing way in which you equated oleaginous stances to academic merit. “I can argue any political point so convincingly,” you said, “that none of you will be able to tell what I really believe.”

And you can. You’ve made a career of it. If you could have done so while double-dipping from the left and the right, I’m sure you would have. Some of us remember that Perot predated Gingrich on your resumé.

So have fun in Hollywood. I’m sure you’ll get along fine with the “arch-liberals” there. They’ll invite you to parties to play the foil, and you’ll go so you can pretend to be their intellectual superior. It’ll work out great for all of you.

Just do me a favor, Frank. Once you’re there, and you’re getting rich from fiction that is supposed to be fiction? Please stay. I think you’ve done the political infrastructure enough damage already.

Best,
Jeff Porten
UPenn, COL ’90

Remember the days after 9/11, when most of us spent days furiously getting in touch with friends and family, consoling each other, and making sure everyone was alright? If you’re like most people, you look back and think, “Christ, that was tedious. I sure hope I don’t have to go through that much effort next time.”

At least, if you’re like most people, according to the developers of the Microsoft Vine social network:

Vine is a hyperlocal messaging and alert system intended to be used to share information during a crisis. Properly configured, it will gather local news and public safety announcements along with location information, reports and messages from friends–eventually even those posted to other services, like Facebook and Twitter–into a handy little dashboard. This being Microsoft (MSFT), that dashboard will be proprietary and require PCs running XP SP2 or Vista and 600 MB of hard disk space.

I’m entirely in favor of disseminating good information during a disaster. When it gets bad, common sense will let you down, and ignorance can be swiftly fatal. For example, in the event of a radiological attack, your best bet — depending on your distance from the epicenter — is to find a deep hole in the ground and stay there for a few days. But if you’re far enough away, and downwind from the attack, you should be running like hell instead.

Then, of course, you should factor in the likelihood that you’ll be running like hell down the same roads that a million other panicked citizens are using, all of you fearing death from invisible, intangible radiation poisoning. Depending on how many of your fellow citizens have guns, well, I’m thinking that should tip some folks into staying in their basements instead.

A good source of information would be crucial during this kind of emergency. And there’s your essential problem with alert networks like Vine. During normal times, no one pays attention to them. So your response is likely to have the bejesus scared out of you when they chirp up — at least until you’re desensitized to false alarms. (Which is exactly what happens with the Alert DC SMS network, and the memories many of us have from the old tests of the Emergency Broadcast System.) But no one likes to build a network and then never use it, so expect to see Vine regularly telling you about decidedly non-emergency issues, leading you to think of Vine as a broadcaster of trivia.

Meanwhile, what happens during an actual emergency? Well, if you’re using Vine, here are the necessary preconditions:

1. You’ll stay relatively stationary with your Windows laptop, or entirely stationary in front of your Windows desktop.
2. Of course, you’ll have reliable access to both the Internet and electricty.
3. All federal, state, and local emergency planners will be diligent in updating their news broadcasts using the computer-readable metadata that Vine will rely on to aggregate your hyperlocal news.
4. Did I mention that you’d be stationary and require Internet access and electricity? Because really, I could have stopped there.

Next time I’m caught in this kind of situation, I already know what alert service I’ll use: Twitter, the alert service I use daily. Why?

1. It aggregates both official news sources, and crowdsourced information from people I collectively trust.
2. It’ll work on pretty much any mobile device I happen to have on me; if there’s any cell service, I’ll be connected.
3. It provides me with a simple way to broadcast information and become a member of the crowd — while, at the same time, running like hell as needs be.

Twitter’s not perfect — in the event of a national emergency, there’s no way it would scale. And it would sure be useful for it to mash up with Google Maps, GPS, and other technologies which could be lifesavers in an emergency. But in the meantime, it’ll do — and in fact, it clearly will be where people instinctively turn next time. Microsoft’s attempt to “compete” will serve only to create a cul-de-sac of people separated from the crowd, which would concern me if I weren’t convinced that Vine will be an utter failure.