You Owe US - LAT Writer to Readers

The writer of this LA Times Business opinion piece believes that free news content on the internet will be the downfall of journalism, and that news companies should start charging for content online.

Not surprisingly, I disagree. The downfall of one form of news reporting (one that requires “an editorial staff of roughly 890”) does not mean the end of news, nor does the LA Times have a god given right to report the news how it wishes.

Mr. Lazarus confuses information with content. Information just exists on the internet - it cannot be monopolized, and can be accessed by anyone. Yes, there was a time where access to information about places afar was limited, and newspapers built themselves around providing access to that information – ‘news.’ Once that monopoly has been broken, content changes. In a world where information is everywhere, content becomes how that information is presented – both imagistically (why TV networks seem to be doing OK – they have high production values and unparalleled use of visuals), and ideologically (blogging is paradigmatic of one successful business model). Essentially, content on the internet means dealing with how information is used, not merely giving information – news outlets can specialize towards using interesting or effective writers, but cannot depend on limiting access to content to create revenue. Sites like BoingBoing or BuzzFlash! show how internet content involves sorting and describing information, not merely creating it. (A NYT article proves this point: sports news is the ultimate commodity – its only stats and scores at its core. In response, ESPN and other outlets have focused on hiring better commentary talent, creating a unique, vastly profitable ‘brand’ identity)

The job of the news reporter should be to respond to readers, not demand that readers pay for what is already free.

Shout Out

to Kyle, who just started a new blog: Inconspicuous Consumption. Much praise to him for being able to take an economic/social perspective that generally escapes me. Read it!

Radical change requires change: Hope for New Orleans

New Orleans remains a war-zone in the southeast of the US, now a one sided battle between the poor and HUD, a slow-motion sequel to the poor v. nature battle broadcast worldwide in 2005. But, as with all battles, a head on attack may not be the best course of action.

Some activists have responded to proposed HUD-led demolition by simply opposing demolition as bad in every case – they are of the opinion that the housing was just fine thank you, and that demolition should be halted. Despite the fact that HUD and the government of NO have consistently ignored the voices of some activists, mere opposition to demolition does disservice to the interests of people fighting for equitable housing.

Radicalism conflates itself with conservatism when it merely defends communities from change. Before cities gentrified they were segregated; defending racial boundaries against the contagion of gentrification reinforces socially conservative notions of natural community identity. What came before should shape what came before. In the instance of New Orleans, the legacy of a segregated city, where resident’s voices were ignored with equal violence as in today’s conflict, means that radical transformation should take advantage of the momentum generated by the storm, in the same way that the business community has taken advantage of the storm to generate their own vision of a new New Orleans. Essentially, anti-gentrification movements should focus on movement rather than stability, building stronger communities when economic or political change force themselves upon a community. Defense of the status quo not only makes little sense ideologically, it makes less sense strategically – the energies devoted to stopping demolition of segregated housing could be put towards recreating better communities through collectivization of childcare and food production in new communities, as steps towards a more self-determined future for the impoverished people of New Orleans.

Tetris, only different

A game I play: making sense of spaces

Today I was in the Atlanta airport, taking a break from reading my (rather good) book, , I took stock of the meaning of the place “Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Terminal”

First, airports are about a particular kind of movement. People choose planes over cars or trains because they get you there faster: you get on a plane knowing you don’t like the time spent traveling, because you’re trying to make it go by as fast as possible. Everything in the airport echoes this type of movement.

Also, the airport only uses indirect lighting. Indirect lighting means that people cast no shadows, because there is no specific point from which light emits. This lends to the feeling that you’re not really in space, because you never have to account for the position of your body as it moves – space becomes undifferentiated before the eyes, we see no shadows, only reflections. The security cameras work the same way: indirect surveillance. Inevitably, they never point – I only saw the black semi-globes which suggest observation but never accuse or position anyone as a subject moving in or out of vision.

The space has specific visual cues which subtly differentiate uses. The center of the terminal has tile, the edges carpeting. The center tile creates a walking space that paces travelers with regular intervals, making movement across the space self-directed and measured. The carpeting gestures towards stillness – it makes less noise when walking and describes space in a more linear, less measured way. Carpet has a cultural echo as well, a less cold, more placed feel – few bedrooms have tiling, tile seems more suited for business, more task-oriented and functional than carpet.

Sitting space exists in abundance, but always lacks tables. People sit in chairs arranged next to each other on a bench style, but always separated by arm-rests or other divider. Traveling didn’t always look like this – benches dominated train station seating in particular. A level of exclusivity and feeling of personal independence separates train travel from air-travel, and the seating honors the power of individuals by granting them personal space that, strangely, probably encourages greater density of people actually seated than just benches. Tables cannot be found – they take up too much space and put people uncomfortably face to face in a space that draws in people from places so disparate that their imagined interests rarely coincide in a comfortable conversation. Something about air travel demands individuality, and the space of the waiting area replicates this logic.

Generally: a place not many really consider I suspect, which is perhaps my point. Air travel has an awkward distance I sometimes oppose, but thinking about it alleviates the problem somewhat. Onward to posts about more communication things!

US to Bush: FU

Reading the subtext of a treaty: The Bali Agreement was essentially written to see Bush off with a bang.

Graffiti Archeology

well, it's come to this. Archeology is underway to unearth the 70s, in the form of the careful preservation of a spontaneous (incomplete?) graffiti wall in SoHo. The overbearing praise and subculture aesthetic of the whole project leads be to beleive that our notions of the historical and valuable have entered terminal decline. Not in the high/low sense, but rather it seems noone thinks they are making history any more. Most anything can become subject to historical preservation it seems (including what may have been the derivative/equivalent of a sketchpad for a few graf artists), and the need to intensely document and memorialize the immediate past (very immediate; check the 6 month-ish turnaround on WTC memorial designs) both suggest a feeling of genuine disempowerment. Each act of preservation becomes vicarious participation in 'real' historical events, cordoned off by the end of history. Could we even imagine a museum dedicated to the act of preserving other art? Disempowerment of many kinds is a economic fact in flexible accumulation, but we may need new terms to gauge our real power after the past disappears under glass.

Google Privacy Problems

The NYT has a good summary of the go-round on Google's privacy issues - I say issues and not problem, because privacy only concerns the management of identity, rather than any substantiative question. Again, I think the problem concerns as much the management of public face, and the ability to control our appearance to other people in terms of discrete public, private and work spheres. Indeed, this is the issue raised by Cory Doctorow in his description of "boyd's law" of social networking - "Adding more users to a social network increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance" (and thus make it less popular, etc.). The furor over 'privacy' (as in that raised over Facebook Beacon) concerns more so the convergence of different social networks into one. I think that the temporal and technological links between the rise of technology convergence and increased privacy issues with the internet is telling: all we really want is the freedom to act like fools in different social situations, and to not have to keep looking like a fool in others.

Duncan

BoingBoing: Blogging the Internet Aesthetic

Written for Dr. Aram Sinnriech's Intro to Media Criticism course in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU.

December '07

The blog BoingBoing.net does something right when it comes to channeling the desires of internet users to attract visitors, viewers, and devoted readers. Currently, it BoingBoing ranks as the 3rd most popular blog on Technorati’s top-100 most popular blogs on the web, and draws around 1 million dollars in ad revenue over the course of a year (Tozzi, 2007). Also, in 2004 BoingBoing was one of only two blogs ranked in the top-15 of 5 different measurements of influence in the blogosphere (Gill, 2004). Ranking high in these measurements suggests that BoingBoing acts “as both an information aggregator and as a ‘summary statistic’ for the blogosphere” (Drezner and Farrell, 2004), shaping and reflecting the aesthetic norms of media on the World Wide Web. BoingBoing, in its design and content choices, embodies an aesthetic unique to the media of the internet at a particular historical moment, thus explaining its popularity and influence.

Attempting to examine a website as a media text poses a slight pedagogical problem. Websites, blogs in particular, undergo constant revision, making it difficult to pin down a stable text for study. Finding a final referent text for study will prove impossible, as “completion may be endlessly deferred in the medium in which everything is always ‘under construction’” (Deuze, 2006). BoingBoing itself averages roughly 20 posts a day, and posts will be added as I write this paper. While this speedy “first-mover advantage” (Drezner and Farrell, 2004) means that blogs end up shaping the narratives of traditional media texts, it requires a shift from traditional analysis as to how texts should be examined. Instead of merely studying the content of individual posts or the content overall, my arguments about BoingBoing will focus first on the form in which content is presented, using the notion of ‘blogging’ itself, the aesthetic choices in the layout of the site, and later end with an examination of the content through the semi-structural element of ‘tagged’ content posted to the site. The structural elements remain relatively stable throughout the site and over time, making them more appropriate objects for examination through a more traditionally stable media such as academic composition.

Before all else, BoingBoing is a blog. Blogs can be identified as “a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first” (Walker, quoted in Deuze, 2006); although in order to qualify for a “Bloggie” weblog of the year award, a site must be merely a “page with dated entries.” Blogs typically include “[l]inks to related news articles, documents, blog entries within each entry (attribution) • Archived entries (old content remains accessible) • Links to related blogs (blogrolling) • RSS or XML feed (ease of syndication) • Passion (voice)” (Gill, 2004). The specific function of blogs can be different from site to site, but in the case of BoingBoing, the site identifies itself as a “Directory of Wonderful Things” immediately below its red, pixel-form logo/title. This corresponds with one primary function of blogs in general, serving as “’intelligent filters’ for their publics by selecting, contextualizing, and presenting links of particular interest” (Rheingold, Forthcoming). Considering the vastness of the internet, a ‘directory’ of links (particularly one that sorts out the ‘wonderful’ ones) is a valuable thing, because “given search costs and limited time, it is near impossible for readers to sift through the vast amounts of available material in order to find the interesting posts” (Drezner and Farrell, 2004). Blogs are particularly suited for the ‘directory’ function, and one of the successes of BoingBoing can be attributed to its effective embrace of this particular activity.

Still, blogs should be further distinguished from other types of sites which sort and filter information on the internet. In particular, publication by specific, identified authors (“voice” in the above list) links blogs to more traditional print-media, and distinguishes them from other link directory intelligent-filter sites (like Wikipedia, Google or FARK.com). Blogs don’t merely filter, they filter through the eyes of a specific author - a blogger. The importance of the author in the blogosphere can be shown by the relatively high popularity of blogs run by “professionals with excellent writing skills” (Gill, 2004), and by the easy adoption of blogs by traditional media sources including “MSNBC, Slate, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Times – almost anywhere Big Media produces online news” (id). BoingBoing fits the mold, with a internet-geeky twist. The blog features four primary bloggers/editors – Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, and David Pescovitz, all of whom have some degree of professional writing experience (books, Wired magazine, and other serials). While Frauenfelder founded the site, the most prolific posters, Xeni Jardin and Cory Doctorow, have gained individual notoriety as a result of their contributions, demonstrating the importance of authorly voice to the blog. Doctorow has become a globally-recognized ‘copyfigher,’ an author of cyber-punk fiction, and cartoon character. Jardin has become a "technology contributor for National Public Radio's "Day to Day," and host of NPR's "Xeni Tech" podcast,” among other public roles, according to her bio from her website, Xeni.net. The individual notoriety of the blog’s authors demonstrates the personal nature of blog authorship, in contrast to the open collaboration of other internet forms, as well as the importance of charismatic and effective writers in shaping a blog’s success. The importance of authorial voice can be traced back to the ‘directory’ function of blogs. Insofar as the internet has a simply overwhelming amount of content, a sharp eye for creating commentary on important and interesting links is a decisively valuable asset for a site. In this way, BoingBoing acts like the Google for a particular culture and aesthetic, sorting and prioritizing news, video, and sites of interest through the voice of its writers. BoingBoing’s specific bloggers should be understood as a key element in the blog’s success.

Additionally, the visual appearance of the blog elucidates the choices which have made BoingBoing such a popular blog. Operating with a digital, malleable environment gives the creators of websites near-infinite choices in shaping the appearance of text and graphics on a user’s screen. The range of choice suggests that the actual appearance of a site on a user’s screen should be taken as a very deliberate, rather than forced choice. That being said, the meaning and form of BoingBoing cannot be separated as “digital writing environments make it difficult to separate words from visuals or privilege one over the other” (Hocks, 2003). Specifically, the visual appearance of BoingBoing emphasizes the creative elements of blogging and the internet. Indeed, the site has developed its own ‘iconography’ which defines the blog categorically and visually. The icons, and the logo/title at the top of each page, feature a pixilated, blocky style indicative of the age of “digital reproduction” (Davis, 1995) where works of art exist solely in the form of bits and bites, with no original non-reproduced referent. With these visual features, the blog whole-heartedly embraces the reproductive and capacities of digital production. The style carries on into the ‘body’ of the blog, where posts are displayed. The site uses a uniform, plain black Times New-Roman font on a white background, with links a blue-green, and red when moused-over. This style downplays flashy presentation, instead drawing attention to the content, alluding to the ‘directory’ tagline by presenting information in a plainly effective, accessible way. Quotes from other sources are juxtaposed against this simple style by larger, red quotation marks. The quotes allow readers to visually scan the document and quickly distinguish the blogger’s commentary from outside sources. Prominent, high-visibility red quotes act as visually expanded links, clearly demarcating the blogger’s work from that of outside sources. The style closely parallels a standard hypertext link, which similarly assembles multiple texts into a single document, establishing “personally tailored paths through textual spaces” (Tyrkko, 2007) by selecting and highlighting important parts of other sites. The design elements embody the reading-sorting function of blogs, visually easing and embracing the social function of blogs as a link-filter in a complex internet media environment.

The ‘tagging’ structural feature of the blog blurs the line between form and content. BoingBoing labels most of its posts with tags, using the categories ‘book,’ ‘art,’ ‘video,’ ‘photo,’ ‘gadgets,’ ‘comics,’ ‘civlib,’ ‘maker,’ ‘copyfight,’ ‘funny,’ ‘steampunk,’ and ‘sex.’ Entries can be viewed sorted by tag, and any one entry can have multiple tags. While the explicit tagging tool is recent, older posts reflect the same general subjects of the tags. Tagging connects the ‘what’ viewers look for on a blog with ‘how,’ dividing out particular posts into filtered mini-blogs. The sorting function of the media itself becomes content as users filter now a variety of entries from different blogs through tag-clouds on sites like Technorati, making the sorting tool an important draw to blogs. The tags serve as the jumping-off point for understanding the content choices of BoingBoing, content which similarly merges the distinctions between form and content by creating content that embraces the capabilities of its specific media and overall structure as a blog. Two key themes – copyright and remix culture – constitute the bulk of posts from BoingBoing, and will be the focus of my discussion of what is written on the blog.

BoingBoing describes its oppositional stance to the expansion of copyright controls as ‘copyfight.’ The ‘fight’ seeks to protect the ability of users to view and copy media as they see fit. The discussion of copyright on BoingBoing mainly concerns a backlash against an ongoing crackdown by media distributors over control of content on the Internet. Commitment to the ‘copyfight’ runs deep on the blog: the struggle is personal for Doctorow as a published sci-fi writer, and evidence of the blog’s commitment appears even in very early posts to the blog. However, a rigorous defense of copyright only makes sense in a political environment that encourages rapid encroachment on traditional copyright use. The perceived need for copyright protection arises as the result of global economic and political shifts which now define corporate commerce: “brainpower drives the modern economy: there are more demands to own ideas… technological change has made it harder to protect ideas… globalization has made it easier for intellectual property to spread to parts of the world with weaker protection of ideas… [and] the output of the "idea industry" has grown exponentially” (Evans, 2002). Because media-industry’s reaction to these developments, a series of US laws and international trade agreements have been used to expand the scope of what falls under copyright protection, as well as the tools available to companies to enforce copyright claims (Coombe and Herman, 2004, Vaidhyanathan 2005a, b, and c). Recently, “copyright-producing industries” have “started a steady movement to shift the site of regulation from civil courts to machines themselves” (Vaidhyanathan, 2005c). Regulating machines is the crucial issue for Doctorow and BoingBoing: the “encroachment many see of recent copyright legislation on personal liberties and well-established habits” (Vaidhyanathan, 2005b), specifically insofar as they involve directly modifying code and physical technology on individual user’s computers. (The modification of user’s personal computers links ‘copyfight’ and ‘civlib’ (civil liberties) tags – BoingBoing essentially seeks to defend the ability of individual users to use the Web as they see fit without interference or tracking from companies or the government) The ongoing attempts to limit the freedom of users on the internet to view and copy media content serves as the background for the blog’s ‘copyfight.’

BoingBoing’s response to the industry on the question of how to manage the flow of information on the internet is framed by its ‘linking policy,’ which controls who can appropriate its content by linking to the blog. BoingBoing’s only linking policy is that sites must not have any conditions in their linking policies to link to BoingBoing. As this shows, the blog unequivocally stands behind the free flow of information over the Web, and puts this stand into practice. In the words of Cory Doctorow, “the web is open.” The linking policy illustrates the connection of media-form to BoingBoing’s particular defense of the rights of users. Using the World Wide Web and hyperlinking content necessarily infringes on some corporate-devised notions of copyright. So, BoingBoing’s defense of copyright user’s rights constitutes an embrace of the things that its users already do by the fact of reading BoingBoing, a site where the bloggers link (‘borrow’) media from other sites. BoingBoing supports the rights of users in other ways. For example, the blog acts as a rallying point for specific political battles fighting copyright expansion, with recent successful campaigns aimed at Canadian and Swiss versions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (a particularly draconian US law concerning digital copyright management).The technological reality of the internet puts older media companies in an uncomfortable position in relation to BoingBoing’s argument – the fact that users already engage in activity that threatens the old media monopoly means they are less likely to accept arguments for increasing the power of that monopoly, and more likely to back protection of the rights of users.

The effectiveness and popularity of BoingBoing’s political stand also depends on other cultural factors which determine the salience of their argument, even as technology uses come to their aid. In the first place, the bulk of what is called ‘piracy’ operates as resistance from individual users “positioned against a global recording industry that no longer adequately serves the needs of its audience;” an industry now characterized by aesthetic and corporate consolidation of media production (Sinnreich, under review). Also, increasingly harsh and invasive protection measures invite increasingly creative subversions: “[e]fforts to curb or damn up the flow of information generate opposition and indignation, and end up undermining the very norms they hope to bolster” (Vaidhyanathan, 2005b). The mere act of attempting to tightly regulate media use invites cultural backlash. The history of copyright protections rhetorically aides the position of ‘copyfighters,’ insofar as “[t]he movie and music industries are now like the boy who cried wolf” (Evans, 2002), claiming that each and every shift in technology will destroy their industry. The history of bad predictions, this time backed with increasingly invasive technologies which inspire resentment against a humorously incompetent industry makes BoingBoing’s steadfast commitment to ‘copyfights’ both popular and necessary for the perpetuation of the open Web.

The bricoleur’s remix style, a second key theme of BoingBoing, shares the resistant posture of copyfight politics. A mode of reading media products in resistant ways, “bricolage simultaneously consists of repurposing and refashioning the old while using and making the new” (Deuze, 2006). The style has manifested itself on the internet in a variety of ways, such as “slash…video game modding… [and] mash-ups” which “take advantage of the available means of production (i.e. copy machines, editing and modding software) and distribution (i.e. the postal system, the internet) to subvert the traditional consumer-producer dichotomy” (Sinnreich, under review). Evidence of the remix style appears everywhere on the blog: at least two tag categories (‘steampunk’ and ‘maker’) concern remix and modding exclusively. Also, regular links to photoshop contests, older posts about Ron English billboard modifications, computer case mods, old media forerunners to do-it-yourself remixing such as ‘paint by the numbers’ books, as well as more recent posts about Hello Kitty bike tires and dis/reassembly of iPods cast in resin all demonstrate the blog’s interest in the remix aesthetic. Doctorow’s short story “Other People’s Money” (although not for BoingBoing exclusively) provides the paradigm for the ‘maker’ tag, describing futuristic subversive production using on the trash of old consumer electronics. The category includes posts about creative production using everyday objects in atypical ways, including park benches made of pencils, lamps made of cocktail parasols, and animal sculptures made from scrap metal. The idea of the remix extends to the idea of creating original interfaces to more ordinary devices, such as a 7 foot tall Atari Joystick, or using a cockroach to control a robot. These examples demonstrate the importance of the notion of bricolage to the blog. The popularity of the site insofar, as it involves this notion, reflects a particular technological and cultural moment that coincides with the creation of BoingBoing.

Remix culture has both cultural and technological origins. The technological origins begin with the development of media technologies that empower individuals to transform the ways in which they view media. Even before the development of the internet, “zapping and surfing (and, why not, twirling the radio dial)” acted as “tools for selecting, cutting up, editing, and manipulating the tide of images and sounds” (Boisvert, 2003). Also, as pointed out above, copy machines and various kinds of editing software are recent technological developments which enable the development of a mass remix aesthetic. The World Wide Web, particularly the use of hypertext links in a blog-style, extends these technological developments to their most-realized form yet. First, BoingBoing itself operates like a textual ‘mash-up,’ combining news and images from disparate sources into a single media text, putting them in conversation with each other as a semi-coherent assembly. The phenomenological experience of reading BoingBoing and clicking on hyperlinks embodies this as well, as “the primary function of the hyperlink is to act as a point of interaction between the text and the reader … a significant departure from the conventions of texts which are more strongly predicated on the non-interactive reception of (usually) thematically organised discourse” (Tyrkko, 2007). Clicking on a link forces a user to create a narrative of continuity that examines the linked-to site for its connections to the site linked from. Not unlike the punning mashup titles such as “The Grey Album” or “Smells like Booty,” the hypertext link creates a “fuzzy coherence” that is “contingent upon both a wide variety of idiosyncratic interpretations and upon personally tailored paths through textual spaces” (Tyrkko, 2007). Essentially, the link-focused assemblage of news stories on blogs allows readers to interactively read separate media texts together as they might do when selecting songs for a potential mashup. Still, these technological changes mean only so much without the cultural impetus to use them. The cultural roots of remix/bricolage culture arise from “the increasing unpopularity of mainstream corporate media” as well as the history of “’DIY’ (do-it-yourself) culture, particularly flourishing during the 1990s, with people increasingly claiming the right to be heard rather than be spoken to” (Deuze, 2007). BoingBoing arose out of this culture, originally appearing in 1988 as a zine run by Mark Frauenfelder & Carla Sinclair. Sinclair (the wife of blog editor Frauenfelder) herself said in an interview “if you're a publisher you don't have to kowtow to anyone … You can say what you want, and talk about stuff the mainstream publications avoid either out of fear or ignorance.” This desire to empower consumers by making them into publishers also lies at the core of its commitment to fighting copyright, as well as the embrace of bricolage. Indeed, record labels in particular have used copyright violations as an impetus to shut down mash-up artists (Sinnreich, under review). The issue of empowering users lies at the core of BoingBoing’s embrace of bricolage, and again demonstrates one of the causes of the blog’s continuing popularity.

Even so, these choices appear on other internet sites as well; one distinguishing feature of BoingBoing’s appropriation of remix culture is its remediation of other, pre-internet media forms. Remediation occurs as the result of media change, where “every new medium diverges from yet also reproduces older media, whereas old media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media” (Deuze, 2006 paraphrasing Bolter and Grusin, 1999). BoingBoing creatively remediates media in a variety of ways. First, Cory Doctorow’s writings, publicized heavily on the site, remediate books into the internet, writing cyber-punk fiction published for free over the internet, as well as in bound form. Also, BoingBoing recently added a video blog, BoingBoingTV, which appropriates the older technology of television onto the internet. Also, the tags ‘video’ and ‘steampunk’ both remediate separate technologies, the latter visually integrating relatively recent technologies, such as web-cams with the aesthetics of Industrial revolution-era steam technology. Last, BoingBoing’s choice in links and content illustrates the importance of remediation. Some recent posts include video of an author reading a book at an internet company, and the transformation of several visual icons into art projects in cloth. Essentially, remediation acts as the “remix of old and new media” (Deuze, 2006), and is the primary form which media production takes on the internet, particularly on sites like YouTube (as in ‘cathode-ray’), or ‘internet radio’ stations like Pandora. BoingBoing’s use of remediation makes its content accessible to users familiar with older media, while at the same time transcending those forms in a creative way. Each of these examples demonstrates BoingBoing’s specific form of bricolage – a style which creatively appropriates media forms, as well as specific content in a way unique to the World Wide Web.

As one of the world’s most popular blogs, the aesthetics of BoingBoing indexes the aesthetic norms of the internet in general. It’s choices in form and content emphasize the strengths of the web as a media form, providing an outlet for frustration with and backlash against companies who control older media. BoingBoing demonstrates one of the most effective ways for creating meaning through blogging and the World Wide Web.

Works Cited

Boisvert, Anne-Marie (2003). On Bricolage: Assembling Culture with Whatever Comes to Hand [trans.Timothy Barnard]. Horizon Zero. Issue 8, April/May. At http://www.horizonzero.ca/textsite/remix.php?is=8&file=4&tlang=0

Coombe, Rosemary J. and Herman, Andrew (2004). Rhetorical Virtues: Property, Speech, and the Commons on the World-Wide Web. Anthropological Quarterly. 77.3 559-574.

Davis, Douglas (1995). The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995). LEONARDO. Vol. 28, No. 5 , pp 381-386.

Deuze, Mark (2006) 'Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture', The Information Society, 22:2, 63 - 75

Drezner, Daniel W. and Farrell, Henry (2004). THE POWER AND POLITICS OF BLOGS. presented at the 2004 American Political Science Association.

Evans, David S. (2002). Who Owns Ideas? The War Over Global Intellectual Property. Foreign Affairs. November/December.

Gill, Kathy E. (2004). How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?. Paper presented at WWW2004, May 17–22.

Haas, Tanni (2005). From "Public Journalism" to the "Public's Journalism"? Rhetoric and reality in the discourse on weblogs. Journalism Studies. Volume 6, Issue 3 August, pages 387 – 396.

Hocks, Mary E. (2003). Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments. College Composition and Communication. Vol. 54, No. 4. pp. 629-656.

Moulthrop, Stuart (2005). What the Geeks Know: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy. presented at Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, Narratives Session.

Rheingold, Howard (Forthcoming). Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement.

Sinnreich, A. (under review). Mash it up!: Hearing a new musical form as an aesthetic resistance movement. International Journal of Communication.

Tyrkkö, Jukka (2007). Making sense of digital textuality. European Journal of English Studies. Volume 11, Issue 2 August, pages 147 – 161

Tozzi, John (2007, July 13). Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks: BoingBoing. BuisnessWeek. http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/07/0714_bloggers/source/2.htm

Vaidhyanathan, Siva (2005a). Between Pragmatism and Anarchism: The American Copyright Revolt since 1998. Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings (M. Halbert, ed.). MetaScholar Initiative at Emory University.

- (2005b). Celestial Jukebox: The paradox of intellectual property. American Scholar. Vol 74, no 2, pp. 131-5.

- (2005c). Remote Control: The Rise of Electronic Cultural Policy. THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. Vol. 597, January, pp. 122-133.

Form as criticism

The 'Kant Attack Ad' YouTube video is as much an argument about media as it is about Kant. While the gimmick holds true as an interesting joke, the form (political attack ads) sometimes reflects a content (swift boat anyone?) that is profoundly un-Nietzsche. The most important part of this clip is what it says about media ecology: enlightenment rationality reflects a print-ecology which has passed us by for a simulated, nihilistic visual ecology where political discourse looks like an attack ad.




...and it never hurts to have some Sesame Street




Duncan

Internet = Pun

“Instead of asking 'why isn't this text coherent?', the hypertextual reader is more likely to ask 'how could this be coherent?' By placing so much emphasis on the inferential properties of each link, hypertext encourages a style of reading which elevates the importance of lexical-level connections over global conceptual continuity” (Tyrkko, 2007)

From

Tyrkkö, Jukka (2007). Making sense of digital textuality. European Journal of English Studies. Volume 11, Issue 2 August, pages 147 – 161

one of the more interesting academic texts I've read in a while

oh, finals.

Duncan

The Flow of Information

A furor over the destruction of tapes depicting CIA agents engaging in torture I think points towards the way that media shapes its own legal and social discourses. Why would anyone believe that tapes SHOULD be released (or even would be made?), without the rhetoric of visual media? I think the idea that destruction of the tapes obstructed justice begs the question of whether justice as we know it is intrinsically linked to the tapes themselves. How would prosecution of the particular crime proceeded without the idea of taping interrogation?

Duncan

this is a telling video. It provides an interesting critique of the relationship between ads and consumers but it assumes there's a natural relationship between advertisers and consumers - that naturally, consumers look to match themselves with brands (or advertisers) in something akin to a lifelong relationship (marriage). It reflects a brand ideology of capitalism, rather than a product-oriented structure, as described by the Sturken book a few readings back. the video suggests that an ideal relation between consumers and the people they buy from is one where consumers integrate a brand/product into their lifestyle.

Also: what does it mean that the advertiser/corporation is male and the consumer female?

Duncan

DEVESTATING

This is one of the most incredible ideas ever.

If anyone ever tells you that media and communication studies is mere rhetoric, point them here.

Duncan

Rules of the game and stacking the deck

The rhetoric of extremism is always a mask for controlling the fundamental modes of political expression. Whenever a tiff like the ‘teddy bear’ debate arises, ‘western’ Muslim groups almost immediately attempt to distinguish moderate from extremist Islam. A call for moderation concerning the issue of offense goes out from representatives of ‘other’ cultures in the west. Even news sources like Fox News get into the discussion as a defense of the right to free practice of religion. Of course, what we understand as the free practice of religion can never be such, because clearly, it does not allow the free expression of what we call ‘extremist Islam.’ Therein lies the quandary. The game of multiculturalism can be played until someone breaks the rules, making the culture of rule-breaking the one culture that can never be brought into the fold. The difference between “the Right howling in outrage at the prospect of a kindly woman teacher being lashed under Sharia” and “the Left tying itself in knots to demonstrate cultural sensitivity” (found here) is only one of degree. Both positions demonstrate a messianic promise of utopian politics; the right position rejects the free expression of ‘Muslim extremists’, the left rejects the expression of westerners in Sudan by acceding to Sudanese punishment of the teacher. Neither is any more open than the other, neither any more sensible as a way to check political violence

The label ‘extremism’ operates by this same playbook of multiculturalism. In a war on ‘islamofascism’ it makes our enemy our mirror image. We fight for nuance and the embrace of political difference in ‘debate,’ they fight in the name of wholesale rejection of cultural compromise. The original ‘dialogue’ myth of American democracy serves as the foundation for what amounts to a war on the refusal to accept a particular vision of free choice. The rules of the game – freedom to practice religion, freedom of speech, etc. - by no coincidence reflect the rules of that other American foundation, free market capitalism, which defines the freedom of choice as its fundamental principle. debate is the red-herring of cultural openness, because its embrace of other cultures, and it empowers the use of arbitrary labels such as ‘extremism’ and ‘fundamentalism.’ Determining what constitutes a restriction on the freedom of speech often is totally arbitrary, and sometimes borders on the totally inane – many in the commentary class during the controversy of cartoons of the prophet Muhammed said that calls for an apology by the cartoonist constituted a threat to free-speech… which of course makes very little to no sense (and again, disqualified the right of protesters to freely express their desire for an apology).

These same rules of engagement serve as checks on radical activism. Controlling the rules for discussion and acceptance of others constitutes the fundamental form of political control in an increasingly open and flowing global space. This reflects most notably in the immigration debate, which does not wholesale reject the entry of foreigners to the US, rather it asks that they accede to the terms of entry set by the United States. The neutrality of the rules is assumed; accepting the rules of the game becomes the key to any form of political expression. We need to focus our attention on how rules of privacy, choice, freedom and the proper means for political expression stack the deck against particular forms of political change. The difference lies between critical mass and advocating for bike lanes at city council meetings; staging a blockade of a port and petitioning to end the war. Political arguments are never merely arguments; they reflect an institutional context that sets the conditions for possible expressions. It is those conditions that should be the focus of change.

Duncan

Visual slight of hand and the narrative format -

The movie “Look” demonstrates the basic fears of technological change– the fear of documentation, the use of our images, but in particular, the idea that they can be integrated into a vast conspiracy of some sort. The concern is not just that ‘our’ images are getting away from ‘us,’ but also those images suddenly become part of a catalogued and indexed centralized machine - that someone takes our casual gestures and removes them from their context to use them against us. The movie trailer uses a visual slight of hand by positioning the viewer behind all the cameras which surround our lives. The assumption is that the technology works in an unhindered, transparent way that reassembles messages in a coherent way for the ‘audience’ of either security systems or other cultures. Video as a format is extremely tied to the movie/television format - narrative coherence, problem/solution, etc. In particular, this lends the impression of videotaping as a breakdown of our ability to manage persona. Essentially, we want to be able to create a school persona (character), a work character, a home character... all these are personas we project towards specific people and places with an eye to their specific interests in us. The fear of surveilence technology, shown in the trailers for the film essentially concern the interruption of voyeurism on activites we normally consider private, because they concern our ability to manage our lives (stealing as subverting power, shopping and the relation of a parent to their child, attempting to get away with murder...). All concern managing our presentation of face to specific people, the camera becomes the third person who subverts this frame. It breaks down the barriers between the presentation of different forms of face, and forces a coherence onto our lives.

Fortunately, the power of the image will be the failure of video surveillance technology. The perception that the image discloses all potentially to an over-reliance on camera technology, which can be subverted in many ways. The Rodney King video demonstrates why this is true - the super-persuasive image which should have been a cinch-win for King, turned against him when reassembled and dissected. Other basic media-theory questions undermine the power of video surveillance - the importance of framing images (both ideologically and physically), as well as the ideological position of the reader as the key to meaning of video.

There are plenty of ideological slights of hand that go into making video surveillance 'work.' Each of them can be carefully undermined in their own way, which is the untold story of media 'progress.'

Duncan

holidayss

Ahoy- I've been writing a lot lately, but not neccesarily for this blog. Here's a post I wrote a few days ago

I’ve noticed a negative reaction to the Thanksgiving holiday from several of my friends in activist-y circles, regarding it as merely a celebration of an imperial past, dressed up in plastic turkey. I think its important to consider the substance of what people are doing with their time and why during the holiday. The most important feature of the ideological meaning of holidays is a division between the normal and the celebratory. Taking time off (from what?) acknowledges a difference between the good and the necessary. Holidays work as an opportunity as much as command, the chance to embrace non-work. In many ways, the time-crunch blackmail of capitalism necessitates holidays, but it also shapes what we do on days off from working. The individually driven culture of capitalism and accumulation acts as its own stress, and the fallback onto established and strong (socially sanctioned) social networks. Symbols create community – the use of the established terms for holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. – use these tools as pragmatic means for creating connection moreso than as deeper political statements. Popular culture supports this idea – the most pathetic, heart wrenching moments in dramatic movies about Christmas in particular, are those where people spend holidays alone. Scrooge is the quintessential holiday villain, someone who takes time alone, who doesn’t celebrate the connections he has with people around him. The public and private enter each other at holidays, where people embrace their private space as a counterweight to their public face. The significance of any given holiday, attached to a date, concerns the need to control the means by which people create holidays. Imagine if we could celebrate any number of holidays, which we created in our own minds. The use of an authoritative historical narrative connected to a day in particular limits the number and character of holidays, which otherwise could exist at any point and time.

Duncan

Apathy again

Much of the discussion surrounding student apathy makes comparisons to the heyday of student activism and public protest, ie the 60s. The real problem with this is that it skip so many movements that failed in between then and now. The nuclear-disarmament movement was as activated as the anti-Vietnam war protests, with what was for a long time (until 2004 with the March for Women’s Lives) some of the largest protests in history. In many ways the Iraq war has more to do with the nuclear power industry than it does with the Vietnam war – the interests of the participants are narrowly entrenched, with no mass-base of people with immediate exposure to the war machine (nuclear war was always just an idea, as in many ways the Iraq war remains just an image on the screen). The false comparison between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ student bodies overlooks this ultimately failed movement, as well as other forms of failed political engagement (2004 election, anyone? Huge turnout, look where we are). So, a big part of the problem with the rhetoric of passivity is that it makes the assumption that activation translates into effective action. Movement building requires careful planning and strategic thinking – it is here that the facile dichotomies of the rhetoric of apathy trips itself up. It implies a failed strategy in its own right – taking to the streets at all costs, broadcasting indignation every which-way and by god, getting properly upset about the world. There is no reason to believe that a merely riled up and angry student body takes us anywhere, and I refuse to believe that protest for its own sake means anything.

Duncan

The Apathy Lie

I believe that the rhetoric surrounding the apathy of college students is an excuse for bad organizing. More than ever, college students are engaged with their lives and politics – and I don’t just mean this in the liberal-Kos/Obama sense. At the risk of sounding cliché, Students define and redefine themselves constantly through Facebook and MySpace, and go to great lengths to involve themselves by participating in (innocuous but telling) activism related to incurable disease and apparently incurable conflicts like that in Darfur. Even this doesn’t get to the core of the issue: students are motivated now more than every to pursue individual ends through the traditional means of power. The most powerful academic institution on any college campus blessed with their presence is the business school. I’ve seen students line up out the door to win free chicken at Chik-fil-a in Georgia, I’ve seen similar fervor for Broadway tickets and on campus events at NYU. The belief that these things represent nothing more than apathy willfully ignores the time and personal investments required to do them; it also demonstrates a woeful arrogance that the complainer simply knows better than anyone else what the real issues to be organized around are. I’ve seen lots of people get worked up about the lack of student protest against the war in Iraq, I’ve never seen a student praised for organization against environmental degradation or copyright politics. The issue selection and tactics choices of most of the mainstream anti-war movement is poor – I don’t even know why ending the Iraq war at this point would be anti-war, except in a facile sense. Even if it was, I don’t see why the amount of time taken to dislodge an oil-driven, well financed occupation makes sense in comparison to the ongoing war of poverty and sexual violence in America. Apathy, no; disregard towards the traditional quasi-fascist bullshit of the old guard left, more likely. Students do things. Lots of things. They just do things according to a different economy of attention and focus than has ever really been seen before. I’ll be honest: the most interesting and engaged activism I’ve seen did not come from either a political party or the traditional organs of the anti-war movement: it came from people my age or in school still (standing in front of trucks, marching through DC with masks, disclosure meetings at NYU, hanger-selling at UGA, Rhizome in Austin, fuck, every Critical Mass ride I’ve ever been on). What other people see as apathy more likely constitutes taking the reigns of power out of their hands. I don’t believe in an messianic transformation of the public sphere centering on the power of the internet and communications technology, but I do know that things are different for me than they were for other people in the past.

Duncan

test

this shit