Don't Hate the (Social) Media. Become the (Social) Media!

The social media technology, as with Internet technologies in general, is a double-edged tool. It is certainly true, because it is known, that governments and corporations use social media to surveil populations. The motivations vary, but the means are the same. However, the population can also surveil corporations and governments using this same technology if they possess the skill and tools to do so. It is this factor that makes the difference.

This is not theory. In addition to earlier examples, the most recent examples of how this technology's power can be used against trusts public (government) and private (corporations) alike that get out of line--Iran, Egypt, Libya, and now Syria; Wal Mart will soon find out how it feels--demonstrates that the former dogma of the State being the sole legitimate exerciser of force is starting to decay.

In each of the above cases, dissidents against those respective states used networking technology--especially social media--to organize amongst themselves as well as to monitor the State. The governments in question then attempted to regain control by disconnecting the country from the Internet; Syria just did this yesterday, allegedly. However, in each case--including the Syria one--corporations such as Google and plenty of individuals intervened and established backup infrastructure that restored function to most of the blacked-out population. (This, in addition to people congregating into places such as Tahrir Square in Egypt; it's easy to spread the word when you're in one place.)

We are already in a place where opting out is socially detrimental to individuals; soon we shall cross the threshold where opting out is economically detrimental due to ongoing changes in the economy--global and local--that make opting out not-viable to pursue, and not long thereafter it will cease to be politically detrimental.

Social opt-outs get cut out of peer lives, as organization of social gatherings increasingly takes place on social media exclusively; if you're not a user, you don't get the invites and soon you are off others' radar entirely- out of sight, so out of mind. Employers use social media to make personnel decisions, starting from hiring and going on from there; if you can't be found, then you can't be trusted, so you don't get the job or promotion. As with employment, so will be the case for other organizations when seeking positions of trust within them. People do this because it is efficient shorthand, and efficiency is prized by all of the global first world.

This leads to the economic consequences. The mail order business of 20 years ago is the online retailer of today, and online commerce of all sorts has so seized control of the minds of economists, businessmen and politicians that a technological momentum is now in place. This force pushes for greater online dominance of the marketplace, and with it comes the dominance of social media--specifically, its personalization algorithms--to advertise, to collect feedback, and to maximize profit. Opt-outs will be left behind, and as more retail storefronts either vanish or become nothing more than showrooms where you can make online purchases after handling a sample item, this means that opt-outs will get shut out.

This also means that money will become increasingly digital, nothing more than bits in a file executed according to a program's parameters. Checks are already well on their way out, and cash is already under pressure to likewise disappear, leaving only digital banking; expect this trend to continue, with government and corporate support, with the consequence being that having your accounts frozen also freezes you out of the ability to buy or sell altogether- and, as with being searched, getting frozen is determined by someone else for reasons that can be quite different from the ones stated. (The State is explicitly allowed to lie to suspects.)

If you cannot effectively engage in social affairs, or participate in commerce, then your ability to deal in politics is nothing more than an empty claim with no power to support it. Real power is always the basis of political power, as those with neither social nor commercial substance--the poor and downtrodden--know too well. (Politics, remember, is warfare without the killing and dying.)

The governments of the world see this as the emerging reality; that's why there's so much effort made to fetter the Internet--SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, Great Firewall, etc.--at the national and international level; they know that the technology is now emerging to make national governments, and international bodies, obsolete. That's why crude attempts, such as those aforementioned, to disconnect from the Internet get made. That's why corporations with obsolete business models--MPAA, RIAA--push so hard for controls on network technologies. That's why there's going to be some heinous cyber-attack, blamed on Anonymous, done as a False-Flag operation by one or more of these governments in the near future; they want to do an Internet 9/11 to scare people into closing the only frontier left to us and turn online life into another free-range prison. There is nowhere to run or hide; opting out just means you get put on the train later. The only effective option is to get in, get mastery, and use the tools to defend yourself and keep your freedom.

Opting out, therefore, is not a viable option. The consequences, though they seem light and infrequent now, shall only increase in frequency and severity as days go by and our network technologies become deeply entrenched into the global structure of power and control that is our world's reality. Instead, the viable option is to engage and master both the theories behind the tools and the tools themselves.

To quote Ambassador Kosh (of Babylon 5): "The avalanche has begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Panopticism Privacy

Some thoughts about privacy and Panopticism:

In the assertions by Jeremy Bentham related to the panopticon, he relies on an "unseen" authority that the observed never knows is or isn't watching, AND the ability all others being observed to observe each other. I don't know that we are at the point of being observed in our homes, but if we are, the observers remain secret (in the tower, so to speak) and it is not the case that everyone sees everyone else (yet) which is an important feature of Bentham's idea - at least as it applies to prisoners.

Often we are told that surveillance constrains us, or that we are forced to be compliant with some sort of accepted norm because we can be seen. This assertion presupposes that there is a behavior inherent in our unique character that we keep secret from others, either because we believe it would be harshly judged or because we believe there is something wrong with it.

From a UK report on "The Surveillance Society"

"Surveillance is two-sided, and its benefits must be acknowledged. Yet at the same time risks and dangers are always present in large-scale systems and of course power does corrupt or at least skews the vision of those who wield it. "

Most of us who are critical of this kind of surveillance would like to be free to behave as we wish in private without being afraid of someone using our behavior against us some time in the future. The theory goes, that these behaviors become constrained because we don't want anyone (either authorities or our neighbors) to know about them.

But could there be a different consequence of a community mutually seeing and being seen in this way? Could mutual seeing lead to acceptance of each other and ourselves for our common and all too human divergences from imagined or implanted ideals?

This is a possible consequence not often discussed, and I find it interesting.

Is Neo-Amish-ism Even Possible?

After mulling over our readings for this week, one line kept coming back to me: "It's not just how we use the technology that concerns us. We're also concerned about what kind of people we become when we use it" (185). Yup.

It appears as though the current powers that be are trying to use technology to uphold the status quo. They "become a threat to liberty as well as dignity when they give one person or group power to constrain the behavior of others (188). Well, in some ways, is this not already happening? We have put so much of our lives online and are giving power to corporation to profile us (ads, etc.). Freedom of Information is being restricted--web publications can be censored by government (see my Mermaid post...). The control of knowledge/power is being manipulated in new ways because of technology. And, we accept regulations etc, as part of normal thinking & behavior (189).

I am less worried with people treating others as machines than I am simply people not knowing how to interact with other people, period. I despise when people continually text others while I am having a conversation with them. And some of these people think it's no big deal--just multi-tasking, or new social protocols. Bullshit. It's rude, plain and simple. If "our artifacts [are] in the information age, but our biology is still prehistoric" (192), then we have a problem. Evolution takes time. Our biology simply can't catch up that quick--and neither, then, will our mental/social skills.

And, those who don't have access then end up farther divided from "the rest of the world" unless we continue the old acts of colonization in new ways.

Though I am not particularly a proponent of colonization, could that not be what humanity needs to make its next evolutionary leap (that is, OLPC on some level)? If we continue to act as separate beings based on place and culture, we will never move forward. Culture changes as it gains more knowledge; to keep knowledge in "Western" hands is to keep power in Western hands. But to "force" it on others is to colonize. What kind of people do they become when using it? What kind of people do we become by "making" them use it?

Basically, we are in the middle of a pretty profound paradigm shift. Sadly, that means, eventually, some people are going to get left behind, and some cultures may "die." And yet, this happens to other species all the time. Humans are a species, and are not immune to the laws of evolution. To preserve ourselves--and our cultures--there needs to be some level of adaptation. Though, I am certainly scared of the direction this could take, and worry for the future of those who choose to not partake of technology. I feel like that could open them up to what I will call "techgenocide."

Smart Mobs: Revolutions or Bust

 
Always being connected does make us vulnerable to additional surveilance and renders us less powerful, though if we "use what we now know about cooperation to drive power/ knowledge to a higher level of democracy (190)" , we as a whole can strengthened democracy and perhap lessen the effects of surveilance or at least curb what is to come.

This is a crucial time in our history with concern to technology. The decision being made in government prompted by: cable companies, telephone companies, the movie industry and Internet inventors will effect us and our liberties for a long time to come. These corporations are moving to control who can build future technology on the Internet and what kinds of  technology they can create.  Hollywood movie studios, (through the guise of protecting intellectual property), are pushing legislation for "protection devices", that will give corporations the right to shut down any phone or computers that is said to be viewing material they deem copy written.

Americans have "voluntarily traded privacy for convenience (186)" and will soon trade their liberties for access if restrictions are imposed and we are turned from "users into passive consumers (202)". But for those who are watching the watchers, they will help decide whether smart mobs grow or dissappear.

Rheingold suggest that cooperation is an inate human trait and that us working together is almost ineveitable (212). "When certain technologies emerge", say Rheingold, "(it) can trigger human societies to reorganize at a higher level of cooperation (213)".

 
Smart mob activity, collective action, increased knowledge and social dynamics could possibly improve the way billions of people live. "Mobile communications, peer computing, location awarness, social accounting systems and pervasive computing (190)" have the potential to encourage cooperation far more than previous technologies.

Rheingold.(2002). Always-On Panopticon… or Cooperation Amplifier.Smart Mobs.

Does Education Really Lead to Critical Thinking?

Many of us in class have eluded to the fact that education brings about critical thinking skills and the ability to shuffle through the BS and get to the truth. We have suggested that if you are getting an education; you will have more information, more tools to decipher and analyze information, more ways to evaluate information, and more open and aware thinking-which leads to less prejudice.

This video sadly dismisses these theories- as education seems to play very little in the thought process of the making of this video. Coming from a Duluth University campus, this video shows nothing but bad taste, bad judgment and some may say- bad up bringing and education, not to mention bad moral character.

Instead of a "like" icon, we could use a "slap" icon for this video!

The video contains profanity, (which shouldn't be any different from class:), the "N" word and host of mean, racist language.To view the video click the link instead of the video prompt-as YouTube has removed it from their site.

http://bossip.com/684561/minnesota-university-students-wear-blackface-and-spit-out-racial-slurs-video/

Internet and social media: Guess whose coming to dinner?

I asked myself what role, if any, did the Internet and social media play in my Thanksgiving dinner celebration this year and was surprised to find that it did play quite a significant  role, indeed.

I first used the Internet to search for recipes to add a little spice to the dishes I make every year and found an interesting way to make fruit salad-though I decided to wait until next year to try it, least I add change to tradition-which is rarely encouraged or accepted. Mostly what I found on the Internet is a confirmation that I know exactly what I am doing and that I can certainly throw down with the best of them in the kitchen.

I then used the social media, via Facebook, to connect with the my family and give the details for this years Thanksgiving gathering, since I host Thanksgiving at my house every year. Since I moved, it was necessary to give my new address and because I used the "event" tab on Facebook, I was also able to connect them to a direction link- with map, which showed them exactly where I lived. Not one call was made to ask for directions-nice!

After eating, I took the time to update my FB status and let everyone know I had finished my first plate and how yummy it was- inviting my social net associates into my Thanksgiving celebration -something I have never felt the need to do.Welcome to the family!!

Lastly, I publicly enjoyed compliments of my cooking and pleasures of being in my home and lots of family connectedness, including pictures, all on the Internet.

The Internet and social media has even positioned itself into family gatherings and family traditions. Guess there's nothing left to say- but grab a chair.

Two Black Friday Social Media Campaigns: A Comparison

I've been ill through this week. Aside from Thanksgiving dinner, and an outing to see Skyfall (quite doped up, mind you), I've been in or close to my bed. Damn colds.

Nonetheless, I've spent quite some time online. I've noticed, amongst other things, the organization attempts around the Walmart strike for Black Friday and the Strike Debt campaign (itself an outgrowth of Occupy Wall Street).

The Walmart strike, as I expected, got covered with a pro-corporate bias to all of the mainstream media coverage. The language used, and not used, is what gave the game away; it is well known that few of the actual workforce would walk off the job, as Walmart has a long and vicious history of retaliation--often disproportionate--to all attempts, big and small alike, to unionize.

Most of the people present walking the picket line were either people that did not currently work at Walmart (these were often union organizers) or individuals that worked at stores other than the one picketed (and, wisely, did not reveal where that store was or gave their identity on camera). A minority of picketers, for reasons that varied, did walk off the job (or, at the least, wouldn't cross the line once established). Yet the mainstream media implies that, since the workers themselves--who, I remind you, would be immediately fired once management noticed--were a minority of those on the line that (a) the strike is a put-on, and (b) it's a bust.

I don't think so. The social media build-up in my Facebook stream made this event into this year's "Buy Nothing Day", for all intents and purposes, pushing the idea that not only should you not buy at Walmart on Black Friday, but you should not buy there at all until Walmart ceases its anti-union oppression and pays living wages to all employees regardless of position. The Black Friday action is just one part of a larger campaign, one that is acknowledged to take years before any positive ends will come, despite recent studies supporting a claim that Walmart could easily fix things.

(According to a study at UC Berkley's Center for Labor Research and Education, a raise in minimum wage to $12/hr for its bottom-end employees would result in an average price hike of 46 cents per trip. Yes, that study's been spread around the social networks also.)

The Strike Debt campaign is one that's gotten a far more positive response overall, even if the mainstream media's position is one like that of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. It's very difficult to paint a group that buys the medical debt of others for pennies on the dollar, and then absolves the debt that it buys, as any kind of threat to society.

The social media presence included spreading the word of a fundraiser, one that raised several thousands of dollars in a day as the word went viral quickly, and the result is that Strike Debt is now accelerating its plans to expand beyond medical debt and into student loan debt; apparently working groups are now looking into doing this.

The interesting thing is that, here and there, now I'm seeing the idea of this being a trap getting pushed; the first is that debt forgiveness counts against you come tax time, and the second is that this has a corrosive social effect as it will just make people be wasteful with money and get back into debt. I'm not yet seeing this in the media, but rather in Facebook posts and commentary threads. Compared to the relative lack of mainstream media reaction, the reactions of social media users are intrigued if not enthusiastic.

What I see here, then, is that social media is having an interesting--if not unexpected--effect. What normally is easily handled by mainstream media (the control of a popular narrative regarding a news event) is increasingly undermined by users of social media as they can link to reliable sources directly, citing them to support the claims for their arguments. (Well, when they deign to do so.) While cat videos remains commonplace, some of us are making more of social media than that; they're the ones that services like Klout attempt to track.

In the years going forward, the social mavens and influencers will start becoming more apparent in social media- and we're going to see celebrity stop being the sole source of that influence in favor of influence being rewarded/reflected with celebrity instead.

Blog post for the week of November 29th

For this week's post you will reflect on the Rheingold Smart Mobs reading (chapter 8).

In chapter 8 of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Rheingold discusses Foucault's concept of social control and the way that knowledge and power are reinforced through surveillance (189). Does our always on, always connected digital culture give more power to those in control, placing us in a Panoptic structure where we have "voluntarily traded privacy for convenience" (186)?  Or could connected groups of users "use what we now know about cooperation to drive power/ knowledge to a higher level of democracy (190)"?

If the Internet is changing the knowledge/power dynamic (for better or worse), does that change the way you think about the digital divide - where some groups of people are said to have been left behind by technology?  What does all of this say about people who voluntarily "opt out" of a digitally connected life?

Elevation, section and plan of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, drawn by Willey Reveley, 1791 From Wikipedia

Lost in Blogging

As Thanksgiving, and the end of the semster, is right around the corner, I began wondering just how well I had kept up with blog posts, blog prompts, and the required formats for posts. Fifteen weeks means a total of fifteen blogs and fifteen comments, right? Out of these, four should follow the blogging exercises: the annotated link post, blogging as connected writing, the analytic post, and making a case for a position. Sadly, I feel like that is a lot of blogging but I know it isn't. Alas, bloggers around the world spend much more time on sites just like this and probably have a lot more interesting things to say! While I might find myself, someday, wanting to blog again, as of right now, I can't wait to be done! Anyways, I'm just organizing out loud (or in text, whatever) and thought someone, somewhere, somehow might also find it useful. Now I'm going to go count my previous posts :)

"Freedooooommmm!"

So, this picture was posted to my FB account recently:

After having read the material for this week, I am still left wondering if this is weak or strong use of internet freedom. I say this because is comes from an U.S. citizen to a U.S. citizen. But who are the people who might benefit the most from this? Other women in Taliban-heavy places who are also struggling for their educational (and other) freedoms. The content for us (the U.S.) is not something we "need" to censor. But that might not be the case in the Middle East.

So what should FB do, were this to make its way to the oppressed/be posted by the oppressed? Would they delete it, as they did in the case of the Moroccan citizen lobbying for separation of religion and education? And what, then, should the U.S. government do: support the post, or support its censure?

I am torn: though I live in a country with freedom of expression, where is the line drawn? I certainly don't support child pornography, and, in my opinion, neither should the US government! But it gets stickier with something like the KKK--though I abhor their rhetoric and motives, do they not also have the right to express their beliefs (something slightly more different than the illegality of "selling" children).

So, it seems the internet is still some type of contested territory, where the boundaries are still being drawn. And, it seems like those lines are going to be continually in flux--and perhaps that is to our benefit, as society and the world changes. Therefore, do we need set, inflexible boundaries? Maybe not...

Technology, Paperweights and Permanency

I’m sure you all remember me trudging into class with my pretty pink Macbook Pro. As a PC user, I had put a lot of time and thought into whether or not to buy a Mac or another PC. I opted for a Mac despite the PC users in my life insisting that I would regret it. Man, were they right. With my purchase date less than two months ago, I have grown extremely attached to my Mac. All of my research, my writing, even my calendar is on it. So of course, it breaks. And being that it was only a month old, I hadn’t backed anything up yet (I know! I know! First rule of being a diligent student). To make matters worse, the Apple store employee I spoke to insists that there is no way to take the documents off of the computer without paying for some mysterious component and a new screen that will run me $750 to fix. This is when I began to wonder why I paid for Apple care when the company can deny manufacturer’s error and insist I damaged my computer. Return policy? Out of the question. So here I am with a $2,000 paperweight and a pile of missed homework that is completed, just out of reach. Isn’t that every student’s nightmare? This made me think of brand loyalty and the iTunes ‘borrowing’ policy. Maybe switching to Mac was a bad idea. After all, PC’s aren’t quite as monopolized as Apple products. Bad customer service is just something that Apple customers have to deal with because there’s not much competition for fixing or refurbishing Apple products as there is for PC’s. Or, perhaps I just had a bad experience and Apple isn’t such a bad company. However, with digital products becoming more common, it’s amazing to think of how big of an effect a broken computer can have on daily life now.

This video contributes to our conversation about Anita Sarkeesian too...I'm a wealth of interesting videos this week!



Thanks for your comments on my last one - looking forward to your comments on this one!

Obama's election brings hate.

The day after Obama was re-elected as President, my Face book was filled with stories of people who were dealing with either angry people who were upset with Obamas re-election or sad people who couldn't believe this country had let them down and re-elected Obama.

Reports from media claims that thousands of hate tweets and comments went out once Obama was
re-elected and the news media were unkind- giving the impression that Obamas election was something that had to be "endured'.

My son who is an avid UTube watcher spent the day laughing at the anger of people spewing ignorance on the web. He got a kick out of seeing the unwarranted hate and anger for a man who is simply trying to run the country as other presidents have done and out of people who were making fun of the "wounded clan".

In this "post-racial" society, (yeah, right!!), most people who experience racism know that we have a long ways to go in eliminating it. When people are eager to publicly display hate messages for the world to see, it leaves an obvious assumption, (at least to me) that we're still living in a racist society that does not want all its people to succeed and achieve the American dream.

Four Chords: The Other Videos About This Fact & Its Consequences

Last week I played Axis of Awesome's Four Chords Song, a demonstration of how so many well-known popular music songs use the same four chords repeated over and over as the whole of their arrangement. There are others that touch upon this stuff.



This is the Pachelbel Rant, a video performance that went viral a few years back, and uses the same melody-style presentation to make the point.

The other name for this phenomenon is "Sensitive Female Chord Progression", and National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" covered this a while back. You can see for yourself how the music industry recognized this and built upon it to record profits, at the cost of a healthy mainstream artistic music culture. More and more songs, especially those performed by women, are built around those same four chords; men who are not explicitly masculine in their stage persona, such as Justin Bieber, are also pushed in this direction.

This industry manipulation of music, and the pushing of fandoms for specific groups or singers, plays directly in to our sense of identity- and the executives running these corporations also sit on the boards of corporations in related culture industry outlets (film, television, etc.) are hardly above using this power to increase corporate profits (and thus their own power, wealth and influence).

Today's teens screaming for their idols are tomorrow's office drones toiling for their employers; today's idols are tomorrow's speakers for various organizations. The fandom of today becomes the brand-loyal base of tomorrow. (Witness the use of fading or faded celebrities to push political movements of all sorts, from all corners; these groups get those celebrities to push this stuff because it works, and it works well. It's not all bad, either.) There are consequences, now manifesting, to this industry practice; we are unwise to remain ignorant of them.

A little fun:




Comment if this offends you...it is a bit stereotypical, but sort of reflective of the Anita Sarkeesian thing.

When Open Source Came to the Tabletop: The Open Gaming License and D&D 3rd Edition

By now, we've talked about the matter of Intellectual Property and how matters of patent, copyright and trademark all intersect at multiple levels with how people form and maintain their identities online. The mashup culture demonstrates a free and easy access to--and entitlement to--artifacts of culture that they may use at will to create new things from existing works through rearrangement of elements in novel manners.

In the world of software, one long-standing reaction to the corporate domination of Intellectual Property regimes is the concept of "copyleft" to get around this issue through the issuance of a new form of license scheme. The most well-known of these is the Creative Commons license. Because of these schemes, operating systems such as Linux would take off and make the server/network side of the Internet as we know it possible; this was not lost on the people making business decisions.

In the late 1990s, over a decade of deliberate sabotage by the owners of TSR--in the form of careful asset looting coupled with incompetent book-division management and even more incompetent management of its games division--sank the company and put Dungeons & Dragons briefly out of print. (This six-month interval is the first time that the current D&D edition was not on top of the sales chart for tabletop RPGs; White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade took the top spot in that time.) TSR sold itself to Wizards of the Coast, then riding high because of Magic: The Gathering and the booming genre of Collectable Card Games. An executive by the name of Ryan S. Dancey took control of TSR with a mandate to make a new edition of D&D.

After conducting a heretofore unprecedented round of market research, Mr. Dancey came to the conclusion that one of the reasons for TSR's failure was that it produced far too many D&D supplements that competed with each other. He figured that, if there existed a ready-to-go licensing scheme that a five-year-old child could comprehend, Wizards could outsource much of that product to third-party publishers. Making a long story short, he convinced senior management to go with a copyleft scheme and thus did he make way for the creation of both the game engine (the d20 System) and the license scheme (the Open Game License).

Things did not work out as planned. The initial enthusiasm resulted in an explosion of third-party products, all intended to directly support the then-new D&D edition, and thus "spread the wealth" in a manner friendly Wizards' management and to the many smaller privately-held micro-publishers or one-man bands that make up most tabletop RPG outlets. Dancey would go on to say that the long-term goal was to ensure that no one, not even Wizards, could ever destroy D&D ever again- or ever threaten its position as the top dog of tabletop RPGs.

We tabletop gamers are a stupidly fractious lot at times, as are fandoms in general, and the reaction to this was not one of universal welcome. As this is a niche where the distance between insider and outsider is thinner than a single strand of silk, it should not surprise you when I say that even well-known publishers reacted in a way that would be taken as unprofessional in any other commercial publishing or gaming niche. "my hat of d02 know no limit" became a meme amongst us, one that's still got some resonance years after D&D went to its 4th Edition (2008-present).

Corporate life being what it is, Dancey got rotated out of his position at Wizards along with a larger sweep-and-replace of senior management in the wake of Wizards' sale to Hasbro (and subsequent reorganization). A half-reformation (known as "D&D 3.5") dealt a Dolorous Stroke to the burgeoning d20 System aftermarket, and those third-party publishers that survived began doing what Dancey did not believe to be a viable option: using the open elements of D&D to create their own stand-alone games.

In the end, when the current Wizards management decided to abandon the d20 System and the Open Game License when it decided to change over to D&D 4th Edition, Dancey's one true statement came to pass: D&D's 3rd Edition remained in print, slightly revised, by a company that formerly published the support magazines for Wizards (Paizo Publishing) under the brand name "Pathfinder", where it now enjoys being the dominant tabletop RPG (with D&D 4th Edition as #2) as of this fiscal quarter.

(Amongst the other notable games to arise in this era is Spycraft and Mutants & Masterminds.)

The mashup culture in tabletop RPGs still exists, but now it's primarily found in a new subset known as The Old School Renaissance.

Post Political BS Point

So, since we just voted Tuesday, I thought this blog post a friend linked to on Facebook would be interesting. Of course, the losers were bemoaning their loss--and called the results a "Sad and Tragic Day for our Nation." Basically, her point is that how the election went wasn't a legitimate tragedy, by any stretch of definition.

I think the reason I found this so fascinating is that is brings a sense of perspective into our lives we don't often think about. For example, I love when people drive around a parking lot for 5 minutes, waiting for a "close" spot to open up--never mind the fact they could have parked and walked into the store by the time they get that close parking place. As a person with a quadriplegic friend, I park wherever I can when I get to a store--and walk however far it is, simply because I CAN. I don't have to take 5 extra minutes to use a ramp to get in and out of my vehicle. I don't have to ambulate myself with an electric wheelchair. I don't need a colostomy bag. I am, simply put, able.

This also seems, in my opinion, to apply to the ubiquitous nature of the web. We can do so much now--and it seems that we are starting to take these freedoms for granted. Is this why the issues of patent, copyright, and trademark seem so much more important these days--that, because the web allows the average person to do so much, we (artists and such like) are becoming increasingly concerned with content? Are we worried that the non-egalitarian nature of the internet could devalue our culture?

I have no answers to these questions. But, I do know that perspective is very much the mind's paintbrush: it can color any situation. This seems to hold true in everything from political elections to the laws surrounding creativity.

rent not buy

The timing of both Cindy's post along with a conversation I had with a co-worker last night are the seeds for this post.

iTunes.  I am a sucker for convenience.  I love that if I get a hankering to watch a specific movie at 1am, I can go to the iTunes store, rent it and watch it immediately.  The fees are on par with those of old school video rentals.  For me, this is a great feature that I enjoy and find useful in my life.

However, when I first bought my current Mac, I was also given a gift card to iTunes for $100 for a promotion.  This amount encourage me to buy the first season of Sons of Anarchy.  I quickly became a SOA fan and with my remaining free funds, soon found myself buying the next available season.

Soon after, I was conversing with another SOA fan about the show, and upon finding out that she was not up to date, offered to let her borrow the season she had not watched....or not.

There are many reasons not to BUY iTunes.  Unlike a rental, where you expect limited access, buying a show or movie only allows you to access it on five different devices.  So unless you want to loan out your device, you can not share your iTunes movie collection with your friends, despite you are paying the same price as if you had purchased a hard copy that has that benefit.

Bruce Willis, a few months back, used his celebrity to address this problem.   Evidently, he has an extensive iTunes music collection, and wants to pass it on to his daughters upon his death.  Under the current law, this is not possible.

Hopefully, the laws will catch up and address the problems that the new technology we are enjoying create.  Apple may also be responding to the concerns people have about sharing different content with one another.  It will be interesting to see if they will find a resolution to this ongoing concern for Apple customers  Until then, if you want to build a collection, iTunes may not be the way to go.

Copy CatsRus

I won't be in class tomorrow, but I found this video cartoon created and posted by YouTube about their copyright policies. I suppose they are trying to inform the younger audience about the rules. :)

This captures the main concern of YouTube, but doesn't address some of the current controversy about copyright laws. Infringement has become a fact of life for many of us and we justify violations of the letter of the law while still, I think, agreeing with the spirit. In this cartoon, for example, the character doing the "copying" may not get into trouble if the one being "copied" perceives it as a positive endorsement of the work rather than as an infringement of rights.

I think it is often the case that the letter of copyright law is ignored, but could arise unexpectedly to punish us. Something to think about as we enjoy the common spaces of our creativity.

Who Am I?

Last class we talked about "game culture," online fantasy, and the way in which a version of ourselves is embedded in our virtual avatars or "agents." These are some reflections about that.

I think the emotional impact of relationships that are forged and lived online can be just as, or sometimes more, rewarding or devastating as our person to person interactions. Our online behavior is often shaped by the rewards and sanctions that are present in the interface - which is driven by game designers, programmers and sometimes other players - while our in-person behavior is also shaped by the rewards and sanctions we experience in real life - driven perhaps by nature, systemic culture, family upbringing, media and interactions with other people.

I think that it is possible to study some social psychological tendencies via players or participants in a virtual reality. It will not always be generalizable to the real world, but sometimes it will be. In any case, it is still relevant because it is likely that the findings in one virtual environment can be generalized to similar virtual spaces - and virtual space behavior and interactions can be significant shaping experiences.

Rather than think of virtual space experience as somehow "outside" of who I am as a human being, I think of those experiences as extending my persona both online and offline. It could be a great place to experiment with behavior that is too uncomfortable or too dangerous for me to engage in real life. Just as in real life, however, caveats apply.

I think one can be "online" without being embedded in a "virtual environment," but it can still be attractively distracting. Over doing it can be in the context of time or in the context of addiction or anything that has the result of reducing our quality of life in some way. It is something to be aware of in real or virtual space.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is I think that who I am includes my virtual being as well as my real life being. Yet, I am aware that I wish to experience more with my physical being in the real world and less of the online and virtual spaces that are part of my work and play. I want to connect with nature - and I can either disconnect from this interface and go outside where the streets are muddy, the air is chilly and the flowers have died, or I can bring up Second Life online and immerse myself in a fantasy natural garden of beautiful life and light. The one may be superficially prettier, but will not fully engage my senses as the unpredictable outdoors does. I think I'll step outside this time....

I Am Not Okay:TodaysTv media.

I was glad to see Denzel Washington has a starring role in a new drama out entitled “Flight”. He, unlike many Black actors, has played the leading role in many Hollywood block busters, which have brought in huge revenue and many actor awards. He, unfortunately, is the exception and not the rule.

 As I scan the 300 cable channels on TV, I am discouraged by the lack of Black faces I see on the hundreds of stations I view. Growing up, Blacks were featured in comedy sitcoms, if nothing else.  With shows like “Good Times”, The Jefferson’s”, “Sanford and Son”, “Baby I’m back”, “What’s Happening”, and host of others Black sitcoms I grew up watching, it is really sad and discouraging to see the lack of sitcoms showcasing Black family life, social problems and humor.

With disproportionate stereotyping of Blacks and the over reporting of crimes of Blacks in the media, it is extremely important that Blacks have positive images that counter these destructive untruths of themselves.

Is there one serious drama starring an African American on television today, I asked a colleague? I was told there was one:  “Scandal”-featuring Kerry Washington.

I am not okay with only one drama featuring Black people on TV today. I am not okay with one only one Black man being selected to play key roles in good films. I am not okay with never seeing a Black super hero and with hardly seeing Blacks who are smart, confident and leaders. I am not okay with one Black princess to represent beauty and magic for our brown girls. I am not okay with Blacks only being allowed to play: the helper, the assistant, the side-kick, the follower, the nurturer and the muscle. I am not okay with having not one new Black comedy on television that I can laugh too. Not one!!I am not okay……are you?