I've taken to walking the mile or so down to a local coffee shop in the afternoons to work and watch world cup. Atlanta is hot this June, well above ninety by mid-day most days. I am almost always the only one moving about outside. The air is heavy with damp, I can see it, hazy and blue, hanging between me and the tops of the tall pine trees that trace the property lines in this upscale suburb. The haze mutes the grey-green lines of the military cargo planes, rendering them smudgy and seemingly insubstantial as they rumble by, languid and pregnant, on final approach to the Air Force plant in Marietta.
They are a reminder that, all these years later, the war is still hiring. I have two friends with the occupation now, both civilian contractors. I got a birthday card from Kuwait. A product of Hallmark Dubai festooned with rainbow camels and minarets. My department chair sent around a request for people to work on a data visualization job that looks to be connected to the Human Terrain System. I'd love for her to ask me to participate, so I could say something like "I'm afraid my conscience doesn't permit me to participate in the war effort," and feel brave but I'm sure she won't. They will get volunteers. Really, I'm not at all certain my refusal would do anything but lend me an undeserved sense of moral purity. I drive a car. I pay my taxes. I voted for Obama. I'm as complicit in this thing as anybody.
Not sure I'm going anywhere with this. Just saying hello to my two remaining readers.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Sneaky Peak
Here is a sneak peak of some diss content. I picked this because it speaks to some issues raised at a recent conference:
Thus, we can see how the adoption of the GFDL was a Wikipedia policy choice guided by the need to secure and retain free labor. Wikipedia's most important content policy, the Neutral Point of View (NPOV), was shaped not only by the need to recruit this labor but by its collective nature as well. The NPOV was one of the first Wikipedia policies to be put in place, and was based on Nupedia's "Non-bias" content policy. However, a comparison of early versions of the NPOV to the Non-bias policy shows how the NPOV quickly evolved to meet the particularly collective needs of labor on Wikipedia. The Nupedia Non-bias policy images lack of bias as the function of a single article author erasing his or her own particular bias in the interest of writing an objective article. It reads, in part, "This question is a good (albeit not infallible) test of a lack of bias: 'On every issue about which there might be even minor dispute among experts on this subject, is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?'" ("Nupedia Editorial Policy Guidelines"). From a very early stage, the NPOV reflects Wikipedia's need, not to erase or obscure the bias of a single author, but rather to build consensus and enable cooperation among multiple authors. The earliest revision of the NPOV still retained on the English Wikipedia, dated to November 10, 2001, reads in part: "The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points" (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&oldid=334854039).
Furthermore, textual evidence from later versions of the NPOV, as well as early Wikipedia press releases, demonstrates that this consensus building feature of the NPOV was seen by Larry Sanger and others as a key to ensuring Wikipedia would attract, retain, and use collective labor effectively. By December of 2001, the NPOV had been extensively updated and expanded. In a large edit dated December 24, a Wikipedia user known by the alias The Cunctator, who had been a vocal advocate for decentralized processes in Wikipedia governance and against the editorial authority exercised by Sanger, revises the NPOV to remove policy discussion from the page itself (Wikipedia had included discussion of content on content pages, prior to the creation of separate talk pages for discussion) while adding extensive language explaining the policy and what he sees as the reasoning behind it to the page. Among the added content is a section entitled, "Why should Wikipedia be unbiased?" which reads, in part:
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation of human knowledge at some level of generality. But we (humans) disagree about specific cases; for any topic on which there are competing views, each view represents a different theory of what the truth is, and insofar as that view contradicts other views, its adherents believe that the other views are false, and therefore not knowledge. Indeed, Wikipedia, there are many opinionated people who often disagree with each other. Where there is disagreement about what is true, there's disagreement about what constitutes knowledge. Wikipedia works because it's a collaborative effort; but, whilst collaborating, how can we solve the problem of endless 'edit wars' in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts that not-p? (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&oldid=270452)
The Cunctators addition to the language of the NPOV shows how the policy was understood as a means to ensure that Wikipedia was able to recruit the labor needed to build and maintain the site from a diverse pool of potential contributors, and that "collaborative effort" needed to build Wikipedia functioned smoothly, and was not wasted in "endless 'edit wars'." Sanger, who had clashed with The Cunctator frequently and sometimes bitterly in discussions on the Wikipedia-L list and Wikipedia itself, effectively endorsed this language when he proceeded to make an extensive set of copy edits to the page over the course of December 27 without substantially changing the content. Furthermore, Wikipedia's first press release, dated January 15, 2002, quotes Sanger as saying: "If contributors took controversial stands, it would be virtually impossible for people of many different viewpoints to collaborate. Because of the neutrality policy, we have partisans working together on the same articles. It's quite remarkable" (http://web.archive.org/web/20020712053853/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_press_release_1). Like The Cunctators additions to the NPOV, Sanger's language here shows how the policy helped Wikipedia attract, maintain, and coordinate its labor supply. Together, the GFDL and the NPOV helped to ensure that Wikipedia enjoy the large pool of collective "free labor" it needed to grow and thrive, and thus addressed the clear anxieties about attracting and retaining volunteer labor that both Wales and Sanger express in their interventions in the GNUpedia and Spanish Fork incidents.
Thus, we can see how the adoption of the GFDL was a Wikipedia policy choice guided by the need to secure and retain free labor. Wikipedia's most important content policy, the Neutral Point of View (NPOV), was shaped not only by the need to recruit this labor but by its collective nature as well. The NPOV was one of the first Wikipedia policies to be put in place, and was based on Nupedia's "Non-bias" content policy. However, a comparison of early versions of the NPOV to the Non-bias policy shows how the NPOV quickly evolved to meet the particularly collective needs of labor on Wikipedia. The Nupedia Non-bias policy images lack of bias as the function of a single article author erasing his or her own particular bias in the interest of writing an objective article. It reads, in part, "This question is a good (albeit not infallible) test of a lack of bias: 'On every issue about which there might be even minor dispute among experts on this subject, is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?'" ("Nupedia Editorial Policy Guidelines"). From a very early stage, the NPOV reflects Wikipedia's need, not to erase or obscure the bias of a single author, but rather to build consensus and enable cooperation among multiple authors. The earliest revision of the NPOV still retained on the English Wikipedia, dated to November 10, 2001, reads in part: "The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points" (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&oldid=334854039).
Furthermore, textual evidence from later versions of the NPOV, as well as early Wikipedia press releases, demonstrates that this consensus building feature of the NPOV was seen by Larry Sanger and others as a key to ensuring Wikipedia would attract, retain, and use collective labor effectively. By December of 2001, the NPOV had been extensively updated and expanded. In a large edit dated December 24, a Wikipedia user known by the alias The Cunctator, who had been a vocal advocate for decentralized processes in Wikipedia governance and against the editorial authority exercised by Sanger, revises the NPOV to remove policy discussion from the page itself (Wikipedia had included discussion of content on content pages, prior to the creation of separate talk pages for discussion) while adding extensive language explaining the policy and what he sees as the reasoning behind it to the page. Among the added content is a section entitled, "Why should Wikipedia be unbiased?" which reads, in part:
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, which means it is a representation of human knowledge at some level of generality. But we (humans) disagree about specific cases; for any topic on which there are competing views, each view represents a different theory of what the truth is, and insofar as that view contradicts other views, its adherents believe that the other views are false, and therefore not knowledge. Indeed, Wikipedia, there are many opinionated people who often disagree with each other. Where there is disagreement about what is true, there's disagreement about what constitutes knowledge. Wikipedia works because it's a collaborative effort; but, whilst collaborating, how can we solve the problem of endless 'edit wars' in which one person asserts that p, whereupon the next person changes the text so that it asserts that not-p? (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view&oldid=270452)
The Cunctators addition to the language of the NPOV shows how the policy was understood as a means to ensure that Wikipedia was able to recruit the labor needed to build and maintain the site from a diverse pool of potential contributors, and that "collaborative effort" needed to build Wikipedia functioned smoothly, and was not wasted in "endless 'edit wars'." Sanger, who had clashed with The Cunctator frequently and sometimes bitterly in discussions on the Wikipedia-L list and Wikipedia itself, effectively endorsed this language when he proceeded to make an extensive set of copy edits to the page over the course of December 27 without substantially changing the content. Furthermore, Wikipedia's first press release, dated January 15, 2002, quotes Sanger as saying: "If contributors took controversial stands, it would be virtually impossible for people of many different viewpoints to collaborate. Because of the neutrality policy, we have partisans working together on the same articles. It's quite remarkable" (http://web.archive.org/web/20020712053853/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_press_release_1). Like The Cunctators additions to the NPOV, Sanger's language here shows how the policy helped Wikipedia attract, maintain, and coordinate its labor supply. Together, the GFDL and the NPOV helped to ensure that Wikipedia enjoy the large pool of collective "free labor" it needed to grow and thrive, and thus addressed the clear anxieties about attracting and retaining volunteer labor that both Wales and Sanger express in their interventions in the GNUpedia and Spanish Fork incidents.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Buffer overflow
I kicked myself off Facebook to try to get myself to finish my damn dissertation. Maybe I'll post on here occasionally, just as a way to clear the buffer, get a few spare thoughts out of my head.
I've fallen into listening to the new The National album on heavy repeat as I write. This is good because I like it and its mostly faded to background so I can work to it. Its bad because they are the sort of band that smolders, the sort that makes me think of girls with dark eyes a size-and-a-half too big for their heads, makes me wish I'd spent my youth learning to speak French and smoke, so that when I met one I could mutter sweepingly beautiful obscenities at her while dangling a gauloises impossibly from my lower lip.
See that sentence ain't gonna fit in my dissertation... should have written about Godard instead of Wikipedia.
If anyone's reading this, prepare for more inane digital telegrams in this genre. You have been warned.
now we'll leave the silver city
cause all the silver girls gave us black dreams
-The National, "Conversation 16"
I've fallen into listening to the new The National album on heavy repeat as I write. This is good because I like it and its mostly faded to background so I can work to it. Its bad because they are the sort of band that smolders, the sort that makes me think of girls with dark eyes a size-and-a-half too big for their heads, makes me wish I'd spent my youth learning to speak French and smoke, so that when I met one I could mutter sweepingly beautiful obscenities at her while dangling a gauloises impossibly from my lower lip.
See that sentence ain't gonna fit in my dissertation... should have written about Godard instead of Wikipedia.
If anyone's reading this, prepare for more inane digital telegrams in this genre. You have been warned.
now we'll leave the silver city
cause all the silver girls gave us black dreams
-The National, "Conversation 16"
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Hrrm
According to Alexa the warrior forum is the 486th most visited site on the internet. Not sure what its deal is... possibly a community worth investigating!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Frederick, Maryland
it is an 11 hour pull from Maryland to Atlanta. I am driving a dead man's car, so his spirit is riding with me (a man's spirit gets into the things he maintains with his hands. if you had some fantastic steampunk contraption you could read back the intent behind each uneven spot in the fender he hammered out, pull synaptic state from the torque on the spark plugs)
the car sings his spirit as we ride. it is a cool strength, like a deep pool of still water.
this is not the only ghost along for the ride. the ghosts of the not yet born, our digital children, seep in through the cell phone. the antenna they ride is a mandelbrot set, each fold contains the whole. they whisper to us and tell us where to go.
we are no longer on internal guidance, spirit. we are a beam-rider now. we are the missile they called sparrow.
I am running with the windows open, since the AC is busted and I can smell the country better this way. it is molecular communion. smell the dogwoods, spirit. smell the taut heat of the mid-day sear. smell the cool rain as the anvil thunderheads break against the blue ridge mountains. smell our constant companion, the asphalt, its low bouquet here waxy, here earthy, here funky and almost human, like a lover's sweat.
it is a long golden evening in the mountains, spirit. it is almost june. the thing about june is always the knowledge of august. summer has become indian summer in America, spirit. august will be here soon.
when the light fades we are riding down a river of embers. taillights and flashers, the glowing rivers of the firefly american empire. the asphalt breathes moist, giving back the day's heat
behold, spirit, the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. 85 erupts from two lanes to six, downshifting from William Faulkner to William Gibson without engaging the clutch. there is low overcast. the sky is actually the color of a television, tuned to a dead station, a dull concrete phosphorescence.
spirit, we are some fantastic steampunk contraption. we are running down the groove in the record of America. listen, can you hear it? we are singing its ghost.
the car sings his spirit as we ride. it is a cool strength, like a deep pool of still water.
this is not the only ghost along for the ride. the ghosts of the not yet born, our digital children, seep in through the cell phone. the antenna they ride is a mandelbrot set, each fold contains the whole. they whisper to us and tell us where to go.
we are no longer on internal guidance, spirit. we are a beam-rider now. we are the missile they called sparrow.
I am running with the windows open, since the AC is busted and I can smell the country better this way. it is molecular communion. smell the dogwoods, spirit. smell the taut heat of the mid-day sear. smell the cool rain as the anvil thunderheads break against the blue ridge mountains. smell our constant companion, the asphalt, its low bouquet here waxy, here earthy, here funky and almost human, like a lover's sweat.
it is a long golden evening in the mountains, spirit. it is almost june. the thing about june is always the knowledge of august. summer has become indian summer in America, spirit. august will be here soon.
when the light fades we are riding down a river of embers. taillights and flashers, the glowing rivers of the firefly american empire. the asphalt breathes moist, giving back the day's heat
behold, spirit, the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. 85 erupts from two lanes to six, downshifting from William Faulkner to William Gibson without engaging the clutch. there is low overcast. the sky is actually the color of a television, tuned to a dead station, a dull concrete phosphorescence.
spirit, we are some fantastic steampunk contraption. we are running down the groove in the record of America. listen, can you hear it? we are singing its ghost.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Why Software (might) be better than Service for Social Networking
Ok, one more concern folks have had about this Diaspora thing. Some folks don't seem to understand what the big deal is, won't Diaspora just end up evil, the same as Facebook? Didn't we all migrate to Facebook because Myspace was owned by Fox news and going to evil-land? Why will this be different?
The logic behind why Diaspora won't be evil is this: Diaspora is software you run on a computer that you own. This matters for two reasons:
1. You retain control of your own data. If you use Facebook or a similar social networking service, you send them all your photos, status updates, likes and dislikes and they host them all on their servers. This makes it both technically and legally easy for Facebook to do whatever the heck they want with your data (you sign over your rights to it in exchange for use of their servers! I'll explain why Diaspora won't do this in just a minute). With a distributed system, like Diaspora, you keep your data and share it only with your friends. This makes it much harder (again, both legally and technically) for someone to aggregate and data-mine vast quantities of consumer information using a system like Diaspora (at least as it is currently designed). For security, all data traffic between your computer and your friends' computers will be encrypted.
2. No business model motivation for spying and data mining. Facebook HAS to monetize its users, it is the only way for them to stay in business! That means they have to snoop on you. Diaspora is being developed by a team of volunteers, supported by donations! Because it will be software you run on your own computer, there will be no overhead costs to be paid. The software will be released under a Free Software license (a variant of the GPL, if you're into that sorta stuff) so it can be maintained by the community. This is a very well understood means for maintaining software, and it works (examples include the GNU/Linux operating system, Apache webserver, GIMP image editor and many, many, many more).
Anyway, that's the logic... I actually think this is a vast experiment to see if this will actually work... but an important one, one that deserves the best possible effort.
The logic behind why Diaspora won't be evil is this: Diaspora is software you run on a computer that you own. This matters for two reasons:
1. You retain control of your own data. If you use Facebook or a similar social networking service, you send them all your photos, status updates, likes and dislikes and they host them all on their servers. This makes it both technically and legally easy for Facebook to do whatever the heck they want with your data (you sign over your rights to it in exchange for use of their servers! I'll explain why Diaspora won't do this in just a minute). With a distributed system, like Diaspora, you keep your data and share it only with your friends. This makes it much harder (again, both legally and technically) for someone to aggregate and data-mine vast quantities of consumer information using a system like Diaspora (at least as it is currently designed). For security, all data traffic between your computer and your friends' computers will be encrypted.
2. No business model motivation for spying and data mining. Facebook HAS to monetize its users, it is the only way for them to stay in business! That means they have to snoop on you. Diaspora is being developed by a team of volunteers, supported by donations! Because it will be software you run on your own computer, there will be no overhead costs to be paid. The software will be released under a Free Software license (a variant of the GPL, if you're into that sorta stuff) so it can be maintained by the community. This is a very well understood means for maintaining software, and it works (examples include the GNU/Linux operating system, Apache webserver, GIMP image editor and many, many, many more).
Anyway, that's the logic... I actually think this is a vast experiment to see if this will actually work... but an important one, one that deserves the best possible effort.
Responses to comments on my earlier post
I posted a link to my last post on Facebook and Diaspora to Facebook (IRONY!) and some folks there raised some concerns in comments. I'd like to respond to their concerns here:
1. The name "Diaspora" is offensive because it trivializes the real human suffering of actual, historical Diasporas.
Ok, you might have a point here. See my suggestion #1 in the previous post where I urge Diaspora developers to take input from as wide a public as possible. I think this is important advice for the Geek community, which can be insular and misunderstand the needs of the larger culture. If they had followed this advice at the name stage, they might have chosen something else. Then again, they might not have. A project like this, I think, needs a name with historical and political implications bigger than itself, and by definition, any such name will connect it to historical events far more immediately dire than Facebook. As such, it risks trivializing said events. In any case, the name is set and abandoning it now would mean a massive loss of publicity and social capital. I hope that, if this is your only problem with this project, you will be able to set this aside and not, as George Lipsitz would say keep "waiting for the perfect bus." As I hope my next couple of paragraphs will explain, this is an important moment when something like Diaspora is very much needed.
2. I'm not concerned because Facebook is only interested in mining data for marketing and advertising, not censorship.
I have two responses to this one. First, a system without any oversight or accountability, like Facebook, really can't be trusted to keep behaving in a benign way. Now, with the recent implosion of Myspace etc. looming over them, Facebook clearly has some reasons to use a relatively light hand on their users. However, as time goes by and people commit more and more of their data to Facebook, the system may well become much harder to leave, and thus, Facebook may feel like they can get away with more active interventions in site content. Like, say, if BP decides it doesn't like its ads popping up next to commentary on the (next) oil gusher. Lets not forget the compromises that a variety of supposedly libertarian tech companies (Google included) made in exchange for entry in to the Chinese market.
Second, I can't believe that I'm hearing people who I know have read Raymond Williams argue that just collecting data for advertising and marketing purposes is harmless. The feedback loop that couples lives lived in increasingly private spaces subject to increasing levels of corporate surveillance to an economy of systematic over-consumption is incredibly destructive. They get us to buy too much as it is, how much worse will that get when they can glean our anxieties and our desires from the traces we leave in our digital lives? Yes, advertising and over-consumption is much older than Facebook, but Facebook is a recent and particularly egregious example of a space of corporate surveillance. For those who want this argument made in more detail, see Mark Andrejevic's excellent iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era
3. I'm not concerned because I don't really use Facebook all that much
Again, I have several points of rebuttal. First, the place where this discussion started WAS ON FACEBOOK. You could have commented on my blog itself. You could have sent me an email. But clearly you thought the public space afforded by a Facebook comment thread was the best place to discuss this issue. That's fine! That's actually one of the great things about Facebook, it provides a space where debate can happen in the open, among friends, where people can jump in and out of the conversation. That's a valuable resource, which is exactly why I think we need to make sure that resource isn't wholly owned by an unaccountable corporation with a business model that requires that it carry out constant surveillance of all of us. Second, the use of social networking to contact people and organize events is, in my anecdotal experience, already becoming the norm for many people. That tends to make the use of Facebook much less optional, unless you don't want to get invited to any social events or hear from any of your friends. Additionally, you give away more data than you are aware of on a network like Facebook. Some data points are obvious, like what you "like" or become a "fan" of. Others are less obvious, like your clicks on profiles, pages, etc (all of which, testimony by Facebook employees has indicated, Facebook records). Still others are totally out of your control, like actions that your friends might take that data miners could use to derive information about you (statistically, for example, they might be able to guess that someone who has a larger number of friends "liking" Barack Obama is a Democrat).
Finally, and most crucially, this is a key moment if we want to insure that we retain control over the software we use to keep in touch with people and share information via the internet. Facebook is only part of a much larger trend that seeks to "close" the once "open" architecture of the web and subject it to control by large corporations. Think of the Apple iPad, which is no longer a general purpose computer, able to run any software you want, but rather a sort of tethered device, only able to run applications pre-approved by Apple. If we don't build a Free social network now, we may lose the ability to do so at all.
I hope this has spoken to everyone's concerns! It is good to talk about and think about these issues, and I'm happy to continue this debate here, on Facebook, Twitter, wherever...
1. The name "Diaspora" is offensive because it trivializes the real human suffering of actual, historical Diasporas.
Ok, you might have a point here. See my suggestion #1 in the previous post where I urge Diaspora developers to take input from as wide a public as possible. I think this is important advice for the Geek community, which can be insular and misunderstand the needs of the larger culture. If they had followed this advice at the name stage, they might have chosen something else. Then again, they might not have. A project like this, I think, needs a name with historical and political implications bigger than itself, and by definition, any such name will connect it to historical events far more immediately dire than Facebook. As such, it risks trivializing said events. In any case, the name is set and abandoning it now would mean a massive loss of publicity and social capital. I hope that, if this is your only problem with this project, you will be able to set this aside and not, as George Lipsitz would say keep "waiting for the perfect bus." As I hope my next couple of paragraphs will explain, this is an important moment when something like Diaspora is very much needed.
2. I'm not concerned because Facebook is only interested in mining data for marketing and advertising, not censorship.
I have two responses to this one. First, a system without any oversight or accountability, like Facebook, really can't be trusted to keep behaving in a benign way. Now, with the recent implosion of Myspace etc. looming over them, Facebook clearly has some reasons to use a relatively light hand on their users. However, as time goes by and people commit more and more of their data to Facebook, the system may well become much harder to leave, and thus, Facebook may feel like they can get away with more active interventions in site content. Like, say, if BP decides it doesn't like its ads popping up next to commentary on the (next) oil gusher. Lets not forget the compromises that a variety of supposedly libertarian tech companies (Google included) made in exchange for entry in to the Chinese market.
Second, I can't believe that I'm hearing people who I know have read Raymond Williams argue that just collecting data for advertising and marketing purposes is harmless. The feedback loop that couples lives lived in increasingly private spaces subject to increasing levels of corporate surveillance to an economy of systematic over-consumption is incredibly destructive. They get us to buy too much as it is, how much worse will that get when they can glean our anxieties and our desires from the traces we leave in our digital lives? Yes, advertising and over-consumption is much older than Facebook, but Facebook is a recent and particularly egregious example of a space of corporate surveillance. For those who want this argument made in more detail, see Mark Andrejevic's excellent iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era
3. I'm not concerned because I don't really use Facebook all that much
Again, I have several points of rebuttal. First, the place where this discussion started WAS ON FACEBOOK. You could have commented on my blog itself. You could have sent me an email. But clearly you thought the public space afforded by a Facebook comment thread was the best place to discuss this issue. That's fine! That's actually one of the great things about Facebook, it provides a space where debate can happen in the open, among friends, where people can jump in and out of the conversation. That's a valuable resource, which is exactly why I think we need to make sure that resource isn't wholly owned by an unaccountable corporation with a business model that requires that it carry out constant surveillance of all of us. Second, the use of social networking to contact people and organize events is, in my anecdotal experience, already becoming the norm for many people. That tends to make the use of Facebook much less optional, unless you don't want to get invited to any social events or hear from any of your friends. Additionally, you give away more data than you are aware of on a network like Facebook. Some data points are obvious, like what you "like" or become a "fan" of. Others are less obvious, like your clicks on profiles, pages, etc (all of which, testimony by Facebook employees has indicated, Facebook records). Still others are totally out of your control, like actions that your friends might take that data miners could use to derive information about you (statistically, for example, they might be able to guess that someone who has a larger number of friends "liking" Barack Obama is a Democrat).
Finally, and most crucially, this is a key moment if we want to insure that we retain control over the software we use to keep in touch with people and share information via the internet. Facebook is only part of a much larger trend that seeks to "close" the once "open" architecture of the web and subject it to control by large corporations. Think of the Apple iPad, which is no longer a general purpose computer, able to run any software you want, but rather a sort of tethered device, only able to run applications pre-approved by Apple. If we don't build a Free social network now, we may lose the ability to do so at all.
I hope this has spoken to everyone's concerns! It is good to talk about and think about these issues, and I'm happy to continue this debate here, on Facebook, Twitter, wherever...
Diaspora and the future of the internet
So, by now, most folks have probably heard about Diaspora, the distributed replacement for Facebook. Basically, the idea is to replace the web-based Facebook service with a piece of software you would run on your own computer, which would allow you to share information with you friends. This radically distributed solution, the thinking goes, would allow users to control their own data and protect their own privacy.
The notion recently came in for some criticism on the download squad blog, in a piece that suggested expecting users to run individual servers would lead to Diaspora's failure. The authors seem to feel that server maintenance is beyond the ability of the average computer user.
It is not immediately apparent to me that this is necessarily so. Napster, after all, asked users to serve music files to one another, and it succeeded until the music industry intervened.
However, it is important to take the warning against putting too much responsibility on individual users seriously. We have to understand that machines and people always exist in communities. To that end, I would make several concrete recommendations:
1. On the technical side, the Diaspora team should solicit the advice of a wide variety of computer users, and design their software to be accessible to everyone. Geeky config options are great, but keep them out of the way. Out of the box, it should just work, and power users can tweak later.
2. On the social side, people interested in migrating from Facebook to Diaspora should organize. A Facebook walk out day, for an en masse migration would work. People get value from the social connections on a network, so we'll want to move as many of those all at once as possible. More technically savvy users should stand ready to help novice users make the transition.
What to people think? Should we start organizing the Facebook walk out?
Sunday, April 04, 2010
The iPad and the "Geek Civil War"
Just a quick comment on the debate over the socio-political implications of the new Apple iPad currently the matter of some contention.
On one hand, Cory Doctorow warns that the iPad is a dangerously "closed" device that restricts the rights of it users, encouraging them to consume rather than create. He points out that the much lauded Marvel Comics app for the iPad prevents users from sharing or reselling comics, potentially destroying a great deal of fan culture, which has revolved around these activities. At one point he asserts, referring to the sealed nature of the device itself "if you can't open it, you don't own it."
On the other hand, Joel Johnson of Gizmodo attempts to refute Doctorow in an article appropriately titled "Cory Doctorow, You are a Consumer Too." He complains that Doctorow's article purports to "sneer at everyone who is excited about the iPad, warts and all, and explain to us that we're dupes." Ultimately, he suggests, Doctorow's commitment to open systems puts too much of the responsibility for maintaining and repairing computers and software onto users themselves, who would rather be spending their time using computers and software to accomplish other tasks. He concludes that, despite sharing many of Doctorow's concerns about issues like DRM and content lock-ins, "But I don't want to use shitty computers with shitty operating systems, just like I don't want to drive cars that come with their own schematics. Instead I want to drive beautifully engineered machines that scream with precision fury. And if they break, I want to take them to a shop and have them fixed. You keep the 3D printer; I'll take AAA."
These two approaches to the iPad demonstrate fairly common discourses about computers, computer mastery, and computer ownership. Doctorow's anti-iPad critique is typical of a hacker position I call "cyborg individualism," that stresses the need for individuals to master and control the computer hardware that they own. "If you can't open it, you don't own it," is a telling line, as it reveals that the ideal Doctorow wants to defend is that of ownership. Ironically, the desire to own hardware totally leads to various forms of commons systems for managing software, as a means of preventing software owners from establishing "illegitimate" control over devices.
Johnson's rebuttal points out the failure of Doctorow's position to spread beyond a very small elite technical community, but I think it suggests the wrong reasons for this failure. It isn't that people just want to be consumers, and have their needs met by nearly unaccountable corporations, its that the model of self-sufficient individual as an alternative to this consumer relationship is a failure. We should not all be expected to write our own drivers, build our own computers, install our own operating systems, and we are certainly not capable of actually supplying ourselves with the necessary inputs to run a contemporary technological society. However, I don't think that means that we should accept consumerism as a necessary condition. Instead what we need to be doing is exploring and attempting to build new forms of community that might really meet those needs, and that is something the acceptance of individualism and individual property as ideal conditions by Doctorow and others like him too often precludes them from really embarking upon.
On one hand, Cory Doctorow warns that the iPad is a dangerously "closed" device that restricts the rights of it users, encouraging them to consume rather than create. He points out that the much lauded Marvel Comics app for the iPad prevents users from sharing or reselling comics, potentially destroying a great deal of fan culture, which has revolved around these activities. At one point he asserts, referring to the sealed nature of the device itself "if you can't open it, you don't own it."
On the other hand, Joel Johnson of Gizmodo attempts to refute Doctorow in an article appropriately titled "Cory Doctorow, You are a Consumer Too." He complains that Doctorow's article purports to "sneer at everyone who is excited about the iPad, warts and all, and explain to us that we're dupes." Ultimately, he suggests, Doctorow's commitment to open systems puts too much of the responsibility for maintaining and repairing computers and software onto users themselves, who would rather be spending their time using computers and software to accomplish other tasks. He concludes that, despite sharing many of Doctorow's concerns about issues like DRM and content lock-ins, "But I don't want to use shitty computers with shitty operating systems, just like I don't want to drive cars that come with their own schematics. Instead I want to drive beautifully engineered machines that scream with precision fury. And if they break, I want to take them to a shop and have them fixed. You keep the 3D printer; I'll take AAA."
These two approaches to the iPad demonstrate fairly common discourses about computers, computer mastery, and computer ownership. Doctorow's anti-iPad critique is typical of a hacker position I call "cyborg individualism," that stresses the need for individuals to master and control the computer hardware that they own. "If you can't open it, you don't own it," is a telling line, as it reveals that the ideal Doctorow wants to defend is that of ownership. Ironically, the desire to own hardware totally leads to various forms of commons systems for managing software, as a means of preventing software owners from establishing "illegitimate" control over devices.
Johnson's rebuttal points out the failure of Doctorow's position to spread beyond a very small elite technical community, but I think it suggests the wrong reasons for this failure. It isn't that people just want to be consumers, and have their needs met by nearly unaccountable corporations, its that the model of self-sufficient individual as an alternative to this consumer relationship is a failure. We should not all be expected to write our own drivers, build our own computers, install our own operating systems, and we are certainly not capable of actually supplying ourselves with the necessary inputs to run a contemporary technological society. However, I don't think that means that we should accept consumerism as a necessary condition. Instead what we need to be doing is exploring and attempting to build new forms of community that might really meet those needs, and that is something the acceptance of individualism and individual property as ideal conditions by Doctorow and others like him too often precludes them from really embarking upon.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tonight, tonight
I went to the IJ brewery, on account of Stross mentions 'em in Accelerando. Ended up sitting with some computer science from Finland. He didn't speak dutch either, so we were a fun pair of ex-pats.
Somewhere around our 3rd beer, this American classic car pulls up on the sidewalk. A convertible with the top down, maybe a Camaro or Mustang of late 60s pedigree, I couldn't tell. The boys inside hopped out of the car, plugged speakers into a post onto the exterior, set up a drum set in the back seat. One stood on the hood with a guitar, the other on the trunk with a base. They wore leather jackets and sunglasses. Their hair was perfect. They started a rambling dutch introduction I couldn't catch a word of. The crowd seemed amused though. Then they started their first song.
It was an electrified version of "Love the One You're With," they were a cover band.
Two songs later they launched into "Country Roads," and the whole bar sang out the refrain. They played a short set, maybe 8 songs. The lead singer came through the crowd with a little red pail, collecting Euro coins. A waitress brought them beers and left them on the hood.
When they were finished they gunned the engine and roared off down the street, an act that, given Dutch gas prices, must have set them back at least 5 euro.
Amazing. Like something out of Godard. So strange to see "American-ness" in the funhouse mirror of New Europe.
Somewhere around our 3rd beer, this American classic car pulls up on the sidewalk. A convertible with the top down, maybe a Camaro or Mustang of late 60s pedigree, I couldn't tell. The boys inside hopped out of the car, plugged speakers into a post onto the exterior, set up a drum set in the back seat. One stood on the hood with a guitar, the other on the trunk with a base. They wore leather jackets and sunglasses. Their hair was perfect. They started a rambling dutch introduction I couldn't catch a word of. The crowd seemed amused though. Then they started their first song.
It was an electrified version of "Love the One You're With," they were a cover band.
Two songs later they launched into "Country Roads," and the whole bar sang out the refrain. They played a short set, maybe 8 songs. The lead singer came through the crowd with a little red pail, collecting Euro coins. A waitress brought them beers and left them on the hood.
When they were finished they gunned the engine and roared off down the street, an act that, given Dutch gas prices, must have set them back at least 5 euro.
Amazing. Like something out of Godard. So strange to see "American-ness" in the funhouse mirror of New Europe.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Reboot the Reboot - First Thoughts on Amsterdam
Ok, so maybe I want a personal blog. I need a "professional" blog somewhere, but the concavity should be for, shall we say, creative non-fiction.
I've been in Amsterdam for about, oh, 4 or 5 hours now... managed to stretch a conference visit into a 5 day trip! I'm almost delirious from lack of sleep, I never sleep on planes, but I know I have to keep going, if I fall asleep now I'll be back up at midnight and all out of whack tomorrow.
When I get to someplace new, I like to walk a wide circle around the place where I'll be staying, like a cat turning circles before laying down to sleep. I like to do this for several reasons. On the practical side, it orients me to the area, helps me learn north from south and keep from getting lost. However, what I really like is the thrill of strolling through ordinary neighborhoods in an ordinary way thousands of miles from my home, like an extraordinarily unlikely extra in someone else's movie. Guy on street #234, Amsterdam exterior day, is just an ordinary guy with no significant role to play in this movie, oh, but he's 6,000 miles out of place.
Oh and you are in a cast of thousands on the street here. Not like Atlanta where you are rarely, if ever, in a cast of dozens on the street. Bicycle friendly cities are awesome. I was enjoying a Heineken at a cafe near my hotel when school let out, and families and knots of children of various ages came bustling down the (subtly marked! careful about that!) bike paths, laughing and chattering in dutch. It felt deeply right somehow, the mix of people of different ages riding together, the discussions between riders... like a proper, living community.
Oh and I'm sure I'm not the first to notice that the simple, upright design of what seems to be the default bike here is awesome. You are almost in a standing position riding it. Looks comfortable and easy to maneuver. I wouldn't want to do 30 miles on one, but that's not what they are for.
Pics from my trip on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/trainsnthings/
I've been in Amsterdam for about, oh, 4 or 5 hours now... managed to stretch a conference visit into a 5 day trip! I'm almost delirious from lack of sleep, I never sleep on planes, but I know I have to keep going, if I fall asleep now I'll be back up at midnight and all out of whack tomorrow.
When I get to someplace new, I like to walk a wide circle around the place where I'll be staying, like a cat turning circles before laying down to sleep. I like to do this for several reasons. On the practical side, it orients me to the area, helps me learn north from south and keep from getting lost. However, what I really like is the thrill of strolling through ordinary neighborhoods in an ordinary way thousands of miles from my home, like an extraordinarily unlikely extra in someone else's movie. Guy on street #234, Amsterdam exterior day, is just an ordinary guy with no significant role to play in this movie, oh, but he's 6,000 miles out of place.
Oh and you are in a cast of thousands on the street here. Not like Atlanta where you are rarely, if ever, in a cast of dozens on the street. Bicycle friendly cities are awesome. I was enjoying a Heineken at a cafe near my hotel when school let out, and families and knots of children of various ages came bustling down the (subtly marked! careful about that!) bike paths, laughing and chattering in dutch. It felt deeply right somehow, the mix of people of different ages riding together, the discussions between riders... like a proper, living community.
Oh and I'm sure I'm not the first to notice that the simple, upright design of what seems to be the default bike here is awesome. You are almost in a standing position riding it. Looks comfortable and easy to maneuver. I wouldn't want to do 30 miles on one, but that's not what they are for.
Pics from my trip on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/trainsnthings/
Thursday, February 04, 2010
David Graeber Defines "Ethnography"
And explains how it may provide a model for radical scholarship. From Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
File under "Things I read a year and a half ago but did not recognize the full significance of." In the sense that Graeber defines it here, I would call my work "ethnography," even though it is probably an ethnography performed by someone learning the ropes of the method as he goes along, and trying to adapt to the strange "field environment" that is an online wiki community. What I like most about Graeber's definition is the concrete sense of purpose it gives to academic work. Reading this while reviewing Fragments for a class reading really made me feel more confident about academia as a whole.
When one carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do, and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people’s habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts.
File under "Things I read a year and a half ago but did not recognize the full significance of." In the sense that Graeber defines it here, I would call my work "ethnography," even though it is probably an ethnography performed by someone learning the ropes of the method as he goes along, and trying to adapt to the strange "field environment" that is an online wiki community. What I like most about Graeber's definition is the concrete sense of purpose it gives to academic work. Reading this while reviewing Fragments for a class reading really made me feel more confident about academia as a whole.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Return of the Concavity
Hey everybody. I'm going to try to revive my blog after a long hiatus. I'm also going to try to refocus what I'm writing here, away from random personal and political stuff (Facebook and Twitter will keep anyone who wants to be up to date on my personal and political rants) and toward a crtical examination of what's called been called Free Culture, Peer-to-Peer culture, or Peer Production. Basically, all of these terms refer to the mode of producing culture that we find on Wikipedia, in which many loosely organized collaborators work together to produce a larger text without a strictly hierarchical organization.
I think it is also important to explain what I mean when I say I intend to take a "critical" take on this method of production on this blog. I do not come here to bury Wikipedia (or YouTube, or Hacker spaces, or what have you). These are some of my favorite things. I think that these projects, and the people involved with them, are often animated by a tremendous idealism, and a wonderful sense that they are working together to build a better future for all of humanity.
I think that idealism is real, in fact I'm banking on it. What I'd like to do here is to argue that some of the cultural assumptions Peer Production brings with it from capitalism may serve to undercut the very idealistic goals that its practitioners embrace. My hope is that their genuine commitment to a better, fairer, human future will motivate them to move away from these assumptions and towards a new vision for Peer Production based on a broader understanding of human equality and shared responsibility.
A tall order for a blog, I know, but I might as well try. At the very least, I'm hoping writing these vignettes on a regular basis will keep me current on the bleeding edge of the discourse about peer production as I slog through the backlog of Wikipedia data that is my dissertation.
I think it is also important to explain what I mean when I say I intend to take a "critical" take on this method of production on this blog. I do not come here to bury Wikipedia (or YouTube, or Hacker spaces, or what have you). These are some of my favorite things. I think that these projects, and the people involved with them, are often animated by a tremendous idealism, and a wonderful sense that they are working together to build a better future for all of humanity.
I think that idealism is real, in fact I'm banking on it. What I'd like to do here is to argue that some of the cultural assumptions Peer Production brings with it from capitalism may serve to undercut the very idealistic goals that its practitioners embrace. My hope is that their genuine commitment to a better, fairer, human future will motivate them to move away from these assumptions and towards a new vision for Peer Production based on a broader understanding of human equality and shared responsibility.
A tall order for a blog, I know, but I might as well try. At the very least, I'm hoping writing these vignettes on a regular basis will keep me current on the bleeding edge of the discourse about peer production as I slog through the backlog of Wikipedia data that is my dissertation.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
How We Became Posthuman
No. Really. Behold the "beautification engine" which mathematically maps "normal" faces into "more perfect" shapes.
In other words, it uses computerized data manipulation to map embodiments onto the body. Yay.
PS: This is probably tripe to everyone else... it is just a note to myself
In other words, it uses computerized data manipulation to map embodiments onto the body. Yay.
PS: This is probably tripe to everyone else... it is just a note to myself
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Truth system trumps reading comprehension in Wired
Wired magazine is currently running a good, informative article on the battle over vaccination. In it, they provide a wonderful quote by the late, great Carl Sagan, in which he presents reasons why the persistent belief in wacky pseudo-science (like the totally unproven link between vaccines and autism) may not be driven simply by ignorance and stupidity:
In other words, people don't believe pseudo-science because they are weak minded, but because capitalism sucks, and does a lousy job of providing support for human beings, which it tends to treat as machine tools. (Yes, I am aware Sagan does not single out "capitalism" for critique here. I am attempting to extend the useful Mormon tradition of posthumous conversion for use by us socialists.)
However, rather than build on Sagan's words, Wired seems to ignore them, as the very next sentence in the article suggests that proper middle-class rationality is self-evidently superior to all other forms of thought, and is only ever ignored because it is just too hard for the dumb, lazy masses.
Let me be clear here, I think the vaccine deniers are wrong, and that preventing children from getting vaccinations is a terrible mistake that could have deadly consequences. However, treating people as children who just need to be properly "disciplined" will only ever make them act as children. If we want to earn the public's trust, we have to build a system of knowledge production (and of production in general) worthy of that trust. One they can be confident is working for them, not to enrich some CEO. Until we do this, their fears will continue to manifest themselves in these dangerous and harmful ways.
“A great many of these belief systems address real human needs that are not being met by our society,” Sagan wrote of certain Americans’ embrace of reincarnation, channeling, and extraterrestrials. “There are unsatisfied medical needs, spiritual needs, and needs for communion with the rest of the human community.”
In other words, people don't believe pseudo-science because they are weak minded, but because capitalism sucks, and does a lousy job of providing support for human beings, which it tends to treat as machine tools. (Yes, I am aware Sagan does not single out "capitalism" for critique here. I am attempting to extend the useful Mormon tradition of posthumous conversion for use by us socialists.)
However, rather than build on Sagan's words, Wired seems to ignore them, as the very next sentence in the article suggests that proper middle-class rationality is self-evidently superior to all other forms of thought, and is only ever ignored because it is just too hard for the dumb, lazy masses.
Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard.
Let me be clear here, I think the vaccine deniers are wrong, and that preventing children from getting vaccinations is a terrible mistake that could have deadly consequences. However, treating people as children who just need to be properly "disciplined" will only ever make them act as children. If we want to earn the public's trust, we have to build a system of knowledge production (and of production in general) worthy of that trust. One they can be confident is working for them, not to enrich some CEO. Until we do this, their fears will continue to manifest themselves in these dangerous and harmful ways.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Pop Music, Memory and Digital Media
A few weeks ago, Bruce Sterling posted a reflection on "plots [that] can’t exist in a world of ubiquitous computing," to his blog. He discussed the challenges horror-movie writers face working in an always-connected world (how do you isolate a helpless victim when everyone has the ability to call the authorities always in their pocket). Before moving on to point out the consequences of our pervasive communications networks to another genre, "lovelorn, romantic torch songs." This song by Everything But the Girl for example:
Sterling quips:
The introduction of always on digital communications and information storage into the everyday lives of ordinary people (at least among the relatively privileged classes of the developed world) does indeed alter the shape of memory, loss, and longing. The experience of discovering a "vanished lover... married now [with] two kids in Omaha," or any of the other encounters we have with those digital ghosts, those patterns of data connected to people we no longer really know but who persist in the linkages of our social networking software, reminds me of another pop song. Namely, "She's got you," in which Patsy Cline mourns that:
She goes on to list other artifacts she once shared with her beloved - records, a class ring - before concluding "The only thing different, the only thing new/I've got these little things, she's got you." The objects of love, stripped of the aura of the beloved, a dilemma probably older than human language - since even bower birds court using gifts - but in this song already betraying the effects of the regime of mechanical reproduction. Snapshots and records easily and efficiently commit memory to mechanism, capture shared experiences now stripped of their original context. The regime of the digital multiplies these "little things," creates the data ghosts that can so easily haunt us. But it does more than that. Because digital artifacts are non-rival, we can easily share "little things," broadcast them not only across our social networks but even to the world at large. Take for example the website My Parents Were Awesome (one of many websites using the "tumblr" service to share photographs, and one of the few not committed to schadenfreude), which invites participants to share scanned in old photographs of their parents. The only context is the site title, but that title suffices to make these little things a powerful meditation on history and mortality, as the user scrolls by picture after picture of youthful people, knowing everyone depicted has since grown old enough to have a child capable of uploading photos to a tumblr site. It is the sort of meditation one might have had with a box of family photos in the age of mechanical reproduction, in the age of the ubiquitous digital network, you can always find someone's family photos.
Thus our digital ghosts invite us to both narcissism and communion. The boundaries of memory are what has changed.
Sterling quips:
Tears your heart out, right? Well, why doesn’t she go on freakin’ Facebook? Why doesn’t she just Google him? It’s not that alligators ate him: he just blew town. Big deal. Get video Skype. Your vanished lover is probably married now and has two kids in Omaha, but hey, that’s another problem.
The introduction of always on digital communications and information storage into the everyday lives of ordinary people (at least among the relatively privileged classes of the developed world) does indeed alter the shape of memory, loss, and longing. The experience of discovering a "vanished lover... married now [with] two kids in Omaha," or any of the other encounters we have with those digital ghosts, those patterns of data connected to people we no longer really know but who persist in the linkages of our social networking software, reminds me of another pop song. Namely, "She's got you," in which Patsy Cline mourns that:
I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed "with love," just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you
She goes on to list other artifacts she once shared with her beloved - records, a class ring - before concluding "The only thing different, the only thing new/I've got these little things, she's got you." The objects of love, stripped of the aura of the beloved, a dilemma probably older than human language - since even bower birds court using gifts - but in this song already betraying the effects of the regime of mechanical reproduction. Snapshots and records easily and efficiently commit memory to mechanism, capture shared experiences now stripped of their original context. The regime of the digital multiplies these "little things," creates the data ghosts that can so easily haunt us. But it does more than that. Because digital artifacts are non-rival, we can easily share "little things," broadcast them not only across our social networks but even to the world at large. Take for example the website My Parents Were Awesome (one of many websites using the "tumblr" service to share photographs, and one of the few not committed to schadenfreude), which invites participants to share scanned in old photographs of their parents. The only context is the site title, but that title suffices to make these little things a powerful meditation on history and mortality, as the user scrolls by picture after picture of youthful people, knowing everyone depicted has since grown old enough to have a child capable of uploading photos to a tumblr site. It is the sort of meditation one might have had with a box of family photos in the age of mechanical reproduction, in the age of the ubiquitous digital network, you can always find someone's family photos.
Thus our digital ghosts invite us to both narcissism and communion. The boundaries of memory are what has changed.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Mid-town towers from the staircase of the High Museum of Art
Mid-town towers from the staircase of the High Museum of Art
Originally uploaded by choo_choo_pictures
Which I am not.
Anyway, I liked this window in the staircase of the High as much as I liked the collection.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
My other other Blog
I've ended my long stretch as a bad blog-team member and added something to the Food blog my twitter friend Carlo was nice enough to invite me to join. You can read about me trying Atlanta BBQ here.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Democracy is in the Streets
This one goes out to all the wanna-be revolutionaries, frustrated leftists, and boomers who are still living in 1968 I have met during my time in the humanities in the American Public University system.
It is time for us to get off our asses.
Have you been watching the news? Have you been monitoring any of the many forms of informational media we have available to us in our 21st century ecology of spectacle?
If you have, then you will have noticed what I have noticed, namely, that we are getting our asses kicked. The crazy right has organized to intimidate, harass, and shout down the elected officials we worked so hard to elect over the last two campaign cycles, as those officials campaign for health care reform that will literally save lives.
Its working. The shouting mobs are swinging the media narrative to the right, creating the impression of "grassroots" opposition to reforming our expensive, broken, ineffective health care system. Robert Reich fears lawmakers may be swayed to pass weak, ineffective reforms, reforms that might provide little real help for under-insured and uninsured Americans and thus weaken public confidence on the very notion of "health care reform."
There is only one way to fix this, we need more bodies in the town-hall meeting rooms, we need our people to be in front of the TV cameras, not just theirs!
We need to get off our asses.
So lets go! We've been waiting for this! The good fight waits to be fought, Democracy is in the Streets again.
You can find health-care events and meetings near you via the FireDogLake campaign silo widget, which I've embedded on the right hand side of this blog, or via HCAN, which also has tips for effective actions in the face of the Teabag mobsters.
This is our fight to lose. Get mad. Get organized.
It is time for us to get off our asses.
Have you been watching the news? Have you been monitoring any of the many forms of informational media we have available to us in our 21st century ecology of spectacle?
If you have, then you will have noticed what I have noticed, namely, that we are getting our asses kicked. The crazy right has organized to intimidate, harass, and shout down the elected officials we worked so hard to elect over the last two campaign cycles, as those officials campaign for health care reform that will literally save lives.
Its working. The shouting mobs are swinging the media narrative to the right, creating the impression of "grassroots" opposition to reforming our expensive, broken, ineffective health care system. Robert Reich fears lawmakers may be swayed to pass weak, ineffective reforms, reforms that might provide little real help for under-insured and uninsured Americans and thus weaken public confidence on the very notion of "health care reform."
There is only one way to fix this, we need more bodies in the town-hall meeting rooms, we need our people to be in front of the TV cameras, not just theirs!
We need to get off our asses.
So lets go! We've been waiting for this! The good fight waits to be fought, Democracy is in the Streets again.
You can find health-care events and meetings near you via the FireDogLake campaign silo widget, which I've embedded on the right hand side of this blog, or via HCAN, which also has tips for effective actions in the face of the Teabag mobsters.
This is our fight to lose. Get mad. Get organized.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Gates, the Police and the History of Race in America
As usual, I'm well behind the ball on this, but I did just want to say one thing about the whole Henry Louis Gates affair. There has been a lot of good commentary on this, but one thing I've been surprised by is the constant drumbeat of "responsible" advice dished out by many well-meaning commentators, white and black alike, who stress the importance of never, ever raising your voice to a Police officer. One particularly egregious example can be found in the recent Salon article by Gene Lyons: Black men, white cops and media mind readers. In it Lyons tells us that Gates' arrest is justified since, "it's not a crime to act like a jackass, but cops can't have crowds seeing them cowered by a loudmouth." Lyon's conclusion is that the whole arrest can be blamed squarely on Gates, who could have avoided the incident if he had acted with, "a degree of self-control."
In other cases, the advice to avoid raising one's voice to, arguing with, or otherwise aggravating officers of the law is explicitly positioned as "survival advice" for Black men. In a recent piece on NPR, King Anyi Howell describes the techniques he has developed for dealing with the undue Police attention he finds he attracts simply by "Living While Black." He writes:
I'm disturbed by two things here, the first is the notion that some or all citizens should show automatic and unquestioning deference to officers of the law, men and women who, if I understand the constitution correctly, are ultimately answerable to the sovereign people of the United States of America, bound to "Protect and Serve" not to command arbitrary respect based on arbitrary authority. The second is that no one seems to want to mention that when people of color are advised that they must always be careful not to act in a manner that might be seen as aggressive or threatening in the presence of a Police officer, this advice, however well meaning and well informed by the situation at hand it may be, implicitly conditions people to think of themselves as second-class citizens, hemmed in by arbitrary power beyond their control. I'm reminded of a passage from Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," in which he describes his Mother's actions after she found him injured in a fight with white boys in the neighborhood.
It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for Wright's mother here, after all, she just wants to keep her boy safe. But can a system that makes keeping your loved ones safe mean teaching them to be subservient ever be just? In the end, the responsibility for changing that system rests with us, the sovereign people of the United States. Why do I fear with have become too fond of the shallow stability provided by our near-police-state to take up that responsibility and see justice served.
In other cases, the advice to avoid raising one's voice to, arguing with, or otherwise aggravating officers of the law is explicitly positioned as "survival advice" for Black men. In a recent piece on NPR, King Anyi Howell describes the techniques he has developed for dealing with the undue Police attention he finds he attracts simply by "Living While Black." He writes:
And I've been profiled so often that I've almost developed an art form for asserting my rights, while not offending the officer. I read recently that black men, when pulled over, have to be some odd combination of Samuel L. Jackson and Sydney Poitier, the former being known for his aggression and the latter for his eloquence. It may sound appalling to some, but that's exactly the tightrope I've learned to walk in dealing with the blue line of racial profiling. There's an unspoken understanding between the offending cop and me when I get pulled over. We both know it's not necessarily because a taillight is out, or my music is playing too loudly. And we both know it will likely end up in some sort of search. I don't act indignant because I'm the Jedi master, employing mind control to get us both out of the situation as quickly as possible.
I'm disturbed by two things here, the first is the notion that some or all citizens should show automatic and unquestioning deference to officers of the law, men and women who, if I understand the constitution correctly, are ultimately answerable to the sovereign people of the United States of America, bound to "Protect and Serve" not to command arbitrary respect based on arbitrary authority. The second is that no one seems to want to mention that when people of color are advised that they must always be careful not to act in a manner that might be seen as aggressive or threatening in the presence of a Police officer, this advice, however well meaning and well informed by the situation at hand it may be, implicitly conditions people to think of themselves as second-class citizens, hemmed in by arbitrary power beyond their control. I'm reminded of a passage from Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," in which he describes his Mother's actions after she found him injured in a fight with white boys in the neighborhood.
She grabbed a barrel stave, dragged me home, stripped me naked, and beat me till I had a fever of one hundred and two. She would smack my rump with the stave, and, while the skin was still smarting, impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom. I was never to throw cinders anymore. I was never to fight any more wars. I was never, never, under any conditions, to fight white folks again. And they were absolutely right in clouting me with a broken milk bottle. Didn't I know she was working every day hard in the hot kitchens of white folks to take care of me? When was I ever going to learn to be a good boy? She couldn't be bothered with my fights. She finished by telling me that I ought to be thankful to God as long as I lived that they didn't kill me.
It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for Wright's mother here, after all, she just wants to keep her boy safe. But can a system that makes keeping your loved ones safe mean teaching them to be subservient ever be just? In the end, the responsibility for changing that system rests with us, the sovereign people of the United States. Why do I fear with have become too fond of the shallow stability provided by our near-police-state to take up that responsibility and see justice served.
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