1. In the Afterward of The Media Monopoly, Bagdikian states that
“Television produced a radical transformation in the way American families arranged their lives.” How is this different from how mass radio changed people’s lives?
2. Will websites ever have the requirement to “act in the public interest” like television stations do? Is it possible?
3. Have attitudes changed toward archiving of media, now that media has become more electronic and thus more ephemeral? Is it necessary?
“The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin
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Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” is an article about the dangers of human over-population. Hardin uses a metaphor of a common land used by farmers. As soon as one farmer adds more sheep to this common land, it affects the community. If farmers keep adding sheep, then the commons cannot be sustained.
The “commons” as Hardin explains, is the communal space that we all occupy. To keep the commons from failure, everyone should feel responsible for maintaining this space. Everyone should sacrifice to keep the commons from being overrun. They should also be conscious of their own actions and how their actions affect others. Because the commons is a finite resource, if everyone acts selfishly it will doom the community to failure. But inevitably someone will act in their self-interest and the commons will be overrun. In addition, our society is built upon personal freedoms, which run against the requirements of maintaining the commons. There is no technical solution to this problem or “the tragedy” of the commons.
This metaphor can be applied to many other societal issues. Listed below are two examples: 1) smoking in public places and 2) internet security.
Thank You for Not Smoking
As a society we believe in responsibilities and in certain rights and freedoms, but it gets a complicated when the action becomes more personal. Smoking is an example of an individual action that affects the community. Until recently, smoking was often cast as a personal choice that only affected the smoker and their pocketbook, when in reality smoking affects everyone around the smoker as well… not only with the unpleasant smell, but the amount it costs a society in health care bills from the second-hand smoke, decreased worker productivity (because of illness and death), and government regulation (How much should a pack of cigarettes be taxed? Who should be allowed to smoke? Where can cigarettes be sold?, etc.)
In this case the commons is being used as a trash can, so gradually legislation has been passed to ban smoking in many public spaces, thus reducing the effect of second-hand smoke on the community. In addition, cultural mores have changed so that it is no longer considered acceptable to smoke. However, these laws combined with societal disapproval, has denied someone’s freedom of choice. By adding in another law or another wall to the commons, personal freedom is encroached. However, the commons is better maintained.
A New Internet
The article “A New Internet” by John Markoff in this Sunday’s New York Times is about how the Internet is vulnerable to a malicious attack. Never built to carry the world’s communication and commerce, it was originally an academic and research network and expanded rapidly and haphazardly into this tremendous system. It never has had true security despite years of work on the issue. The current method of security is to create strong firewalls, but little else. Unfortunately, this allows an attacker to gain access to the “soft chewy center” once a firewall has been breached.
The alternate answer to this problem is to make a new Internet from scratch, one that is a world-wide “walled garden” of sorts, where a user would have to give up at least some of their anonymity for protection. Privacy, a dearly-held Internet (and American) belief, would have to be relinquished to a degree to have the network be secure. And that would be a big trade-off for many Internet users.
Here is another case where the commons (the Internet) might need to change and new rules and laws will have to be created (by removing anonymity) in order to keep it protected (from malicious attackers). But the change in laws goes against a strongly held belief system by the users (about online freedom.) Markoff argues that will be hard to change the legacy of libertarianism of the Internet before a devasting attack has occurred. Hardin would argue however, that this triumph of “freedom” will most assuredly bring about ruin. Only by seeing the necessity of mutual responsibility and benefit (he calls it “mutual-coercion”) by giving up our dearly-held privacy in this case will we become truly free.
Additional thoughts
A couple of additional thoughts on Hardin’s essay:
1. Hardin states that “education counteracts the natural tendency to do the wrong thing” (the “wrong thing” in this case being not being responsible to the commons.) There are plenty of well and/or over-educated people who believe that needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. For example, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations “invisible hand” theory (refuted by Hardin in this essay) states that decisions made by individuals will be the best decisions for an entire society… which goes against someone doing the “wrong” thing.
2. Hardin focuses exclusively on people and government’s roles in decision-making. He doesn’t include other influential relationships, such as peers, family and parents, religious organizations, and other societal groups and institutions (like, say, a motorcycle club) that might have authority with an individual. These relationships are also affected by the outcome of the commons.
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Hardin, G. (1968, Dec. 13) “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, 162 (3859), 1243-1248.
Markoff, J. (2009, Feb. 15). “A New Internet?”. The New York Times, pp. 1, 4.
1. How is the government’s response to independent news different today from late 1820′s?
2. How similar is early radio broadcasting to today’s Twitter or blogging?
3. How has the expansion of the West in the United States affected the change in communication in the 1800′s?
Questions on Roger Fielder, “Technologies of the Third Media Mediamorphosis.”
1. My little pony (no, MY little pony)
Samuel Morse, along with two others, started the Journal of Commerce paper in 1827 to “cleanse New York of its moral impurities.” They came up with an innovative way of getting the news to Wall Street faster than any other news organization at the time by using ponies to gallup from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The US government forced them to give up their equine dispatchers because it “competed with a government mandated monopoly” or, in other words, it made the government look bad. And the government lost control of the news (and the message.)
Question - In the United States today, with everyone having up-to-minute news access and with journalism becoming hyper-local and out-of-control by the government, could something like this happen today? If a citizen journalist, like say, the West Seattle Blog, regularly scooped news that the government thought that they should be in control of, would they shut it down?
2. Early radio broadcasting
Fieldler says that prior to World War I, radio communication was considered primarily between two points or people though early ham radios operators did broadcast news and music without expectation of a reply.
Question – How similar is early radio broadcasting to Twitter or blogging?
3. Lewis & Clark expedition (extra credit rumination #1)
Question – I’m also interested in how the expansion of the West plays into the expansion of communication. We talk a lot about the railroad and telegraph because of the harnassing of electricity. What if we look even earlier to Lewis & Clark and what new technologies they brought on their trip (including having a universal translator of Sacajawea) ? Is there a direct correlation of the Lewis & Clark expedition and the drive towards coming up with faster ways to travel and communicate?
4. Ponies and Marshall McLuhan (extra credit rumination #2)
Question – What would McLuhan say about the medium of ponies? Is it a hot or cold medium? Would it be the extension of the foot or hands? Are they similar to railroads? Or to a laptop?
Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” is a visionary article from 1946 that lay the groundwork for a variety of modern communication technology, most notably the World Wide Web (which he calls the memex) and search engines. He also describes a sort of electromagnetic strip (using electromagnetic paper) to replace film, a type of computer mouse, databases, spreadsheets, search engine optimization, scrolling (an important viewing construct in viewing and reading), voice recorders and mini-cameras for scientists.
I am interested in his description of being the reader or specialist being overwhelmed or “bogged down” by the massive amounts of information. Bush was also concerned that the “truly significant will be lost in the mass of the inconsequential.” Certainly in our contemporary times, this is even more of a problem, with out massive amounts of media. In fact, we can look to McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” from 1964 and his concern about accelerated media change as a sort of ‘massacre of the innocents’ as comparably old news. Not only is important content being possibly missed, not only is it overwhelming to the user, but McLuhan’s theory would suggest that eventually the massive onslaught of content is ultimately a sort of dehumanizing death.
Another issue with the onslaught of information is how to archive it or organize it in some manageable way. Bush discusses the “voder” or a primitive voice recorder that he saw at a recent World Fair in the 40′s. He wonders if this technology is available, then why is the stenotype still being used at public meetings and in court? A stenotype is a machine that is a cross between a typewriter and a word processor (today’s versions are more like computers) (Wikipedia, 2009). A stenographer phonetically types in the words spoken. The print-out (today’s stenotypes don’t just print, but translate and store the transcript on a disk) is then either translated or refined on a computer. It’s much faster and quieter than a typewriter, hence it’s popularity.
But really, why is it being used today in court? A human typing what’s been spoken in a cavernous room (and the resulting re-translation) is much less accurate than a video camera (and gives rise to the comparision to Plato’s Cave story.) Human fallability being what it is, beyond the inevitable mis-communication, there just has to be numerous errors. Are there not better archival options?
Back to the archival question – at this point, online search is one of the best options for short-term archiving of data/content. But search only works as well as the items have been keyworded (or the company that owns the items has paid.) Archiving today is difficult with our ephermal data — photos that get deleted or never removed from their data source (the camera), millions of emails deleted or spammed, twitters lost (or else randomly optimized for search)…
(As an aside, I note the sexist references to the ubiquitous “girls” with mildly suggestive and somewhat robotic descriptions: 1. a “girl strokes” the Voder’s keys to input the voice data, 2. a “girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze” while typing on a stenotype, and 3. in reference to a large calculating machine it would “take instructions and data from a roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches.”
The content has to be put into the machines by girls for the male scientists to analyze. Despite Bush’s prescience on the future of communications, it apparently didn’t extend to gender roles. Ah well.)
References:
Bush, V. (1945, July). “As We May Think.” Atlantic Monthly. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
Engber, W. (2005, May 25). “What’s That Thingy Court Reporters Type On?” Slate magaine. http://slate.com/id/2119534/
McLuhan, M. (1962) “The Medium Is The Message” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In Ed. Wardip-Fruin, N. and Moatfort, N. The New Media Reader: MIT Press. (pp. 205-209)
“Stenotype”. In Wikipedia online. Retrived Feb. 2, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
Seeing What’s Next by Christensen et al.
Media Technology and Society by Brian Winston
In the introduction to Media Technology and Society, Winston identifies four different classes of possible proto-types that lead to inventions: 1) rejected, 2) accepted, 3) parallel and 4) partial. A “rejected” prototype is one where there is no possible use seen at the time. An “accepted” prototype is one that fulfills a need at the time, but another one replaces it. A “parallel” prototype arises that fulfills a different need than the one intended and a “partial prototype” is one that are designed to work a certain way, but unfortunately, does not.
My question is whether a prototype can be designated more than one “class.” For example, the Betamax video format came out in the late 1970′s. It was a developed after VHS, and had superior qualities, but lost the format war because of marketing reasons. The beta format can be seen as both (or either) an accepted and rejected prototype. Accepted in that it was seen as a better alternative to VHS and at one time had more than a tenth of the marketplace; rejected because in the end consumers did not acknowledge the superiority of the product.
Another question – does the success of a prototype have really more to do with the effectiveness of an inventor’s or a company’s patent attorneys?
For example, Robert Kearns, the fellow who invented the intermittent windshield wiper system won a series of lawsuits against the ‘Big Three’ automobile manufacturers for patent infringement. (Wikipedia, accessed 1/12/08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns) This is another example of a “rejected” prototype, but the automobile industry then embarked upon creating their own version of the intermittent windshield wiper. So, it was actually “accepted”… or rather it was stolen.
But was it really his creation (automobile attorneys argued that their was nothing original about his invention, as it used existing materials), or his creation of something new with these materials (his successful argument)… or it just was it his legal perseverance against their patent infringement that makes him the true inventor?
His experience can be compared to Samuel Morse’s case which is outlined in Winston book. Neither Kearns nor Morse may have been the first person to think of the overall concepts – using a form of shorthand to transmit information or car windshield wipers. However, they both made a refinement that made the overall invention more usable — Morse by having his code established by the popularity of letters (which he identified by consulting printers, who at that time hand-typeset the letters and knew all about which ones were the most popular) and Kearns by adding in the intermittent wiping aspect, much the way a human eye blinks, to the windshield wiper.
There are certainly better prototypes or inventions that are created and patented every day, but sometimes they never see the light of day, and not just because they aren’t good ideas, but because of the single-minded determination to use, as well as a lack of intimidation of, the legal system.
Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig
Lessig questions of the difference between online and real worlds and what happens when they intersect through four ‘puzzles’: a land boundary dispute, pornography, online gambling and the right of privacy. All four puzzles, however, have to do with the legal implications of cyberspace on the existing law. The problem is that existing law isn’t applicable any longer on some of these issues — Are they ‘pretend’ problems, because they don’t ‘harm’ anyone real (like the virtual dog being poisoned by the virtual petals)? Who has jurisdiction when the network server doesn’t exist in the country which is serves up information? What are the legal ramifications of a cyber worm entering people’s computers to search for illegal activities?
Another case that caused similar legal problems is the famous “cyber bully” case, which resulted in a young girl’s suicide. She killed herself, in part, due to the rejection of her online MySpace boyfriend, who as it turns out, was a pretend person created by her former friend’s mother. Once the information came out about the actions of this individual, local law enforcement could not charge her with anything. There was no law against her actions.
However, the U.S. Attorney is Los Angeles charged the mother with four counts of fraud because MySpace servers are located in Los Angeles.
The legal system is trying to catch up with the blinding speed of online legal issues. One question is – where will it end?
On to another more mundane question
I’m just interested how people do their schoolwork.
