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September 30, 2004
Want to read something that’s simultaneously entertaining and scary? Go visit Andrew Gumbel’s article in the UK Independent about the upcoming nightmare about voting procedures in Florida. Oy veh, with a side order of chads.
I grew up in the sort of household that defended unions (my father was a labor lawyer), sang protest songs (my mother taught folk guitar well before it was trendy), felt personally disgraced by the institutionalizing of racism (my brother registered Black voters in the south in the early ’60s) and watched the rise of Congressman Nixon with disbelief. Yet, my parents’ indignation was aimed at what they perceived as our country’s failure to live up to its own values.
I was brought up on those values. I still believe in them. To me, an America that doesn’t welcome the outcasts of the earth is unthinkable. It is not only at our moral center, the diversity and vitality and hope it provides is the core of our strength.
So now we’re going to deport people even if we’re sending them back to be tortured.
There’s a moral high horse to be ridden here. Something about Jefferson and the Statue of Liberty. That’s the logical conclusion from my first two paragraphs, I admit. But my shame over this cold-hearted decision by frightened sons of bitches doesn’t come from principle. It comes from imagining how to explain the ruling to one of its victims without the explanation amounting to a further betrayal. It comes from imagining the family scene afterwards.
I’m in favor of fear. I wake up every day and check the news to see what’s still standing. I fled Boston the weekend that Ashcroft said there was “credible evidence” of an attack. Believe me, my fear credentials are in order. But I don’t love fear so much that I’m willing to send people back to countries to be tortured.
The vote on this bill was along party lines. The Republicans have betrayed our country. For shame.
September 29, 2004
Jay points out and then takes apart the mainstream press’ jocular writing off of the real changes that are happening via the happy phrase, “Every 4 years we’re told…” etc. Brilliant analysis. And, just to make sure you read it: Jay explains why Jon Stewart deserves to be on the list of truth tellers who matter.
September 28, 2004
“That’s why I said to the Taliban in Afghanistan: Get rid of al Qaeda; see, you’re harboring al Qaeda. Remember this is a place where they trained — al Qaeda trained thousands of people in Afghanistan. And the Taliban, I guess, just didn’t believe me. And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence.” [Bush, 9/27/04]
There’s estimates that 90 percent of the country — at least a very large percent of the country, is under the occupation of the Taliban and the warlords.” [Rep. Paul (R-TX)., Remarks to House Committee on International Relations, 9/23/04]
Taliban Violence Threatens Elections: The pre-election period has been marred by repeated attacks against voter registration workers and facilities, mostly carried out by Taliban forces. The Taliban has vowed to sabotage the election — the first national poll in Afghanistan in three decades of war and turmoil, and the country’s first-ever presidential election. [Washington Post, 9/17/04]
“There is no Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe.” — Gerald Ford, 1976
[The first three quotes come from a mailing from the Kerry campaign.]
BlogPulse is graphing the attention bloggers are paying to candidates and issues. They explain what they’re doing here.
September 23, 2004
Well, that was an interesting way to spend a day!
For reasons beyond my ken, I got asked to talk to the Entertainment and Media section of a World Economic Forum meeting in NYC on Tuesday. How could I say no? Besides, the organizers are completely charming, open-minded, smart people. (Thank you, Alex.)
Dinner the night before
The event began with a gala dinner for all the assembled industries, held on Governors Island in NYC. From 800 yards away, the bottom of Manhattan looks like a really bad idea, an experiment in how much weight you can add until a land mass will sink.
There were about 75 people in the tent, about 90% men, and almost all white, with a few Asians and a dark face or two. Although the invitation said this was informal and men need not wear ties, just about every man did. Also, apparently you can’t have too many cufflinks. I was easily the worst dressed person there, which does not make me happy; I don’t like to be conspicuous.
During dinner (great wine, by the way), two panels were held. The first was on the economic situation in China. The highlight for me was hearing Li Lu again. Lu was one of the organizers of the Tianamen protests, and now is a VC. I had the honor of spending some time with him at PopTech a few years ago. On the panel, he first described the serious risks China’s economy faces and then he talked about the effect the Tianamen generation will have on China now that Jiang Zemin has ensured a peaceful succession. You only invest in China, he said, if you believe that the Chinese people will overcome every obstacle. And eventually, said Lu, the Tianamen generation will be in charge. Lu is an excessively modest hero, and a hero of mine.
This was followed by a panel on governance (= Sarbanes-Oxley), a topic that’s truly depressing. What a waste of time, paper and attention. I like locking up rapacious CEOs at least as much as the next person, but Sox seems based on the magical thinking that since rules limit risk, you can’t have too many of the cute little buggers. The Europeans I talked with are bemused by our punctilious bulwark against corporate evil, and are thinking that doing business with us is getting to be just not worth the paperwork.
The meeting
The next day, the Entertainment and Media group met in downtown NY. Thirty-five of us sat around tables formed into a large square. No PowerPoints, just discussion among senior people in the recording, movie and media industries.
The conversation doesn’t lend itself to detailed retelling. But it sure was fascinating for me. I came away with four overall impressions:
First, these people are thrashing. They’re floundering. They’re desperate to find a way in which their organizations still add value. They are in denial but, it seemed to me, they know that there’s just about nothing that the market wants from them. For example, at one point someone said, “Content is king.” I replied that judging from the content they’re producing, marketing is king; that’s where their real value is. Further, I said, on the Internet, connection is king. But then they want to know how to “monetize” connection. There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you understand how monetizing it can kill it. The most convincing case I heard for real value was that only Hollywood can afford to make blockbusters. But beyond that…?
Second, they don’t understand what the hell we’re talking about. I can’t say that I made any inroads. To them, the Internet is a transport for distributing bits they own. Its lack of DRM is a hole that they will plug. They have no doubt that strong DRM is on its way and that it’s a good thing. (Cory could tell them.)
Third, they believe they’re responding to the market. They do not recognize that their market has abandoned them. They think that file-sharing is an aberration. In some unthought way, I think they actually believe that the legislation they’re back is something the market wants. They maintain this thought only by not actually thinking it out loud.
Fourth, they’re going to win. They own Congress and neither Congress nor the entertainment cartel sees any reason to compromise. Their Lakoffian frame tells them that they’re stopping theft, end of story. So they are going to kill the Internet and they don’t even know it. The worst of Larry Lessig‘s nightmares is coming true, at least in the US. Sure, there will be sophisticated hacks and analog holes and guys in back alleys with soldering irons who’ll remove the hardware restrictions so your kid can include a snippet of a movie in her social studies paper. But that’s exactly what losing looks like.
Depressed? You betcha. But then I think: That’s why G-d put Canada right there to our north.
These are smart people and I liked talking with them. They were willing to listen. Some, in fact, even agree to varying degrees. But they are riding beasts that are in agony, and the Internet will be a sticky stain on the bottom of their massive hooves.
We are doomed.
My pitch
I ended up giving a somewhat different pitch than the one I planned on.
I said that there was a huge gap in how this group understands the Net and how their customers do. (Yes, I appointed myself the Representative of the Net. So have a recall if you don’t like it.) We don’t mean the same thing by terms as basic as community, content, “consumer,” and something-else.
Then I described the End to End principle and how it’s enabled the Net to spawn an amazing marketplace of innovation. Tinker with the center and there can be disastrous unintended consequences. E.g., if packets contained bits that ID’ed the user in any strong sense, the Net would have been nought but a research library. (No, I don’t know that that’s true. Emergent effects are too hard to predict. It was just an example, and at least a few people nodded. Good enough.)
I said that I understand that to them the Net looks like a medium through which content passes, some of which people aren’t paying for. But, (sez I) their customers aren’t “consuming” content. We’re not consuming anything. We’re listening to music, We’re watching video streams, We’re talking with friends. To call it content is to miss why it matters to Big Content’s customers.
BigCon’s product, I said, is special. It’s published. That means it’s given over to the public for us to appropriate it, make it our own. We hum it, we quote it, we make jokes with it as a punchline, we get it wrong. We do that because it matters to us. And that’s how creative works succeed. They become ours in some sense.
Further, culture advances by our having the leeway to build on published work and incorporate it into other works. From The Star Spangled Banner to most of Disney’s feature length cartoons, that’s what we do.
So, we need the leeway, both to be able to continue as a culture, and — more important from their point of view — to continue to get value from what the Big Content folks produce. It’s our ability to absorb and reuse that gives their product value.
I ended by saying, perhaps too forcefully, “I’m here arguing for using this remarkable global connectedness to enable the flowering of culture the Internet seems born to provide…and you call me the barbarian?” I think it just alienated them.
I also made the stupid, self-indulgent error of saying that trying to “monetize communities” (the official topic of the session) was evil. Shoot, I’m in favor of monetizing communities. But, as the Greek doctor said, first do no harm. D’oh d’oh d’oh.
Luca Lizzeri has translated some of this post into Italian. Grazie!
September 22, 2004
The FCC is fining CBS $550,000 for transmitting the image of Janet Jackson’s bosom during the SuperBlow, protecting Americans from, well, Janet Jackson’s bosom.
Meanwhile, the portion of the SuperBowl most re-watched by TiVo owners was the part where we saw Janet Jackson’s bosom.
The market has spoken!
The TSA wants 77 airlines to turn over information about everyone who traveled domestically during June so it can be compared with a “newly concentrated security watch list.” Some of the names would be compared with bank, mortgage and credit agency databases. This compels all airlines to turn over personal information that JetBlue and Northwest were embarrassed to be caught turning over voluntarily, according to the NY Times. It’s a replacement for the CAPPS 2 system that caused a ruckus among civil liberties folks. Unlike CAPPS 2, it would not also be used to find people wanted on outstanding warrants, etc.
David Stephenson, a security consultant, thinks this is real bad. For one thing, he has no faith in the “imbeciles at Acxiom” that will participate in the mess. The ACLU says:
For example, it appeared that security decisions will be made based on frequently inaccurate information contained in secret “black boxes ” maintained at the Terrorism Screening Center that are completely inaccessible to the public and effectively shielded from scrutiny or correction. According to news reports, the Terrorism Screening Center will maintain watch lists that will be used under Secure Flight for identifying passengers to be screened as “selectees” or placed on a “no-fly” list, leaving innocent travelers who are caught up in the system with no fair way to have their names removed.
I guess I don’t have a lot of faith in the ability of database mining to uncover terrorists accurately enough to be worth the false positives (AKA violation of our constitutional rights), but I might be ok with that if this didn’t put our civil liberties into a black box guarded by F. Kafka.
BTW, Stephenson suggests that TSA play Cat Steven’s Peace Train as they pat down those who are profiled into the possible-terrorist category…
September 19, 2004
I got a msg from the Bush campaign (I’m a member of GOP TeamLeader) touting an HBO movie, 9 Innings from Ground Zero. The msg links to a clip about Bush throwing out the first pitch. In it, W lets us know the pressure on him not to “bounce” it.
I can see why the Republicans are circulating it. It’s a good piece of tape, in a patriotic-cum-Riefenstahl sense. And, on the other hand, it’s maybe the most absurd reduction of a serious issue I have ever seen.
You want to see American political cynicism at its worst? This is it: The drama of the President throwing out the first pitch.
September 17, 2004
ElectABlog has posted 25 minutes of George Lakoff on video explaining his ideas about framing the election with language that will enable the Democrats to win.
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