Barack Obama lamented Sunday that “with iPads and iPods,” information has become a distraction that is putting new pressures on the U.S.A. and “democracy.”
“‘You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,’ Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia,” AFP reports. “‘With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,’ Obama said.”
MacDailyNews Note: During the 2008 election, KCAL-TV covered Candidate Obama’s advertisements placed inside eighteen of Microsoft’s Xbox video games:
Direct link via YouTube here.
AFP continues, “He bemoaned the fact that ‘some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,’ in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets. ‘All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy… We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,’ Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers. ‘Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,’ he said.”
Full article here.
Obama’s commencement address at Hampton University:
Direct link via YouTube here.
[Update: 2:08pm EDT. Pulled the Take because the point we were attempting to make seems to have been either too satirical or not satirical enough. Our fault, not yours. We blame the weekend help.]
[Update: 11:37pm EDT. Added link to 2008 report on Obama campaign’s ads in Xbox video games. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
[Update: 11:59pm EDT. Added link to Obama’s commencement address at Hampton University. Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Algr” for the heads up and the nice compliment.]
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TowerTone” for the AFP article heads up.]
IIT: Geeks, that completely missed the point because their favorite autistic gadgets were mentioned.
I intent to have an ipad very sure, yet fully agree with Obama. This because I can tell the difference between real world events and just wasting my time endlessly poking ifart apps, making fake facebook friends and hating on micro$oft.
@ Scott Murphy
I call the condition you described willful ignorance. And, “angels and ministers of grace defend us!”, there’s so much of it in the posts (Yes, Ubermac, you’re a leader!), on the net in general, and in the media that Jefferson’s “but to inform their discretion” (Good quote, VBBob.) has become drowned out in the flood. There is so much chicanery and buffoonery perpetrated by the extremists — and bizarrely covered by “journalists” as “news” — that there’s almost nothing left but “a tale … full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.”
Yes, the Internet is rotting your brain
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/05/09/the_shallows/index.html
What this ungrateful swine doesn’t realize is that without those technologies and the internet, there wouldn’t be a negro in the oval office!
MDN: This is just too much over the top. This longtime reader won’t be back.
magic word: has
“MDN has lost its relevance and become a Fox news right wing hang out”
there is a new divide.
We also have the right to take time to think by our own.
Most american love the predicators preaches wich are overfilled with statements about good and bad and what a patriote should live and feel. So why desagreeing a president that presents it in a much calmer way and without uttering threats of hell.
Those pointing out the redness of a president by comparing one of his sentences with another pulled out a chinese statement should rather have a look to their own narrow concept of life.
IMO
@longtimereader et al.
“MDN: This is just too much over the top. This longtime reader won’t be back.”
<sarcasm>Yes, MDN, reporting when a U.S President comments on Apple products has no place here. It’s just too much over the top. </sarcasm>
And, you’ll all be back as usual and you all know it.
@Cass Winthrop
You’re a good example of american brain washed guy!
A pitty you’re too much into war games!
Such a silly negro.
I simply wanted to point out that RDM has (yes of course, Daniel Eran) revealed his political affinity/affiliation in his writing.
I don’t know (really, I don’t) why MDN is catching so much attention (read: flack) here on this, but I suspect that it’s because it’s easy to sniff out someone unlike the majority/stronger voice in a community (after all, one might suspect most Mac users might be liberal in perspective, or at least are a stronger voice)
I don’t think any of that is a reason to leave MDN (though I am not seeing/understanding the issue here with this Headline, Article Snippet, nor take…didn’t see the first Take.
I appreciate the frustration many are feeling when a site having nothing to do with politics conflicts politically with them, but I question that any journalism can really be apolitical.
Anyway, I appreciate MDN and their Takes. They find Mac news, post it, include the relevant Mac-related paragraph (following natural flow of text as far as I can see), give their opinion (which no one has to agree with btw), add relevant links, and allow people to comment providing moderation of comments, likely as much as possible given their staffing). They also encourage readers to go to the article source to read it, unless going their only offers clicks to a disagreeable site (again, opinion-based) Once in a while, SteveJack offers an opinion article.
NBD:::No. Big. Deal. To. Me.
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5 pages of fun reading
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I’m an Obama supporter, and he has definitely crossed some uncomfortable boundaries this time… For shame Mr President.
Before jumping to conclusions. Before allowing other opinions to twist your mind and throw judgement out the window. READ AND UNDERSTAND FOR YOURSELF.
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.
He is comparing information as “entertainment” to what it once was, information as a TOOL OF EMPOWERMENT etc. READ it CAREFULLY.
Christ. I knew this post would be a fscking nightmare.
What he’s saying is if a blog is pro Obama it’s OK, if it’s anti Obama it’s disinformation.
He’s a politician not a god.
It seems as though MDN is going to lose a lot of pikers – sorry – posters. Most of them lefties, who can’t stand their Emperor being stripped of his clothes. Maybe he can borrow another empty suit from one of his pals Chavez, or maybe Castro. He would have to grow into them tho’. Also, I believe they can dictate without a prompter. Dictators need to learn that.
Roll on November and 2012.
“You don’t think so, though, because you can’t accept that someone can be open-minded and tolerant and still hold opinions different than yours.”
I have no idea where you get your info about me. Sounds like you are prejudiced against anyone with a differing point of view.
“This is why we still have birthers, people who think the President is a Communist who wants to destroy America, racists, and conspiracy theorists.”
Creationism is not the foundation for conservatism but rather a crutch that weak minded leftist use to discredit any argument the right may have.
Odd that the last two in your pathetic list are actually more descriptive of the left than right. How ironic….
And, this will be my last visit… Obama makes a nuanced point about critical, reasoned thinking in the era of 24/7 digital chatter and MDN takes the opportunity to score political points. Frankly, this kind of thinking reminds me of your automated “Apple is always right” perspective. I love Apple but they’re not always right. Worship blindly at your peril.
“Truth Meter” ??? Leave that one to a politician. Things that have variable properties usually require a meter. Truth doesn’t require a meter, more like an indicator.
Truth is what it is, yes/no, black/white. I think the real truth is, most of the time he wouldn’t know truth if it hit him upside his his head..
Good thing Obama’s TelePrompTer was working, or he would have really said something stupid…
“Worship blindly at your peril”
I’m lost. Are you talking about Apple or Obama…?
I agree with “O” to a large extent. You have to listen to it in context. Most people take everything that they read on the internet as gospel. Just because you read it on the internet (blogs, websites, etc.) doesn’t mean it’s truthful. People spend so much time constructing arguments around facts, that they miss the Real Truth (The Way, The Truth, and The Life).
How many folks have information overload-from the right or the left? Spending large amounts of time sifting through all that rhetoric out there can leave one less time for meaning ful activity–mentoring, volunteering, working, developing meaningful relationships with people eye to eye and heart to heart.
I know. I spend too much time reading Mac news, sifting through all the comments and still haven’t mown the lawn yet this year, weeks behind on my exercise program, month or so behind on taking my children fishing, and myriads of other meaningful activities.
MDN points out hypocrisy regularly. They cover Apple-related news.
They have done both in this article.
Anyone who is complaining and threatening MDN needs to take a few thousand steps back and take a long hard at why they’re upset.
You might consider that you have more than a wee bit too much invested in a neophyte politician who appears to most objective observers to be in well over his head.
He’s right. Apple products are sinister and evil. Unlike CNN or any Fox news show, all report truth totally unbiased. Now we can see why it’s going to be like 1984.
You’re president is making uneducated comments publically about products he even claims to know nothing about!! Lame. Retarded. Typically American!