Beauty and genius lost in context

I’m going to make up some statistics: Of all the wordsmiths alive today, 99.9 percent of them can’t crumble a house with stokes of imagination like Edgar Allen Poe could. Likewise, 99.9 percent of all ecologists alive today can’t figure finches into the greatest single scientific thought in history. And, exactly which one of us can sketch out the plans for a democracy that could reign more than 200 years?

When genius strikes in Baltimore, Maryland, the Down House, Kent, England, or Independence Hall, Philadelphia, humanity can’t afford to let ideas be watered down by a community of editors with conflicting interests.

“Man as an individual is genius. Men in the mass form a headless monster, a great, brutish idiot who goes where prodded.” Charlie Chaplin

And so, I am frightened by a world that doesn’t recognize the isolation of good leadership, the morals of the courageous, and the valor of the fight. I am frightened that passivity could leak into apathy about the truly beautiful things in our world. I don’t think that an idea as strong a peace can be forged by masses of ho-hums, or that:

“A treaty can be beaten out by members of that community that allows them to reach consensus and move forward.” Michael Nielsen

Ideas like this suggest that just because we are now online and not physically in the same place that the mob mentality disappears. But, 100 years ago great thinkers were understanding how people change philosophies as a crowd.

Still, though the wishes of crowds are frenzied they are not durable. Crowds are as incapable of willing as of thinking for any length of time. Gustave Le Bon

That is not to say that I don’t believe in imitation:

“Imitation, if noble and general, ensures the best hope of originality.” Edward Bulwer Lytton

And, certainly, I agree that building the body of knowledge leads to a more complete text:

“The idea of a purely linear text is a myth; readers stitch together meanings in much more complex ways than we have traditionally imagined; the true text is more of a network than a single, fixed document.” Stephen Berlin Johnson

That’s why I kept my own “commonplace book” of quotes as I worked through the mind-warping texts of Norton’s Anthology of Theory and Criticism with Dr. Grant Snyder.

But, let us not forget that the Declaration of Independence had to be defended with blood, that the Descent of Man cost Darwin his health, and that Poe’s work didn’t escape a “dull, dark, soundless autumn day” and make it into the incandescent light of our libraries until after the man died penniless.

Because,

“The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.” Edgar Allen Poe.

The tide of social stigmas and activism

As I poked around the sites of the top political tax-exempt organizations (527s) listed on OpenSecrets.org, I wondered if the individual websites are still the most relevant portal for researchers to use when examining political activism. The largest organizations have clean and comprehensive sites, but little interaction with its members. Instead, I found most of the member-input on the social networking pages of the organizations (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). The next time we examine political activism, should we tun our attention to social networking?

Finally, though, I chose and thoroughly dissected the website of EMILY’s List.  This organization promotes Democratic candidates with a pro-choice agenda. I used a combination of OpenSecrets and the organization’s “About” pages to learn more. The group has been around since 1985 and raised more than $81 million for candidates, its site said. Today, its members number more than 623,000.

My Internet search also yielded two interesting facts about the organization: 

1. EMILY stands for “early money is like yeast.”
2. The Container Store is one of the top contributors to the 527, with $92,000 . I thought containers were just containers.

On this site, the members make themselves known by signing up for an e-mail list. Visitors to the site are also expected to contribute cash. This is the same member process as MoveOn. Much of the types of content are also comparable, such as information about the supported candidates, propaganda about the organization’s success, and encouragement to visit the social networking pages of the organizations. If anything, I think EMILY’s List provides more content on its website than MoveOn. Specifically, there are pages dedicated to training people in activism, blogs by the organization leaders, and information about moving the activism from “armchairs to the streets” (Rohlinger & Brown, 137).

While the interviewees in the Rohlinger & Brown study talked extensively about the benefits of anonymity regarding their activism, I don’t see that present in either the MoveOn or EMILY’s List sites. This is especially true on the Facebook pages of both organizations, where comments appear with your name unmasked by a handle. For instance on a status update made yesterday on the Facebook page EMILY’s List, there were more than 500 “likes” and 23 comments. Comparatively, there weren’t any comments posted to the three entries of the official EMILY’s List blog. And, posted to the latest entry of EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock blog was just one comment left relatively anonymously with a simple signature of “Renee.”

I don’t think this contradiction can be explained away by a difference in social perception of the ideologies of the two organizations. I think it is safe to say that the progressives of MoveOn have the same stigmas and detractors as a group that promote pro-choice women candidates. Maybe the fear of expressing unpatriotic thoughts has decreased since the time of the Rohlinger & Brown study?

Honing my zen with political knowledge

My evaluation of Jon Stewart’s “fake” news can hardly be unbiased. I think he’s brilliant. I discovered him when I moved to college and first had access to cable. My friend Jennifer Fitch got me hooked and by April 3, 2004, I was in the third row of the Benedum Center looking up as he did his stand-up shtick. He’s short. He’s also much more vulgar without the TV censors.

So, I’m saying it hardly felt like course work to be “forced” to watch two episodes of The Daily Show. I watched episodes from Monday and Tuesday online today because once again I am living without cable. Then, I headed over to Google News and browsed the information board that definitely was not static.

I didn’t stop to read the full text of a story until I got to “The Artistic License of Social Network” from the Guardian. I’m interested in seeing this movie sometime. As in, I haven’t seen it yet. So, truthfully, the story was just lots of literary references that never told me if I should see the movie. However, the word “anti-bildungsroman” baffled me. I opened a new tab and searched out the definition. Apparently, this I should know this word. I certainly have read enough coming-of-age stories.

Back to the fluid information board I went. The next story was a brief on Brett Farve that also told me nothing. The final story allowed in my time slot was a story in Huffington Post about Glenn Beck sending out Mormon battle cries. Weird. So weird that I had to open another tab and do research on the Mormon wiki about the White Horse Prophecy and on the author of the column. It’s apparently all legit.

So, oddly, my results don’t mimic the results of Xenos and Becker because I didn’t seek out political information or further my knowledge of the topics Stewart talked about in those episodes. However, I would agree that it was impossible for me to watch the two episodes and learn nothing. I did learn that Rich Sanchez had been fired from CNN and I would probably be able to recognize the face of Rahm Emanuel’s replacement. I was primed so that the next time I see a reference to it in the news, I’ll have more background information.

While this wasn’t classic gateway theory, I also participated in something I’ll call Duncan-gateway. When I read something that has political or historical context, the Internet makes it so much easier to delve into the deep-down crevices of that subject. When I was weirded out by the Beck story, that was a gateway for me to learn more about Mormon prophecies and about the employment history of the author. It gave me knowledge that I needed to better decide what weight to give what I was reading.

Trusting online shopping merchants

My interviewees: Kerry W. Duncan, 62, of Pennsylvania, a retired teacher. He’s my daddy.

Todd R. Duncan, 25, of New York, a data architect. He’s my baby brother.

Sarah Beth Goodwill, 29, of Pennsylvania, a material analyst. She’s my best friend.

1. Describe your online shopping habits.

KWD: Picks a product and researches it. He buys products ranging from inexpensive to a couple hundred dollars.

TRD: Buys clothing, electronics, cellphone holsters, and even student loans. He buys online every month. He spends a couple thousand dollars annually.

SBG: Buys home products and also entertainment products. She makes purchases between one and three times a month and estimates she spends $600 annually.

        2. How have your expectations of online merchants changed since your first online purchase?

KWD: Has more confidence in online merchants.

TRD: Expects products faster and also expects better product descriptions.

SBG: Is more trusting of shopping online because of success.

            3. How have your expectations of in-store merchants changed since your first online purchase?

KWD: Store merchants are more eager to explain things than they used to be because they know that people his age are techno-savy can buy online.

TRD: They haven’t.

SBG: Expects best price in store or will go online

              4. How has the type, importance and cost of online purchases you make changed since your first online purchase?

TRD: Variety has expanded.

KWD and SBG: No answer.

              5.  If you have ever had a negative online purchasing experience, what steps did you take to resolve it?

KWD: Had problem with a printer. He called the retailer and then the manufacturer. He spent more than four hours on hold. Never was resolved. Will never buy from manufacturer again.

TRD: Had only one negative experience and didn’t try to resolve it because of the low purchase value.

SGB: Received a product with part missing. Called customer service and got part by mail.

        6. Which statement most accurately reflects your philosophy on the trustworthiness of Americans?

        A. If someone tells me he or she will do something, I don’t doubt he or she will follow through.

        B. Generally, Americans are good people, but there are a few bad apples out there.

       C. I don’t like to do anything before getting it in writing.

       D. All Americans are just out for themselves. I don’t trust anyone.

KWD: A

TRD: B

SGB: B

This phone survey showed that the subjects, who buy online, are also generally trusting of Americans. Two subjects said that because of success in buying online, they have grown to trust merchants more and are willing to buy a different variety of products online. KWD went on and on about his negative experience, but he was still the most trusting of the subjects. Without prompting, two of the three subjects talked about how experiences have increased their trust in online merchants. It was unclear from their answers if the trust had a direct correlation with their trust in the folks of the real world.

When free speech means porn

I checked a blog that was new to me. Called “NewsBusters,” this site has multiple contributors and dozens of postings each day. The posts take on a strong conservative slant. Judging from the comments, so do its readers. The “About” page  says the site’s goal is “documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.”

The first post I considered from this blog was an open letter from country-singer Charlie Daniels, which in successive paragraphs calls President Obama a socialist, an elitist, and naïve. He also suggests the president has Muslim alliances.

Sedition laws would have outlawed this speech and put Daniels in jail. Attacking the POTUS in modern times is accepted practice. Daniels isn’t likely to have G-men show up at his door tonight, though he also might not headlining music act at the next White House dinner.

Cammaerts calls American rights to free speech “absolutists.” I think this is foremost a characterization of the laws in regards to political speech. Our society and Constitution put the right to attack a politician, even with what may be lies, above the politician’s rights to privacy and ability to protect his reputation.

Political speech can “advocate the end of democracy” (560) or use the platitudes of democracy to suppress others (561), and its all protected.

I thought the debate among the com mentors was interesting because it discussed if Daniels had enough standing to do this….or should he “just shut up and sing.” Some people recognized they were being hypocritical by telling Barbara Streisand not to talk politics, and others justified their stance, saying Daniels is more intelligent than the soprano.

The second post I examined was simply about two jagoffs (excuse my Pittsburgh-ese) who discussed on TV their thoughts on seeing former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in either Playboy magazine or the White House. On the face of it, I wouldn’t have claimed this to be “particularly decisive,” but the comments perked my Internet antenna.

About 10 comments down, “NavyBuckeye” defends the rights of Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco to talk about Palin’s body and his right to buy porn magazines.

“That’s the beauty of freedom… you can be immoral and its your right,” the former military man from Ohio says.

In much of blogosphere, the speech is comparable to porn. It’s quick and dirty low-level communication. But, even still, I would never advocate that it be hindered by the government. After giving a bunch of examples from Belgium, Cammaerts surprised me by coming to the same conclusion.

My heart’s a Twitter

 Twitter, you spoiler.

I’ve been caught up in the faux buzz Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have created on their respective Comedy Central shows all week. What would Stewart’s big announcement be? And, Colbert’s counter-announcement? Well, this morning before I streamed Thursday’s episodes, I checked my Twitter feed @CloudDream2002. That ruined the surprise.

In addition to the Twitterers related to the show, the announcement was heralded by news organizations and media. I checked hashtags related to the rallies and learned pretty much all the details I need to know before I watched the show. People were meeting up and making travel plans. Airlines were taking advantage of the situation and posting low fares to Washington. There was decent “buzz.”

So, I suppose if you consider these two fake newscasters to be celebrities, I fall into the trap Shepherd hates so much: prizing celebrity over political speech. This case also proves true Shepherd’s remark that Twitter is public relations tool for celebrities more than a way for non-famous users to have their voices heard.

Until now, I had only used my Twitter feed as a journalistic tool. (Seriously, check my history of tweets.) So for this assignment I started following a bunch of news organizations. There’s Associated Press, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post and Reuters. There’s my old employers: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Butler (Pa.) Eagle. There is also a variety of side interests, like the Steelers and my favorite beverages.

My ability to follow my feed was severely impeded this week after a vicious burglar stole all my electronic equipment from my car. Nevertheless, I checked my feed from a computer multiple times this week to analyze content. Sure there was the mention of celebrities by news organizations when Sasha Baron Cohen announced he would play Freddie Mercury, but in general I learned a lot about the political world. The only time I read more than a headline about the Pope’s visit to the U.K. was prompted by a post. Tea Party news was abundant Tuesday night into Wednesday. And, the election analysis stories were linked to posts everywhere by Thursday.

I would agree with Shepherd that The End of Geography isn’t here yet, especially in my case. The BBC is the most foreign of the Twitterers I follow. However, I think my geo-centric feed is more explained by personal interests than by the “turn within” effect.

Oh, and I learned how to uncork a wine bottle with a shoe while on a picnic. I wonder how Shepherd would judge that bit of knowledge taking up valuable space on my feed.

Girl Talk – Sampling as a form of music convergence

Stephanie and Jesse pose in the parking lot while we wait for Girl Talk.

I can dance a July night cold when Girl Talk is “spinning” in the amphitheater.

The man on stage, Pittsburgh native Gregg Gillis, is using simple technology to take hundreds of samples from good music and mash it together into something that has such energy the crowd can’t stop moving.

“Copy that. Paste that,” Gillis said an interview for the documentary “Good Copy/Bad Copy.”

Girl Talk and the dozens of other sampling artists are making money by taking a song produced in a sound studio and making a new sound in their homes.

“It comes back to some guy from Pittsburgh with a laptop,” Gillis said in an interview.  (As a bonus,you see him eating a Primanti’s sandwich in the video.)

Is he an artist? A composer? A producer? A consumer? Girl Talk is an example of convergence between the producer and user in the music industry.

Illegal Art apparently thinks this is a profitable form of convergence. Girl Talk signed to its label and has produced four albums of his works.

Girl Talk is also a consumer who is listening to the music and the crowd to create his art.

Rebekah Farrugia of Oakland University calls Girl Talk and similar artists “bedroom musicians” and “laptop artists.” She talks about the pervasive use of technology in shaping the future of music and converging the consumer with the producer.  This echoes nearly Deuze’s definition of convergence: “cultural phenomenon of blurring the boundaries between ‘producers’ and ‘users’ of content.”

With the instantaneous ability to join sound, music becomes a reflection of the mood and the moment.

“Sampling, if it leads you to one thing, it’s thinking of culture as collage,”said Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, in a speech  about his book “Sound Unbound” at Google headquarters.

The technologies Gillis uses are also available to the masses who often also create their own mashups and post them to forums like YouTube.

“Computers, mobile phones and other interactive technologies are changing our relationship with media, blurring the line between producer and consumer, and radically changing what it means to be creative,” PBS said in its release  for its January documentary“Copyright Criminals.” While this documentary mostly focuses on the legal conflict surrounding sampling, it also examines the layman composer as an example of convergence. The final entry in the Copyright Criminals timeline  is a video of Gillis taking the “bedroom musician” to its literal form as he copy and pastes his way through a song from Elvis Costello’s Radio.

Deliberation….

I searched for videos dealing with sex education for the nation’s youth. The issue is devise in the United States because the federal government uses taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only education. Supporters say this approach is the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and disease, and that it preserves family values. Detractors cite studies that show that teens who have had abstinence-only education aren’t any less likely to wait until marriage. They support education that includes information on birth control methods.

Video 1: “Comprehensive sex ed vs. abstinence only” posted April 6, 2007 by Sex, Ect., a non-profit dedicated to providing comprehensive sex education. In the video, two college-aged representatives of Sex, Ect., talk to U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angelos, about the sex education in public schools. The video concludes with the Sex, Ect., representatives using a PowerPoint-like slideshow to present information in support of comprehensive sex education. 16 comments.

Video 2: “Abstinence Video.” Posted Feb. 20, 2008. The video ends with the logo of Jordan Community Development Corporation, a not-for-profit in Texas. In the video, a teen boy and teen girl separately think over their problems in voice overs. When the couple finally meets at the end, the girl reveals she is pregnant and the boy reveals he has AIDS. The ad concludes that abstinence is the only way to prevent these results. 92 comments.

 The comments do stick to the subject, and many come out in favor of comprehensive education. Several insist that abstinence is the best policy. Like the comments Hess examined, the language used in the comments section is in-line with the vernacular of online users. It is immature in its sentence construction and in its tone. But, I didn’t find people taking on a systematic approach to dismantling the message, as Hess did. In the comments to the videos, birth control methods were discussed, but not a context that brings in established science or new research. The comments in support of abstinence don’t provide anecdotal or research evidence to support that stance, either. I found, as Hess said, “serious discussion is juxtaposed with crude humor.”

While Hess found parodies of the specific public service announcements he examined, I did not. There are certainly some sarcastic videos in YouTube’s search-able database about sex education, but none I found referred back to these videos.

Neither of these videos were produced by the federal government, as Hess’s examples were. However, the Jordan CDC does have a partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That connection, nor the question of who financed either of these productions, never entered the conversation.

Also, I could not find the five-star rating feature that Hess talked about on either of these videos. Each simply had a “like” and “dislike” selectors. The pro-abstinence video had slightly more “dislikes” than likes. The video in support of comprehensive education was “liked” by an overwhelming majority of viewers who rated the video.

Internet and Democracy

 I finished “Internet: A Room of Our Own?” (2009) angry because I felt Evgeny Morozov had passed judgment on groups – like those against immunizations – that don’t share his values. He just spent six pages sharing his ideas, but then wants Google to censure the vast World Wide Web based on a measure of scientific validity. He seemed afraid that if more people were allowed to share anti-immigration or authoritarian government ideas, more people might believe those ideas.

So, I dove into this very same World Wide Web to do some data mining on Morozov’s other writings. There’s a bunch. Many of them are published through the magazine “Foreign Policy,” which is owned by the Slate Group. Here, Morozov keeps a blog full of anti-Internet rhetoric (see: “I’m back but the Internet still sucks”). Mostly, though, I focused on a 2,600-word piece he did for publication in the May/June issue, “Think Again: The Internet.”

Here, he summarizes his gripes against the ability of the anti-gay rights groups in Serbia to connect online and Google’s for-profit business model.

The Internet is just a hyped up version of the real world, he concludes. He expected this new platform would lead us into a utopian society for happy, civilized people, and  he has been devastated by its similarities to the real world.

I didn’t find any articles that explain how Morozov came to his cynical attitudes about the Internet or why he developed such glossy expectations of the Internet to begin with, but I did read this bio on his personal site that establishes him as a former resident of the former Soviet states. I would be interested in learning more about what has influenced his thoughts.

I also looked into the idea of digital activism that Morozov broached near the end of the first page of “Internet” and continued discussing in the context that it can be used for what he views as negative causes – like terrorism – as well as positive ones.  Here’s a simple slideshow explaining that digital activism is a method low-level groups use to spread their message for social change. It cites a case in Columbia where rallies were organized through Facebook. The organization that produced that slideshow, DigiActive, is a volunteer group that uses cell phones and the Internet to change the world, according to its mission statement. Over at the “meta-activism project,” (sic) a team is collecting data on digital activism projects around the world. Its mission is to analyze the data and learn which strategies are most effective and what groups are going the best work. They project also plans to make a database available so others can expand the research base on digital activism. The group went live in March. From my reading, it seems like there are endless research opportunities in this specific field.

I think Morozov is ignoring the learning curve to using the Internet in activism. Yes, there are digital activist groups that are ineffectual. But, there are also foundations to cure the world of all disease that are ineffectual. Yes, there are groups that organize on Facebook with violent intentions. But, there are also citizen groups that meet in the town square with violent intentions. Simply introducing technology into a situation doesn’t instill a set of values in people. Instead, it will take practice and the research of groups like the meta-activism group to learn what works. And, it will take the good works of groups like the National Endowment of Democracy to balance the ideas of groups run by people who are less-than-friends of civil society.

Nice to meet you

I’m generally a glad person, but my mother named me Megan Ann Duncan. I’m not sure if she intended me to be angry all the time or just plain crazy.

I hail from Wattsburg, Pa., and have spent the last eight years living in and near Pittsburgh. I majored in print journalism at Point Park University and have worked at newspapers since graduation.

I don’t think that it will be too many more years before we have to quit calling this “New Media” and refer to it as simply “media” as the old ways of doing things become obsolete. So, I’m excited to learn about how these types of media will interact with a functioning government and society.