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Barack Obama The Web and Technology

The Serendipitousness Effect

I noticed over the weekend my site was getting a bunch of visitors from a site called wa6n.net. Curious, I followed the trackback (A poorly translated version here.) Apparently wa6n.net is a bulletin board registered in America by someone in the United Arab Emirates. With the poor quality of the translations and a lack of understanding of the background, it’s hard to see what type of site this is. There are arguments over whether Saddam Hussein is a martyr; there are arguments over whether Obama truly means to withdraw from Iraq; there are calls for revolution in the name of Allah.

And – here’s where my site comes in – a member of the forum posted a picture of Obama answering a phone upside down intending to ridicule him – a picture that was emailed around during the past year. This actually starts what seems to be a brief argument as the other members of the forum dispute the picture, and in the end, the matter seems resolved when someone posts links to – among other places, my blog – where the authenticity of the photo was challenged.

What I thought was noteworthy was the amount of interest in Obama on this discussion forum. Many of the members of this discussion forum even seemed somewhat sympathetic to Obama, though they did not believe he represents a true break from an American foreign policy they strongly oppose.

Looking through that forum, to the extent that Google Translate was able, was like some accidental insight into a world I would not ordinarily come across.

It is this type of serendipitousness that makes the internet so transformative.

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