Archive for May, 2009

last voyage of Robert Falcon Scott

May 31st, 09 / 0 Comments

In 1912, English Naval Officer Robert Falcon Scott and his party of explorers died after a failed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. Scott’s diary, recovered with the bodies of his co-explorers, indicate that he was the last to die.


Left to Right: Wilson, Evans, Scott, Oates and Bowers

The first was Petty Officer Edgar Evans, who had suffered extreme frostbite and wandered away from camp. Scott wrote:

I was first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn’t know, but thought he must have fainted. We got him on his feet, but after two or three steps he sank down again. He showed every sign of complete collapse. Wilson, Bowers, and I went back for the sledge, whilst Oates remained with him. When we returned he was practically unconscious, and when we got him into the tent quite comatose. He died quietly at 12.30 A.M. On discussing the symptoms we think he began to get weaker just before we reached the Pole, and that his downward path was accelerated first by the shock of his frostbitten fingers, and later by falls during rough travelling on the glacier, further by his loss of all confidence in himself. Wilson thinks it certain he must have injured his brain by a fall.

The second to die was Captain Titus Oates, who suffered such extreme physical deterioration as a result of severe frostbite, hunger, and exhaustion that he was nearly completely unable to walk. In the end he was such a burden to the other members of the expedition that he asked to be left behind. Here’s how Scott’s diary describes Oates’s final hours:

Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates’ last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not – would not – give up hope till the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning – yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since… We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit, and assuredly the end is not far….

When an expedition discovered Scott’s body, along with those of his companions Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Dr. Edward Wilson, they also recovered Scott’s diary. A copy of the last page, with a translation, is included below.


We shall stick it out
to the end, but we
are getting weaker, of
course, and the end
cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but
I do not think I can
write more.
R. Scott

Last entry
For God’s sake look
after our people.

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Breaking: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton “cannot subscribe to the views of those online critics who insist that I ‘just don’t get it’ “

May 31st, 09 / 1 Comment

Subhead: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton just doesn’t get it.

Michael Lynton wants guardrails for the internet in the name of preserving creativity. At least, that’s what he says he wants. If you read his recent piece in the Huffington Post, you quickly understand that what he really wants is to preserve his company’s ability to profit from the creativity of others.

Lynton went viral after making the following assertion: “I’m a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period.” And in the HuffPost piece, he explains that he welcomes the “Sturm und Drang” that resulted from that statement, because it allows him to make the following point:

the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content — music, newspapers, movies and books — have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.

He’s right, of course. But any attempt to roll back the appropriation, remix, and–sometimes–piracy practices enabled by new media will fail, and one big reason for this is that people like Lynton can’t see that the internet simply cannot be regulated the way we’ve traditionally approached culturally transformative inventions.

Lynton compares the Internet to the national highway system developed under the Eisenhower administration. He explains the comparison thus:

Contrast the expansion of the Internet with what happened a half century ago. In the 1950′s, the Eisenhower Administration undertook one of the most massive infrastructure projects in our nation’s history — the creation of the Interstate Highway System. It completely transformed how we did business, traveled, and conducted our daily lives. But unlike the Internet, the highways were built and operated with a set of rational guidelines. Guard rails went along dangerous sections of the road. Speed and weight limits saved lives and maintenance costs. And officers of the law made sure that these rules were obeyed. As a result, as interstates flourished, so did the economy. According to one study, over the course of its first four decades of existence, the Interstate Highway System was responsible for fully one-quarter of America’s productivity growth.

We can replicate that kind of success with the Internet more easily if we do more to encourage the productivity of the creative engines of our society — the artists, actors, writers, directors, singers and other holders of intellectual property rights — yes, including the movie studios, which help produce and distribute entertainment to billions of people worldwide.

It makes sense for someone like Lynton to compare the internet to a literal highway–he, and many of his ilk, continue to think of the internet as an “information superhighway” that can be maintained and paid for via a simple system of tolls, speed limits, and regulations on what kinds of vehicles will be allowed to operate, and when, and by whom. This is precisely why the information superhighway metaphor has fallen into disuse by the majority of internet users: It simply does not apply to a system that is far more complex, and far less regulated and regulatable, than the metaphor suggests.

Mind-bogglingly, Lynton believes that “without standards of commerce and more action against piracy, the intellectual property of humankind will be subject to infinite exploitation on the Internet.” He wonders:

How many people will be as motivated to write a book or a song, or make a movie if they know it is going to be immediately stolen from them and offered to the world with no compensation whatsoever? And how many people whose work is connected with those creative industries — the carpenters, drivers, food service workers, and thousands of others — will lose their jobs as piracy robs their business of resources?

Seriously? The head of one of the most new media-reliant entertainment companies in the world is so oblivious to the creativity that is enabled by social media that he really, honestly believes that the social practices that are emerging around these technologies are going to destroy humanity’s creative impulse?

On the other hand, this is perhaps an apt approach for the head of a company that makes its bones on defining creativity as “stuff that can make money for whoever owns the rights to it (e.g., Sony Entertainment).”

Lynton would have us believe that he’s in this fight for the good of mankind, that he and others like him are humanitarians along the lines of this cartoon I pirated from the internet:

Alternately, we might view his motives as more closely aligned with this cartoon I pirated from the internet:

Lynton wants us to know that he is not a Luddite, not “an analogue guy living in a digital world.” I am fully convinced of that. I also believe that his impulse to set up internet guardrails is not quite as humanitarian as even he himself might think. He seems to be confusing the notions of “creative impulse” with “the drive to make money off of creativity.” As anybody who’s been paying attention for the last couple of decades knows, in the internet era, these aren’t the same thing. They aren’t even in the same category. If that makes it harder for behemoths like Sony to survive by standing on the shoulders of the creative types it exploits, then so be it.

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headline: Hillary Kolos brings the awesome. Awesomeness ensues.

May 31st, 09 / 0 Comments

One of my favorite young media scholars is Hillary Kolos, a graduate student in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program. Because I have had the great, great luck to get to work with her over the last year as part of my day job, I’ve had the joy of watching her blossom as a thinker, writer, and media scholar.

Recently, Hillary had a personal essay posted to Henry Jenkins’s blog. The piece, “Bouncing Off the Walls: Playing with Teen Identity”, focuses on her experience with gender and identity play through a consideration of how she decorated the walls of her bedroom as an adolescent. The piece is a gem. One tantalizing snippet:

As a teen, I used many resources to play with new identities. Fashion ads served as inspiration. My walls were a place to exhibit them. I did also, on occasion, leave my room where I had other experiences that helped shape the woman I am today. But having a space of my own to play and then reflect was very important to my process of identity formation. What seemed like goofing off at the time was actually a process of exploring who I thought I was at the time, as well as who I thought I should be.

My experience in my room is one of countless examples of how teens use their available resources to explore potential identities through play. This kind of play can happen in private, but often young people use media to capture their experiments and share them with others. In this way, they can gauge reactions and refine their performances. I used my walls to reach a limited audience, but today teens can easily reach millions of people online and receive feedback instantly on how they represent themselves. It will be interesting to see the new possibilities, as well as the new concerns, that emerge as teens use new resources to play with their identities online.

You can find the rest on Henry’s blog here. As I mention in the title of this post, the piece is filled with awesome and well worth the read.

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the MIT budget-crunch cheer

May 30th, 09 / 4 Comments

RAH RAH REE! KICK EM IN THE KNEE!
RAH RAH RASS! DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT!

As an employee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I regularly receive email communications from MIT President Susan Hockfield. Recently, I got an end-of-year message that made a strong attempt to put a positive spin on what’s been a very difficult year for the Institute.

The letter starts by acknowledging the pressures of operating during an economic recession, pointing to successes in meeting those pressures without mentioning, in this opening paragraph or anywhere else, the number of MIT employees who have been sacrificed in the name of this success. Hockfield writes:

Around the world and in every sector, fundamental economic assumptions have dramatically changed over the last eight months. At MIT, we responded swiftly to the evolving economic downturn. Last November, anticipating a dramatic decline in our endowment’s value, we set out a plan to reduce our $1 billion General Institute Budget by $150 million, or 15%, within two to three years. Thanks to extraordinary work in every MIT unit, we have achieved 5% cuts for Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10), which begins July 1, 2009; some units and departments have already reached or even exceeded the targets set out for them. In addition, we have in place a thoughtful, deliberate process to achieve the full $150 million reduction by FY12.

We can take enormous pride in the ongoing work across the entire Institute to reset our base budget for what may be a protracted period of slow economic growth.

It’s tough, admittedly, to acknowledge the human cost of belt-tightening at the institutional level. And it’s likely that this letter isn’t the place for it. But in addition to the innovative cost-cutting approaches deployed by MIT (convening a 200-member task force, opening up an Idea Bank where faculty, staff, and students can submit and rank ideas for increasing MIT’s operating efficiency), administrators relied on a tried-and-true approach to budget cuts: layoffs.

Layoff numbers are not readily available–in fact, may not be available at all, as far as I can tell–but my experience and my colleagues tell me that layoff numbers are at least in the dozens and probably much higher. As far as we can tell, no faculty have been let go (though an Institute-wide pay freeze means that faculty and staff alike received no pay raises this year), which means the burden of these layoffs rests on the shoulders of administrative and support staff.

The tone of Hockfield’s letter is “we did it, together.” The little people who have fallen by the wayside in the “doing” of “it” get no mention, here or anywhere else. (As I wrote in an earlier post, previous letters from Hockfield take the same “we’re just going to ignore the fact that we have to lay people off in order to meet our financial goals” approach.) This makes it mighty hard to get into the team spirit mode that Hockfield would like to see.

Things are tough all over, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair or right to pretend to the world that everybody at the Institute banded together in a joint innovative approach to cutting costs. In this respect, MIT is no different from any other bulky, expensive institution, as much as it would like to make the world believe otherwise.

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why you should invite me to your next party

May 28th, 09 / 0 Comments

(hint: because I will entertain your guests with talk of the social revolution)

I was at a party last week when someone asked me what I do for a living. I used the opportunity to engage in what, in retrospect, may have been an ill-timed impromptu pronouncement about the status of the social revolution.

It turns out I’ll need to rethink how I use that phrase “social revolution,” at least in mixed company, because a tubby drunk man wearing a confusing hat walked up to me and tried to steer the conversation toward war atrocities.

“You can’t tell me,” he bellowed, “that the atrocities that are happening during the Iraq War are any different from the ones that happened during World War II. It’s just that we have more media coverage now.”

As I wrote in an earlier post, this is what I’ve decided to call the Space Odyssey mistake. This particular kind of error is explained by Clay Shirky, who describes a scene from 2001 in which

space stewardesses in pink miniskirts welcome the arriving passenger. This is the perfect, media-ready version of the future–the technology changes, hemlines remain the same, and life goes on much as today, except faster, higher, and shinier.

Lately I’ve been finding Christopher Kelty’s notion of a “recursive public” useful in thinking about what, other than hemlines, have changed. As Kelty describes it in Two Bits (available for download, online browsing, and modulation for free online),

A recursive public is a public that is vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public; it is a collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually existing alternatives.

More to the point, a recursive public is a group of people who exist outside of traditional institutions (governments, churches, schools, corporations) and, when necessary, use this outsider status to hold these entities in check. The engagement of these publics goes far beyond simply protesting decisions or stating their opinions. Kelty, writing about geek culture as a recursive public, explains it thus:

Recursive publics seek to create what might be understood, enigmatically, as a constantly “self-leveling” level playing field. And it is in the attempt to make the playing field self-leveling that they confront and resist forms of power and control that seek to level it to the advantage of one or another large constituency: state, government, corporation, profession. It is important to understand that geeks do not simply want to level the playing field to their advantage—they have no affinity or identity as such. Instead, they wish to devise ways to give the playing field a certain kind of agency, effected through the agency of many different humans, but checked by its technical and legal structure and openness. Geeks do not wish to compete qua capitalists or entrepreneurs unless they can assure themselves that (qua public actors) that they can compete fairly. It is an ethic of justice shot through with an aesthetic of technical elegance and legal cleverness.

This is precisely the difference between 1945 and 2009. It’s not just that we have more media coverage but that, as Shirky proclaims, everybody is a potential media outlet–everyone has the potential to join a recursive public, whether impromptu or planned.

In fact, the notion that we can all engage in reportage is perhaps a bit too simplistic, at least until we can adjust what we mean by “journalism.” When Facebook users joined up in opposition to a change in Facebook’s terms of service and successfully pressed administrators to rethink and reword the terms of service agreement, that was the work of a recursive public, loosely banded and easily disbanded once their purpose had been achieved (if necessary, they will quickly gather again in their virtual space and just as quickly disband). We don’t recognize this as journalism, often don’t even recognize it as civic engagement–but for those who joined this Facebook knotwork, it’s certainly some kind of engagement. And what could be more civic-minded than fighting to define the uses of a public space?

The atrocities of war are approximately the same (though, as always, new technologies mean new modes of torture and murder). What’s different is the following:

All in all, it was a good party. Near the end, someone produced a Donald Rumsfeld piñata. We were going to hoist it up and smash it, but it seemed kind of…irrelevant.

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I wish fake feminists would cut it out.

May 19th, 09 / 2 Comments

“You can’t claim to be a feminist simply because you’re a woman.”–Julie Bindel

“There is no such thing as a bad feminist.” –Jess McCabe

Being controversial may not always be fun, but it certainly guarantees that people will pay attention. This is exactly what happened with Double X, the new site launched by Slate earlier this month. Double X describes itself with a slight nod toward feminism without explicitly mentioning the dirty F-word itself:

Double X is a new Web magazine, founded by women but not just for women, that Slate launched in spring 2009. The site spins off from Slate’s XX Factor blog, where we started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women listen in on. Double X takes the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and applies it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We tackle subjects high and low with an approach that’s unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending.

Double X targets its demographic with both barrels smoking, presenting itself in pastels, pinks, and purples and offering stories on motherhood ( “Why are moms such a bummer?”), breast cancer (“Enough with patenting the breast cancer gene”), and first-person, “it-happened-to-me” testimonials (I Wanted to be Blondie. Now I Write for Colbert”).

By now, it may be clear that this is not your mother’s feminism. The site is playful, mouthy, and just a little self-indulgent–normally exactly my cup of tea, except…well, if you were, say, a 30-ish, self-described feminist living an out-of-the-mainstream lifestyle, you might be a little worried.

This is not necessarily about topic choices–it’s about the fights Double X has picked in its opening weeks. As this Guardian article by Amelia Hill and Eva Wiseman points out, Double X galloped out of the gate, chasing down and pummeling the popular site Jezebel. In “How Jezebel is Hurting Women”, Linda Hirshman explains that

[t]he Jezebels are clearly familiar with the rhetoric of feminism: sexism, sexual coercion, cultural misogyny, even the importance of remembering women’s history. But they are also a living demonstration of the chaotic possibilities the movement always contained…. From removing the barriers to women working to striking down the criminal laws against birth control and abortion, feminism was first and foremost a liberation movement. Liberation always included an element of sexual libertinism. It’s one of the few things that made it so appealing to men: easy sexual access to women’s bodies. (And to their stories about sex, which helps explain why 49 percent of Jezebel’s audience is men.)

But unregulated sexual life also exposes women to the strong men around them, and here, the most visible of the Jezebel writers reflect the risks of liberation…. How can women supposedly acting freely and powerfully keep turning up tales of vulnerability—repulsive sexual partners, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, even rape? Conservatives have long argued against feminism by saying women are vulnerable, and we need to take care of them. Liberals say there’s no justification for repressing sexual behavior.

The Guardian article highlights the conflict that has erupted out of this attack (Jezebel, of course, struck back, prompting a response from Double X…there is, so far, no end in sight), pointing to the heart of the issue: A struggle over how to define feminism in 2009.

It’s a struggle that strikes close to my heart, as I see the term, if not the ideals, taken up in disheartening, even terrifying ways by friends and colleagues. Men calling themselves feminists push for “open,” commitment-free relationships, since “that’s what women want.” Women shove their way to the top of corporations at the expense of (male and female) coworkers, and proclaim victory in the name of feminism.

For that matter: Women who call themselves feminists and push for “open,” commitment-free relationships, and men shoving their way to the top of corporations at the expense of (male and female) coworkers.

It’s no wonder so many young women and men are so loath to consider sexism as an ongoing issue: Feminism has been co-opted in vile ways for the purpose of self-advancement. Why would anybody want to associate with a movement whose name is responsible for so much abominable behavior?

Feminism, at its heart, is not about political justification of personal behavior. At its very best, feminism is about setting aside petty personal interests and considering what’s best for an entire culture–and considering the best approaches for making the kinds of changes that will enable this culture to emerge. The Double X-Jezebel debate threatens to obscure this larger point beneath vitriol and, on the part of anti-feminist observers, the most loathsome kind of schadenfreude.

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our rock stars are not your mother’s rock stars

May 17th, 09 / 4 Comments

I saw this video for the first time yesterday while watching the season finale of “Fringe” on Hulu.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I&hl=en&fs=1]

Our rock stars, the commercial explains, aren’t like your rock stars.

Let me tell you a story: In my day job, I work with media scholar Henry Jenkins. Last year, I was sent to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, where Henry and Steven Johnson were scheduled to hold a discussion at the front of an enormous room, which filled up fast. As Henry and I were chatting before the event, a woman walked up to Henry and girlishly asked, “would you mind if I got a picture of me standing next to you?”

“Sure,” said Henry, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. (I later found out that it does.)

Here’s Henry Jenkins:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUQKStba10&hl=en&fs=1]

What I like about the Intel commercial is that it points to an interesting characteristic of our culture: that when people are as immersed in a field as the Intel employees of the commercial clearly are, they have their own set of rock stars who aren’t like “real” rock stars. Well, at least they don’t look like rock stars. But they do share certain common features with pop icons: They are generally very, very talented; they have achieved something we fantasize about; and they are famous among people who care about their field.

I’m going to come clean and admit that I have my own rock stars, and I suspect that many of my readers do too. Here’s the deal: After I list my rock stars, you have to list yours. But make sure to identify your field, so we can all know how and why these people are superstars to you. I chose to stick with 3 because I didn’t want to look like some sort of crazy groupie, though of course I could go on.

Jenna’s Rock Stars
field: education / new media / participatory culture / technology / creativity
1. Educational researcher, games expert, and social justice theorist Jim Gee
2. Technology writer Clay Shirky
3. Insane genius philosopher Bruno Latour

Your turn.

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PSA: in support of post-punk laptop rap

May 16th, 09 / 1 Comment

Here’s a new release from MC Lars, who calls himself a “post-punk laptop rap artist.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7V7BaRAy0k&hl=en&fs=1]

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