In the process of becoming the 44th president of America, Obama added a few facts in the pages of history by being the first black president elect (African ancestry) with a non-Christian middle name (Hussian).
He may not be the first president of the Internet age but the way he realized the power of Internet and strategically used the Web 2.0 to his advantage, perhaps no other politician has ever did.
Some interesting statistics from Obama's campaign as reported by Bloomberg.com:
Ø Obama has more than 2 million friends on the social-networking site Facebook.
Ø Obama's campaign videos on YouTube have been viewed 92 million times.
Ø Obama raised more than $600 million, much of it from online donations.
Ø Volunteers used Obama's website to organize a thousand phone-banking events in the last week of the race.
Obama's rise to the presidency will be studied for years to come as a textbook example of how technology can be used to redefine the rules of the games and how internet as a powerful tool brought a metamorphosis in world’s most powerful democracy by inspiring the hopes of millions of Americans.
Now its time for our leaders to realize the power of Internet and used it to touch the lives of billion plus Indians and bridge this digital divide existing in our country.
6 comments:
At the age of 31, I actually realized the value of computer and internet in my life (perhaps 5 to 10 years ahead of many of my team members, who were of my age then). That's why I preferred to purchase a branded PC over a second hand Car for Rs.64K, as I was in a position to afford only one thing at a time.
Subsequently, situation was, when my kids were of the age of 3 or 4, they knew operational computer skills and I was still competing with them.
Now, I can teach them few tips and they can also teach me few new tips. ( by the way they are aged 11 & 7 respectively now).
That's my own small story with computers and internet.
This reminds me of my own peculiar story. Once upon a time around seven years back-Initially I used to ask a cyber cafe operator to type what I wanted to & send a mail. Then one day I thought that this dependency is not right. I sat down to send a mail & started typing. I thought, I will not hesitate to ask anything to the operator because I am still a learner. After writing a paragraph, I asked the operator-how to go to the next line. He told simply press ENTER. This was embarrassing. Next day I was a proud owner of a PC. Today whatever I know of computers is by experience & self learning, but I still am a learner & do not hesitate to ask anybody for any assistance.
My elder son was 3 years then & his control over mouse & adaptability to computer functioning, continues to be better than me.
Seven years back(2001)I came to know that an International Nuclear Congress is going on in Germany.The elligibility to participate was a bachelor degree in science and it was for the students.To participate in that, participants had to send an essay on Nuclear Energy and if that essay gets selected,the congress will call that paricipant to Germany to present his/her essay.But I got this information very late nand it was not possible for me to send that essay throgh mail/speed post.Then I called the coordinator and told her my problem.The coordinator suggested me to send my essay through e-mail.I thanked her and put the phone.After talking to her i was just thinking that what is this e-mail?how can i send essay through e-mail that will rech in few seconds to Germany? I was completely unaware of computer and had no idea about e-mail..infact i heard the word e-mail for the first time from that lady(I remember her name..Stanislav Rapavy).Then i went to cyber cafe(difficult to find atAllahabad).The guide of the cafe typed my essay and sent.Though that essay was not selected but that event had sensitised me to learn at least somethig about computer.At that time internet cafe's were charging 60-80Rs/hr.I learnt internet with the little pocket money i had and what i know today is just bcoz of that instance.I m still learning......
Yes!Indeed Obama has set in the example and uses the power of internet at it's best in his presidency campaign.
We all have realised the same - power of internet technology.. in our lives sooner or later.
I still recall,I was in Hissar(Haryana) in the year 1998 the first time when I went to one of the cyber shop over there and made my email user id with the help of the cyber operator....those were initial days and I'm still learning to make the best use of this technology...like this blog..Beleive me this is anew experience for me as,I was not going to ant blog earlier...
Yes!Indeed Obama has set in the example and uses the power of internet at it's best in his presidency campaign.
We all have realised the same - power of internet technology.. in our lives sooner or later.
I still recall,I was in Hissar(Haryana) in the year 1998 the first time when I went to one of the cyber shop over there and made my email user id with the help of the cyber operator....those were initial days and I'm still learning to make the best use of this technology...like this blog..Beleive me this is anew experience for me as,I was not going to ant blog earlier...
Woh! some really cool experience people have shared..........i was a bit lucky to start early from my school days with the computer lab in the school.
But yes internet came much later that too at an exorbitant price of Rs60/hr, there use to have this happy hour from 9pm-8am, where you could surf at 1/4th of the normal rate.
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