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In the fall of 1995, a few days after Salon first ventured out into the strange new territory of the World Wide Web, I reviewed the site for an online magazine called Web Review. I said nice things about the quality of the content, but concluded that the medium fails Salons message.

The superb writing, graceful layout and inspired selection of story ideas deserve better than the pale light of my monitor and the discomfort of my desk chair. Theres too much content to sort through and the articles, though shorter than those in the New Yorker, are still too long to be enjoyably read online. And thats the rub. SALON, more than anything else Ive come across on the Web, falls victim to the fundamental deficiencies of online reading.

Ha. Ha. Ha. I was a grumpy codger even when the Web was young. But the joke was on me. A few months later I was freelancing for Salon. A year later I was hired as the magazines first full-time reporter. My beat: The Internet. And God only knows how many words Ive written for the delectation of Salons online readers in the years since.

But eighteen years later, the time has finally come to move on to new challenges. The future of journalism is still being invented and theres a book I want to write. And 18 years, in this day and age, is an eternity to spend at one job.

But its still hard to get my head around the fact that Im leaving. Ive helped Salon cover five presidential elections, the dot-com boom, the bust, 9/11, the great financial crash, and the rise of the smartphone. Ive been a reporter, editor, blogger, pundit and then reporter again. I even tried to write a book on Salon.

When I started out with Salon, I sometimes had to explain to the people I was interviewing what exactly this thing we called the Internet was before I could explain what exactly an Internet magazine was. Eighteen years later, thats no longer necessary. The Internet is embedded in every facet of our existence. And a funny thing happened to me along the way. I made a slow, painful transition from cheerleader to critic. You might even say I switched sides in the tech culture wars.

Of course that kind of binary thinking betrays a mindset too locked down in ones and zeroes to capture the messiness and nuance of whats really going on. I still love technology. I love my smartphone. Im excited by new ways of doing things and the unlimited potential of the future.

And Ive always felt the duty and desire to be a critic. I will never forget how my jaw dropped when my superiors at Salon announced that we were going to have an IPO. But, but, but Id spent the previous year mocking the greed and chicanery of and endless sequence of dot-com fiascos. Oh well. What is it that Chairman Mao wrote? All contradictory things are interconnected.

Still, theres some truth to the Benedict Arnold framing. Where once I evangelized, now I feel disposed to caution. Where once I gleefully trumpeted the way everything was going to change and everybody better get on board the train before they were run over on the tracks, now I find myself wondering when all this change is going to translate into a truly better world, one with greater social justice, a better deal, instead of a raw deal, for labor, and less income inequality, rather than more. And where once I was fascinated and seduced by geek culture, now I am repelled by Silicon Valley arrogance and hubris.

What I will always treasure about Salon is how generously it supported me all along the way, whether I was ranting or reporting, to tell the truth as I saw it. From my first editor, Scott Rosenberg, to my last, Peter Finocchiaro, my idiosyncratic passions have been encouraged and cheered on. From my first editor-in-chief, David Talbot, to my last, David Daley, Salons top bosses have always let me run free. (Except for when they wanted three blog posts a day about the debt ceiling showdown for weeks on end. But Im successfully repressing those memories.)

See the article here:

How I switched sides in the technology wars

By Humberto Sanchez Posted at 5 a.m. on Sept. 10

Marijuana in Terrapin Care Station, a marijuana dispensary, in Boulder, Colo. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

BOULDER, Colo. Long a flashpoint in the culture wars, marijuanas growing legitimacy hasnt yet turned it into a political weapon, even in the marquee races in the first state to legalize the drug.

In Colorado, the issue has barely gotten a mention as Rep. Cory Gardner takes on Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, and Republican Rep. Mike Coffman faces a challenge from Andrew Romanoff in one of the countrys hottest House races.

For now, the lawmakers still seem to find pot too hot to handle as a political weapon. Republicans in the state have shifted how they talk about the matter, but Democrats arent trying to capitalize on what could potentially become a new wedge issue in their favor this cycle and in elections to come.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia currently have legalized medical marijuana. Only Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana, but more are expected to vote on whether to change their laws, including Oregon and Alaska in November, as polls have shown surging support for legalization.

Udall, whose race could decide control of the Senate, said marijuana is now simply a business interest in Colorado.

We are all together in urging the attorney general to let this experiment unfold, Udall said in Greenwood Village, Colo., after an event with Denver business interests.

But he hasnt attacked Gardners hard-line record on marijuana, something advocates for legalization call a missed opportunity.

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Pot Still Too Hot to Handle for Colorado Politicians

Imagining 2024: The Next Culture Wars
If, for example, major value shifts surrounding things like same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use might be mostly behind us in 2024, what will be ...

By: The Aspen Institute

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Imagining 2024: The Next Culture Wars - Video

A culture war (or culture wars) is a struggle between two or more sets of conflicting cultural values.

The phrase "culture war" represents a loan translation (calque) from the German Kulturkampf. The German word Kulturkampf (culture struggle), refers to the clash between cultural and religious groups in the campaign from 1871 to 1878 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.[1]

In American usage the term culture war is used to claim that there is a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. It originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into clear conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the cities by people considered alien to earlier immigrants. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring 20s, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith.[2][3] However, the "culture war" in United States of America was redefined by James Davison Hunter's 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. In this work, it is traced to the 1960s.[4] The perceived focus of the American culture war and its definition have taken various forms since then.

The expression was introduced again by the 1991 publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed American politics and culture.

He argued that on an increasing number of "hot-button" defining issues abortion, gun politics, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, homosexuality, censorship there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideological world views.

Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to as Progressivism and Orthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists."

In 1990 commentator Pat Buchanan mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States against incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992. He received a prime time speech slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which is sometimes dubbed the "'culture war' speech."[5] During his speech, he claimed: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." [1] In addition to criticizing "environmental extremists" and "radical feminism," he said public morality was a defining issue:

The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.[6]

A month later, Buchanan said that the conflict was about power over society's definition of right and wrong. He named abortion, sexual orientation and popular culture as major fronts and mentioned other controversies, including clashes over the Confederate Flag, Christmas and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the negative attention his "culture war" speech received was itself evidence of America's polarization.[7]

When Buchanan ran for President in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war:

Link:

Culture war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia