The Shallowz; Follow-up

Hi, last class over but I am totally sitting in my room finishing the book and I must admit defeat here.. I think it's because I'm so connected and so invested in it, while unwilling to admit my lack of power over my brain's plastic bits that makes me hate to admit that he's super onto something here. The biological perspective is usually the more convincing set of data to me, but here I was writing it all off. His conclusion isn't overblown, our reactions are.

Also: I am writing this from my phone, while still in the middle of reading... You got me, friend.

To: Martin

This started as a response to Martin's post, but I decided to give it its own space:

One of my greatest pleasures as a constant consumer of media (ick) is when I'm reading a book that is still pretty fresh and I get the tickle in my brain tell me that I'm reading something outdated.

Working at Staples this past holiday season, we had so many people come in for Kindles that we sold out of them every two days. I'm not sure what happened all of a sudden, but it was like a switch was flicked in people's brains. Suddenly, instead of only nerds and travelers, just about everyone who came in was frothing at the mouth for them and in many cases, they barely knew how it worked.. just that they needed one.

More digital books than real books were sold this last quarter. Fuck.

I think we will/should keep them both around. They've got great battery life, but analog backups are pretty important.

The unbundling of albums only really matters to prog. musicians; albums were collections of singles before the Beatles. I dig Martin's point about television/movies; there's no way that people are actively watching clips INSTEAD of consuming the main show. It looks to me like a double dip for advertisers much more than a problem for them.

I am distracted by the outside world at a level that smashes the distraction I feel when I'm at a computer. I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against Carr's point (for, I think, actually?) but I have ADHD and one of my favorite things is this table of test scores I have from my psychologist that contrasts my level of proficiency at doing a task in silence (or with smooth jazz playing, he's a cool guy) versus when a tape of a city is playing (quietly, really) in the background with all the hustle and bustle, cars, conversations, etc. It's a comical drop in performance. When I'm at a computer, I am actually a lot more task oriented than I am when I'm OFF the computer. I DO stop and check my Facebook and my email and the news and whatever, but mostly when I am NOT on the computer and I'm obsessively doing it on my phone. On the machine, I do those things first and then I get to doing the thing I'm doing.

Eat them up, Yum yum.

Pax East 2011 from Brian Augustus on Vimeo.

Easy target

Ok, let's get this out of the way: The article about tweets spurring interest in long-form articles is exclusionary and anecdotal. He is talking about himself and his reading habits; I have similar reading habits, too. To provide my own anecdote, I didn't used to read status updates at all because they didn't exist; status updates take away from my long-form reading time. So what? The data he provides only applies to readers of blogs or people who regularly use Twitter. I can't figure out why I'm supposed to find this insightful in any broad sense.

YC

Devin Friedman muses:

But you know why I think they're really happy? Because they get to build all this stuff.

You know why I think they're really happy? They are getting a ton of money and being called geniuses by everyone. And before anyone gets started on the, 'But he said they don't buy expensive things!' line, I'd like to point out that keeping your money in a bank account is not the same as giving it all away. They want to feel like rebels.

And before anyone gets started on the, 'You're just jealous!' line, I'd like to point out that you're probably right. People like that make me feel like the starting quarterback at their high school reunion who never went to college; I sold a website when I was 11 and I am very poor now... what happened?

Worth considering is the way that these people sound like they're full of shit. I don't know that they are, but I have a strong feeling about it. All quotes are stated matter-of-fact-ly and are devoid of any self reflection- even when Friedman explicitly asks for a self reflective answer.

This seems eerily similar to the articles we read in the beginning of the semester describing the events leading up to the dot-com bust; their optimism isn't for people, it's purely selfish. Couched in egalitarian marketing speech is a laissez faire attitude toward consequence.

Penguins

I'm a terribly inefficient person (or perhaps not? I'm also indecisive) so I don't normally take notes even when I think it would make sense, so this is a bit of a change of pace for me. I've just started reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and here I am making a note when I'm only 4/18 pages (PDF printout of page) deep:

No disrespect to those that might be geekier than I've realized, but I don't know how any of you are reading this without knowing exactly what he is talking about from prior knowledge. These examples he is using are not vague.  I can see how the arguments he is making aren't going to hinge on a complete or clear understanding of his anecdotes, but that has to diminish it to a certain extent, right? I don't know. I'm enjoying it, though. This was written the same year that I started programming as a kid and it's giving me the warm and fuzzies reading him talk about latest developments I had just barely started to notice.

Movements.BORG

The mission page for Movements.org:

21st century activism produces unlikely leaders. Movements.org represents a new model of peer-to-peer training wherein these leader lends their experience in digital organizing, especially short term protests and campaigns, not just to each other but also to those whose expertise lies in long term capacity building.

Can I get some cognitive dissonance up in here? 21st century activism DOES produce unlikely leaders if their model is followed; since when are activist leaders sponsored by the US State Department and a myriad of gi-fucking-gantic corporations?

Peer-to-peer? Right, I'll let the poor in the walled-off slums (literally, although also figuratively in a sense I'll address in a moment) of Rio de Janeiro know that all they have to do is charter a private jet so that they can come meet with you to discuss strategies for spreading democracy.

Moving away from them in particular, I'd like to address the 'at least they are doing SOMETHING good' sentiment about corporate social responsibility. I understand it, it seems pretty straightforward: some money invested in something important is better than none EVEN if the bottom line is still profit-drive (Andrew's point about the importance of positive branding). I am not going to restate the few things I mentioned in class, as I assume people can at least sort of remember what I was saying even if I was a little unclear and losing my shit.

Why stop at 'at least' statements? Why do we have to accept profit as the primary factor driving action by the world's big players?

Don't look now

I mentioned this in class earlier during discussion... check it out, maybe.

China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications

"A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude's response to Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." The second time he said the word "protest," her phone cut off."

Oh, ok. This suits Andrejevic's arguments in iSpy like a, uh, suit.

Not my real class (Update 1)

Most everyone was here; Jamar mentioned that the people who aren't here won't have blogs about this.. except perhaps for anyone who checked the class blog and got creative. I think we should give them credit for that if they can pull it off.

We had some discussion over key points, some side conversations, and lots of conversation about how we don't like that we're sitting here. Some people left, more people stayed. Wait, the final paper is 15+ pages about myself in relation to my grade? Do not want.

Andrejevic's book was making me angry last night; not because I disagree but because I agree, I see it happening, and it's upsetting to me (Yes, I read the whole two chapters).

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

The heralding by technologists and politicians and assholes (Murdoch) about the internet democratizing being placed alongside examples from earlier communicative technological advancements was especially keen. This is... [CLASS ENDED AND A WELL DRESSED MAN EVICTED US-ADDENDUM AFTER I'VE EATEN LUNCH IS BELOW THE JUMP]

Cephalopods!

I wish I could say that I haven't posted a blog in 10 days and I've been missing because I have been asleep. Unfortunately, today is not opposite day. Now here, I will address some random points in Lanier's argument that I find lacking, fitting, or making me wish I was in Palo Alto with him during the 1980s. This will happen in no particular order; I take medicine to help me organize my thoughts but this box and all the tabs I have open in Chrome negate any of that influence on my writing. And the music that's playing has lyrics, I'm distracted.
I think it makes Lanier sound like my grandfather when he complains that our culture's fascinations are any worse than the ones preceding it were. Preposterous! The kind of art I like most, in fact, involves the juxtaposition (often times through mashing...) of elements of our culture as a critique of it at large. I find it both aesthetically and intellectually pleasing. [Please click me and me - couple of my favorite artists' works]
Interestingly, it is for the same reason that draws me to these types of expression that allows me to sympathize with his despair over the state of culture today. The difference is that he takes the old systems seriously and yearns for an improvement over the status quo pre-internet. I don't see the status quo as improved, either, but I don't see it as diminished in quality because of the internet. It's always been bullshit, it's still bullshit (Thus marking the third use of that word on the blog so far). So what? It isn't any easier for an artist to get paid for his work, but is it actually any harder? I find that argument lacking.

Further ramblings

Something many people (me included) seem to have taken for granted about the internet is that the anonymous nature of discourse is the source of much of the vitriol and short-sighted or unbecoming comments/postings found online.
This argument seems to be falling apart now with the emergence of Facebook as the most popular, populated social networking site; most people go by their own names but I don't detect a major change in the etiquette of the majority of people that show up on my feed compared with the random comments on blogs I read or Youtube videos. The topics are typically more personal, of course, because they are meant to be amongst 'friends' but in many cases that only makes things worse...
Is it that the denizens of the web were conditioned previously into this ridiculousness by living with the anonymous internet that we are voluntarily waving away and failing to adjust their behavior accordingly? Or perhaps people actually don't realize yet that all of this is being recorded and their grandchildren will have no problem mining for choice quotes from their grandfather in his youth calling people "faggots," fighting with his girlfriend in a public space online, or arguing ferociously with his peers over trivial bullshit.
I am beginning to think that the more thoughtful of us were making an excuse before for everyone else by assigning blame to anonymity. To some people, the internet is not the same as a public park. Unfortunately for them, it actually is a public park... with a massive surveillance system in place and a stenographer. Thoughts?

Ramblings Concerning You Are Not A Gadget (Part 1), etc.

Really fascinating read; wanted to jot down notes as I went along so I could type them into this box (actually, I wrote that in pen first--caught me in a lie) but I had issues finding a suitable break point because I was so engaged with it. This is somewhat comical because it's written in tiny snippets with obvious places at which to break, but I didn't do any of that.
These concepts that Jaron Lanier so eloquently describes are exactly the types of ideas I have had floating around in my head for years, but I rarely have had the chance to articulate them to others. I want to print out bits of it and keep them handy to pass out to clients of mine.
Although I was very young (or perhaps because I was very young), I feel along with Lanier a sense of nostalgia for the earlier web (I choose the world earlier because I missed the real early web; my family joined the collective in 1997 and my love for the Internet and programming couldn't begin before then, and I was 9) because I can remember a time when rules and standards (externally and internally imposed) were actually up in the air and the big players of today were only mere ideas, if that.
I was in love with the Internet from the start; it blew my mind apart with all the possibilities it introduced for my nascent little nerd brain to ponder. I needed to understand how it worked and I needed to forge a space of my own there to share with the rest of the collective. Being a child, I had no conception of using it as a commercial vehicle; I made websites about the things that I loved so that I could collaborate with other people who shared my interests: other enthusiastic nerds who would chat over ICQ or IRC to help one another learn and grow as programmers just because we thought it was awesome.

We all love Infographics

Doesn't quite compare with The Oatmeal (<3), but click it!

Also: Original content incoming sometime in the not so distant future.