A personal story

By Jose Antonio Vargas | Dec 4, 2011 | Originally Published in Blog

Sometimes you risk your own life to free yourself from it.

Around this time last year, two months before my 30th birthday, I was at the height of my professional career and fielded various job opportunities: perhaps writing for magazines (I had just profiled Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker); maybe serving as editor of a news website (or starting a news website); or selling a book proposal on an idea that I had been reporting on and felt most excited about -- that we're all living under a growing "Click-o-cracy," one nation under Facebook, Google and Twitter, with video, texting and email for all. What are our rights, privileges and limitations, individually and collectively, in this unprecedented global social order?

But before my professional life and personal life -- the two are inseparable for a writer -- could go on, I finally decided that I had to reveal a central fact about myself: that I am an undocumented American, what many people call an "illegal alien" or, worse, an "illegal." Before I could explore the nature of global citizenry, I had to first come to grips with my reality in a country that I've called my home. Though I consider myself an American at heart, I am not an American on paper. And I'm just one person and mine is merely one story -- one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants whose lives are interwoven and integrated with those of American citizens. We are here. We are part of you.

In the coming months, I'll be reporting and writing more about immigration -- which, at bottom, is more than about immigration. It's about the very question of American identity itself, about who we are as a country and whom we consider to be Americans. How do you define American?

 

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Mark Zuckerberg — Our First Millennial CEO

By Jose Antonio Vargas | Dec 9, 2010 | Originally Published in Huffington Post

Like all influential and complex entrepreneurs, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is many things to many people. But he is, first and foremost, our young century's first Millennial CEO.

That's a fact that's been glaringly omitted -- not to mention profoundly misunderstood -- in everything that's been written and reported about Zuckerberg this year. And due to the continued rise of Zuckerberg's company (users spent more time on Facebook than on Google this year); the critical drum-roll for Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's The Social Network; and largely because Facebook is closing the gap between our virtual and real lives, all the while serving as an online Rorschach test of sorts; there's been a mountain of interest in and a non-stop flood of all things Zuck, including the 60 Minutes segment that aired this past Sunday.

Though at times the TV interview played like a free infomercial for Facebook, which unveiled its newest site re-design during the segment, it offered some insights. There was the obligatory exchange about Facebook's stance on user privacy, and a nod towards the most interesting story in Silicon Valley -- the battle between Google and Facebook. (Note to reporters and editors: it's not just a business and tech story; it's a story, at bottom, about changing human behavior.) But the most striking nugget in the broadcast came courtesy of Kara Swisher, editor of the Silicon Valley staple All Things Digital.

Three years ago, Swisher famously referred to Zuckerberg as the "Toddler CEO." A Harvard drop-out, with no managerial experience to speak of and a shyness that easily came across as cockiness, Zuckerberg worked through a revolving door of senior executives. Facebook was unstable. "The kid," as the old guard called him, was not up to the job. No one thinks that anymore -- certainly not in the Valley. Swisher told 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl: "The toddler's a prodigy, as turns out."

And the prodigy, unlike any other CEO of his stature, is growing up right in front of our eyes. I profiled Zuckerberg earlier this year for the New Yorker. After the profile was published and posted online, I received numerous Facebook messages, tweets and emails from readers, asking questions ranging from "Did he really turn down that much money?" (yep, he did, a few times) to some variation of "...but what really makes him tick?" As a Millennial myself, I can tell you that who Zuckerberg is cannot be divorced from the generation he represents.

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The Goracle — Al Gore, the Internet and the Future of American Politics

By Jose Antonio Vargas | Dec 14, 2009 | Originally Published in Huffington Post

The advent of global warming, the dangers of declaring war on Iraq, the power and reach of the Internet. Is there another American political figure who's been so right, so prescient, about so many things -- and, in turn, so loathed by a consistent vocal opposition?

No, there's only one "Goracle."

All eyes will be on Al Gore this week, as he attends the last days of the U.N.-sponsored climate change summit in Copenhagen. In recent years, it's been impossible to divorce Gore from the environment, what with the Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth, the Nobel Peace Prize and the release of another book called Our Choice. "President of the planet," he's been hailed. "Alarmist" and "exaggerator," he's been mocked. But just as lasting and undeniable as his imprint in modern environmental history is Gore's early and sustained prophecy -- there's no other word for it -- for the inevitable impact of the Internet in our everyday lives. Starting with his years in the House of the Representatives and the Senate ("the Gore Bill" being just one of his achievements), and throughout his service in the Clinton administration (in developing what he called an "information superhighway"), the global warming crusader was also the government's biggest Internet advocate. Gore never said he created the Internet, though Vint Cerf, aka the "father of Internet," has said that Gore's "initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet." Cerf added: "So he really does deserve credit."

These days, his two long-time interests are crossing paths. The man (Gore) and the message (our climate crisis) has finally met the medium (the Web) that can effectively help spread the word around, from one social network to another. To hear skeptics such as former vice president candidate Sarah Palin tell it, the global warming debate is far from over. To Gore, however, there is no more debate -- just an opportunity for fact-driven, practical-minded individuals to mobilize around the cause.

"You know, Web 2.0, which may gave way to Web 3.0 -- social networks, basically -- holds the great promise of empowering enough individuals who share that broad public interest in an issue like global warming to organize and express themselves with sufficient intensity and focus to overcome the special interests. We're already seeing that begin to happen, and I'm encouraged by it," Gore told me recently inside the headquarters of Current TV, his Internet-meets-television outfit in San Francisco, located just a few blocks from the offices of Twitter.

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TRANSCRIPT: Q&A with Al Gore

By Jose Antonio Vargas | Dec 14, 2009 | Originally Published in Huffington Post

This is the transcript of a wide-ranging, two-part, three-hour interview with Al Gore, touching on the impact of technology and the Internet in politics, both in the U.S. and abroad; the state of the mainstream media and the left and right blogosphere; the role of the Web in spreading the facts about global warming, among others topics. The interviews were held in early and late October, first in the San Francisco offices of Current TV, then in his geothermal system-powered home in Nashville, which is certified as Gold LEED, one of the highest ratings for green design. An excerpt of the Q&A appeared in the Dec. 10, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone.

Jose Antonio Vargas: A year ago, weeks before the election, I visited Blach Middle School in Silicon Valley and spoke to a group of young reporters. In the middle of the talk, Naib Mian raised his hand and asked if I had downloaded Obama's iPhone application -- which showed, in real time, where Obama was campaigning, the number of campaign offices within a few miles of where Naib lives, how much money he had raised...

Al Gore: [Laughs.]

JAV: This kid was 13, and politics was right in his pocket.

AG: Wow.

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Citizen Gore

The former vice president on the 2000 election, his new book and how digital democracy can save the planet
By Jose Antonio Vargas | Dec 10, 2009 | Originally Published in Rolling Stone

Al Gore has spent his career in public office preaching about two issues. The first — the threat of global warming — earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. The second — the political potential of the Internet — has earned him mostly ridicule. But ever since Barack Obama's election, even Web-savvy Republicans have started to hail Gore, who sits on the board of Apple and serves as a senior adviser to Google, as one of the earliest and most influential prophets of digital democracy. Andrew Rasiej, founder of the bipartisan Personal Democracy Forum, the largest annual gathering of tech-political geeks, calls Gore a "godfather of this emerging political movement."

On a crisp fall day, Gore sits down with Rolling Stone at his home in Nashville, a few minutes south of downtown. Powered by a geothermal system and 33 solar panels, the house is certified as Gold LEED, one of the highest ratings attainable for green design. "It's been a long process, getting all of this done," Gore says proudly. Dressed in jeans and a faded blue shirt, an iPhone vibrating from his left pocket, he seems leaner and more relaxed than he's been in years. On the eve of the publication of his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Gore reflects on both the evolution of the Internet and the survival of the planet.

Obama wrote the playbook on how to win an election using the "here comes everybody" nature of the Internet. But a year into his presidency, many feel that his administration is governing in the same old Washington way. What happened?
Basically, the whole arm of the campaign that used the Internet was severed from the group that moved into the White House. They used the Internet as a tool for enhancing the effectiveness of their grass-roots organizers, and they did it better than anyone else. They just haven't figured out yet how to move from campaigning to governance. That's a long and difficult transition for any politician to make.

What do you say to people who feel frustrated by that?
It was inevitable that all these high hopes would collide with the still-impressive forces of resistance entrenched in the legislative branch. I would urge people to hold Obama accountable and keep the pressure on but to give him credit for the many changes he has already brought about. For example, even though he hasn't been able to get the Senate climate bill passed yet, his EPA has enacted tough new CO2 reductions. And just yesterday, he announced that new mercury regulations were going into effect in 2011.

What do you think of the president winning the Nobel Peace Prize?
I was glad, I was glad. I hope it further encourages him to be bold.

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