March 05, 2004

the american people

Greg Knauss launches The American People, an automated news service that plucks the phrase “the American people” out of any politics-related story on Yahoo.

The American People. You hear an awful lot about them. Politicans, especially, are experts: they know what we want, need, feel, think, deserve, demand. So we thought we’d start keeping track of who’s claiming to speak for us, the American People. Who speaks for you?

(Relatedly: a very very smart web application developer asked me last night what the big deal is about RSS. We didn’t have time to get into it, but here’s one reason: having a wide variety of content available in standard formats makes remixes like The American People that much easier to pull off. And after seeing the new Bush ads, I want a similar service that pulls mentions of “September 11” from the same sources.)