Back To School 2017-Culling The Social Media Herd-Podcast 659

State Fair Time in Minnesota. A change in the weather. Time for Back to School. Back in the studio after summer traveling. An afternoon with FaceBook convinces me it’s time to start culling the social media herd. In Back To School 2017-Culling The Social Media Herd-Podcast 659.

Back In The Studio

These days all of my travel is on America’s back roads. Summer 2017 saw thousands of miles of travel for The Bob Davis Podcasts. All of it on two lane state and US highways. You see a different United States from the two lane highways. Whether it was Joliet, Illinois or Rapid City, South Dakota or traveling through rural Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, West Virginia or mining towns in Ohio. I did not see Americans consumed with politics.

Backroads Education

When you travel the backroads you see people doing what they do every day. Getting up and going to work. Running their businesses. Taking kids to baseball, football soccer and hockey games.  This is not a country of feral political beasts. It is not a country of angry supporters of either political fringe. Looks pretty much the same as it did when my family toured the country by the same highways, back when I was a kid.

Social Media Cesspool

On social media though, it is a different world. In Back To School 2017-Culling The Social Media Herd-Podcast 659 it’s time to cull the social media herd. Unfollowing those dear friends who post links to articles and demand your support or comment on the latest political and usually nonsensical missive from someone who exhorts you to think and act a certain way.

Where’s The Vision?

Back to School also means reengaging in a political process gone mad. Vision? Concrete plans for the future? Political organization? Those are relics of the past. What’s left are screaming matches, memes, reposts and going ‘live’ on FaceBook to grind your political axe. How does a podcaster add to this cacophony of ignorance and advance the story at the same time? In Back To School 2017-Culling The Social Media Herd-Podcast 659.

No Good Citizens

Neither mainline political party serves the interests of its adherents anymore. Part of the reason is demographic. Much of the reason is people seem to think negatively commenting on a congressman’s FB Live post or protesting is the same as involvement. There are no political movements to convince legislators to take a course of action because no one wants to do that work anymore. Maybe the reason people have turned away from politics are the loud mouths and those who fill their social media feeds with partisan posts, and demand reaction.

Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Back To School 2017-Culling The Social Media Herd-Podcast 659

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Podcast 506

Future Shock. As the 24 hour news media and talk radio fixate on gorillas and high school election antics, its hard to get a conversation going about the future. Is the future potential leaders want the future we should have? Is it the future we want? There are developments almost everyday now with autonomous cars, robotics, materials, aviation, and communications; the building blocks of a future wave that will leave nothing untouched and unchanged. A series of stories from today’s headlines shedding a light on one potential future and a question; Planners and government officials are  diverting resources to bring about a vision of the city of tomorrow, which is really the city of the early 1900’s. Is this what you want? Will the driverless car, autonomous software and machines, robotics, and other developments make trains, buses and the standard bureaucracy heavy city, state and federal government ‘obsolete’? If so, why is so much time, effort and authority expended to see that we plan for and create a urban spaces, and that suburban villages and towns conform to a vision of a city that probably never existed and never will. Driverless cars will render the amount of space needed for freeways and parking ramps obsolete. Remote technology, robotics and other technologies may mean that people will not have to travel to large office complexes for their work, with increasing freelance employment. What are our so called leaders talking about? Minimum wages, government controlled health insurance and trains. Trains. Why are we planning for 1940’s Chicago when reality could be closer to Jefferson’s vision than Robert Moses? The old world is being torn down and a new one is being built that will be very different from what we know. Do our leaders understand this? Future Shock. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and X Government Cars.

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