Wha, that last link threw you a bit? Why is that? Is it that we are more comfortable confronting racism then sexism? And has the Presidential campaign reflected that? Why?
How we go about fighting racism and sexism, while protecting free speech is confusing territory.
I figure the best way is by speaking out loudly, and clearly.
There are quite a few fellow bloggers who have linked and commented about this – but without more info, it is just conjecture and I don’t wish to add to any of it.
However, I do want to stress the importance of the de-linking – note that the first two pages of Google search results on this subject don’t point to Violet Blue what so ever. You would think they would, but they don’t.
As Rafe states – links are currency on the Web. When we reach a certain level of influence, we’ve earned a responsibility, whether we want to own up to it or not. When we don’t live up to that responsibility, we lose credibility.
Boing Boing, in my book, has lost some.
Related:
Jeff Jarvis: Media is Singular (about time folks come around to this)
A great fellow Philly blogger, upon seeing that recent CNN video of a person ran over with no one helping posted a passionate piece questioning where our society is headed when a group of people can act so unconcerned about someone else’s welfare.
In his comments, I felt the need to remind him of Kitty Genovese.
Phil Ochs’s wrote a song about her in 1967, that, with its refrain, is all too painful.
The lyrics make me feel uncomfortable, and if they make you feel the same, then that says something about their ongoing relevancy.
“Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends”:
Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it’s gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Sweating in the ghetto with the (colored/panthers) and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides, we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Oh, there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine.
But we’re busy reading playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides, we’re much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Oh, look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Down in Santiago where they took away our mines
We cut off all their money, so they robbed the storehouse blind
Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear
But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
I tend to think that the human condition is made of sterner stuff than our culture can throw at it. For good or ill.
That’s why we need to shout from the rooftops the good wherever we may find it. It is out here. There are great stories to tell. Heroes who break the mold everyday.
I know I don’t talk about them enough myself.
But the question is – does anyone care outside our circle of friends?
The NYTimes looks at the effects of DVRs and Web video on mass entertainment. It’s not as clear cut as you think: In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time? – New York Times: “As a result of time-shifting, the biggest shows are getting bigger and some of the smaller shows are getting negatively impacted,” the senior television executive said.
That’s so counter intuitive. In my experience, my TV watching not only increased, but Richelle and me watch a far wider variety of shows.
What Shelley Powers describes in the below linked piece is the current economy that encourages folks like Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears to do whatever it takes to get publicity.
David Shenk’s “Data Smog” put it like this “All high-stim roads lead to Times Square”.
That’s the Web. It is nothing if not high-stim.
Folks like Michael Arrington not only have embraced where that leads, but know how to make a profit from it.
Kevin Kelly, in a piece that cuts away at the hype, describes one possible business model for artists in in “1,000 True Fans”. But he never describes how you are going to find those fans. In an attention based economy, will it force artists to involve the kind of marketing that, in the words of Dave Rogers tries to “exploit love”?
According to people like Michael Arrington all recorded music should be given away for free, and artists make their only income from concerts. If they can’t make their living from concerts, or busking for tossed dimes in the subway, than they should consider music to be their hobby, and get a job digging ditches.
Of course, if we apply the Arrington model to the music industry, we should be able to download all the songs we want-as long as we’re willing to sit through an ad at the beginning and in the middle of every song. Isn’t that how Techcrunch makes money? Ads in the sidebar, taking time to download, hanging up the page. Ads at the bottom of the posts we have to scroll past to get to comments? And in between, loud, cacophonous noise?
It angers me how little value people in this online environment hold the act of creativity. Oh we point to Nine Inch Nails and Cory Doctorow as examples of people who give their work away for free but still make a living. Yet NIN levies an existing fame, selling platinum packages at several hundred a pop to make up for all the freebies, and Doctorow has BoingBoing as a nice cushion for the lean years. They bring “fame” to the mix, and according to the new online business models, you have to play the game, leverage the system if you really want to make a living from your work. We don’t value the work, we value the fame, yet fame doesn’t necessarily come from any act of true creativity.
All you have to do to generate fame nowadays is be controversial enough, say enough that’s outrageous, connect up with the right people in the beginning and then kick them aside when you’re on top to be successful. You don’t have to have artistic talent, create for the ages, or even create at all-just play the game. If you do it right, you get Techcrunch. If you do it wrong, there’s the ditch.
There are far too many who like to paint the future of quality filtered media as either entirely driven by ‘the wisdom of the crowds’ or entirely by ‘the experts and the elite’.
Both these extremist views are wrong as hybrids that combine the best of both have already proven successful and will continue to do so over the long haul, no matter the fashion of the moment.
I was happy to read about Dave Rogers’s and Doc Searls’s conversation on Dave’s blog the other day. Both write about subject matter I care about – various intersections of society and the web – and have opinions I respect, if not always agree with.
The back and forth between them is a great and rare example of how two people of very, very differing opinions can converse and connect across the Web.
So color me sad when I read Stowe Boyd’s response. Yes, Dave called him blowhard. But his denouncement of Dave was downright Cheney-like, putting words in his mouth and even calling Dave an “enemy of the future”.
I hope I never get such an elitist, my-view-is-the-only-correct-view way of looking at the Web or the world.
I made a few important edits to my post yesterday. Added links that gave context. Removed a typo here and there. Did you notice?
Well that’s your fault you see. You’re not media literate.
You are expected to revisit my posts to see edits and updates. As a good host, I should indicate my edits in one fashion or another (which I didn’t do).
Very, very related if you want to see the societal shift this is part of: BusinessWeek: “I Want My Safety Net”.
We are shifting risk from institutions, the producers of things, to the consumers of things.
The expectation is that since we are all now producers, we must individually keep BS meters up and running at all times, otherwise, it’s our own damn fault if we get fooled by something.
While people point to blogs as the primary purveyors of this kind of thought, in actuality, it seems prevalent in all forms of media.
…saying the answer to the crisis in journalism today is “better media literacy” is like saying the answer to the crisis in education is “better learning skills.”
He says this sarcastically but the redistribution of risk is a trend in everything from the food we give our dogs, to the education we give our children, from what we expect from our government (just re-look at Katrina), to the relationships we have with our neighbors.
The lesson – keep your guard up. You are on your own. Trust nothing and no one except yourself.
Good or bad? You decide.
The title of this post refers to a “law of data smog” in David Shenk’s terrific book, “Data Smog”. He was referring to the libertarian impulse that was prevalent in the late 90s Republican movement. He should have said “Cyberspace is Libertarian” and it would have been timeless.
Update:David Shenk posts a comment in this post’s thread that in the paperback version of “Data Smog” he put down Law 13 of Data Smog to be “Cyberspace is Libertarian” instead of “Cyberspace is Republican”!
Even the regional online community I help host, Philly Future has little posted.
Philadelphia’s larger community of aggregated local bloggers are talking, but maybe not with each other, and mostly to their own independent communities.
You would think the obscene loss of life in our city would merit a few links, a few mentions, a few drops of interest.
But no. Not a whit. It doesn’t register. It doesn’t rank.
You could argue that there has been no ‘defining event’ to draw interest – like a mass murder.
Or that the national mainstream media (damn I hate that term) has largely ignored it as well.
But those excuses don’t detract from the fact that what’s happening here – and elsewhere in other urban centers across this nation – is news.
And that for some reason – our current social media environment – just looks the other way.
Mathew Ingram, when looking at Pew’s latest research on who is using participatory media, wonders if the Web is half full or half empty? Greg Searling at search engine land and Jordan McCollum answer, although not as bluntly as I.
We have a long way to go.
A long way to go for those who are weak and powerless to be given a voice here.
A long way to go for those who have no influence a representation here.
A long way to go for those who have no visibility a means to communicate their importance here.
A long way to go for the news that affects our *daily* lives, the kind that percolates slowly, needs context to be understood, and is about subject matter we may not care to know about, but should, to be produced and distributed here.
This may lead to a place that elites find so distasteful, so raw, so low brow, so mundane and reflective of *all* of human society, they go off to establish something shiny and new.
