Net Surf
Campaigning in the '90s: Candidates Sport Their Wares on the Web Just about everyone who has ventured onto the World Wide Web has clicked to http://www.whitehouse.gov and listened to that poor cat meow. With another presidential election coming up, Socks isn't likely to get much peace, and neither is the greater Web. The '96 race for the White House may be the sternest test yet of the Web's political potential. Like Republicans at a midterm New Hampshire pancake breakfast, some candidates have already arrived.
So far, incumbent Bill Clinton is using the White House site, which includes plenty of material on his administration's accomplishments, to play a cyberspace version of the famous Rose Garden strategy. But the Republicans' cybercampaigns are livelier. Presidential hopeful and former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander's Come on Along! page at www.nashville.net/~lamar/ attempts to duplicate his folksy manner with a lovely black-and-red checkered background much like the flannel shirt he often wears on the campaign trail. Surfing to http://www.gramm96.org will bring you to the Phil Gramm for President page. This site boasts more than 100,000 hits to date (though one wonders how many of those came from the same sort of eager volunteers who call in to radio shows to boost their candidates). Senator Gramm's page offers a multimedia archive, complete with lovely photos like "Phil Gramm with Boys Club football team he coached in College Station, Texas."
Other Republican hopefuls Wired up at press time include Indiana Senator Richard Lugar at http://www.iquest.net/lugar/lugar.htm, and the conservative's conservative, Pat Buchanan, at http://iquest.com/~buchanan/patindex.html. Though alleged front-runner Senator Bob Dole hasn't put up a page yet, a rabid fan has done it for him: you'll find The Unofficial Bob Dole Home Page at http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~lapple/bobdole.html. (A similar effort, earnestly titled Clinton, Yes!, can be found at http://www.av.qnet.com/~yes/. More unofficial pages will likely blossom by next fall.)
The best of the nonpartisan campaign resources is the Election '96 Homepage at http://dodo.crown.net/~mpg/election/96.html, assembled by Michael Gonzalez, of Portage, Indiana. A 1994 graduate of Indiana University and part-time Webmaster for his state's crown.net, Gonzalez hopes the page will be a valuable public resource (and somewhat of a personal trophy).
Meanwhile, mainstream media organizations will be using the '96 campaign to test the potential of the Web. The election area at Time Warner's Pathfinder site - http://www.pathfinder.com - is already busy. At http://www.fosters.com, the Foster's Daily Democrat newspaper in Dover, New Hampshire, is making its Web debut with a comprehensive guide to the state's first-in-the-nation primary.
The Foster's site is slated to include a forum to post questions to the presidential candidates as well as the usual news stories, photos, and occasional online debates.
At www.drake.edu/public/caucus.html, you can tap into CyberCaucus - a thorough look at the past and present of the Iowa caucuses - supported by Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and staffed largely by journalism students. The lead page includes links to various political sites. One to watch in coming months.
Finally, a look at Web campaigning wouldn't be complete without a visit to www.amdest.com/Pat/pat.html, cyberspace home of another one of Pat Paulsen's quixotic and comedic campaigns for the country's top job - a performance art tradition dating to 1968. Paulsen's platform may not go over big in cyberspace, though. Among its planks is a plan to deny the vote to everyone under 30.
Joel Brown (joelb@twinpines.chi.il.us)
Ahead Warp 1. Planning a trip to Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5? Then brush up on your extraterrestrial trivia with Alien Information. From its deep purple background, more than 50 multicolored links beckon like distant stars, covering everything from the "face" on Mars to mysterious abductions. You can even find the latest updates on the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, incident - the military's alleged recovery of a crashed UFO on which two alien passengers were found (one survivor is rumored to have lived for a year and a half in a secret government compound). Subscribe to various electronic mailing lists and you'll receive the latest announcements on your favorite little green men and women. The links to scientific societies and ftp sites are good, but what's better are the dozens of downloadable photos: aliens, UFOs, and plain old human astronauts - enough to keep any ufologist busy for light years. Sulu, lay in a course for http://www.iinet.com.au/~bertino/alien.html.
Anagram Margana Readers of "Wring Idea Maze" (Wired magazine) will enjoy checking out the "main sanitary nag" (anagram insanity) at http://infobahn.com:80/pages/anagram.html. "Tuner serfs" (Net surfers) might like to know that "Wired magazine" is also "Media Grew Nazi," "Amaze Grin Wide," and "Gazer Media Win." See for yourself - anagrams are "infamous wet fate!" (A fun waste of time!)
Down a Different Rabbit Hole T'was brillig, and the slithy toves did tweak their HTML scripts into The Lewis Carroll Home Page (http://ux4.cso.uiuc.edu/~jbirenba/carroll.html), the looking glass of all things Alice. Admire Tenniel illustrations, guffaw at Wonderland techno-humor, or slink to the Jabberwocky link. After a few pages of the Mad Hatter's tea party, TCP/IP configurations will seem downright intuitive.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T-Find Out What It Means to Me- The poor schlub can't get no respect anywhere, but maybe actor/comedian Rodney Dangerfield will find some online with the launch of his very own Web site. Surfers who travel to http://www.rodney.com/ can check out bits of Rodney trivia, hear snippets of his routines in various formats, see photos of Rodney with his family, and watch parts of his film Back To School, including the spectacular triple-lindy dive from the film's thrilling climax. If the look on Dangerfield's face during his somersaulting plunge isn't bizarre enough for you, check out the photos of him with President Clinton and such comedy superstars as Jim Carrey, and Andrew "Dice" Clay.
Democrats Hold the Cybermajority
Surf Smart; Vote Smart Project Vote Smart is one of the best-kept secrets in the nation. Its semiannual report reviews the records of all Congress members and provides background on them, all in an evenhanded manner: this nonprofit group is staunchly nonpartisan. In July, it put up a Web site to help you sort through a morass of political information. An army of Web-savvy student interns spend hundreds of hours trolling for political information, which is then linked to the Vote Smart site, creating a stream of information on candidates and elected officials. Think of it as a one-stop shop for policy wonks. If you're still stumped, you can always slip into retro-tech and call the toll-free Voter's Research Hotline, (800) 622 7627, for help with your political Web wonking. Increase your intelligence at http://www.peak.org/vote-smart/.
Select maps from the Subway Navigator at http://metro.jussieu.fr:10001/ are only part of the mass transportation help you'll find here. Navigate the subway systems of a host of international cities from Glasgow to Calcutta.
Got Spam? The World Wide Web spans every subject, from a zoo of squashed insects to a Church of Tarantino, but some Net surfers are still searching for that elusive killer site. Wander no more, pilgrim. The Hormel Foods Corporation is online, and both irony-loving hipsters and honest-to-goodness aficionados of potted lunchmeat can now shop for official Spam merchandise directly over the Net. Items for sale include T-shirts ("Wear the world famous SPAM luncheon meat colors"), boxer shorts ("with colorful SPAM luncheon meat cans repeated throughout!"), and The Great Taste of SPAM cookbook (with "award winning recipes from state fairs!"). There's even an official Spam watch. To let your real-life mailbox share in the joy of Spam on the Net, point a Web browser to http://wolf.co.net/spamgift/index.html, and order up!
Between yin and yang and "om" lies a rich world of artistry on Digital Avatar. Enter this quiet space at http://www.charm.net/~nayak/avtar2.html.
Close Encounters of the Binary Kind Another day on the farm: Steve's Ant Farm, to be more specific. With quick pics updated every 10 seconds, you'll also find a link to NASA's Public Affairs page. Make like ants at a picnic and swarm toward http://sec.dgsys.com/AntFarm.html.
Artistic Creationists The theme of the University of Maryland's new Internet art gallery is a mouthful: "Connectivity, Interface, and Imagination in the Digital Village." The gallery (simply - and a bit predictably - named Digital Village) features eight "internationally known" electronic artists and their interactivity plots. The major thrust of the project is to showcase the installations of these eight artists, augmented by contributions from students, Netizens, and teachers from distant quadrants of the Earth. Each project will include a high degree of interactivity. Featured artist Alan Dunning, for example, is heading "The Lost Dimension - An Internet City," a collaborative project built by Dunning based on textual descriptions from students and artists of all disciplines. The Lost Dimension will be constructed three-dimensionally within a computer and interactive walk-through animations will serve as progress reports. Other artists' projects include interactive installations dealing with violence, forest ecology, sex roles, and cultural diversity.
The Web site is functional but slow and rather linear. Despite the stuffy academic overtones, Digital Village should give students a stimulating launch pad into the exploration of specific issues and techniques. Lend your artistic opinion at http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/ArtGal/.WWW/digvil/digvil.htm.
Virtual Memory What it lacks in dazzling jpegs and gifs, the Cybrary of the Holocaust makes up for in substantive essays. The Cybrary is part of a two-year project, sponsored by The Write Thing, to create an online forum that educators can use to teach about the Holocaust. Visitors can peruse topics such as "Who are the Jews?," "Adolf Hitler," and "The Final Solution," along with various interviews of Holocaust survivors, and accounts of German resistance groups.
In the Imagine Art Gallery, a selection of poems and paintings by a group of sixth-grade students offers a poignant, sobering peek into the young minds coming to terms with this tragedy. Finally, a half-dozen outside links take you to places like The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site, or its Israeli counterpart, the Yad Vashem home page. The Cybrary is text-heavy and a little hard to follow in places, but stands alone as a serious and illuminating stop on the Web. Don't forget to leave your comments in the guest book as you leave; everyone should bear witness. Do so at http://www.writething.com/cybrary/.
Mere hints of the vast depository of information that awaits you at http://www.iinet.com.au/~bertino/alien.html. More than just little green men.
Random ASCII art o' the month
_..——–.._ ________________________ _.-e|| e-._ /' \ ||``\ /' \\ | | | \ |: === -||: ) /' \ .–eeee–. / \ \.____________________/_||../ /' \ /e e\ / / \ | | || \ /' || |/ \ \ | || \ ———–/e\ \ / \ / \ / \ \ \ .-ee \ | / /| | - | \ .-eeee-. / \ - ; | \ \ | /' |O | |e\ ./'\ _ | - _ | |O /____________..–e [] |__|- | [] .. .—._ | - | _ _| | ===____________ –|]=====__| | [] .. ( D> ) | _ | _ =| |O \ / / ee–. [] | | -| []__ —'e | _ | - e| | / / | \ |O | |_/ \ / | - | / // .-. / | \ \| | _ | / -..-' \ / \ ; | || / eee————_/ \ / \ / / ||______________ || / \ /| | |\ / \ / ||______________ || / \ /| | |\ / \ / /' \ ||``\ \ / / \_ /' \ / |: ===-||: ) \e-__ .-e \ \ /' .__________/||../\ / / eeee |/' -. | || \ _.-' e-....-e`Thanks to the Wired 3.10 Surf Team
Michael "Ernie" Behar michaelb@wiredmag.com
Amy Bruckman asb@media.mit.edu
Matt Haber mah0547@is.nyu.edu
JC Herz mischief@phantom.com
Robert Levine rob@wired.com
Brock N. Meeks brock@well.com
Ed Stastny ed@art.net
