Bonnaroo

Out on the road this week you all. Sorry for the truncated post. But I wanted to share this video about the right of DDoS (Denial of Service) attacks to be counted as a form of civil disobedience. There are some really good gems in this discussion that I hope to parce out later. But unfortunately I am headed to Tennessee to partake in Bonnaroo. But fear not, I am taking a fistful of readings for that long car ride and hope to be back next week with some posting.

ps what do you think of the make over?

Here I go again on my own...

lol

Let me first start by saying that I am horrible with these things. Seriously. I think I might have started this blog every summer for the last three summers. Every time I get a few posts in and then I just stop. I promise this time things will be different. I promise that this time I will be consistent. That’s because my very academic future depends on it! Let me explain…

I am unorganized. This may come as a shock to some whom for some reason think that I am on top of all my ish. I am desperately unable to remember things from one minute ago and if I don’t write it down, forgettaboutit. Even with this handicap I am required to do my thesis, and that is going to require some amount of discipline. I am hoping that this blog can be a place where I can contain and workout my thoughts and research and perhaps shed a little light on an area that concerns me greatly. Political activism.

I have met with a few professors over the last few weeks of the semester trying to gather some ideas and thoughts about my thesis. Ever since the fall I have really been interested in the political dimension of media. From blogs, to memes to viral videos it seems that the Internet is a verifiable playground of political freedom. But all these platforms are not guaranteed. Ultimately somewhere along the line you are bound by some terms of service. This is precisely what happened to Wikilinks. Their online political activism/advocacy was squeezed out not through a crushing governmental sanction, though we have seen that happen elsewhere across the globe, but rather through financial institutions like Visa and Amazon. Violate the terms of service and be expelled from the Internet,” they say, but we don’t get a say in those rules. Though the space for utopian expression may exist on technology that can connect us with viewpoints and philosophies from across the globe and through the ages, we don’t have a say in the rules that govern that space.

What worries me about this thought is that at precisely the same time people are clamoring about the “democratic liberation” provided through the Internet, we are seeing the most drastic privatization campaigns in history. The occupation of Zuccotti Park by Occupy Wall Street is a prime example of this principle. The park, originally and aptly named Liberty Plaza, was a quasi hybrid of public and private space. A public space, that was privately owned by an outside company that was “leasing” to the public. But when that public took a political turn this huge dichotomy opened up. Much like the case of Wikilinks, the public party was quashed by private rules. Rules that none of us agreed on, and that were seemingly arbitrary. This led me to ask my professor if he thought that the Internet was the new public space, to which I now think that there is no public space. That it is all facilitated through terms, and rules, and regulation (although I don’t like this word because it implies laws, through which we have control, however minimal, over) by entities that allow us no recourse in terms of their process. Though we may be customers, we are not constituents and we cant vote them out of office if they fail us.

In cases of Anonymous and Luz Sec, these groups have provided some political agency, but also face an international manhunt that has already claimed several well know hacktivists. The proposed jail sentences for these individuals are hefty. Though they were not without their malevolence, I became concerned about the ability to take direct action online, without fear of severe and lengthy punishments. What is the difference between blocking the entrance of Bank of America and a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against Bank of Americas website? Why are the punishments so disproportionate? What kind of “speech” are we willing to protect online?

Brian reminded me that there is disobedience that occurs online everyday. Perhaps I was too narrow in my original conception. He suggested that every time someone downloads a song illegally, that is a form of civil disobedience, every time someone shares a copyrighted photograph with a friend on tumblr that is a political act. I think that it might be hard for us to see it that way, because it is so pervasive, but I think that Brian is right. Information is the new currency and we are all making it non-stop. It is ridiculous to think that anyone can own it. And with the sophistication of modern computers and the ease of copying information from one place to another it is silly to think that anyone can control it.

But now I am concerned about privacy. How do I keep my own? How much is reasonable? Can expect that all of my activity online could potentially be used against me? Does this mean I can never look at porn if I want to be a politician? Companies like Facebook and Apple want us to get comfortable with the idea of sharing all of our data. Think of it as the price of admission. Even our general cultural attitude is changing towards one of ambivalence even outright indifference towards issues of privacy. There is this notion, we don’t get to make the rules, we just live by them. Last time I checked that wasn’t a democratic attitude. This laissez faire attitude towards issues, real, pressing issues, of personal privacy are coming on the heels of increased prosecution of whistle blowers, and all kinds of rhetoric about protecting corporate intellectual copyright. SOPA and Bradley Manning are perfect examples of this disconnect. For the user, his data, his passions, his entire life must be available for the picking by the same institutions that claim their data is private property and must be compensated for.

But what does that mean? Well that’s what I have to find out. Doing some more thinking about public vs private spaces. Maybe for next week I will try to come up with some examples of the barrier there. Brian suggested this book “Free Ride” by Steven Lavine, that he said he would loan to me. He called it incendiary so I am hoping that it will be right up my alley. Other than that I am going to look more into data mining practices that are legal. Brian told me that there are places where one can data mine others legally, and I think it might prove interesting to look at the extent of the law in this area.

One final word. I love, love, love comments. I love being challenged and hearing points of view that differ from my own. I certainly do not know everything, and I am sure there are those out there that have valuable insights for me or for the sake of good old fashioned discussion. So I implore you that if you come across this blog, and are engaged by any of the nuggets I am tossing out, feel free to chime in, to point me somewhere or to make me back it up and I will try to answer it in the following weeks blog! 

New Website

New website just launched, check it out you all!

trial by fire

I spent this morning at the unemployment office. I was there to get fingerprinted, now a mandatory requirement for anyone seeking assistance in New York State. In the waiting room both televisions were set to a low drone of CNN, and talks about the stock market. Many analysts are worried that the country might slide back into a recession. But I have a secret for you, the recession never ended.

The unemployment rate has been above 9% since May of 2009 except for a single two month dip to 8.8% in early 2011. Millions of people remain unemployed, many with little access to health care. The recovery did little to help except disguise the fact that this is a depression not a recession. When you have a population unemployed for this long they become demoralized. Elected officials and media pundits tell them they did something wrong, that they should tighten their belts, meanwhile corporate executives make record salaries, and the wealthiest Americans pay record low taxes.

Those who are able to find work, find it at places like McDonalds who recently sponsored the National Hiring Day; a publicity stunt to hire 50,000 new workers on a single day this spring. But even McDonalds was not prepared for the overwhelming response. Over 1 million people put in applications. This underscores the desperation out there for any work (full disclosure: I am former McDonalds employee, so I know how shitty of a place it can be to work). There have even been reports of companies post positions with the phrase “the unemployed need not apply”. Turns out that the only valuable workers these days are the ones who already have jobs. Sorry 9.1% of people out of work. Tough luck.

As some people begin to be rehired at a lower salary base, their ability to spend is reduced. They begin to cut back; they begin to spend less in the market place. And since we no longer have a manufacturing sector that supports our economy, weakening consumer spending means a slow down in the economy. Compounded by the fact that the richest among us feel they are entitled to live in their decadence while millions of children don’t have access to education, medicine or food. Over looking the fact that a modest tax hike from them could help offset our national debt, help fund incredibly important programs like Medicare and social security, and put people back to work. Instead they lament the suggestion that they tighten their belts and pay more taxes as an aggressive assault on freedom, one that can only be met with the dismantling of the US government.

Thus these last 3 years have been one very slow car wreck.

We all heard of the “recovery summer” where the government pumped money into projects meant to kick start the economy. Unfortunately it didn’t work, a) because it was mismanaged, and b) because the sum wasn’t large enough. But it did create a lot of “confidence “ in the stock market, giving the illusion of economic growth. It is only in the wake of the past few days that these overly optimistic projections have been called into question. The tax breaks and growth of the corporate state since the crisis has not been reinvested into the American economy. Instead it has gone to the coffers of greedy, extravagant men who have fooled us all into believing that their compensation is just. Those elected to watch out for our well-being are at best complacent and at worst complicit. We face a systematic failure of the government to protect the interests of the people through regulations and enforcement.

We have allowed those in the financial sector to high jack our tax money. The money that should have gone to building schools and fixing education, or to making sure everyone is cover by health insurance, or towards building a better, bigger, cleaner train network to move people and goods across this country. But instead of dreaming for the future and all that we can accomplish, we have let competing private interests distort our vision for a just society in the name of profit and personal gain

We must decide that somethings are more important than profits. That we should pay teachers well and give them benefits. That we should make sure that every man woman and child has access to the best medical science we have to offer. That we should reduce our pollution, research new energy sources, and explore the wonders of the cosmos. We should be doing all these things, but we can’t until we get out from under this spell of market fundamentals.

The US got off relatively light at the start of the collapse. Unlike the UK, who is now seeing riots and violence as a result of the economic downturn in that country, the US hasn’t faced the tax increases and austerity measures that were put in place there, expect that to change. This crisis isn’t over. We are headed toward a bigger crisis than the one we saw in 2008. It is just a matter of time.

These are systemic problems, and they need to be dealt with by serious men, and unfortunately we do not have any serious men in congress right now. The debt ceiling debate is proof of that. One side wants to burn the place to the ground the other wants to postpone any real action until after the next election cycle. These career politicians are more worried about supporting fundamentalist ideology or being elected for another term then they are with the difficult decisions that need to be made. These are selfish men and women, held up by process or arrogance. They are unable to act, only able to posture and point and take industry money to feed this constant state of gridlock.

So what can one do? Well first one can read this article by alternative media entitled “8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance”. And second you can get involved with a little direct action. Those of you who are in and around New York City should come to Occupy Wall Street on September 17th for some good ol protesting and chanting. I would also like to take this opportunity to recommend a very good book called “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot” by Naomi Wolf about how democracies transition to authoritarian regimes and what to look out for (super congress anybody?).

Til next time, keep fighting the good fight.

altered states

I have been reading a lot of articles recently about the enhancement of video media. News reports, and TV shows being subtly altered to, in the words of network executives, “enhance” the experience for the viewer. Isn’t that so considerate, making our viewing experiences “better”. In most cases, “better” means whatever the producer thinks will make the show/clip/event more attractive (read lucrative) to an audience. For example take Fox who was recently busted for making the crowd at one of its dismal reality shows twice as large. Now first of all this is a surprisingly bad fake. I mean look at the obvious woman in the orange jacket repeated twice. I only have a semester of final cut experience and that is a mistake that I could have avoided, and I am certainly not making as much money as the video editors for Fox. Fox apologized for the fake, stating that it was a clear reproduction, but if it was so clear, how did it get by the editors, producers, and directors in the first place?

How about ads retroactively being placed in old reruns of your favorite show. I mean it would be convenient to watch old episodes but still be in the know for what current crap to buy next. Consumerist.com recently highlighted this practice. Below are two shots from an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” The one on the top is from the original broadcast, the one on the bottom is the rerun. You can see that the lamp was replaced with a script? For the new film The Zookeeper.

But how did that get there? This episode is from 2007? Well thank goodness that corporate executives don’t have to worry about a little thing called continuity, I mean good writing and acting only get in the way of the commercial message. Lets not forget that the primary function of television is to sell you stuff, not to tell you stories.

But if you think this behavior is relegated to the relm of fictional narritive, than you are sadly mistaken. CBS recently aired a broadcast of the fireworks show in Boston. After a few people called in and questioning some of the impossible views of Boston’s most historic landmarks, CBS admitted to “digitally altering” some of the broadcast to “highlight great places in Boston, historical places with direct ties to the Fourth”. Unfortunately in some cases that meant removing other parts of Boston to get these impossible perspectives. In essence CBS took it upon themselves to reorganize the landscape of Boston to suit their interests, and as a consequence gave viewers an “unreal” representation of the city.

But what is real? Is it what really happens or is it what is reproduced and people experience through media? Does CBS have the right to air these altered footage without a disclaimer? Does it matter that Fox faked the crowd to look bigger? Can we call these things lies or they merely misrepresentations or are they neither? Are they just the vision of an artist who uses any means necessary to paint the kind of picture he or she wants you to see?

Theorist Jean Baudrillard talks about the hyperreal, the simulacra. It is the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, and is a symptom of technologically advanced cultures. When we watch a broadcast, see a photo or view media with our own eyes and it appears to be “real” there is really no way for us to know if it has been altered or not, unless we are experts, and even then the experts miss things. When we live in a world that is saturated in “enhanced” images and media, how do we begin to perceive real life? Are the women we met in real life less attractive because if all the “unreal” women we are used to seeing? Do we care about the forests in our backyard as much as the forests on Pandora, even though they lack the richness of color and lushness of foliage? Do we join the protest against corrupt politicians and corporations when the crowd had been “enhanced” to half of its actual size? In a society that has come to rely so much on consuming media, we often don’t stop to ask ourselves, is this true? Is this correct? My eyes may not lie, but media, in all its varying forms, is almost predisposed to.

Nation of Tralier Addicts

This is one of my favorite shots from Super 8


I have been freaking out over the epicness of Super 8 ever since I saw it last week. I have been gushing to everyone, my mother, my coworkers, strangers on the street, but I have been getting a lukewarm response. People keep saying to me “yeah, I hear it’s GREAT, and it got amazing reviews, but I just don’t know”. What could their possibly be left to know? What's the problem? If everyone is telling you that the acting is great, the story is great and it brings you a warm feeling for a nostalgic past that we are sorely lacking in these modern times, what the hell else are you waiting for? Is it because unlike other summer movies, Super 8 didn’t pander to its audience with a marketing campaign that cums in your face with visual effects, sound bites, and the entire plot wrapped up in a 2 min package? Or because it wasn’t flashing on your phone, and your TV,and on the twitter and the facebook, and didn’t have a viral marketing campaign to sell you a set of eight plastic collectors cups (coincidentally poisoned with lead) that you forgot there were movie theaters playing movies in your town this weekend?

Hollywood seems to think so. There have been loads of stories over the last week speculating about the “success” of Super 8. Insiders have been worried that due to “soft tracking” the film would not have a big release. Fortunately the film had a better than expected release with a $38 million opening, but that didn’t stop the Hollywood doomsayers. The industry has been critical of the films approach to marketing. Particularly around keeping the main plot points and special effects tightly under wraps(something that is extremely difficult to do in the age of internet leaking, Abrams and Spielberg deserve an award on this front alone). The industry seems to think that if an audience isn’t already built in around a franchise, or isn’t given all the goodies in the trailer, they simply will not materialize at the theatre. I find this to be a lazy load of marketing BS.

Trailers these days are so shittly crafted, like eating all the chocolate chips out of a cookie, they will be delicious when you eat them, but when it comes time to eat the real cookie all the good stuff is gone. Take a look at the green lantern trailer, I don’t even have to see that movie to know what happens, its all special effects and dramatic music. And before you say “it’s a comic book movie, what do you expect” I’ll remind you that comic books have been around for 60+ years for combining art with GREAT STORYTELLING. To cast off the green lantern/Hal Jordan (yes I am a comic book nerd) as a one note character is to totally misinterpret the genre. Now contrast that with the Super 8 trailer. It from beginning to end it was structured in a way that drew you into the characters and the story, without giving too much away, the music was good, the cuts were good, just a glimpse of the film. I was drawn to it because of the care I saw in constructing the preview. I was interested not because I thought I was going to get some big CGI monster payoff (they always look fake to me anyway) but because there was this sense of the right kind of mystery. I knew enough about the film to know that I would be something I found enjoyable without spoiling the enjoyment of discovering the movie the first time I saw it.

Another interesting comparison is the trailer from ET and the one from Super 8, and my detractors will say that times and audiences have changed since then, but I still think that surprise is one of the best aspects of storytelling.

Audiences want to see a good story. They want to escape their gradually depressing lives, and forget for a few hours they live in a society that charges $15 to see a movie and another $25 for cardboard popcorn. The interesting thing to me in all of this is the success being wholly determinate on the box office weekend numbers. Summer movies are expected to have earth shattering record debuts, and those who don’t are seen as unsuccessful(?), shouldn’t the marker of success be that a) it got amazing reviews, b) for not a lot of money, c) the people who saw it generally liked it, and resonated with the film. These would be my guidelines for success, and while I acknowledge that money plays a factor, my point is that it shouldn’t be the ONLY factor. If marketers and Hollywood stopped “tracking” films for big box office blowouts and spent more times creating original ideas, tapping innovative filmmakers and treating its audiences like adults then we would have more movies that resonate with us and stand the test of time, instead of Michael Bay eye orgy pieces of crap.

So while you enjoy your summer of sequels, prequels and franchises, think about the movies that have really stuck with you. Explosions and effects are cool the first time you see them but fade as technology advances, but compelling personal stories grounded in empathy and solid acting performances, those are the ones that you go back to again and again.

PS go see Super 8 RIGHT NOW!

Watch the Trailer

The Death of the 18th Century institution

I've been reading some Clay Shirky lately, here are some thoughts on the death of 18th century institutions

In the view of Shirky the term professional journalist has become problematic. This is because in the age of mechanical reproduction the line between the professional and amateur is blurred perhaps disappearing altogether. Does this democratize journalism, or reduce it? Or does it, as Shirky believes, transform our understanding of journalistic practice?

For me the democratization of information in ways that Wikipedia exemplifies challenges our assumption of management of information. This is to say, that individuals working together in a loosely defined community can produce works of great value with almost no need for old structures of management. Shriky points out that by its very structure, the company can not take this approach, inherent in the institution is a barrier to this kind of free collaboration. But Shirky is also right in stating that most companies are in the business of managing information. I think that in the future as information is viewed more and more as a public right, it places difficultly for businesses to keep proprietary information secret, and also more difficult for anybody anywhere to have any reasonable expectation of privacy.

I think this is an interesting way of thinking about the problem. Many people when talking about privacy make the mistake to place the blame on sites like facebook for eroding our private lives. I would argue that it is our democratization of information that challenges our implicit assumptions about privacy. Information is the key input in our lives and if we agree that everyone should have access to it and that it’s a good thing to recorded it all on the internet to further our human endeavors then we also agree to the “restructuring”, which is to say the elimination, of privacy as we know it.

Further more, I think that since more and more people are sharing information in a networked fashion, this presents a challenge to the structure of institutions in general. In an 18th century mindset, compulsory education at a centralized school made sense. The educational institution had access to the knowledge. This is the bottleneck that Shirky describes, but today this is not the case. Today most interesting learning happens outside the classroom. While every other part of life is interactive, from Internet to video games, education is not. We educate children to believe that education is not interactive and therefore not fun or stimulating. No wonder we have a dropout crisis. How have we not addressed this glaring problem? Why are we still clinging to an institution that no longer suits our needs or processes?

Additionally, our political institution is burdened by the same problems as nupeida. It too has a bottleneck, but I don’t think it understands why. Political leaders fancy themselves “experts” much in the same way the board of nupedia did. But, these “experts” are only self-defined, and in reality the declaration of such authority is meant to impose control. Wikipedia teaches us that a system of self-governing is possible without managers. This is not to say that there would not be errors or injustice if this idea was applied to government, but isn’t the point not to eliminate injustice but instead to quickly serve justice? And on this premise, I think we all can agree that our current institutions fail us.

As the world becomes more networked we cannot ignore that these institutions were created for a different time that had different needs and processes. If we are to further our society we must question the structure of an institutional system and its necessity in the modern age.