December 18, 2010
I expect all choices to have consequences.
If I set myself up publicly as the never-questioning promotional voice of a cause, I expect to be publicly identified with that cause in its totality, whether or not I personally have the power to alter a tiny hair in the direction of its policies. If I choose never to waver from that tone in the slightest, no matter what the circumstances, I expect others to consider me little more than an extension of the cause and to answer me accordingly.
After all, I always have the freedom to choose differently.
If I set myself up publicly as the never-questioning promotional voice of a cause, I expect to be publicly identified with that cause in its totality, whether or not I personally have the power to alter a tiny hair in the direction of its policies. If I choose never to waver from that tone in the slightest, no matter what the circumstances, I expect others to consider me little more than an extension of the cause and to answer me accordingly.
After all, I always have the freedom to choose differently.
December 14, 2010
In 1917, the United States Patent Office awarded Clarence Saunders a patent for a "self-serving store". Customers enjoyed the new freedom to be able to choose their products directly.
Against that newfound freedom and the promise of lowered prices, what was a little lost customer interaction as quota'ed checkout stands, turnstiles, and fences replaced the local grocer? Few noticed or cared that customers had been converted into part of the store's service assembly line and were now doing many of the jobs that paid staff used to do. The store manager was in charge of the buying, as always. The only paid jobs that were left were stocking, cleaning, and cashing out: and those at a sharply reduced staff-customer ratio.
Not surprisingly, Piggly-Wiggly and its competitor Alpha Beta were happy with the enhanced profit line. Other stores noticed, and were quick to follow suit.
Neither the personal touch nor the lost jobs were missed, not with a war looming on the horizon. As the traditional role of women abruptly shifted to fill the employment vacuum, the jobs lost to volunteering customers would not become noticeable until the men returned from war: at which point the self serve store had become so much a part of the landscape that its role was never questioned.
Nor did the promise of lowered prices ever pan out. Since education in identifying product value had not parallelled increased customer choice, shelf appeal quickly became the dominant basis for product selection. To best leverage the new basis for choice, an entire industry grew up around packaging and brand recognition: an industry which quietly raised the wholesale cost of the most popular products and edged others out.
The introduction of self-bagging at discount grocery stores went almost completely unnoticed. Now self-bagging in all levels of grocery stores is the norm, although it is often concealed under the environmental guise of reducing plastic bags (but you can always buy one if you want, which sometimes also pays for your bagger's services and sometimes not).
When self-checkouts were introduced in Clifton Park in 1992, customers scarcely blinked. A single cashier could now supervise four or more self-serve lines: which were even more efficient than cashier lines would have been since the customers who chose that option were clearly motivated by getting out of the store as quickly as possible. A few objected that self-checkouts used customer unpaid labour to further trim store costs and increase profit margins: but enough people saw only a shorter, faster checkout line that the objectors were little more than a speed bump.
Forty years ago, full service filling stations (gas stations) were the norm. Not only would the attendants fill the tank, they would also clean the windows, check and adjust the tire pressure, and top off the oil, tires, antifreeze, and a myriad of other engine fluids essential to the smooth operation of a vehicle. This model had not essentially changed since the first purpose-built gas station in the world came into being in St. Louis (United States) in 1905.
The first self serve filling station was built in Winnipeg in 1949. At first, the concept was slow to take off: but a tipping point was reached during the 1980s. Now, it is the full service filling station which is the quirky oddity in a world filled with self serve. The customer is increasingly expected to do all parts of the transaction, even to the point of pre-paying at the pump to release the nozzle. These changes have made most filling stations into simple turnkey operations which require only a single attendant to oversee them.
In the United States, New Jersey and Oregon do not allow customers to handle the pump, and the town of Huntington in New York State has also banned self serve on the basis of saving jobs. These bans are frequently challenged in the name of constitutionality and reducing prices: yet prices did not fall when self serve took over.
For some time now, a fair number of for-profit foundations, causes, and even overtly for-profit companies have been shifting their labour pools to include more and more volunteers: some to the point that only their directors and a few core staff are still paid. In a few cases, the core staff are paid handsomely enough that the business would collapse were it ever forced to pay its volunteer component.
The Internet world was quick to adopt this unpaid labour model, most effectively wherever those who worked for the business could be taught to see themselves as a "community" and invest their labour into the interests of that "community". Even though their only reason for existence was their direct value to the company, the social ties in these communities did become real: but so did the amount of unpaid labour extracted from those communities in the name of a common cause. This pattern is far from unique to the Internet: but its effectiveness rises greatly when the company structure can bring together many isolated people, none of whom are employed directly by the company, who will never meet each other except through the company structure.
Curiously, the vast majority of this unpaid labour is directed toward what would be called marketing promotion, quality control, and customer service in a more conventional business model. In other words, this Internet model has successfully outsourced every single one of its most expensive elements to volunteerism by appealing to a sense of community -- which is allowed to exist only insofar as it remains desirable to the business bottom line. Elements of community which go off on a tangent from direct business benefit will be the first to be shut down. Elements of community which challenge the status quo will be tolerated only insofar as what is said provides some benefit to the community, if only that of a pressure releasing steam valve: any real potential for substantial change will be quickly shut down and their instigator banned from the community and the business. Should any other part of the community ever start to become too independent of the Internet company, the business will not hesitate to shut down the relevant parts of the structure which brought those people together in the first place.
Ideally, the community has so internalised company values by this point that it will actively band together of its own accord to support the company's actions, even where those actions demand yet more unpaid labour of its members. Having invested so much into the community already: what is another hour of unpaid time in the interests of the "community" (or ten, or a hundred)?
Against that newfound freedom and the promise of lowered prices, what was a little lost customer interaction as quota'ed checkout stands, turnstiles, and fences replaced the local grocer? Few noticed or cared that customers had been converted into part of the store's service assembly line and were now doing many of the jobs that paid staff used to do. The store manager was in charge of the buying, as always. The only paid jobs that were left were stocking, cleaning, and cashing out: and those at a sharply reduced staff-customer ratio.Not surprisingly, Piggly-Wiggly and its competitor Alpha Beta were happy with the enhanced profit line. Other stores noticed, and were quick to follow suit.
Neither the personal touch nor the lost jobs were missed, not with a war looming on the horizon. As the traditional role of women abruptly shifted to fill the employment vacuum, the jobs lost to volunteering customers would not become noticeable until the men returned from war: at which point the self serve store had become so much a part of the landscape that its role was never questioned.
Nor did the promise of lowered prices ever pan out. Since education in identifying product value had not parallelled increased customer choice, shelf appeal quickly became the dominant basis for product selection. To best leverage the new basis for choice, an entire industry grew up around packaging and brand recognition: an industry which quietly raised the wholesale cost of the most popular products and edged others out.
The introduction of self-bagging at discount grocery stores went almost completely unnoticed. Now self-bagging in all levels of grocery stores is the norm, although it is often concealed under the environmental guise of reducing plastic bags (but you can always buy one if you want, which sometimes also pays for your bagger's services and sometimes not).
When self-checkouts were introduced in Clifton Park in 1992, customers scarcely blinked. A single cashier could now supervise four or more self-serve lines: which were even more efficient than cashier lines would have been since the customers who chose that option were clearly motivated by getting out of the store as quickly as possible. A few objected that self-checkouts used customer unpaid labour to further trim store costs and increase profit margins: but enough people saw only a shorter, faster checkout line that the objectors were little more than a speed bump.
Forty years ago, full service filling stations (gas stations) were the norm. Not only would the attendants fill the tank, they would also clean the windows, check and adjust the tire pressure, and top off the oil, tires, antifreeze, and a myriad of other engine fluids essential to the smooth operation of a vehicle. This model had not essentially changed since the first purpose-built gas station in the world came into being in St. Louis (United States) in 1905.
The first self serve filling station was built in Winnipeg in 1949. At first, the concept was slow to take off: but a tipping point was reached during the 1980s. Now, it is the full service filling station which is the quirky oddity in a world filled with self serve. The customer is increasingly expected to do all parts of the transaction, even to the point of pre-paying at the pump to release the nozzle. These changes have made most filling stations into simple turnkey operations which require only a single attendant to oversee them.
In the United States, New Jersey and Oregon do not allow customers to handle the pump, and the town of Huntington in New York State has also banned self serve on the basis of saving jobs. These bans are frequently challenged in the name of constitutionality and reducing prices: yet prices did not fall when self serve took over.
For some time now, a fair number of for-profit foundations, causes, and even overtly for-profit companies have been shifting their labour pools to include more and more volunteers: some to the point that only their directors and a few core staff are still paid. In a few cases, the core staff are paid handsomely enough that the business would collapse were it ever forced to pay its volunteer component.
The Internet world was quick to adopt this unpaid labour model, most effectively wherever those who worked for the business could be taught to see themselves as a "community" and invest their labour into the interests of that "community". Even though their only reason for existence was their direct value to the company, the social ties in these communities did become real: but so did the amount of unpaid labour extracted from those communities in the name of a common cause. This pattern is far from unique to the Internet: but its effectiveness rises greatly when the company structure can bring together many isolated people, none of whom are employed directly by the company, who will never meet each other except through the company structure.
Curiously, the vast majority of this unpaid labour is directed toward what would be called marketing promotion, quality control, and customer service in a more conventional business model. In other words, this Internet model has successfully outsourced every single one of its most expensive elements to volunteerism by appealing to a sense of community -- which is allowed to exist only insofar as it remains desirable to the business bottom line. Elements of community which go off on a tangent from direct business benefit will be the first to be shut down. Elements of community which challenge the status quo will be tolerated only insofar as what is said provides some benefit to the community, if only that of a pressure releasing steam valve: any real potential for substantial change will be quickly shut down and their instigator banned from the community and the business. Should any other part of the community ever start to become too independent of the Internet company, the business will not hesitate to shut down the relevant parts of the structure which brought those people together in the first place.
Ideally, the community has so internalised company values by this point that it will actively band together of its own accord to support the company's actions, even where those actions demand yet more unpaid labour of its members. Having invested so much into the community already: what is another hour of unpaid time in the interests of the "community" (or ten, or a hundred)?
December 13, 2010
December 12, 2010
What is the use of universal education if most people refuse to use it? If the purpose of education is to be job training alone, the apprenticeship system is much more effective.
December 10, 2010
I know the length of these posts deters some readers. Twitterfeeds run a maximum of 140 characters, but even newspaper columns are almost never longer than eight hundred words. Some of the more detailed or introspective posts in this blog are easily twice that.
But what does it cost, here, save server space which Google claims to have in abundance, my time in writing, and your time in reading? Were you really going to solve world peace in the time you did not spend reading the rest of this post? or were you going to chase down the latest YouTube viral video?
When I choose to write for other publications, I will play by their rules and write to their specifications. Until then, I will spend as much time and space and as many words as it needs for me to feel out a topic within a single post.
You may choose to read, or not. It lies completely in your free will and your freedom of choice and of action. I don't claim to have the world's truth. If there is any wisdom in any of this, you have brought as much to the table as I. Please don't take it as insult or deterrence or any kind of demand when I say as much directly!
But what does it cost, here, save server space which Google claims to have in abundance, my time in writing, and your time in reading? Were you really going to solve world peace in the time you did not spend reading the rest of this post? or were you going to chase down the latest YouTube viral video?
When I choose to write for other publications, I will play by their rules and write to their specifications. Until then, I will spend as much time and space and as many words as it needs for me to feel out a topic within a single post.
You may choose to read, or not. It lies completely in your free will and your freedom of choice and of action. I don't claim to have the world's truth. If there is any wisdom in any of this, you have brought as much to the table as I. Please don't take it as insult or deterrence or any kind of demand when I say as much directly!
December 09, 2010
Note: WikiLeaks is not associated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.
- note at the top of the WikiLeaks article on Wikipedia
I find it truly interesting that the current denial of service attacks on the companies which have cut off Wikileaks (Amazon, Paypal, VISA, Mastercard) and the websites of those politicians who seem to be most closely involved in trying to take down Wikileaks are not sourced in networks of 'bots. Rather, they seem to be the coordinated efforts of thousands, perhaps millions of people acting individually.
Contrary to media reports, this is not the first info-war. Wars destroy: and thus far there has been no attempt by the DoS people to damage any data on any of the targeted sites. Even when examined only as a determined attempt to take Wikileaks down (for the Wikileaks site continues to be hacker-targeted), there have been many similar attacks before: some in the news, some not. Ironically, the Wikileaks diplomatic cables confirm at least one such suspected government attack, by China on Google.
Still, the current DoS action is historically significant: as the very first ever cyber demonstration, with protesters "camping out" on the doorsteps of those against whom they are protesting and doing their utmost to disrupt business as usual simply by their massed presence. As protesters have known for generations, action speaks much more loudly than even the largest petition.
(It remains an open question whether it speaks more loudly than the ballot box. I am not at all certain whether democracy has particularly much to do with all this -- on either side.)
In passing, the Wikipedia editors have been diligently collecting and summarising the leaked information, to the point where it now has its own page.
- note at the top of the WikiLeaks article on Wikipedia
I find it truly interesting that the current denial of service attacks on the companies which have cut off Wikileaks (Amazon, Paypal, VISA, Mastercard) and the websites of those politicians who seem to be most closely involved in trying to take down Wikileaks are not sourced in networks of 'bots. Rather, they seem to be the coordinated efforts of thousands, perhaps millions of people acting individually.
Contrary to media reports, this is not the first info-war. Wars destroy: and thus far there has been no attempt by the DoS people to damage any data on any of the targeted sites. Even when examined only as a determined attempt to take Wikileaks down (for the Wikileaks site continues to be hacker-targeted), there have been many similar attacks before: some in the news, some not. Ironically, the Wikileaks diplomatic cables confirm at least one such suspected government attack, by China on Google.
Still, the current DoS action is historically significant: as the very first ever cyber demonstration, with protesters "camping out" on the doorsteps of those against whom they are protesting and doing their utmost to disrupt business as usual simply by their massed presence. As protesters have known for generations, action speaks much more loudly than even the largest petition.
(It remains an open question whether it speaks more loudly than the ballot box. I am not at all certain whether democracy has particularly much to do with all this -- on either side.)
In passing, the Wikipedia editors have been diligently collecting and summarising the leaked information, to the point where it now has its own page.
December 07, 2010
The results of Haiti's controversial election are expected to be released today. Currently, polls show a possible run-off between the top two candidates: Misery and Corruption. Optimism withdrew from the race weeks ago.
- The Current, CBC Radio
- The Current, CBC Radio
December 06, 2010
We love the comfort of the familiar morning newspaper. We may curse its inconvenience or its temporary isolating qualities when it is spread out halfway across the breakfast table, but to those of us who grew up with it, the routine is as well-worn and familiar as a pair of old shoes.
Who would even consider casting it aside? The backlighting of most computer screens is extremely wearing on the eyes, the text on cellphone screens is microscopically tiny.
But set all that aside. These are not permanent reasons to prefer one type of information transfer over another. Daily comfort rituals change. Technology evolves. The technology of LED and Kindle is already doing much to remove computer screen backlight and make the light contrast easier on the eye.
At the same time we ourselves are adapting to the technology. Increasingly we take it for granted that the right size in which to read news should be the size of a telephone screen: something to which we have perhaps been pre-conditioned by the bottom headline newsfeed of the news cable networks. We would rather shorten our information feed to correspond to the cellphoned Twitter than strain our eyes trying to decipher anything of any length.
The coming generation can't even conceive that information might come in any other form. Just as those born after the 1940s cannot conceive of a world without radio and those born after the 1970s cannot conceive of a world without cable television, those born into the new millennium take the Internet and electronic news for granted. We are endlessly psychologically adaptable that way.
We find it difficult even to conceive that we might lose anything thereby. Who could lose, now that the world is at our fingertips?
Yet we do lose. And we are so very adaptable and so very willing to forget what has gone before, most of us not living in the transition years will never even realise what we have lost.
*** In depth analysis ***
Electronic news does not lend itself to in depth analysis. If it is to survive, the printed page has no choice in the matter. Competition from 24/7 cable news feeds and now from the Internet has forced major printed newspapers and printed weekly magazines to compete almost entirely on the basis of in depth analysis.
As with televised cable news before it, electronic news delivery prioritises speed and efficiency over substance: an attitude which has been fully transposed to the reader. Short attention spans are now the norm. If the substance of an electronic news feed cannot be fully summarised within 140 characters, most readers find it not worth reading.
How can what is going on in the world ever be adequately summarised in just a few short paragraphs, let alone a Twitter feed? How can it possibly be understood? Yet we know that in electronic journalism, it must be: for anything below the fold is much less likely to be read. There are always alternatives on the Internet. If a reader runs into something too complex to try and digest in the few in-between moments devoted to the quick update, there will always be something shorter and faster and easier to read. On the Internet, it is easier than ever to "channel change" away from unwanted depth.
Yet in depth analysis of current events also costs money. In a world where removing cost from processes is an ongoing initiative, in depth analysis may not even be desirable. In depth analysis keeps the reader on a very few pages for long periods of time. Far more ROI-desirable is the rapid clicking through multiple pages: translating into visit depth and far, far more viewed advertisements, and correspondingly increasing the odds that at least one of those advertisements will become a click-through and perhaps a sale. Rapid, efficient turnover of content and constant new gimmicks and eye candy to pull the reader from page to page and especially advertisement to advertisement will always trump quality of content in the capitalist electronic universe.
Print media does not have this limitation. Whether readers read a single page or the entire publication in detail, they are still counted into its circulation. A newspaper does not have to encourage the reader to flip flip flip through its pages in order to maintain its advertisement revenue: it only needs the reader to be hooked by a single one of its articles. That single article could suddenly double or even triple circulation as new readers rush to check it out.
Still, even newspapers are succumbing to the combined pressure of high in-depth costs and the short attention span: and subscribing to information feeds that give exactly the same short, concise information to news networks of all shapes and sizes.
This pattern is not unique to electronic news and the printed newspaper. Every age has had its version of the same pattern: from manuscripts to printed books to weeklys, dailys, and now the electronic age. Every time new technology has speeded up the release of information, the in depth quality of that information has been been diluted correspondingly.
*** Pixels are fragile ***
Physical newspapers and magazines have a permanence which electronics at every level have yet to embrace. Pixels get lost or purged or glitched or outright deleted on a regular basis. Early electronic information was lost to the recycling of tapes, even such worldshaking historical data as the original feed for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Modern electronic information is lost to constant technological change and to sheer volume. With every hardware and software upgrade, vast amounts of information are permanently lost.
Although the vast majority of newspapers are tossed or (hopefully) recycled, hundreds of copies of major newpapers are preserved in living rooms, attics, libraries, even the newspaper office itself. Even if one of these storage locations were to suffer a catastrophic event, it is very likely that copies will still survive elsewhere.
Paper news media lend themselves to clipping, scrapbooking, archiving. Cellphones and iPads don't even print hardcopies. They are not meant to.
Our journalistic heritage is vanishing at our fingertips. History is eroding as quickly as as the next new electronic edition. On-line news is impermanent by its very nature. As newsfeeds are updated, old articles are pulled, so quickly that readers may never have seen them and -- barring actually thinking about the news process -- have no reason even to suspect their existence.
*** Medical issues ***
The flip side of electronic news media has always been a technology which could receive it and download it to consumers as quickly as it can be churned out. The personal computer age opened the door, the Internet turned the key: but at that time relatively few of us lived on-line to the point where instant feeds made any sense. If we wanted instant and sometimes graphic news 24/7 and did not care particularly about its quality or depth, CNN taught us to turn on the television.
The personal digital assistant changed all that. The Blackberry first brought the Internet world into a jacket pocket, but its early possibilities were still limited mostly to e-mail communication. Everything really started to change when the increasing popularity of WiFi wiring made it easier and more convenient to hook into the Internet than to seek out a television. Now, with the cellphone revolution, the Internet lives at nearly everyone's fingertips, no matter where they happen to be.
We don't know exactly what this barrage of constantly linked-in electronics is doing to our health -- but some early warning signs should cause us to pay close heed.
In the January 2011 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, a new study has found that something about cellphones in themselves is linked with behavioural problems in children much too young to use them themselves. Even pregnant mothers who use cellphones frequently are much more likely to give birth to a child with a behavioural problem. This finding is independent of other complicating factors which could have been linked with high cellphone use such as maternal inattention or the amount of time spent with the child. A family history of behavioural problems was checked and ruled out as contributing to the cellphone-behavioural problems link.
Even the different type of eye focus required by computer screens permanently alters the shape of the eye, resulting in a rising incidence of myopia and quite probably a future parallel rise in the rate of chronic glaucoma (since the existing structures for siphoning off excess fluid in the eye is blocked by the elongated shape). In some teenage populations, the incidence of myopia is already as high as 80%.
Most of these effects have never been studied before. Governments have previously rejected any restrictions on technology expansion on the basis that no negative evidence had ever been found -- yet does this really mean anything if the issue has never been studied? No negative evidence found does not mean the same as that a negative effect does not exist. Our children are the guinea pigs.
Quite independent from any material or radiative factor is the psychological impact of a constant barrage of news headlines, for the most part received without context and without further explanation of any kind. With all these constant graphic headlines at our fingertips: how much can the human factor still mean to us? How much will it mean to our children, who have grown up with the knowledge that where human contact is not face-to-face, they can always turn the cellphone off? Where we don't personally know the people involved, how many domestic or foreign deaths does it take before we care?
Or will it all be lost in time to the ability to quickly flip the channel away from unwanted content?
*** A look forward ***
Yet for all this, electronic versions of daily news are here to stay. From a business perspective, electronic news is simply cheaper to produce and has a higher return on investment. From a reader perspective, electronic news is more convenient and far-reaching -- at least in theory -- than ever before.
Nor there any objective reason why electronic news should be rejected out of hand. If there is a fundamental fault in any of what has been said before, it lies not in the medium itself but in our willingness to have our expectations shaped by early limitations of the medium. Electronic media can be responsible, can preserve history, can cover an event with just as much detail and context as any printed newspaper. The potential of electronic media is vast. But it can also be just as narrow and limiting as any printed page -- more so, because we delude ourselves that the wider access and instant public feedback inherently mean that it is not.
Even the technology to make that news safely accessible can come into being if there exists the public will to do it. Safety standards were virtually unheard of at the turn of the previous century, yet today few products are released without them. Yet no product can be made subject to safety standards where the will does not exist. Common sense and public education should have eradicated smoking years ago: yet here it remains, just as strong as ever.
As with all things, the future direction of electronic news and the printed page is entirely in our hands. It is up to us to decide whether we will choose to proceed with wisdom.
Who would even consider casting it aside? The backlighting of most computer screens is extremely wearing on the eyes, the text on cellphone screens is microscopically tiny.
But set all that aside. These are not permanent reasons to prefer one type of information transfer over another. Daily comfort rituals change. Technology evolves. The technology of LED and Kindle is already doing much to remove computer screen backlight and make the light contrast easier on the eye.
At the same time we ourselves are adapting to the technology. Increasingly we take it for granted that the right size in which to read news should be the size of a telephone screen: something to which we have perhaps been pre-conditioned by the bottom headline newsfeed of the news cable networks. We would rather shorten our information feed to correspond to the cellphoned Twitter than strain our eyes trying to decipher anything of any length.
The coming generation can't even conceive that information might come in any other form. Just as those born after the 1940s cannot conceive of a world without radio and those born after the 1970s cannot conceive of a world without cable television, those born into the new millennium take the Internet and electronic news for granted. We are endlessly psychologically adaptable that way.
We find it difficult even to conceive that we might lose anything thereby. Who could lose, now that the world is at our fingertips?
Yet we do lose. And we are so very adaptable and so very willing to forget what has gone before, most of us not living in the transition years will never even realise what we have lost.
*** In depth analysis ***
Electronic news does not lend itself to in depth analysis. If it is to survive, the printed page has no choice in the matter. Competition from 24/7 cable news feeds and now from the Internet has forced major printed newspapers and printed weekly magazines to compete almost entirely on the basis of in depth analysis.
As with televised cable news before it, electronic news delivery prioritises speed and efficiency over substance: an attitude which has been fully transposed to the reader. Short attention spans are now the norm. If the substance of an electronic news feed cannot be fully summarised within 140 characters, most readers find it not worth reading.
How can what is going on in the world ever be adequately summarised in just a few short paragraphs, let alone a Twitter feed? How can it possibly be understood? Yet we know that in electronic journalism, it must be: for anything below the fold is much less likely to be read. There are always alternatives on the Internet. If a reader runs into something too complex to try and digest in the few in-between moments devoted to the quick update, there will always be something shorter and faster and easier to read. On the Internet, it is easier than ever to "channel change" away from unwanted depth.
Yet in depth analysis of current events also costs money. In a world where removing cost from processes is an ongoing initiative, in depth analysis may not even be desirable. In depth analysis keeps the reader on a very few pages for long periods of time. Far more ROI-desirable is the rapid clicking through multiple pages: translating into visit depth and far, far more viewed advertisements, and correspondingly increasing the odds that at least one of those advertisements will become a click-through and perhaps a sale. Rapid, efficient turnover of content and constant new gimmicks and eye candy to pull the reader from page to page and especially advertisement to advertisement will always trump quality of content in the capitalist electronic universe.
Print media does not have this limitation. Whether readers read a single page or the entire publication in detail, they are still counted into its circulation. A newspaper does not have to encourage the reader to flip flip flip through its pages in order to maintain its advertisement revenue: it only needs the reader to be hooked by a single one of its articles. That single article could suddenly double or even triple circulation as new readers rush to check it out.
Still, even newspapers are succumbing to the combined pressure of high in-depth costs and the short attention span: and subscribing to information feeds that give exactly the same short, concise information to news networks of all shapes and sizes.
This pattern is not unique to electronic news and the printed newspaper. Every age has had its version of the same pattern: from manuscripts to printed books to weeklys, dailys, and now the electronic age. Every time new technology has speeded up the release of information, the in depth quality of that information has been been diluted correspondingly.
*** Pixels are fragile ***
Physical newspapers and magazines have a permanence which electronics at every level have yet to embrace. Pixels get lost or purged or glitched or outright deleted on a regular basis. Early electronic information was lost to the recycling of tapes, even such worldshaking historical data as the original feed for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Modern electronic information is lost to constant technological change and to sheer volume. With every hardware and software upgrade, vast amounts of information are permanently lost.
Although the vast majority of newspapers are tossed or (hopefully) recycled, hundreds of copies of major newpapers are preserved in living rooms, attics, libraries, even the newspaper office itself. Even if one of these storage locations were to suffer a catastrophic event, it is very likely that copies will still survive elsewhere.
Paper news media lend themselves to clipping, scrapbooking, archiving. Cellphones and iPads don't even print hardcopies. They are not meant to.
Our journalistic heritage is vanishing at our fingertips. History is eroding as quickly as as the next new electronic edition. On-line news is impermanent by its very nature. As newsfeeds are updated, old articles are pulled, so quickly that readers may never have seen them and -- barring actually thinking about the news process -- have no reason even to suspect their existence.
*** Medical issues ***
The flip side of electronic news media has always been a technology which could receive it and download it to consumers as quickly as it can be churned out. The personal computer age opened the door, the Internet turned the key: but at that time relatively few of us lived on-line to the point where instant feeds made any sense. If we wanted instant and sometimes graphic news 24/7 and did not care particularly about its quality or depth, CNN taught us to turn on the television.
The personal digital assistant changed all that. The Blackberry first brought the Internet world into a jacket pocket, but its early possibilities were still limited mostly to e-mail communication. Everything really started to change when the increasing popularity of WiFi wiring made it easier and more convenient to hook into the Internet than to seek out a television. Now, with the cellphone revolution, the Internet lives at nearly everyone's fingertips, no matter where they happen to be.
We don't know exactly what this barrage of constantly linked-in electronics is doing to our health -- but some early warning signs should cause us to pay close heed.
In the January 2011 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, a new study has found that something about cellphones in themselves is linked with behavioural problems in children much too young to use them themselves. Even pregnant mothers who use cellphones frequently are much more likely to give birth to a child with a behavioural problem. This finding is independent of other complicating factors which could have been linked with high cellphone use such as maternal inattention or the amount of time spent with the child. A family history of behavioural problems was checked and ruled out as contributing to the cellphone-behavioural problems link.
Even the different type of eye focus required by computer screens permanently alters the shape of the eye, resulting in a rising incidence of myopia and quite probably a future parallel rise in the rate of chronic glaucoma (since the existing structures for siphoning off excess fluid in the eye is blocked by the elongated shape). In some teenage populations, the incidence of myopia is already as high as 80%.
Most of these effects have never been studied before. Governments have previously rejected any restrictions on technology expansion on the basis that no negative evidence had ever been found -- yet does this really mean anything if the issue has never been studied? No negative evidence found does not mean the same as that a negative effect does not exist. Our children are the guinea pigs.
Quite independent from any material or radiative factor is the psychological impact of a constant barrage of news headlines, for the most part received without context and without further explanation of any kind. With all these constant graphic headlines at our fingertips: how much can the human factor still mean to us? How much will it mean to our children, who have grown up with the knowledge that where human contact is not face-to-face, they can always turn the cellphone off? Where we don't personally know the people involved, how many domestic or foreign deaths does it take before we care?
Or will it all be lost in time to the ability to quickly flip the channel away from unwanted content?
*** A look forward ***
Yet for all this, electronic versions of daily news are here to stay. From a business perspective, electronic news is simply cheaper to produce and has a higher return on investment. From a reader perspective, electronic news is more convenient and far-reaching -- at least in theory -- than ever before.
Nor there any objective reason why electronic news should be rejected out of hand. If there is a fundamental fault in any of what has been said before, it lies not in the medium itself but in our willingness to have our expectations shaped by early limitations of the medium. Electronic media can be responsible, can preserve history, can cover an event with just as much detail and context as any printed newspaper. The potential of electronic media is vast. But it can also be just as narrow and limiting as any printed page -- more so, because we delude ourselves that the wider access and instant public feedback inherently mean that it is not.
Even the technology to make that news safely accessible can come into being if there exists the public will to do it. Safety standards were virtually unheard of at the turn of the previous century, yet today few products are released without them. Yet no product can be made subject to safety standards where the will does not exist. Common sense and public education should have eradicated smoking years ago: yet here it remains, just as strong as ever.
As with all things, the future direction of electronic news and the printed page is entirely in our hands. It is up to us to decide whether we will choose to proceed with wisdom.
December 05, 2010
It seems Wikileaks' release of the diplomatic cables has touched a nerve mere military releases could not. The general public seemed just fine with protecting First Amendment rights during a series of leaky hiccoughs involving some dozen (other) countries, odd reports of toxic dumping, the inner secrets of sorority sisters and Scientologists, illegal practices in Icelandic banks; and let's not forget about the leaked e-mails of the Climatic Research Unit, gleefully reproduced in appropriately edited versions all over the conservative blogosphere.
The first sign of real trouble actually antedates the diplomatic cable leak. When the Swiss bank Julius Baer learned that some of its records had been leaked specifically pertaining to anonymising trusts in its Cayman Islands branch (with strong tax evasion and money laundering implications), the chief operating officer of that branch was fired. Interestingly, the leaks appear to have continued even after Rudolf Elmer's dismissal: so the bank launched a cease and desist order against Wikileaks and its United States domain registrar Dyandot, on the basis that "immediate harm will result to Plaintiffs in the absence of injunctive relief." For reasons as yet unconfirmed, Wikileaks had no representative at the hearing where the injunction was granted. Although the law firm representing Julius Baer is based in Los Angeles, the hearing was held in San Francisco. Wikileaks claims that Julius Baer had never informed Wikileaks in which city it would seek the injunction.
This first action passed almost completely under the media radar, and would probably have gone almost completely unnoticed on its own. Things only hit the fan when Julius Baer succeeded in getting a second injunction against Wikileaks: which would have suppressed virtually every major document Wikileaks had ever exposed. At the time, Wikileaks held somewhere in the neighbourhood of a million documents: of which only fourteen touched on Julius Baer. The given reason was to protect the privacy of Julius Baer's clients: yet Julius Baer's own lawyers identified at least one of those clients by name and street address in their own submitted documentation.
The second injunction did not go unnoticed. With the assistance of several First Amendment and civil liberties groups, Wikileaks was able to overturn the injunction and reclaim its domain name by the 29th of February, 2008, eleven days after the original injunction was issued; and the bank dropped the case a week later.
At no point was any libel, slander, or infringement of copyright ever proven in the courts; nor was any lawsuit filed on that basis. The original cease and desist injunction stood alone, without ever having been submitted to any rigorous examination; and without protest and quite a bit of external financial and legal assistance, the second would have stood as well. Destroying a member of the press is just that easy: even in a part of the world which prides itself on its freedom of speech.
Yet Dyandot had unquestioningly complied with the permanent injunction by immediately locking the wikileaks.org domain name.
Fast-forward two years, to the present day and the present release of diplomatic cables.
This week alone, Wikileaks has been subject to a denial-of-service attack, has been forced off Amazon's servers and now its French server, is steadily losing domains, and has been cut off from receiving funds through Moneybookers and Paypal. Access to the document release is now restricted almost entirely to independent mirror domains. For now, Wikileaks still retains its Facebook page. Unless Facebook's CEO is sufficiently independent of his investors to be able to take a stand -- and wishes to do so -- don't expect that to last.
In one of those surreal moments which never make the media, Homeland Security Committee Chair Peter King, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all agreed that the Wikileaks diplomatic cables release was an attack on their respective countries, although only Peter King has claimed that the release was an attack on the international community. Only United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ventured to suggest that reaction to the release was "over-wrought".
More amusingly, the White House Office of Management and Budget expects all unauthorised federal government employees and contractors to avert their eyes from what the world has already seen.
These actions will never be called censorship. As far as the letter of the law is concerned, each of these actions represents the independent decisions of a number of separate corporations. Equally, each corporation has denied acting under political pressure. Instead, each has claimed that Wikileaks violated its terms of service by providing illegal activities. Anyone who tries to work around the ToS by hosting or collecting money for Wikileaks independently risks similarly violating the ToS of any company with which they may be associated.
What will never be said is that those services were not illegal until the moment the United States government opened a federal criminal investigation, and they are still not illegal until charges are actually laid and Wikileaks has been convicted of those charges. To date, no charges have been laid.
All that has happened is that an investigation has been opened, in precisely the same way as HUAC opened its investigation against Communist Party infiltration some fifty-odd years ago. In effect, the moment the United States government opened a federal criminal investigation, those same corporations were given precisely two choices: either sever all ties with Wikileaks and open the relevant documentation to the federal government, or be considered possible accomplices and liable to parallel investigation. Successful prosecution on any such basis against Amazon, Paypal et al is so highly unlikely that it would probably never be initiated: yet the threat suffices to create exactly the same effect as if government pressure had been applied directly.
Let no one who finds this kind of government pressure acceptable say a word against Chinese censorship. At their core, the two are no different.
The first sign of real trouble actually antedates the diplomatic cable leak. When the Swiss bank Julius Baer learned that some of its records had been leaked specifically pertaining to anonymising trusts in its Cayman Islands branch (with strong tax evasion and money laundering implications), the chief operating officer of that branch was fired. Interestingly, the leaks appear to have continued even after Rudolf Elmer's dismissal: so the bank launched a cease and desist order against Wikileaks and its United States domain registrar Dyandot, on the basis that "immediate harm will result to Plaintiffs in the absence of injunctive relief." For reasons as yet unconfirmed, Wikileaks had no representative at the hearing where the injunction was granted. Although the law firm representing Julius Baer is based in Los Angeles, the hearing was held in San Francisco. Wikileaks claims that Julius Baer had never informed Wikileaks in which city it would seek the injunction.
This first action passed almost completely under the media radar, and would probably have gone almost completely unnoticed on its own. Things only hit the fan when Julius Baer succeeded in getting a second injunction against Wikileaks: which would have suppressed virtually every major document Wikileaks had ever exposed. At the time, Wikileaks held somewhere in the neighbourhood of a million documents: of which only fourteen touched on Julius Baer. The given reason was to protect the privacy of Julius Baer's clients: yet Julius Baer's own lawyers identified at least one of those clients by name and street address in their own submitted documentation.
The second injunction did not go unnoticed. With the assistance of several First Amendment and civil liberties groups, Wikileaks was able to overturn the injunction and reclaim its domain name by the 29th of February, 2008, eleven days after the original injunction was issued; and the bank dropped the case a week later.
At no point was any libel, slander, or infringement of copyright ever proven in the courts; nor was any lawsuit filed on that basis. The original cease and desist injunction stood alone, without ever having been submitted to any rigorous examination; and without protest and quite a bit of external financial and legal assistance, the second would have stood as well. Destroying a member of the press is just that easy: even in a part of the world which prides itself on its freedom of speech.
Yet Dyandot had unquestioningly complied with the permanent injunction by immediately locking the wikileaks.org domain name.
Fast-forward two years, to the present day and the present release of diplomatic cables.
This week alone, Wikileaks has been subject to a denial-of-service attack, has been forced off Amazon's servers and now its French server, is steadily losing domains, and has been cut off from receiving funds through Moneybookers and Paypal. Access to the document release is now restricted almost entirely to independent mirror domains. For now, Wikileaks still retains its Facebook page. Unless Facebook's CEO is sufficiently independent of his investors to be able to take a stand -- and wishes to do so -- don't expect that to last.
In one of those surreal moments which never make the media, Homeland Security Committee Chair Peter King, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all agreed that the Wikileaks diplomatic cables release was an attack on their respective countries, although only Peter King has claimed that the release was an attack on the international community. Only United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ventured to suggest that reaction to the release was "over-wrought".
More amusingly, the White House Office of Management and Budget expects all unauthorised federal government employees and contractors to avert their eyes from what the world has already seen.
These actions will never be called censorship. As far as the letter of the law is concerned, each of these actions represents the independent decisions of a number of separate corporations. Equally, each corporation has denied acting under political pressure. Instead, each has claimed that Wikileaks violated its terms of service by providing illegal activities. Anyone who tries to work around the ToS by hosting or collecting money for Wikileaks independently risks similarly violating the ToS of any company with which they may be associated.
What will never be said is that those services were not illegal until the moment the United States government opened a federal criminal investigation, and they are still not illegal until charges are actually laid and Wikileaks has been convicted of those charges. To date, no charges have been laid.
All that has happened is that an investigation has been opened, in precisely the same way as HUAC opened its investigation against Communist Party infiltration some fifty-odd years ago. In effect, the moment the United States government opened a federal criminal investigation, those same corporations were given precisely two choices: either sever all ties with Wikileaks and open the relevant documentation to the federal government, or be considered possible accomplices and liable to parallel investigation. Successful prosecution on any such basis against Amazon, Paypal et al is so highly unlikely that it would probably never be initiated: yet the threat suffices to create exactly the same effect as if government pressure had been applied directly.
Let no one who finds this kind of government pressure acceptable say a word against Chinese censorship. At their core, the two are no different.
December 02, 2010
CHONPS: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur. These six elements are the building blocks of all life.
The first four of these elements are each the least massive element in their respective periodic table group. Hydrogen is the simplest, a single electron orbiting a single proton: from it are all the other elements made. Helium comes next but it reacts chemically with nothing else. Fusion can build upon helium but life, never. Among all possible reactive elements born in the stellar fusion crucible: carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen are the easiest for a star to make.
The other two elements are used to create amino acids, the basic building blocks of life at the molecular level. Sulphur appears in cysteine and methionine, two of the essential amino acids we must ingest through our diet to sustain life.
But phosphorus: that is the very spine of all life. Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, zippered together on a backbone of alternating sugars and phosphates: these are the essential components of DNA, upon which all life is based. The phosphate ion is also a key player in both adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and adenosine diphosphate (ADP): without which metabolism could not occur.
No phosphorus, no life.
Or so we thought.
The GFAJ-1 bacterium, a member of the common Halomonadaceae family, seemed to be just another extremophile at first: happy in high-saline, high-alkaline environments which would kill most other organisms. Mono Lake, a volcanic lake located high in the Bodie Hills of California, United States, provides both of those conditions. It also happens to have an unusually high concentration of arsenic.
When phosphorus is lacking, it seems that the GFAJ-1 bacterium is capable of using arsenic instead: in ATP, in glucose, in its proteins and lipids, even in its very DNA.
A successful elemental substitution has never been known before in a living organism. As a member of the nitrogen-phosphorus family in the table of elements, arsenic is chemically similar enough to phosphorus that our bodies often try to substitute arsenic for phosphorus, with disastrous results. This similarity to phosphorus is exactly why arsenic is so very toxic to us. Yet somehow, GFAJ-1 seems to have made it work.
Arsenic is known to be common in hydrothermal vent environments: which the depths of Mono Lake mimic quite well. After water diversions were ended in 1994, the deepest layers of Mono Lake ceased to mix in with shallower layers, and the lake reverted to its natural meromictic state. We have long known of entire ecosystems built upon sulphur, substituting chemical reactions based upon sulphur and the vent's geo-energy for photosynthesis and other photochemical reactions. The previously unsuspected ability of the GFAJ-1 bacterium to also use the arsenic eminating from these vents may thus have cast a light into the dimmest recesses of the very origins of life.
The research is still young. The results obtained by Felisa Wolfe-Simon have yet to be replicated: for it is on such replication that scientific evidence is built. Multiple dilutions built into the methodology make it unlikely that trace phosphorus could have contaminated the lab samples; yet any such contamination might be sufficient to maintain the phosphorus spine of the GFAJ-1 bacterium's DNA, with the arsenates used elsewhere in the bacterium's structure and metabolism. Upon this point much depends: for all life as we know it is based on DNA and RNA, and thus on phosphorus.
If the GFAJ-1 bacterium is indeed capable of replacing one of the core elements in its genetic structure with arsenic, it will force us to re-consider the nature of life and what is needed for life, not only on our own planet but in the entire universe.
To Mark Twain, Mono Lake was a "lifeless, treeless, hideous desert ... the loneliest place on earth". Will the GFAJ-1 bacterium native to Mono Lake turn out to be the loneliest organism in the universe ... or will it feel right at home?
The first four of these elements are each the least massive element in their respective periodic table group. Hydrogen is the simplest, a single electron orbiting a single proton: from it are all the other elements made. Helium comes next but it reacts chemically with nothing else. Fusion can build upon helium but life, never. Among all possible reactive elements born in the stellar fusion crucible: carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen are the easiest for a star to make.
The other two elements are used to create amino acids, the basic building blocks of life at the molecular level. Sulphur appears in cysteine and methionine, two of the essential amino acids we must ingest through our diet to sustain life.
But phosphorus: that is the very spine of all life. Adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, zippered together on a backbone of alternating sugars and phosphates: these are the essential components of DNA, upon which all life is based. The phosphate ion is also a key player in both adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and adenosine diphosphate (ADP): without which metabolism could not occur.
No phosphorus, no life.
Or so we thought.
The GFAJ-1 bacterium, a member of the common Halomonadaceae family, seemed to be just another extremophile at first: happy in high-saline, high-alkaline environments which would kill most other organisms. Mono Lake, a volcanic lake located high in the Bodie Hills of California, United States, provides both of those conditions. It also happens to have an unusually high concentration of arsenic.
When phosphorus is lacking, it seems that the GFAJ-1 bacterium is capable of using arsenic instead: in ATP, in glucose, in its proteins and lipids, even in its very DNA.
A successful elemental substitution has never been known before in a living organism. As a member of the nitrogen-phosphorus family in the table of elements, arsenic is chemically similar enough to phosphorus that our bodies often try to substitute arsenic for phosphorus, with disastrous results. This similarity to phosphorus is exactly why arsenic is so very toxic to us. Yet somehow, GFAJ-1 seems to have made it work.
Arsenic is known to be common in hydrothermal vent environments: which the depths of Mono Lake mimic quite well. After water diversions were ended in 1994, the deepest layers of Mono Lake ceased to mix in with shallower layers, and the lake reverted to its natural meromictic state. We have long known of entire ecosystems built upon sulphur, substituting chemical reactions based upon sulphur and the vent's geo-energy for photosynthesis and other photochemical reactions. The previously unsuspected ability of the GFAJ-1 bacterium to also use the arsenic eminating from these vents may thus have cast a light into the dimmest recesses of the very origins of life.
The research is still young. The results obtained by Felisa Wolfe-Simon have yet to be replicated: for it is on such replication that scientific evidence is built. Multiple dilutions built into the methodology make it unlikely that trace phosphorus could have contaminated the lab samples; yet any such contamination might be sufficient to maintain the phosphorus spine of the GFAJ-1 bacterium's DNA, with the arsenates used elsewhere in the bacterium's structure and metabolism. Upon this point much depends: for all life as we know it is based on DNA and RNA, and thus on phosphorus.
If the GFAJ-1 bacterium is indeed capable of replacing one of the core elements in its genetic structure with arsenic, it will force us to re-consider the nature of life and what is needed for life, not only on our own planet but in the entire universe.
To Mark Twain, Mono Lake was a "lifeless, treeless, hideous desert ... the loneliest place on earth". Will the GFAJ-1 bacterium native to Mono Lake turn out to be the loneliest organism in the universe ... or will it feel right at home?
