Il Settlement 2.0 di Google è arrivato.
Data la complessità, mi rifaccio a questo sommario di Weinberger, estrapolato da qui. Ho integrato un po’ con il poco che ho capito dal sempre ottimo Grimmelmann (consigliato ai meticolosi e ai legulei).

• Estensione. L’accordo è stato ristretto per i paesi non-anglofoni, dunque vale solo per i libri registrati negli USA, o pubblicati in UK, Australia, Canada. Il cambiamento più grosso, secondo Grimmelmann.
• Opere orfane. Cambio di rotta: i ricavi generati dalla vendita delle opere orfane non verrà più diviso fra autori, editori e Google, nessuno dei quali ha in realtà alcuni diritto su quesi soldi. Verranno inveec utilizzati per finanziare la ricerca degli effettivi detentori dei diritti. La Authors Guild ha infatti affermato davanti ai giudici che il 90% dei detentori potrebbe essere ritrovato, con adeguati finanziamenti. Dopo aver fermato i soldi per 10 anni, il Book Rights Registry donerà i soldi ad enti no-profit che promuovano la lettura pubblica: dunque, forse, biblioteche, programmi di alfabettizzazione, altre biblioteche digitali.
  Grimmelmann dice: “Il trattamento delle opere i cui diritti non sono stati rivendicati è il cuore delle promesse e pericoli del settlement—una categoria che contiene anche le opere orfane.  Il Settlement 1.0 permetteva a Google di usarle venderle su un proncipio di opt-out (cioè, se non ti piace, sei tu ad uscirne), e il Settlement 2.0 fa lo stesso. Questo da a Google esclusivo accesso ad un segmento di mercato in cui nessun altro pò entrare, e dunque sollevò perplessità sul monopolio“. Nonstante la creazione del UFW, le preoccupazioni rimangono (la questione è complessa, chi è interessato guardi qui).

• Unclaimed Works Fiduciary. Un fiduciario approvato dalla corte, l’Unclaimed Works Fiduciary, verrà creato appposta per gestire diritti e magagne delle opere i cui diritti non sono stati rivendicati.
• Rivenditori. Il Settlement ora afferma esplicitamente che ogni rivenditore di libri potrà vendere l’accesso online ai libri fuori stampa che Google ha digitalizzato, anche le opere orfane. I ricavi saranno divisi come prima, 63% al detentore dei diritti, “la maggior parte di” 37% al rivenditore).
• Biblioteche. Il Registry potrà ora decidere che le biblioteche possano avere più di un solo misero terminale con accesso ai libri scansionati (e questa è un’ottima notizia).
• Creative Commons. E’ riconosciuto l’utilizzo delle Creative Commons: se hai accesso a un libro in CC, potrai riutilizzare anche la versione digitale di Google. Gli autori acquistano maggior potere su quello che Google potrà mostrare.
• Algoritmo dei prezzi. Google specifica meglio come funzionerà l’algoritmo che deciderà i prezzi dei libri fuori stampa, come in un “mercato competitivo”.

Da varie parti si riconosce dunque un passo in avanti, soprattutto per l’aumento della competività e l’accesso. Amazon, per esempio, potrà vendere l’accesso ai libri scansionati da Google come Google stesso, con i prezzi stabiliti dal Registry.

Ma vi sono ancora critiche. Open Book Alliance continua a dire che Google avrà il monopolio sui libri digitali, mentre l’Electronic Frontier Foundation si preoccupa che niente di nuovo è stato proposto per salvaguardare la privacy dei lettori.

Sembra che ancora non ci siamo del tutto. Passi in avanti, ma non sembra che Google e gli altri si siano sbottonati più di tanto.

I recently procured the book Everything is Miscellaneous from my local public library. This is a book, I believe that every librarian and MLS student needs to read.

What Weinberger is promoting is “messiness” being a virtue in a digital environment. He believes that as tagging increases, a data set is created that is more and more useful every day – particularly with images.

However, he doesn’t believe in the end of MARC, as some have accused him of believing (those who haven’t actually read his book from cover to cover). He also stated in the Many2Many blog specifically that he would like to see tagging integrated with the MARC records, creating a richer OPAC experience.

Roy Tennant, on the other hand, wrote in the Library Journal blog back in 2002 that “MARC must die.” He believes that MARC has outlived its usefulness. An example he gives is the inconsistency in encoding an editor in the 700 field. He states that “clinging” to MARC cataloging makes it difficult to serve patrons in a way they expect in the 21st Century. He has backpeddaled from this stand, but still feels that MARC and our cataloging system needs reworking.

There are certainly problems with tagging. Misspellings is one oft repeated example. I recall creating web pages for a grief recovery web site back in 2001, and having to put “greif” in the metatags to ensure that if a seeker misspells the word, he can still find the help he needs. Nowadays if you enter “greif” in a search engine, you will be asked “do you mean ‘grief’?” Perhaps that technology could be integrated into tagging mechanisms.

Nichole Engard quoted John Blyberg in a synopsis of a moderated discussion on Weinberger and Cataloging:

“Library 2.0 is not the dismissal of authority. It’s the retooling of authority and coming at it in different ways.”

I think that is it in a nutshell.

The Futurelib Wiki has several interesting scenarios for how to replace the current MARC records. Their first scenario – expanding MARC to include new data – seems to make the most sense to me. It makes little sense to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let’s keep our current MARC records, and add the dimension of tagging in a searchable way. That is not a trivial problem, but a very solvable problem in this day of relational databases.

We need MARC, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings in particular, for the basis of the organization of information.  However, we need patron supplied tagging to increase information finding.

I have had this library copy of Weinberger’s book for so long that it is time that I purchased my own. I have placed an order through Amazon to purchase a used copy (the best recycling there is – used books!).

Human communication was radically changed with the advent of the internet. The creation of an online, virtual world has changed the way we socialise; our concept of self-identity; the way we evaluate relationships and how we gain information and knowledge. I will discuss these aspects of online life in relation to my own experiences and with reference to the essays, ‘The emerging online life of the digital native’ by Marc Prensky (http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf) and ‘A new world’ by David Weinberger (http://www.smallpieces.com/).

Both Prensky and Weinberger see digital technology as a means of creating new worlds, however, each author takes a different perspective. Prensky sees users creating their own rich, online lives and worlds while Weinberger believes that this new world creates new people. For Prensky, users are masters of their own destinies, creating and adapting technology to satisfy their diverse needs and interests. For Weinberger, users are adapting and changing as a result of the technology.

Weinberger raises concerns regarding the blurred notion of self-identity on the internet—the users ability to create or assume multiple and varied personas. He believes that how we live in the real world defines who we are and, as we are no longer bound by the physics of real-world associations, the notion of the self existing in a physical world does not apply on the internet. Prensky, however, takes the view that this lack of physicality is the very thing that enables users’ online freedom. Online contacts are as real as face-to-face ones and are not affected by physical appearance or status; users are judged by what they say and produce.

Both authors acknowledge that digital technology has altered the way we socialise, and research from the Social Science Computer Review indicates that ‘internet users showed signs of more active social lives that non-users’ (1).While my own use of the internet for social purposes is extremely limited (I only use email), I can appreciate Prensky’s view of the internet as providing an unrestricted forum for users to communicate freely and the liberation that offers. Surely anything that removes social barriers and enables free exchange of information and ideas is beneficial to society.

Prensky also makes the interesting observation that today’s students are the first to grow up with digital technology and he describes this generation as ‘digital natives’— native speakers of the digital language. Throughout their lives, they will engage with computers,video games, mobile phones and portable music players; they will use email, blogs, instant messenger and social networking sites to communicate with their peers and the world. According to Prensky, I fall into the ‘digital immigrant’(2) category—someone who has learned to adapt to the new digital environment but is not a native speaker of the online language. I accept this and share some of Weinberger’s apprehension regarding the unmapped landscape of the internet. Like Weinberger, I tend to use the web as a research tool and again, agree with Prensky in that I want greater filtering of information to avoid suffering from information overload.

In regards to communicating on the internet, I am uncomfortable with the use of blogs as a form of online diary and agree with Weinberger’s observation that there is a need to draw a line between the public and the private. This reflects Prensky’s view that digital immigrants use technology to share information for intellectual rather than emotional purposes. This blog I have created reveals very little about me as a person and this is intentional on my behalf. I am not comfortable with the internet as a public sphere but acknowledge that links within blogs serve to aid interconnection. Part of my reluctance to embrace the social aspect of the internet is related to the difficulty of evaluating relationships.

Weinberger points out that users can create identities that exist only on the internet; that identities are intermittent and that users can create multiple identities. In Prensky’s words though, I’d better ‘get used to it’. The days of ‘looking people in the eye to know if you trust them’ are over and Prensky offers the establishment of online ratings systems as a tool to evaluate behaviour and develop trust as an alternative to the firm handshake.

In accordance with the findings by the ‘Generations Online in 2009’(3) project from the Pew Research Institute (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Generations-Online-in-2009.aspx), I am more comfortable with the use of digital technology to aid in learning and agree with Prensky that the internet allows users to search for information about topics they are interested in. As a motivation for learning, the internet is invaluable and provides users with extensive online tools that allow for greater breadth and depth of research. The sheer volume of information can be overwhelming and like Weinberger, I agree that online forums comprising specialists in a particular field of interest can be more valuable that a formal site, due to the human input. Like Weinberger, I have difficulty coordinating the real and virtual worlds but perhaps that is due to the fact that I have not grown up with this technology.

During this course, my understanding of the possibilities of new communication technologies has grown but my use of technology is still limited. I have no desire to be involved in multi-player role playing games, I have no interest in developing websites and programs, I am not compelled to share information about my life on a blog but I embrace the opportunities for world-wide communication. The internet allows me to communicate, research, learn, exchange and collect information and ideas and this is invaluable. I recognise that there is a whole new world that requires a new language and a new way of thinking and I think the possibilities of digital technology have yet to be realised. Weinberger and Prensky, while varying in their opinions on the role of digital technology, both agree that the technology is evolving; that it is being incorporated into our lives in new ways and that we need to learn and understand the implications and possibilities of this new, online world.

References

Jones, S & Fox, S 2009, ‘Generations Online in 2009’, Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 28, Pew Research Centre from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Generations-Online-in-2009.aspx

Prensky, M 2001, ‘Digital natives, digital immigrants’, On the Horizon, MCB University Press, vol. 9, no. 5, October from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf.

Prensky, M 2001, ‘Do they really think differently?’, On the Horizon, MCB University Press, vol. 9 no. 6, December from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf.

Prensky, M 2004, ‘The emerging online life of the digital native: what they do differently because of technology, and how they do it’ viewed at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf

Orleans, M & Laney, M 2000, ‘Children’s Computer Use in the Home: Isolation or Sociation?’, Social Science Computer Review, 18:56 from http://ssc.sagepub.com

Robinson, J, Kestnbaum, M, Neustadl, A & Alvarez, A 2000, ‘Mass Media Use and Social Life Among Internet Users’, Social Science Computer Review, 18:490 from http://ssc.sagepub.com

Weinberger, D 2002, ‘A new world’, Small Pieces Loosely Joined: a unified theory of the web, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA from http://www.smallpieces.com/

Websites

Marc Prensky: http://www.marcprensky.com/default.asp

Project Tomorrow: http://www.tomorrow.org/index.html

Pew Research Centre: http://pewresearch.org/

(1)  Robinson, J et al 2000,’Mass Media Use and Social Life Among Internet Users’ in Social Science Computer Review 18:490. Viewed online at: http://ssc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/4/490

(2) Prensky, M 2001, ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’, On the Horizon, 9:5, MCB University Press.

(3) Jones, S & Fox, S 2009, ‘Generations Online in 2009’, Pew Internet and American Life Project, January 28.

21/09/2009
destinatar: Guvernul Romaniei

Cum nu există o zi internatională a blues-ului, am putea începe prin a stabili prima Zi Națională a Blues-ului din istorie… în România. Chiar de nu s-a născut blues-ul pe tărâmuri mioritice, pentru mulți dintre noi această muzică înseamnă… “acasa”. Iar motive sunt peste un milion…

Pentru că sună bine…
Pentru că este onest…
Pentru că blues-ul vorbește despre tine…
Pentru că este coloana sonoră a existenței tale…
Pentru că blues-ul te face să plângi…
Pentru că blues-ul vindecă dragostea…
Pentru că te învață să iubești, să respecți și să accepți diferentele…
Pentru că scoate din tine fiara care mângâie ca un înger și îngerul care plânge ca o fiară…
Pentru că venerează femeia și se supune…
Pentru că te regăsești în el…
.
.
.
Pentru că… “Blues Is Sex”
Tu ești Blues?

Dacă ai și tu argumente pentru care Blues-ul ar trebui sărbătorit în România, intra pe www.petitieonline.ro și votează Ziua Națională a Blues-ului. Ajută-ne să strângem o sută de mii de motive pentru care blues-ul merită sărbătorit în țara noastră. Scrie-ți motivele la secțiunea Comentarii și votează! Ajută-ne să readucem demnitatea în viețile noastre!
Și nu te lăsa păcălit!

Autor: AG Weinberger

Semneaza petitia
Vezi semnaturile pentru petitia: 28 Februarie – Ziua Națională a Blues-ului

The Washington Post

Domingo, 14 de  enero de 2007, página w22

JUEGOS MENTALES

Nuevo en Internet: un grupo de personas aseguran que el gobierno está transmitiendo voces a sus cerebros. Pueden que estén locos, pero el Pentágono ha creado un arma capáz de hacer justamente eso.

Por Sharon Weinberger

Thank you, Chris!

Weinberger, David. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. New York: Holt, 2007.

Weinberger, David. (2007) Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York: Holt.

Prologue: Information in Space

• “As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge freed from physical constraints, information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous.”

Chapter 1: The New Order of Order

• browsing: to “intentionally ignore the organizational structure the store has carefully imposed on its stock” (8)
  • To get good at browsing, to take full advantage of the digital opportunity “we have to get rid of the idea that there’s a  best way of organizing the world” (10) (see chapter 2, mostly)
• “the solution to the overabundance of information is more information” (13)
• Rather than things having “a place” they have “multiple places simultaneously” (that’s the ideal, however—one allowed by the digital that’s impossible in the “real” world.) (14)
• The Three Orders of Order
  • First order: organizing things themselves (books on shelves, etc.)
  • Second order: metadata–information about information: a catalog of some kind that contains information about the objects in the first order.
  • Third order: bits, digital order–removes assumptions of inevitability in organization of information (19).
    • “third-order practices undermine some of our most deeply ingrained ways of thinking about the world and our knowledge of it” (22) (as well as how we think of “authority”)
      • See, for example, the fights over digital scholarship & paper(less) library collections (my example)

Chapter 2: Alphabetization and its Discontents

• Natural order (and “joints” in nature–natural breaks in organization)
• Cultural order (and social construction)
• Most of our organizations and categorizations (like alphabetization) are arbitrary and capricious–necessitated by the limitations of physical space and “expert” preference.
• “how we organize our word reflects not only the world but also our interests, our passions, our needs, our dreams.” (40)
• Difference between actual relationship and how relationships are expressed (layout) (42)
• Second-order media limits some orderings–we’ve had to pick some over others. (45)

Chapter 3: The Geography of Knowledge

• The Library, the Dewey Decimal System, and classification schemes
  • Dewey–interested in democratizing knowledge, empowering everyone to be a lifelong learner (another version of personal agency??); the old “warehouse” library system required experts to retrieve knowledge.
  • Three big ideas (synthesized)
    • There could be a single, universal way to catalog books — arranging them relative to one another rather than fixing them to one spot on a shelf.
    • Books could be arranged by subject (spatializing ideas)
      • Ancient notion of a “memory palace” (Cicero, earlier?)
    • Topics could be ordered by decimal numbers
      • Limitations: arbitrary reason (dewey loved decimals), assumes 10base for everything, implied hierarchy of numerals
  • “Problem endemic to large classification systems tied to the physical world” (56) — it’s an attempt to fix that which is fluid: “knowledge itself is unfixed”
• Amazon: overturning Dewey’s three big ideas:
  • Singe universal system? Amazon provides a “unique organization for each user” (62)
  • Subject arrangement? Amazon tries to find every method of organization & relationship possible
  • Precise, predictable, unique decimals? Amazon throws all of that to the wayside, with abandon.
• “Any map of knowledge assumes that knowledge has a geography, that it has a top-down view, that it has a shape.” (63)  That assumption “unnecessarily inhibits the useful miscellaneous of the third [order of order].

Chapter 4: Lumps and Splits

• nesting–one of the most powerful ways of organizing ideas (listing metadata in a meaningful way)
  • Fundamental technique of human understanding (68)
  • Lumping & splitting
• Discussion of Plato’s Forms and Aristotelian Definition (68ff)
  • Aristotle: a category is a definition that explained why some things fit into it and others don’t (as opposed to platonic eternal perfect form that we participate in)
• Trees–powerful way to understand a complex system
  • Assumptions of trees: (70)
    • A good tree gives each thing a place; too much miscellany means a tree isn’t doing its job
    • Each thing gets only one place
    • No one category should be too big/too small
    • Defining principles of each category should be obvious
      • The Mistake Made With Trees: That they aren’t just convenient ways of categorizing knowledge, they’re indicative of how the cosmos itself is organized (how hubristic!)
      • “reality” — clean and comprehensively knowable?
• Linneaus–also wanted to democratize knowledge (classification of natural order–and before Darwin & evolutionary theory, mind you)
• Faceted classification system (78) — nesting beyond paper?
• Paper implicitly shapes knowledge into trees, in the third order of order, a leaf can hang on many branches, different branches for different people, and can change branches if we want it to. (83)

Chapter 5: The Laws of the Jungle

• What’s our problem with the miscellaneous, anyway? (87)
  • Mixing things up can be great for creativity, but bad for finding things
  • Overmiscellanous categories can be a sign that the system isn’t really using the right information
• Every time you organize matters one ways, you disorder them in others (88)
  • Order often hides more than it reveals
  • Order gives those in control of information more power than those who created it.
• “Classification is a power struggle–because the first two orders of order require that there be a winner” (91)
  • Enter tags (instead of forcing things into categories/folders)– (delicious)
    • tags let individuals remember things their own way
    • Public tags (social bookmarking), tag streams, tag feeds, can be incredibly powerful
  • Enter aggregators (google, iTunes, etc) allowing objects to available free of their old structures
• With the digital, organization & taxonomy is free from what’s being organized.  You’re not moving THINGS.
• Four traditional characteristics of knowledge: (100)
  • There is one reality, thus one knowledge, true and the same for all
  • Just as reality is not ambiguous, the same for knowledge
  • Because knowledge is as big as reality, no one person can filter it, so we need experts to do so for us.
  • Experts achieve their position by working their way up through social institutions
    • SHOWS WHAT’S AT STAKE WITH THE THIRD ORDER MISCELLANY
• Four new ways to understand knowledge:  (102ff)
  • Filter on the way out, not the way in.
    • The value of abundance is that you can locate what’s of value to you at a particular context, there is an increase in shared potential for knowledge
  • Put each leaf on as many branches as possible
    • More findable, more usable, more (profitable)
  • Everything is metadata, everything can be a label
    • Metadata–what you already know; data–what you’re trying to find out.
    • Everything is connected, therefore everything is metadata
  • Give up control
    • We can’t predict what will be truly valuable to people
    • Owners of information no longer own organization of information

Chapter 6: Smart Leaves

• Spime: a physical object whose location and status is constantly tracked and recorder (111)
• Essentialism: everything is defined by clear and knowable traits that make it into what it is.  Everything was easier when we all believed in essentialism
• Intertwingularity:  (125)

• Intertwingularity is a term coined by Ted Nelson to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.
• Nelson wrote in Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Nelson 1974, p. DM45):
  • EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly.
• and added the following comment in the revised edition (Nelson 1987, p. DM31):
  • Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t.

• Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity>

• • Are unique ids realistically possible?

Chapter 7: Social Knowing

• Relevance, social binding, atomization vs molecularization, culture of relevance, social expertise, conections
  • What’s the divide between social expertise & the wisdom of the herd? (The Daily Me)
• Expert’s hysteria is understandable–we’re taking away their control and judgment, their ownership (through filtering)
  • Knowledge is becoming even more of a social construct than it was before!!
• Anonymity, credentials, and ethos (135)
  • Credibility is about contributions, not credentials, on wikipedia.
  • The interaction and argument that goes on in social knowing situations shows the inherent rhetoricity of the situation.
  • Neutrality–a function of social interaction, not a quality of writing ot be judged from on high
  • Accuracy–a product of community? (take it back to Bruffee, normal and abnormal discourse, in “Collaborative learning and the conversation of mankind” (CE 46.7, 1984)
• Does a text’s automatic injection of ethos make us more active or passive readers? (142) (Weinberger argues more passive)
• Lessons of wikipedia: conversation improves expertise by exposing weakness, introducing new viewpoints, and pushing ideas into accessible form (145)
  • KEY TO OUR PROJECT THIS TERM?

• Print limitations–requiring documents to be declared finished and unambiguous, alone and unlinked to other texts and sources
• Wikis and weblogs–getting people on the same page, and distributing conversation and knowledge across space and time (146)
  • “What you learn [in the digital world of information] isn’t prefiltered and approved, sitting on a shelf, waiting to be consumed. […] The knowledge exists in the connections and in the gaps; it requires active engagement.” (146)
  • In digital order, we can not only listen to POVs easier, we can participate easier.  PERSONAL AGENCY
    • Diversity moves us past individual bias and its pitfalls (?)

Chapter 8: What Nothing Says

• Implicit data, explicit data
• We can read metadata before we learn to read; reading as sign takes longer than getting a symbol.
• Computers deal only with the explicit, what they’ve been told, and are causing a “disruption of the delicate ecology of the implicit and explicit” (154)
• “Interests” lists
  • Complex social artifact that comes from goals, self-image, anticipations of interpretations of others
  • Explicitness is a social act with consequences (like friending your mom on FB)
• We can’t say everything we know (tacit knowledge) (160)
  • The implicit “is potential to be mined, clustered, sorted, and mixed (162)
• Folksonomy (165)
• Tags–amplification system for memory
• Basic techniques for resolving the dialectic between tagging for private use and for public good, from computers’ increasing power to reconstruct the implicit based on the explicit (166)
  • With enough people tagging, a system doesn’t have to rely on tags of a single person
  • Computer can learn from sets of tags people apply to pages (come to conclusions about organization of information)
  • Intersect a tagging system with online social network, and much of the content that tags ignore can be brought back in
  • Clues may be within pages tagged themselves
    • The computer could be wrong, but with more tags & clusters, the potential for meaning, relevance, and clarity is stronger (168)
• Heidegger: the meaning of a particular things  is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world (170)
• McLuhan–sometimes the externalization not only extends but changes that which is externalized (170)
• When we tag, when we contextualize, when me make the implicit explicit, we create an “infrastructure of meaning” (and it’s got agency written all over it)

Chapter 9: Messiness as a Virtue

• We straighten up third-order messes by arranging metadata, not objects
• “third-order messes reverse entropy, becoming more meaningful as they become messier, with more relationships built in.” (176)
• Counter to thousands of years’ worth of assumption, we CAN know what something means even if it can’t be clearly defined and even if its boundaries can’t be sharply drawn (185)
  • Eleanor Rosch, prototype concepts, undisputed examples of concepts
• Tagosphere, semantic web, links–”sort of, kind-of” clustering.
  • How can we KNOW anything?
    • What does that even mean?

Chapter 10: The Work of Knowledge

• Some questions raised by social knowing and miscellany:
  • Is knowledge being fragmented? Are we being fragmented along with it?
  • What happens to the very nature of a topic when there are so many ways to carve up nature?
  • Does knowledge stay simple and orderly?
  • Does knowledge retain its privileged position?
  • If everything is miscellaneous, why doesn’t it stay that way?

• Does fragmentation cause groups to become more extreme and polarized in their views? (201)
  • Does the web work against polarization?
  • Utopian vision of the internet is just that, utopian; but it does provide “more equality” (rather than perfect equality)
  • the goal in most conversations is understanding (discussing difference while standing on shared ground)
    • Conversation thrives on difference (which is a traditional sign that knowledge hasn’t been reached)
• Knowledge–students of mcluhan argue (plausibly) that the modern notion of knowledge and expertise came about because of the invention of the printing press (206).
  • What happens to experts when topics crumble?
  • See the sprawl quote on 207–the Cambridge don being quoted says “one’s encyclopedias” — assumption that the encyclopedia of one (presumably him) is the encyclopedia of all, and should be so, despite the recognition of idiosyncratic interests and things “one wants to know”
  • Print forces editors to make unnatural decisions, and layers symbolism onto the length of topics (207)
    • Importance versus interest
    • A topic (in the misc) is anything someone somewhere is interested in.
• Complexified knowledge
  • Blogs, for example, make the simplified complex
  • Customers taking revenge for being treated like simpletons
  • Chaos theory, complexity theory, emergence theory (211)
• What’s happening to knowledge we already know?  What’s happening to how we develop knowledge?  What will be knowledge’s role in the externalized web of meaning we’re spinning?
  • Wikipedia and Google are Commoditizing knowledge–the “facts in boxes” are settled knowledge,
  • But not all knowledge will be commod. –
    • There’s always more to discover and argue about
    • There’s always a need to localize the commoditized (215)
  • Developing knowledge–has also been determined by economics of paper, this can be changing.  Paper still has its authority, but now we can access Aristotle’s “excluded middle” (218)
• Essentialism is falling, connection is the growth of meaning
  • Knowledge is not the whole project, the highest calling.  Making sense of what we know is the broader, better, harder task. (222)
    • And how humanistic of a task!!
• Paper’s physicality, immutability, solitude & the problems it made (229) about how we understand knowledge
  • Changes in cultural beliefs that: Truth means accuracy, effectiveness means adherence to clear lines of command, control, knowledge is power.
    • It’s not right & wrong, ti’s negotiated, contextualized, understood, embodied points of view
    • It’s not who you report to, it’s how you’re connected, how meaningful are the links
    • It’s not what you know, it’s how much knowledge you give away.  Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence (230)

Things to reread in Weinberger, sections 1699-1786

“New Properties, New Strategies, New Knowledge” (pp. 100-6 in Chapter 5)

The traditional view of knowledge is based on four principles/characteristics:

1. Just as there is one reality, there is one knowledge, the same for all. (1707-15)
2. Just as reality is unambiguous, so is knowledge. (1707-15)
   Conversely, if there is no possibility of certainty, it is not a matter of knowledge at all (1715-22).
3. Because knowledge is as big as reality, no one person can comprehend it. So we need people who will act as filters, using their education, experience, and clear thinking. We call them experts and we give them clipboards. (They will protect us and feed us.) (1715-22)
4. Experts achieve their position by working their way up through social institutions.

Four New Principles for Structuring Knowledge

[What follows is excerpted from pages 100-106 in Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous.

Over the course of the millennia, we’ve developed sophisticated methods and processes for developing, communicating, and preserving knowledge…. Now we have to invent new ways appropriate to the new shape of knowledge. We are doing so at a pace unparalleled in our history.

Four new strategic principles are emerging, severing the ties between the way we organize physical objects and ideas.

1. Filter on the way out, not on the way in. ….when anyone can publish at the press of a button, the socia1 role of gatekeepers changes. For example, from the outside the “blogosphere” looks like a self-indulgent pool of slush that wouldn’t get past the usual publishing filters. While the economics of publishing ensures that most blogs indeed wouldn’t be let through the gates, the aggregate value of all the blogs in the “long tail” (to use the term Chris Anderson made popular in his book of that name)-each perhaps of interest to only a few people-is incalculable. This is an inversion of the old model. In a world of parsimonious access to paper, filters increase the value of what’s available by excluding the slush. But in the third order, where there’s an abundance of access to an abundance of resources, filtering on the way in decreases the value of that abundance by ruling out items that might be of great value to a few people. Filtering on the way out, on the other hand, increases the value of the abundance by locating what’s of value to a particular person at a particular moment.
2. Put each leaf on as many branches as possible. In the real world, a leaf can hang from only one branch. In the first order of organization, there’s no way around that limitation. In the second order, most cataloging systems have provisions for listing books under more than one heading, but the physicality of the second order still usually demands that one branch be picked as the primary one, and there is a limit on the number of secondary listings.In the third order, however, it’s to our advantage to hang information from as many branches as possible…. Hanging a leaf on multiple branches makes it more findable by customers. Unlike In the second order, this doesn’t make your e-store disorganized or messy. It makes it more usable … and more profitable.
3. Everything is metadata and everything can be a label. ….In the first two orders of order, we’ve had to think carefully about which metadata we’ll capture because the physical world limits the amount of metadata we can make available: A book’s catalog card has to hold far less information than does the book itself. In the third order, not only can every word in a book count as metadata, so can any of the sources that link to the book. If we want to help our customers or users find information, we’ll try to make as much of it usable as metadata as we can.This not only makes sites easier to use, it vastly increases the leverage of knowledge…. The power of the miscellaneous comes directly from the fact that in the third order, everything is connected and therefore everything is metadata.
4. Give up control. Build a tree and you surface information that might otherwise be hidden, just as Lamarck exposed information left hidden in Linnaeus’s miscellaneous category of worms. But a big pile of miscellaneous information contains relationships beyond reckoning. No one person or group is going to be able to organize it in all the useful ways, hanging all the leaves on all the branches where they might be hung.That’s why it’s so powerful to let users mix it up for themselves…. Users are now in charge of the organization of the information they browse. Of course, the owners of that information may still want to offer a prebuilt categorization, but that is no longer the only-or best-one available. Put simply, the owners of information no longer own the organization of that information.

In this world, the burden for learning shifts from teacher to student. Learning as an assertion of personal agency.

We are looking for a more pragmatic approach to things—hopefully, says Fred.

It’s not what you know, and it’s not even who you know. It’s how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence.

Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger

Răsfoind net-ul, am dat peste Blogul lui AG. Weinberger.

…şi o părere cel puţin la fel de tristă ca a mea despre Industria de la noi.

Pornind de la un pueril incident – să zicem – organizatoric, îmi pun întrebări despre firescul şi legitimitatea industriei muzicale de la noi. Nici măcar nu mă mai amăgesc cu comparaţii… Caracterul global evident necesar unei industrii profitabile este condiţionată de pricepere şi know-how. Showbiz-ul nostru este ca un cîine care-şi muşcă singur coada. Dacă nu se schimbă atitudinea afacerea se va imploda foarte curînd. Urmărind din interior fenomenul mă îndoiesc că ar exista pricepuţi în domeniu, sau oricum prea puţini ca să aibă vreo influenţă. Tot ce vedem, tot ce auzim este făcut „după ureche” – să mă exprim în stil. Poate mă aflu prea mult sub influenţa normalităţii şi a business-ului sănătos. Se pare că acest lucru constituie prerogatoriul pentru o acută izolare de showbizul gen „daciada-bumbeștilivezeni-cîntarearomâniei-brigadeartistice-cencluri-casastudenţilor-şuşe” – cea ce se practică la noi unde trebuie să fii băiat de gaşcă şi să ştii multe bancuri idioate ca să fi în „zamă”. Talentul, priceperea, originalitatea nici nu conteză. Ce să mai vorbesc de cineva care preferă o viaţă privată şi discretă. Doar un singur segment al industriei de entertainment îşi poate aroga dreptul de a lua decizii la o şampanie: politica. În rest este pură disciplină. Poate doar tu, onorabilul cititor vei înţelege editorialul meu, că pe cei din industria mea de acasă nu prea pot conta. Cu toate că eu deţin soluţii…

Nu Vă Lăsaţi Păcăliţi!

agw

Über die Bildung von Marken und Bildung als Marke. Den Begriff “Markenbildung” habe ich erstmals 2002 verwendet, als Titel meiner Antrittspräsentation für das Konzernmarketing der COGNOS AG. Damals ging es u.a. darum, inwiefern eine Dachmarke für die Vermarktung einzelner Bildungsunternehmen relevant ist, und welchen Mehrwert sie im Gefüge liefert. Eine – klar – immer noch spannende Frage, über die ich später mehr schreiben werde. Doch war die Frage in der genannten Situation nicht akademisch, sondern unternehmerisch zu lösen – lohnt es sich, in den Aufbau einer Bildungsmarke zu investieren? Eine Antwort ist zumindest klar: jedes Bildungsunternehmen kommuniziert: mit potenziellen Kunden (Schülern, Studenten und Teilnehmern), mit deren Geldgebern (Eltern, Großeltern oder Firmen) und mit der Öffentlichkeit. Und je klarer und sympathischer das Bild ist, das durch diese Kommunikation entsteht, desto besser macht sich diese Kommunikation bezahlt. “Markenbildung” ist also keine Frage des Budgets, sondern dessen optimaler Verwendung. Heute ist ja bekanntlich alles anders – um mit David Weinberger & Co. zu sprechen: “Marken sind Gespräche” (auf diesen Spruch ist mokono auch schon gekommen, aber dadurch wird er nicht weniger wahr). Darüber werde ich hier künftig schreiben und ein bisschen sammeln.

John Perkins era un respetado miembro de la comunidad financiera internacional, pero en realidad se dedicaba a operaciones económicas ilícitas en el Tercer Mundo para el gobierno de los Estados Unidos. Acaba de publicarse en Estados Unidos su autobiografía, en la que John Perkins detalla cómo ayudó a Washington a estafar a países pobres prestándoles dinero que no podrían devolver para después apoderarse de sus economías.

En una reciente entrevista con Amy Goodman, locutora del programa “Democracy Now” (Democracia Ya!) del National Public Radio en Estados Unidos, Perkins confiesa lo que todos sospechan pero nadie ha querido creer. Lo que sigue fue extractado de esa extensa entrevista traducida por Michael Sondow -Periodista. El libro de John Perkins, se titula “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” (Confesiones de un Sicario Económico), y fue editado en San Francisco, California por Berrett-Koehler el 2004. El libro no ha sido traducido aún al castellano. Vamos al desarrollo de la entrevista:

P.- Explíquenos qué quiere decir sicario económico.

–Básicamente, lo que nos enseñaron a hacer es reforzar el imperio estadounidense. Crear situaciones donde el máximo número de recursos naturales fluyan a este país, a nuestras corporaciones y nuestro gobierno, y en efecto hemos tenido mucho éxito. Construimos el imperio más grande de la historia. Esto se logró durante los últimos cincuenta años, desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial, con muy poca intervención militar. Es sólo en casos como Irak donde lo militar entra como último recurso. Este imperio, a diferencia de cualquier otro de la historia, fue constituido principalmente a través de la manipulación económica, de la estafa, el fraude, la seducción de la gente por nuestra manera de vivir, y a través de operativos económicos. Estuve muy involucrado en todo eso.

P.- ¿Cómo llegó a eso? ¿Para quién trabajaba?

–Inicialmente fui reclutado cuando estudiaba negocios en la universidad en los años sesentas, por la National Security Agency (Agencia Nacional de Seguridad de Estados Unidos), la organización nacional de espionaje más grande y menos conocida, pero luego trabajé para corporaciones privadas. El primer verdadero sicario económico en los años cincuenta fue Kermit Roosevelt, nieto de Teddy, quien derrocó al gobierno de Irán, un gobierno elegido democráticamente –el gobierno de Mossadegh–, y quien fuera el “hombre del año” de la revista Time. Y tuvo enorme éxito haciendo eso sin derramar sangre, bueno, hubo algo de sangre pero ninguna intervención militar, sólo gastando millones de dólares y reemplazando a Mossadegh por el Sha. Entonces nos dimos cuenta de que esta idea del sicario económico era muy buena. El problema fue que Kermit Roosevelt era agente de la agencia CIA. Era un empleado del gobierno. Si lo hubiesen atrapado, nos habríamos encontrado en un lío. Habría sido un escándalo. Entonces allí se tomó la decisión de usar organizaciones como la CIA y la NSA para reclutar potenciales sicarios económicos como yo, y después enviarnos a trabajar para empresas privadas, consultorías, de ingeniería, de construcción para que, si nos agarraban, no hubiera conexión con el gobierno.

P.- Bien, ahora explíquenos el trabajo que hizo.

–La compañía para la cual trabajé se llamaba Charles T. Main, de Boston, Massachussets. Éramos alrededor de dos mil empleados y yo era el economista principal. Terminé teniendo cincuenta personas en mi equipo. Pero mi verdadero trabajo fue el de hacer tratos, dar préstamos a otros países, enormes préstamos, mucho mayores de la que ellos podrían devolver. Una de las condiciones de un préstamo, digamos de unos mil millones de dólares, a un país como Indonesia o Ecuador, era que este país tendría que dar 90 por ciento del préstamo a una empresa estadounidense para construir infraestructura, una Halliburton o Bechtel. Eran grandes. Esas empresas entonces entraron y construyeron un sistema de energía eléctrica o puertos o autopistas, y estos proyectos básicamente servían sólo a algunas de las familias más ricas de esos países. La gente pobre de aquellos países quedaba clavada con esta asombrosa deuda que no podrían devolver. Un país como Ecuador hoy debe destinar más del 50 por ciento de su presupuesto nacional sólo para pagar la deuda. Y no puede hacerlo. Los tenemos con el agua al cuello. Entonces, cuando queremos más petróleo, vamos a Ecuador y les decimos: “Mire, no pueden pagar sus deudas, pues entréguenos sus bosques amazónicos, que están llenos de petróleo, a nuestras compañías petroleras”.
Y hoy estamos entrando y destrozando a la Amazonia, obligando a Ecuador a entregárnosla porque acumuló tanta deuda. Cuando hacemos un préstamo enorme, la mayor parte del cual vuelve a Estados Unidos, el país queda con la duda más los intereses, y básicamente ellos se convierten en nuestros sirvientes, nuestros esclavos. Es el imperio. No hay que equivocarse. Es un inmenso imperio, y ha sido muy exitoso.

P.- Usted dice que a causa de sobornos y otras razones no escribió este libro durante mucho tiempo ¿Qué quiere decir? ¿Quién lo sobornó? ¿Qué sobornos aceptó?

–Acepté un soborno de medio millón de dólares en los años noventa para no escribir el libro.

P.- ¿De?

–De una empresa importante de la construcción.

P.- ¿Cuál?

–Se llama Stoner Webster. Legalmente, no fue un soborno, fue…; me pagaron como consultor. Todo de acuerdo con la ley. Pero esencialmente no hice nada.
Estaba entendido, como expliqué en Confesiones de un Sicario Económico, que cuando acepté el dinero como consultor no tendría que hacer mucho trabajo, sólo no escribir este libro, que en ese momento se llamaba “La Conciencia de un Sicario Económico”.

P.- De Arabia Saudí a Irak- En su libro usted habla de cómo ayudó a poner en práctica un plan secreto para redirigir miles de millones de petrodólares de Arabia Saudita a la economía de Estados Unidos, y que cimentó la íntima relación entre la familia Saud y sucesivos gobiernos de Estados Unidos.
Explique

– Fuimos a Arabia Saudita a principios de los años setentas. Sabíamos que Arabia Saudita era la clave para acabar con nuestra dependencia de la OPEP, o para controlar la situación. Arreglamos un trato a través del cual la familia real Saud aceptó reenviar la mayor parte de sus petrodólares a Estados Unidos e invertirlos en bonos del Tesoro. El Departamento del Tesoro usaría los intereses de esos bonos para pagar a empresas estadounidenses que construirían en Arabia Saudita –ciudades, nueva infraestructura, cosa que hemos hecho. Y la familia Saud aceptó mantener el precio del petróleo dentro de los límites aceptables para nosotros, lo que hicieron todos estos años, y nosotros prometimos mantener a la familia Saud en el poder mientras respetaran el trato, cosa que también hemos hecho, y es una de las razones por las cuales invadimos Irak. Allí, intentamos implantar la misma política que tuvo tanto éxito en Arabia Saudita, pero Saddam Hussein no aceptó.
Cuando los sicarios económicos fracasamos en este escenario, viene la próxima etapa que es la que llamamos de los chacales. Los chacales son individuos habilitados por la CIA que entran e intentan fomentar un golpe de Estado, o un bloque contrario a los gobiernos, o compran líderes populares para organizar manifestaciones o finalmente…, una revolución.
Si eso no da resultado emplean asesinatos, o lo intentan. En el caso de Irak, no pudieron llegar a Saddam Hussein. Sus guardaespaldas eran demasiado buenos. Él tenía dobles. No pudimos llegar a él. Entonces la tercera etapa, si los sicarios económicos y los chacales fracasan, son nuestros jóvenes soldados que enviamos para matar y morir. Que es obviamente lo que ha pasado en Irak.

P.- Era un hombre de principios Omar Torrijos? ¿Puede explicarnos cómo murió Torrijos?

–Omar Torrijos, el entonces presidente de Panamá; un líder latinoamericano.
Omar Torrijos había firmado el Tratado del Canal con Carter… y usted sabe que nuestro Congreso lo ratificó por un solo voto, fue un asunto muy contencioso. Torrijos entonces se adelantó a negociar con los japoneses para construir un canal al nivel del mar. Los japoneses querían financiar y construir un canal al nivel del mar en Panamá.
Torrijos habló con ellos de este tema, lo que molestó mucho a la empresa Bechtel, cuyo presidente era George Schultz y su consejero mayor Caspar Weinberger. Cuando echaron a Carter, y ésa es una historia interesante, ver cómo sucedió realmente, cuando perdió las elecciones y entró Reagan con Schultz como Secretario de Estado -que venía de Bechtel– y Weinberger –que vino también de Bechtel– como secretario de Defensa, estaban muy enojados con Torrijos. Intentaron convencerlo de renegociar el Tratado del Canal y no hablar con los japoneses.
Se negó rotundamente. Era un hombre de principios. Tenía sus problemas, pero era un hombre correcto. Un hombre asombroso, Torrijos. Entonces murió en la caída de un avión en llamas, conectado a una grabadora con explosivos dentro, que … , …. Yo estaba allí, estaba trabajando con él. Sabía que nosotros, los sicarios económicos, habíamos fracasado. Sabía que los chacales se acercaban. Y acto seguido, explotó su avión con una grabadora conteniendo una bomba. No cabe duda de que fue organizado por la CIA y muchos investigadores estadounidenses llegaron a la misma conclusión. Por supuesto, nunca nos enteramos de eso en nuestro país.

P.- Hablemos del Banco Mundial y el FMI. ¿Con qué proximidad trabajó usted con el Banco Mundial?

–Muy, muy de cerca. El Banco Mundial proporciona la mayor parte del dinero que financia a los sicarios económicos, él y el FMI. Pero cuando ocurrió el 11 de septiembre, tuve un cambio de sentimientos. Sabía que tenía que contar esta historia porque lo que pasó el 11 de septiembre es el resultado directo de lo que están haciendo los sicarios económicos en los países pobres.

[*] John Perkins, Trabajó para la Firma Consultora Internacional Chas T. Main desde 1971 a 1981 donde se autodefinía como ‘Economic Hit Man’. Transcripción de una entrevista en el programa de Ammy Goodman-democracynow. La entrevista original se encuentra en: www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

Fuente: conejos suicidas

Confesiones de un Ganster Economico, John Perkins

The President of the Tribunal, Lord Chief Justice Lawrence, pronounces the sentences and reads the dissenting Russian opinion

 by Roger Hollander

www.rogerhollander.wordpress.com, February 19, 2009

(SEE UPDATE BELOW)

An essay entitled “Obama’s Justice: Reconciliation Not Retribution” appeared recently in the progressive online journal, Truthout.com (http://www.truthout.org/021809J).  Its author is Cynthia Boaz, assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, who is described as a specialist “in political development, quality of democracy and nonviolent struggle.”

Professor Boaz’s approach was most annoying in that she felt the need to set up a straw man (the notion that those who want justice want it for purposes of retribution) and resort to the ad hominem by characterizing those who are pushing for investigations and prosecution of the Bush era crimes as “disgruntled, self-identified progressives” and comparing them to “villagers wielding torches and pitchforks.”

But such annoyances pale in light of the implication of her thesis in support of Obama as a “unifier,” and his mission of “reconciliation, not retribution” in an attempt to justify Obama’s oxymoronic and disingenuous statement that he believes in the rule of law but would rather look forward rather than backward.

(To her credit Professor Boaz acknowledges that the Bush administration may have committed misdeeds “which in some cases, rise to the level of crimes against humanity” and does not argue that they should not be brought to justice.  Her point is that justice should not be politicized, that the president should not seek “retribution” for his predecessor)

In the real world justice in fact usually occurs in a political context – especially when crimes occur at the higher levels of government.  Obama recognizes this and his remarks to George Stephanopoulos were in response to overwhelming public sentiment for him to appoint a special prosecutor as reflected in his transition sounding exercise.  Presidents do appoint Special Prosecutors and the United States Attorney General.  Presidents grant pardons, often controversial and often of a political nature (Ford/Nixon; Reagan/Weinberger, North, Irangate).  The political and the judicial are indeed intertwined.

Talking about “reconciliation” and “looking forward rather than backward” is in itself a blatant political intrusion in the world of justice.  If Obama were not signaling to the heads of the Justice Committees in both houses of Congress (and the American people) that he would prefer for them to back off, then he simply would have affirmed his commitment to the rule of law and left it at that.

The evidence that is already in the public domain with respect to the knowingly false pretense for the invasion of Iraq, the high level authorization of torture, the extraordinary renditions, the wiretapping, the U.S. Attorney firings, etc. is so overwhelming that – in spite of the sacred principle of “innocent until proven guilty” – the American and world public cannot be faulted for demanding that the Nuremberg principles be applied to the neo-fascist Bush clique.  That former Vice President Cheney, who is universally considered to have been the Bush administration Godfather, has been making the rounds boasting about his role in committing in effect what are crimes against humanity, constitutes an open challenge to anyone who takes the rule of law seriously.  Given the literally millions of human beings whose lives have been destroyed or seriously debilitated by the actions of the Bush administration and the gross violations of constitutional and international law, the imperative for speedy justice within the context of due process is overwhelming.

What I fear is some kind of Truth Commission based on the premise of giving immunity for the sake of getting the truth out.  This, I believe, is what Obama was getting at with his “looking forward” remark and what Professor Boaz would like to see.  Such a notion mocks the concept and dignity of Justice.  It gives no closure to those who have suffered at the hands of high level war criminals and it has little or no deterrent effect.  What it is is politically expedient. 

Do I expect to ever see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Wolfowitz et. al. in a United States court of law charged with high crimes?  Honestly I do not (but I didn’t ever expect to see the election of an Afro-American president in my lifetime either).  But genuine truth, reconciliation and justice demand that such high crimes be investigated and prosecuted; those who suffered deserve justice; and the future of what is left of constitutional democracy is worth fighting for.

What is more, if President Barak Obama or anyone else acts in any way to impede or frustrate the carrying out of justice, they become to some extent complicit with the principal perpetuators.

UPDATE (May 1, 2009)

There has been a lot of -pardon the pun - wate(boarding) under the bridge since I wrote this piece in mid February.  If you surf around my Blog or the many Blogs I post on it, you will find dozens if not hundreds of articles on the issue of torture and criminal responsibility for it.  Just today, for example, I posted an excellent article by Glenn Greenwald that appeared in salon.com which documented the words of, of all people, Ronald Reagan, who, in introducing the law that made torture a serious crime in the United States, states that torture is a crime, with no exception for extraordinary circumstances (including, presumably, the phony “ticking time bomb” scenario).  Ronald Reagan!

Professor Boaz, who is the target of my criticism in the original article above, had argued that those of us demanding that now President Obama take criminal action against the Torturers were misunderstanding the role of the presidency.  Investigation and criminal prosecution in the bailiwick of the Judicial System, not the presidency she tells us.  I wonder what she is thinking now that President Obama has heard, tried and exonerated the CIA agents who carried out the war crime known as torture.

During the longest eight years in history that we lived through under Bush/Cheney, one felt that what was happening as if it were in the realm of the surreal.  Anti-war election results, and the war escalates (excuse me, surges).  Torture with impunity.  Habeas Corpus out the window.  Warrantless wiretapping.  An ideologically politicized Justice Department.  Signing Statements allowing the President to ignore laws passed by Congress.  Dr. Strangeglove figures such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Gonzales; and Darth Vader himself disguised as Dick Cheney, bunker and all.

May the goddess help me, I am having the same surrealistic dizziness all over again.  The Attorney General declares that waterboarding is torture.  Torture is a crime.  Therefore … do nothing about it.  The President releases evidence in the form of the infamous torture memos that, that along with photographic and other (International Red Cross, for example) evidence, leaves no doubt about the nature and extent of the torture; and then he proceeds to grant amnesty to those who committed the crimes.  They were only following orders, he says, as the Nuremburg amnesia sets in alongside the swine flu.  Pelosi and Reid want investigations … in secret (!).  The mainstream media, as it did under Bush/Cheney, plays along with the Alice in Wonderland fantasies, and the maniacs on the neo-Fascist Right have convinced a signficant percentage of Americans that torture is not a crime under “certain circumstances.”  The torture memos written by John Yoo and Jay Bybee are so patently phony and Kafkesque that Yoo is invited to teach law in Orange County and Bybee is made a Federal Judge.

It has been suggested that President Obama doesn’t feel there is the political will to prosecute the war criminals, which is why he has been so wishy-washy, but that he has released the tortue memos and is soon to release more photos as a way to achieve that will.  I don’t believe this, but that doesn’t matter.  Only by latching on to the the issue like a pit bull and refusing to let go can we who believe in Decency and Justice bring the American War Criminals to justice.

I’ve just caught up with some of the Multiliteracies tasks (Electronic Village Online 2009) from two weeks ago, including the debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keen on Weinberger’s All Things are Miscellaneous. Here’s some first thoughts.

The Weinberger-Keen debate is a hoot. Weinberger of course (!) is right, more or less, and Keen is wrong, mostly; that much is easy. However the interesting thing is, why? The fundamental difference between their approaches is that Weinberger sees the changing structures in the new media environment as giving rise t0 changing roles and opportunities for all – readers, writers, consumers, producers – which in turn are helping to create a more participatory and democratic culture. Weinberger is enthusiastic about these developments – very enthusiastic.

Keen however sees in all this a collapse of cultural authority, with the arbiters of knowledge falling from their pedestals, and being replaced by a free-for-all where any Tom, Dick or Harry can have their say, and there’s no-one left to tell us what’s good and what’s bad, what’s right and what’s wrong.

He talks up the role of ‘traditional’ media in promoting cultural values, and claims that they have always allowed talent to rise to the surface. No-one, he says, has been prevented from having their work published just because they’re black, or female.

Well, where do you start? With generation after generation of black people deprived of liberty, education, economic independence, civic participation, perhaps? Something similar could be said for women, of whatever race, and in whatever part of the world.

Keen is trapped within an old-fashioned, restricted, patrician definition of culture, which is essentially conservative, despite his protestations, and never did adequately describe cultural processes anyway. What is glaringly absent from such a view is the question of social class, and its political ramifications – this is no surprise, as conservatives rarely recognise these issues. Our ‘traditional’ media cost a lot of money to run, and they have always been funded by the social, political and economic elites. They mostly represent the values and/or interests of those elites, whether the cultures they promote are considered ‘high’ or ‘low’. The new media gives the rest of us a chance to escape this stranglehold, and that is what makes conservatives nervous.

It’s great having the debate on video – the contrast between the confident, hyperactive, gabbling Weinberger and the nervous, defensive, hesitant Keen is telling, and the body language is fascinating. Keen clearly felt himself to be in the lion’s den, and some of the floor speakers seemed to relish their chance to play at being lions.

The debate is from June 2007, and 20 months is a long time in the new media world. I wondered how these two would approach these issues now. The change in title of Keen’s book, from one year to the next, gives an indication of the path he has taken:

2007: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture

2008: The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, Myspace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-generated Media are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values

I look forward to the follow-up: How YouTube caused the credit crunch (2009)

“What happens with the monkeys have the technology of the Gods at their paw tips? Media will be transformed into ubiquitous chatter — into an audio-video version of Twitter.”

Do you think this is starting to happen right now?  What do you think the Web will be like as our generation gets older?

“The problem, however, with Web 2.0 is that most of the conversation seems to be taking place anonymously, conducted — in a manner of speaking — by people who are more interested in vulgar insult than respectful intellectual intercourse.”

Have you ever been a victim or culprit of anonymous insults on your SNS’s?  Do you think this trend is increasing or decreasing with the growth of Web 2.0?

Mr. Weinberger, in his last rebuttle, seems to agree with the concept of collective intelligence by claiming the amateur’s point of view on the web is just as important as the professional.  It’s great to have a psychologist publicly explain why people are rioting against a hot issue like gay marriage, but it’s just as important to hear it from the source, who may personally blog about it.  They may not be as well-versed, but they bring an authentic passion to the issue that we can’t get from a structured, hard news story.

It seems that professionalism and amateurism go hand in hand: one cannot survive without the other.

“Keen vs. Weinberger (text)“

This article was an argument about the new thing web 2.0.  Web 2.0 lets people from all over the world show their many different talents around the world.  Keen is against this idea and Weinberger was in favor for the idea.  Keen said that it does not let people get their true talents out because it is better in person then seeing it through a screen.  Weinberger thinks that Web 2.0 is a great idea to let people get their talents out and let millions of people see it.  Like the articles before this article there are many options and opportunities to show your talents on the internet.  People can actually gain a career out of this.  So basically keen is for the traditional way if you will and weinberger likes change.  

1) Do you agree with Keen or Weinberger?  Why?

2) Do you like the whole Web 2.0 idea? Explain.

All Articles will be composed into 1 Response

The art of blogging basically doesn’t make you much money or much praise either unless you are really good at it. Many celebrities such as Mark Cuban are good at blogging even though they have a very busy day job. They do it just to share information and learn from one another. The basics of blogging aren’t hard, but in order to be successful you just need to be yourself, and write about what you want to. Keeping a steady pace too is important because if you get ahead of yourself, then your readers wont want to come back not knowing when a post will be there. Finally, don’t make it an everyday job because it doesn’t pay well. Now, people who post images on Flickrwill get money for someone to buy them. That is a great service since its always good to have extra cash. Some of these photos may get up to 600 dollars and that is great. I am thinking about posting a few pictures in order to get some money. I am sure these photos are excellent and probably the photographers put so much time and effort into them too. The reason why we should all blog is that this person is going to get 300,000 dollars for there blog to be written as a book. That is a great idea to make more great books that people will read, and it is good for the founder who is going to be rich. I guess if you have a really good idea for a blog and it becomes very popular, it is always good to check if it can become a book. That is really cool, but I am sure that this doesn’t happen often at all. Ms. Digby is very lucky that she was found on the internet. I get the point I missed though, she already had a record deal in place to do these music videos. It is not like she was just being discovered. Still, it is good that she is getting recognition for her hard work. That is the opportunity the Internet gives us all. I know one of my friends wanted to play football in college and was not getting recruited, but once he put his highlight tape on Youtube the phones rang and he is now playing at a very good school. Blogs give people a place to express themselves more than anything else. They can talk about any subject they want to and people can comment back to express their own thoughts too. This is what makes blogging great because people can learn from one another just by reading someone elses blog. They can make responses to what they read to formulate their own opinion. This is how blogging has evolved over the years. It started off as just posting information, but today you can personalize your blog to fit your needs and what you want to talk about. Blogs offer people an escape from their everyday life that nothing else can really offer. sometimes in tough times today we really need that escape.

In this class so far, how do you like blogging and do you think you will continue once the class ends?

How do you like the idea of people buying photos off Flickr from yourself?

Do you think blogs can survive as a book?

Would you post any of your talents on Youtube in order to become famous?

What are your feelings when you blog about a topic that you really enjoy talking about?

Keen vs. Weinberger

The article goes back and forth with the two authors arguing about if Web 2.0 is good or is it bad. Mr. Keen talks about how the Internet and the open society is hurting our newspapers and television news. This is true because people arent watching or reading the news much anymore. The people are just reading the Internet and writing about what they want to talk about. Mr. Weinberger agrees that the Internet is not a good thing, but it isnt hurting our society. He says life on the web is like life before the web where people would do the same thing but with regular chatting. He also thinks that there are too many voices on the web to talk about certain topics, and there is no medium to control what people want to say. There is no governenance and thats why we dont trust most of the bloggers out there and what they say. Thats why we stay with most of our trusted sites. Mr. Keen believes that people should write their intellectual work and sell it for monetary value instead of putting it on blogs. Blogs offer a way to show our talents online which we havent had people do for a long time. I believe people need to show their inner talents because some of them might be too shy to show it in the real world. This is a way to express themselves online, and offer the world a piece of their own mind. I like blogs and I think it is the new way of providing information to the world.

Do you think that blogs are the new way of providing information?

Nein, ausnahmsweise waren es mal nicht die Schweizer. Andrew Keen, selbsternannter führender Internetkritiker, sieht im Web 2.0 das Werkzeug zur Verdummung der Massen. Teufelswerk!

Seiner Meinung nach sorgen Blogs, Wikis, all die Videoclipseiten und sogar Amateurpornos nicht nur dafür, dass jeder dahergelaufene Depp Dilettant seinen unqualifizierten Senf seinen möglicherweise nicht qualifizierten Content zu jedem x-beliebigen Thema ungefiltert abgeben darf (so wie ich gerade) und damit vielleicht seine Unwissenheit auf andere (das seid vielleicht ihr) überträgt, sondern auch dafür, dass “bewährte Experten” auf der Straße landen und gemeinsam mit den unzähligen durch die Finanzkrise hervorgebrachten Rezessionsvegetariern Hunger leiden müssen.

In seinen Aussagen kann man unter anderem den Wunsch nach Regulierung erkennen, aber wie diese Peer-Reviews aussehen könnten und wer die oberste moralische Kontrollinstanz sein sollte, darauf geht er nicht ein. Warum auch, denn wie soll das bei  zig Millionen Blogs überhaupt möglich sein? Vielleicht gemäß der chinesichen Methode?

Aber Keen ist nicht der Erste, der die Qualität von Blogs kritisiert. Bereits im Jahr 2005 stellte Michael Gorman – damals Vorsitzender der Americal Library Association – ebenfalls fest, dass Blogs von nur minderer Qualität sein können, weil u. a. vor Veröffentlichung von Artikeln eben keine Prüfung durch qualifizierte Redakteure vorgenommen wird. Auch im Buch “Generation Doof” von Anne Weiss  und Stefan Bonner ist beim Thema Blogs die Rede von der “ungefilterten und langweiligen Dummheit der Masse”.

Welchen Anspruch ein Blogger überhaupt verfolgt und welche Zielgruppe erreicht werden soll, das scheint  nebensächlich zu sein, Hauptsache der Inhalt ist qualitativ hochwertig.

Falls man dann auf einem dieser “unschönen” bzw. inhaltlich anspruchslosen Blogs landet, wer hindert einen eigentlich daran, das Gleiche wie beim Fernsehen zu tun und einfach um- oder auszuschalten? Oder ist die ganze Diskussion nicht sowieso überflüssig, weil uns das Fernsehen schon längst verblödet hat?

Natürlich gibt es auch Blogs, die falsche Informationen verbreiten, vielleicht auch in böswilliger Absicht. Letztendlich spricht Keen uns aber die Fähigkeit ab, richtige von unrichtigen Informationen unterscheiden zu können. Und dass Peer-Review sowie Expertenwissen auch keine Fehler verhindern, kann man beispielsweise anhand der Fehler in der Encyclopædia Britannica erkennen.

Ich empfehle bei Gelegenheit einmal einen Blick in das Buch “Das Ende der Schublade: Die Macht der neuen digitalen Unordnung” von David Weinberger zu werfen. Dort ist die inhaltliche Qualität im Web 2.0 auch ein Thema. Weinberger vertritt hierzu jedoch eine andere Meinung als Keen: Information  kann ruhig ungefiltert sein, denn eben die Menge an ungefilterten Informationen im Web ermöglicht es jedem Einzelnen, sich  zu einem Thema ein Gesamtbild zu machen und somit diese Informationen zu Wissen zu  bündeln.

Wie schon Marcel Reich-Ranicki erst kürzlich mit seiner Aktion zum Thema Qualität im Fernsehen nichts erreicht hat, wird auch das Geschrei von Andrew Keen bald vergessen sein.

]]> http://cavehicdragones.org/2008/10/23/did-weinberger-defy-reagan/ Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:44:28 +0000 CLB http://cavehicdragones.org/2008/10/23/did-weinberger-defy-reagan/

Robert C. McFarlane writes in today’s NYT that Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, refused a “direct order” from President Reagan to deploy US Marines alongside Lebanese Army forces to secure Syrian and Israeli withdrawals rather than have them simply maintain a “presence” in Beirut.

This sounds bizarre to me. At first, McFarlane describes Weinberger’s postiton as a disagreement, but then refers to it as an order. Was Weinberger excluded from discussions with the president that McFarlane and Secretary of State Shultz had? Or were Weinberger’s objections at a National Security Council meeting or other informal venue overruled in the form of a presidential decision memo that Weinberger then ignored?

McFarlane’s account should be clarified.

I love Web 2.0. There, I said it. Does it make me selfish and shallow to say so? According to Andrew Keen, yes. According to David Weinberger, no.

David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Order, heavily discusses the Web site Wikipedia and the process of individuals contributing to make an article more credible and truthful. He has a positive attitude towards this technology and I agree with him, although I do have some minor reservations about Wikipedia.

In Weinberger’s book, Phillip Bradley, a librarian and internet consultant, was quoted as saying that Wikipedia is “a lovely idea,” but “I wouldn’t use it, and I’m not aware of a single librarian who would.”

I’ve used Wikipedia multiple times throughout my school career, but if I did use it, I sometimes double checked the information with other credible sources online. It’s not that I have trust issues with Wikipedia, I just wanna make sure my facts are right. I find it unfortunate that this librarian Bradley refuses to use Wikipedia because it is a good resource and a prime example of the positives coming out of Web 2.0.

David Weinberger and I have many of the same views regarding Web 2.0. We both see it as a conversation and a very much social and personalized thing. As long as a user “plays well with others,” and most do, then things run smoothly and everyone is able to get more information.

Andrew Keen thinks everyone is an amateur who has no business contributing to things like Wikipedia without proper training.

Sorry Keen, I’m with Weinberger on this one and I’ll say it again, I love Web 2.0 and Wikipedia.

Stewie loves Web 2.0 as much as me

In its Everything Considered program NPR has a few commentary podcasts by David Weinberger.   One podcast, “Open Up The Vice Presidential Selection Process”, discusses the uses of the internet as a discussion forum for political dialog.  In another podcast, “The Value of a Man-Made Mess, on the Internet,” Weinberger discusses some of the topics covered in the lecture, “Everything is Miscellaneous”.