Octavia Butler, (see photo right). The Obama campaign's use of the internet. NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me". These three topics seem unconnected, but, for those with a futurist or, as Doris Lessing calls it, an outer space fiction bent, there are eerie dots to connect. Butler's Patternist series deals with a world where people are connected telepathically to their leader through a web or net-like (neurological) system. It is a highly sophisticated means of communication and control and future leaders need to be able to take over this web from the current leader. As the Obama campaign, and now, administration assesses the need to keep in touch with their constituents through various social networking media, and as more and more people interact through their headsets and receive information directly from their leader on the internet, there is an uncanny similarity to receiving communication from a leader telepathically. The NPR show comes in to play here because the guest today, Tom Brokaw, had a wonderful and humourous insight into the media during the campaign and added some levity to the dark side of information and communication technology.
