sicko, google, and grass-tech-roots

sicko
i just finished watching SiCKO. great movie. i don't care if it is potentially one sided. at least moore is sticking up for what he believes in.

there are a couple of things that bother me about these types of films:

a movie like sicko doesn't get into the mainstream. that is crazy to me. a quick little story: i bought an inconvenient truth DVD months after it was released (but i really wanted to see it, but never got around to buying the dvd), thinking that everyone should have heard about the movie by now. i went to a family party and asked, "hey, i just got inconvenient truth, what did you guys think of the movie?" to my surprise, only one family member knew what i was talking about. i was shocked. so, i went to work and asked the same question. this time a few more people knew about the movie, but some where completely oblivious to the who thing. wow, i said to myself. people just don't pay attention to this kind of stuff. hmm...

critics... there are too many critics. blah, blah, blah... i just happened to read the readers reactions to al gore winning the nobel peace prize. i hate critics (haha, irony). they say "blah blah blah, gore sucks, blah, blah, blah". instantaneously, my brain translates that to "haha, haha, haha, you suck way more, you dumb critic, haha, haha, haha". like i said earlier, at least gore is trying to do something. even if it really does suck, then you, for not doing anything, must suck way way more. thats how i feel. just take these movies for what they are worth - the entire purpose is to raise awareness - and gore did an excellent job.

anyway, back to sicko. sicko makes me feel like america is the odd ball. i get the "why can't we just get with the program" feeling.

google
google is the exact opposite. google is the odd ball, but in a good way. i get the "why can't every company be like google" feeling. this is strange, because almost everything google does seems to be open to the public. google is awesome because of what we hear about them is awesome. (haha, why can't yahoo copy that? why can't anyone else copy that?) for example, they they focus on global justice. here is a cool quote:

"Imagine somebody saying, 'You know, our greatest asset is our employees,'" said Cohen, a political theorist and professor of political science, philosophy and law. "Imagine, number one, that it's true; and number two, that they take it seriously. It's as if that's what's going on at Google. I don't think any company has done this.

(i took this a little out of context so you'll have to read the whole article yourself) imagine a company taking its employees seriously. wow, what a concept. here is more:

"It's been a unique experience to figure out how a company like Google could make a difference,"

"We want Googlers to understand the issues," she said. "A lot of times we probe speakers about how Google can help. Googlers are always coming up with solutions."

you know what, i'm sick (sicko... haha) and tired of hearing that googlers can do this and can do that. why can't i! why can't every company have a .org (as in google.org) associated with it.

anyway... google seems like the best place to work for many many reasons. haha, one of my friends couldn't come up with one reason why he worked at his company. boo to that. why can't his company be awesome like google? is it impossible? does google have the monopoly one awesomeness? i think not.

tom hanks
so, i found out that tom hanks has a myspace page (haha, i found that out by watching oprah). anyway, what kinda started this whole blog was that i was noticing how people are using tech to spread the word. a kind of grass-tech-roots kind of thing. sicko and inconvenient truth did it with blogs, comments, votes, badges, etc. tom hanks does it with myspace pages. so does leo - and i was reminded about his film the 11th hour. grass-tech-roots (i just made that up) is cool. grass-tech-roots is the kind of thing i was hinting at before in my previous post.


another anyway...
i'm not getting all political on you... but i think the google article puts it best. "Think Globally, Act Googley." that is awesome.