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January 10, 2005
NPR’s hourly news just played a snippet of Bush saying something about “an election in Iraq,” but he stumbled ever so slightly: “An er-election in Iraq.” We can only hope W was on his way to a full spoonerism: “An erection in I-lack.”
Sigh. Such are the petty joys to which I have been reduced.
Britt has a terrific piece — with the terrific title “The Commons of the Tragedy” — about blogging and journalism. He says that not only are we — all of us — writing the first draft of history, but we’re engaged in what he calls recursive journalism: “the amazing detail and clarity possible when the blogosphere gets on a story and combine our individually flawed viewpoints into a coherent and relevant representation.” He quotes Arianna Huffington:
When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They’re the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you’ll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it’s their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another’s work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically.
It’d be easy to dismiss this by pointing to all the ways bloggers get stories wrong and to the genuine strengths of professional, full-time news organizations. Yes, of course. And I demur from the idea that blogs tend toward a single “coherent and relevant representation” — our views remain distributed and diverse. But none of this should mask from us the fundamental truth that Britt and Arianna point to: For better or worse, the who, what, where, when and why of journalism is changing.
(Note: if you use the “echo chamber” word on me, I will sit in a corner with my fingers in my ears chanting “Dean won! Dean won!” until you go away.)
Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet — a book that influenced my wife and me waaaay back when — has published an important essay that out-Lakoffs Lakoff. Here’s a summary-by-snippets:
Lakoff’s central idea is that conservatives see the world through a “strict father” frame emphasizing discipline, self-reliance, forceful defense, while progressives see the world through a “nurturant parent” frame—supportive, nourishing, emphasizing mutual responsibility.
…Certainly, much of Lakoff’s advice about communicating progressive ideas is powerfully insightful and right on target.
But two big dangers loom.
First: Too narrowly focusing on getting the frame right might delude progressives into believing that’s all they need to win, …
…Second, the frame Lakoff identifies with progressives – “nurturant parent” – itself needs critical thought.
Nurturant parent – what could be worse for progressives?
They’re already stereotyped as coddlers of the lazy poor; dubbed “bleeding hearts” who refuse to require people to take responsibility for themselves…
… Maybe, in many respects, we’re moving beyond hierarchy, which any parent-centered frame necessarily must be…
…We need to ask: What frames best embrace the growing appreciation that human beings are going beyond one-directional communication, moving from “one-to-many” directives toward “many-to-many” multi-logues? What frame suggests mutuality – mutual responsibility, cooperation, teamwork, dialogue, synergy, inter-connectedness, and the co-creation of meaning?
Any parent frame fails the test; it is inevitably one-directional, and hierarchical. So let’s bury the family metaphor and search for a more robust frame…
…let’s reframe the entire conversation to one that begins with a definition of citizens as responsible grown-ups, not helpless children. In this progressive moral vision we strive to live in strong communities…
There is much, much more good stuff in this article. For example, I’ve left out the bits about Open Source, reframing the ecological question, and how the crisis of the Catholic church fits in. This is, IMO, a must read. In fact, I feel bad about attempting to summarize it. [Thanks to Jock Gill for the link.]
“There’s an interesting parallel between Bush and Richard Nixon. While Nixon was clearly a superor statesman and in many ways a more intelligent politician, what they share is a kind of boldness in how they emote their insecurities. What we’re finding with George Bush — part of what’s familiar to people and that adds to his likability for many — is that there’s a commonality of deep insecurity and his handling it with a kind of bravado. What they both did is handle things with a similar certainty — certainty being the ‘disease of kings.'”
I like this not only for its insight but because it so clearly — and helpfully — reflects the worldview of a professional actor. It’s a snippet of an interview in the Boston Globe with Sean Penn, conducted by Ty Burr. (The whole interview is worth reading.)
January 9, 2005
NewEgg is my favorite place to buy hardware: Near rock-bottom prices, no-hassle returns, lots of information about what you’re buying, customer reviews for every item, no monkey business about shipping costs. I have a good feeling buying from NewEgg.
But I hate their marketing campaign: “Shop there, buy here.” We’re supposed to go to our local computer store, waste some salesperson’s time, get her expectations up that we’re going to buying from her, and then buy at NewEgg because Newegg’s prices are low … and those prices are low because NewEgg asks us to steal services from another store.
I don’t have a good feeling about buying from a parasite.
January 8, 2005
Clay Shirky responds to Louis Rosenfeld’s piece on taxonomies vs. folksonomies. Lou argues that folksonomies aren’t as searchable and may not scale, but, he writes, treating both “as major parts of a single metadata ecology might expose a useful symbiosis.” Clay responds that economics weighs heavily on the side of folksonomies, since taxonomies and controlled vocabularies are so expensive to build and maintain. And Clay points to what I think is the most important point: We are just at the beginning of inventing folksonomies. Del.icio.us, for example, doesn’t yet show us how other people have tagged the page we’ve just bookmarked, which inhibits consistency in tagging. (On the other hand, that might encourage a tyranny of the majority in the development of folksonomies.) We are way early in the development of folksonomies. Exciting adventures in classification science await us. The game is afoot!
In any case, I haven’t done justice to either Lou or Clay’s post. Go ahead and give ’em a read…
Matthew Stoller has started a blog supporting Simon Rosenberg for chair of the Democratic National Committee. I don’t know enough about Rosenberg to have an opinion, but I have a lot of respect for Matthew’s judgment.
I woke up last night and couldn’t fall back to sleep, leading me to be able to declare with some authority that “Cult of the Damned” is the worst movie ever made.
But this is an honor it shares we several other films, including “Head,” starring the Monkees and written by Jack Nicholson. In fact, there’s a cluster of bad films made in the 60s and embodying the 60s ethos. No surprise, for the properties of that epoch — a drug-assisted sense of humor that insisted that any random juxtaposition must be funny, an unshakable belief in one’s own profundity, and a belief that talent and craft are forms of despicable elitism — are just what’s required to make truly awful movies.
The only other period in living memory so productive of bad movies was the late 70s when fear and patriotism led to a spate of stupid, predictable, jingoistic macho movies. Then, of course, the streams crossed and we got the two worst successful movies in history: “Platoon” and “Dances with Wolves.” But I’d rather not discuss them. They’re still too painful to contemplate.
January 7, 2005
Dan Gillmor’s new blog is kicking ass. In this case, the ass happens to belong to Bill Gates. Go, Dan!
NetMesh Inc. has announced its proposed solution for the digital ID problem. Called LID (Lightweight ID), it gives the user complete control over her digital ID by putting the actual info on the user’s site. It differs from the Identity Commons idea by using a simple URL as the pointer to the information, rather than a special “URN”; a url has the advantage of being more familiar, and is accessible to anyone who knows how to type in a Web address. LID supports standards, including Jabber’s XML version of VCards, FOAF and XPath. In his blog, NetMesh’s Johannes Ernst argues that it also supports Kim Cameron’s Laws of Identity.
Unfortunately, currently to create a LID, you have to have your own URL, have to be comfortable loading a Perl script, and have to have GPG and the right Perl XPath module installed. I asked Johannes via email why that isn’t too high a hurdle. (It’s too high for me. At the very least, I’d like a LID-o-Matic that, like FOAF-a-Matic, creates a LID file for me.) He replied that they’re aiming initially at the tech community, releasing code that allows would-be LID implementors to understand how it works and what’s required to support it, hoping that that will light a fire that will encourage some horizontal apps to take advantage of the standard. Johannes tells me that NetMesh is working with several organizations that are planning their own LID implementations targeted more towards mainstream consumers.
I also asked Johannes what happens if I change urls. He responded with a set of ways that could be handled. For example, they could add a “secured. forward” protocol to LID, a centralized server could let a 404’ed LID URL look for the new one, or, “most intriguingly, one could use one’s social network (basically the content of the FOAF file) to ‘vouch’ for somebody’s new LID URL. (That’s the way the real world works and it wouldn’t be very hard to codify in software…).” But his key point was: “All ideas that I mentioned can be implemented by people other than us — just like new vocabularies (VCard, FOAF, … whatever-is-hot-next-week) — which makes LID more than just an identity technology but a true platform for identity-related innovation. And at the end of the day, that’s what is exciting about LID.”
From Reuters (with a photo here):
NAIROBI (Reuters) – A 120-year-old giant tortoise living in a Kenyan sanctuary has become inseparable from a baby hippo rescued by game wardens, officials said on Thursday.
The year-old hippo calf christened Owen was rescued last month, suffering from dehydration after being separated from his herd in a river that drains into the Indian Ocean.
“When we released Owen into the enclosure, he lumbered to the tortoise which has a dark gray color similar to grown up hippos,” Sabine Baer, rehabilitation and ecosystems manager at the park, told Reuters.
She said the hippo’s chances of survival in another herd were very slim, predicting that a dominant male would have killed him.
However, Owen’s relationship with the Aldabran tortoise named Mzee, Swahili for old man, may end soon. The sanctuary plans to place Owen with Cleo, a lonely female hippo.
My theory: The tortoise is desperately trying to get away…but no one can tell. [Thanks to Mark Dionne for the link.]
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