Engaging the TV-minded

My grandfather and i often speak about Christian morality in the context of politics. This has become increasingly noticeable this year and i was stunned when he told me that Bush was not a Christian (in his actions, not necessarily his purported religious association). That gave me hope.

I decided to assemble a little pre-election package for my grandparents. I wanted to send them: Moral Politics, Don’t think of an Elephant, Unprecedented, Outfoxed and Fahrenheit 9/11. Much to my dismay, Outfoxed was only available on DVD and F9/11 wasn’t to be released for a few weeks so it cost a fortune. But still, i sent them the other three.

This made me wonder. I get an AOL CD every few weeks. I realize that not everyone (like my grandparents) have DVDs. But DVDs are much cheaper to produce than VHS tapes. I’m getting all of this paper political propaganda, but most Americans don’t get their propaganda on paper – they get it on TV. This is why organizations spend millions of dollars to place their ads on FoxNews. Of course, FoxNews is biased.

What would it mean for MoveOn (or other organizations) to start manufacturing DVDs and shipping them off to potential voters? Imagine a hand-written note from a volunteer saying that this might be of interest to you (oh random stranger from a swing state). Imagine shipping out Outfoxed or Unprecedented or F9/11 rather than asking people to pay for it. The people who buy it are already converted. Imagine putting a little note saying “if you don’t have a DVD player, return this card and we’ll send you a VHS copy; give the DVD to a friend.” I wonder what percentage of people would watch a movie that appeared on their doorstep. I’d bet a decent number. Certainly more than read paper propaganda. The TV is what makes most people in this country think. Why not work with the TV, even if you can’t work with the TV stations?

Curious about Libertarians

Some of my closest friends are libertarians. I love them to bits. Yet, their politics strike a chord in my heart that makes me shudder. Since i’ve been taking the Lakoff class, i’ve been faced with the dichotomy between conservatives and progressives. It always makes me wonder where the libertarians fit in.

In Moral Politics, Lakoff argues that libertarians are fundamentally conservatives ++ (read this chapter if you’re a libertarian!). Barlow concurred, telling me that’s what he used to think that he was. He’s always told me that the approach libertarians take boils down to “leave us the fuck alone.”

In thinking of the values of libertarians, the first that immediately comes to mind is meritocracy. Interestingly, most of my friends who espouse to be libertarians are some of the most privileged intelligent folks that i know. I’m not convinced that meritocracy gave them that privilege. From a meritocratic value system, everyone has equal opportunity to succeed. It is their responsibility to work hard; if they do, they will have access to the fruits of success. Another strain says some people are more intelligent and they simply should have the rewards of that.. this is the outright elitist strand. The work-ethic value comes straight out of conservative thinking. In either case, both go against my own progressive value system.

I strongly believe that the world is inherently unequal and unfair. I believe that fairness is essential and that no one should suffer simply because of the position they were born into. I believe that we must work to make access open to everyone. I believe that a diverse community offers different perspectives, all of which are exceptionally valuable. This means diversity across all axes. A pure meritocratic system consistently excludes people from lower socio-economic classes and poorer countries. This bothers me.

In theory, libertarians and i have the same views on a lot of policies. We’re both pro-choice on lots of topics. We’re both anti-military. Yet, our motivations behind these stances are fundamentally different. Take the military. Libertarians simply don’t want to pay for it. I think that we need to be a part of an international community and that cannot be done by force. Libertarians would never be in favor of working with outside agencies for anything. Most of the libertarians i know are mostly of the civil liberties style. They don’t want the government to curtail their liberties. I don’t want the government to curtail equality or opportunity, which often boils down to not wanting the government to curtail liberties.

While we have similar beliefs, no libertarian that i know is in favor of social programs of any sorts. Education. Housing for the poor. Affirmative action. Economic support for working mothers. Environmentalism. Yet, these are all policies that i’m adamantly in favor of. And my motivation comes down to my strong belief in equality, fairness and opportunity.

The thing that i cannot resolve is why so many of my younger libertarian friends think that they’re more aligned with progressives than conservatives when they don’t believe in any of the underly motivations of progressive and their underlying motivations are more attuned to conservatives. What am i missing? What don’t i understand about libertarians?

classroom blogs/wikis?

Are you a teacher or professor? Does your class have a blog or a wiki that is used for classroom purposes? If so, can you list it in the comments or send me an email with the URL to dmb .AT. sims .DOT. berkeley .DOT. edu

“The Media Sucks, And It’s Your Fault”

Ethan Zuckerman has some interesting data on the topical coverage of blogs.

There is often a fantasy that blogs will cover more diverse topics than the mainstream media, that they will force the media to cover different topics. Ethan is bothered by the fact that neither mainstream media nor bloggers cover news from less developed regions of the world. So, a research question emerges: in what ways are bloggers expanding the scope of the mainstream media and in what ways are they duplicating it?

I love you [rev.eng]

One morning in the fall of 2000, i woke up to a message from my ugrad advisor Andy van Dam with the subject “I love you.” I remember scratching my head and wondering if Andy had fallen off of his rocker. [Mind you, Andy is not one to profess his love to anything or anyone, and certainly not in email. His typical message reads: “Pls c me. Tx avd”]

The message appeared blank, with only the subject line (gotta love pine on Solaris boxes) and so i slowly crafted an email to Andy asking if he was OK and if there was anything i needed to do. His response email was a collection of foul words, only making me more concerned about his state of well-being.

As i was crafting a response of confusion, i received four more “I love you” emails. I quickly figured out that a virus was on the loose and i rolled onto the floor laughing imagining everyone in Andy’s addressbook receiving a message that was so-not-Andy. Executives at Microsoft, former students, heads of companies. Apparently, he was apologizing for that one months later. Still, it brought me great joy to get at least one emotional message from him, virus or not.

Given all of this, it brings me great joy to hear of a new exhibit at my Alma Mater entitled I love you [rev.eng]. [Review]

Inside the ivory tower

“Blogging is allowing academics to develop and share their ideas with an audience beyond the universities. But as Jim McClellan reports, not everyone is convinced.”

my HIV test

I try to get an HIV test annually, but i realized it had been far longer than that and i felt guilty. I wasn’t actually anxious or concerned as i haven’t really been dating. Yet, ever since i started doing AIDS education in the 9th grade, i’ve felt that it is my sexual duty to get this test annually, just as it’s my civic duty to vote. So, i phoned up the AIDS Health Project Service Center and scheduled an anonymous appointment.

The last test that i had was an oral swab; this test was a finger prick. The results come back in 20 minutes so you spend the time in between talking about why you got tested. I tried to tell the guy that i wasn’t worried and that i was only doing the test because i believed in doing the test. Annually. I told them that i believed in treating it like a ritual, something you did to protect you and those you love. I think i confused the poor guy. I realize that most of the people he deals with are not in that stage.

So, instead, we talked about the role of meth in SF, the increase in STDs, etc. We talked about what it meant to be a part of a community where testing was ritual, while risk was (relatively) low. I found out that the finger prick test was because Glide kept having people come in anonymously, get tested and the test would turn up positive but they would never return to get their results. They hoped that this would help them help people be more informed. I was quite thankful for it because i hate having to go back.

I wonder if younger people still have the philosophy that you should get tested annually. I’m very thankful that i grew up with that assumption. Besides, it brings relief to confirm that i’m still negative.

ifoundsomeofyourlife

The story seems to go… “Jordan” finds a camera in a NY taxi full of images from the last year. He creates a blogspot blog where he puts photos with commentary. Blog spreads rapidly through blogosphere. Rumor has it that he was threatened with lawsuits, although not from the camera owner. Blog disappears.

This is a fascinating situation because it’s very reminiscent of Sophie Calle’s project (documented in Double Game). She found a black book on the streets of Paris and she decided to interview all of the people in the book about the owner of the book. Every Sunday, she wrote up her interview in a Paris newspaper… until the owner of the book sued her.

I’m curious if anyone knows anything more about Jordan’s experiment… or who Jordan is and how he can be contacted. I’d love to hear the full story.

participating in a digital focus group

I love participating as a subject in user studies, focus groups and interviews. This affords me the opportunity to witness social science from an entirely new perspective. Last nite, i had the opportunity to be in a focus group on blogging. The focus group consisted of 5 (technologically savvy) subjects plus the moderator and it took place over AIM. I’ve participated in interviews over AIM and found them incessantly irritating, so i was quite curious to see what would happen in a focus group.

We were all assigned random logins. This meant that no one took the time to personalize them and thus, there were a lot of little AIM men talking. Because i was using iChat, i couldn’t differentiate the AIM men and i found this consistently confusing. [Update: smarter people taught me how to switch to see names because of this post.] Nothing was known of the participants, although aspects of their interests and values emerged through conversation. Of course, the problem was that i couldn’t differentiate the speakers so i’d learn something about one AIM man and not know how to connect it back to that AIM man when the s/he spoke again. Very confusing. Thus, i tried not to model gender or other attributes in my head and just stick to text, line by line. This made it feel very un-focus group-y.

The questions came as fast as they did in the interview and so i found myself scrolling fast trying to keep up. I also found that i did not like the text i was producing. Instead of trying to flesh out nuance, i answered every question as briefly as possible, with lots of information left to interpolation. Still, we were producing so much data that it was hard to keep up. Yet, what was that data worth? I don’t think that i answered any question well or properly contextualized anything. Still, i rambled on with stories and little anecdotes, hoping those would help.

To a certain degree, we bounced things off each other, but group gestures of affirmation and confusion were completely missing. Most everyone was focused on getting their text out as fast as possible.

The result was pretty frustrating. Of course, i think that my experience on that AIM chat mimics one of my subject’s descriptions of blogging better than blogging itself:

“You’re basically standing on a soapbox and reading something out loud only with a blog it feels like there’s a big community square and everyone’s got a soapbox and they’re about the same height and everyone’s reading at the same time.”

fair use restraints dampen my love affair with audible.com

I have 741 books in my room. Paper. Almost all used from the beginning. I have obsessively documented them in Excel (although i twitch with excitement over the possibilities every time Marc Smith appears with his little barcode reader/Aura). I love lending my books to people, provided that they follow my neurotic rules (particularly: no removing of any object found inserted into book and please insert some sort of tender love and attention… strawberry jam is fine).

When i started listening to Audible.com, i professed my love and convinced all of my friends that this was the best thing since sliced bread. I rave about a book that i read or tell a friend that they must read it. Then, the inevitable horror comes. They ask, simply and politely, may i borrow it? I turn bright red, lower my eyes and mumble apologies, stammering out that i can’t… that the technology forbids me… that fair use is dead… digital first sale requires that i sell the whole book collection, not just the one… aa files can’t be transferred…

It sucks, really. What the hell is the use of a book that you can’t lend? I’m completely devastated. My role of friendly hub librarian is being destroyed by technology. The joy i give people by lending my books is being replaced by embarrassment. I find myself stifling any speech about the books i read on Audible, not wanting to face the inevitable interaction. Will all the lenders in the world find their positions in the social stratosphere usurped by capitalists?

Why can’t i just have the digital equivalent to my little Excel file that says “lent to XX”? Why can’t i just be forced to re-acquire the book before lending it out again? I do this all the time (or i’m forced to buy a new copy myself… i’m on copy #17 of Stone Butch Blues). I want a lending solution for digital technology damnit!

I find it hard to tell you
Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a mad world

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed