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To me, the majority of the spectrum of mainstream media spans from Maureen Dowd to Katie Couric. At one end is MoDo, whose addiction to trivialities, I find just painful. I have never once learned anything from her. She, and the jokesters whose lines she steals and prints, simply repeat the insipid cocktail party chatter of the Upper East Side mansions where they accidentally kick their poodles drunk. It’s fine. It’s not worthy of column inches in The New York Times, it insults my intelligence, but it’s not actually insulting.
Katie Couric is insulting. She, and the Right-Wing attack machine whose frames she steals and parrots, repeat the toxic talk radio chatter of the hate-filled fever swamps. It actually is insulting.
When Katie grills Parkinson victim Michael J. Fox for either acting like he had worse Parkinsons than he has, or purposely not taking his medication in order to exaggerate the shaking – using “some say” constructions in her questions, we know that she is speaking on behalf of Rush Limbaugh. It is insulting.
When Katie grills stage four Cancer victim Elizabeth Edwards for apparently having the temerity to fight her cancer – using “some say” questions again to paint her husband as uncaring, incapable of leadership, insane with ambition. It is insulting. Most Americans, actually, Katie, have hearts. And to think that her CBS news chair was once occupied by Edward R. Murrow. God, how insulting!
Frank Rich, one of the only reasons The New York Times deserves to still exist, earned a beer from me for this:
Would it be better if he [Edwards] instead ran the country at the same time he was clearing brush on a ranch? Polio informed rather than crippled the leadership of F.D.R.; Lincoln endured the sickness and death of a beloved 11-year-old son during the Civil War. In the wake of our congenitally insulated incumbent, who has given our troops neither proper armor nor medical care and tried to hide their coffins off camera, surely it can only be a blessing to have a president, whether Mr. Edwards or someone else, who knows intimately what it means to cope daily with the threat of mortality. It’s hard to imagine such a president smiting stem-cell research or skipping the funerals of the fallen.
Indeed, of all the reasons to applaud Elizabeth Edwards’s decision to stay in politics, the most important may be her insistence, by her very action, that we not compartmentalize the harsh reality of death and the imperatives of public policy, both at home and at war. Let the real conversation begin.
This old media is done for. The old media wherein a small clique without any accountability or adjudication of fact decides what news stories are worthy of coverage, and the terms of the debate.
It won’t be a “whoa shit, I’m extinct” evolution, the way it was in 1860 when a letter from Hiram Sibley, the president of Western Union went to Salt Lake City Utah by Pony Express. The letter was an agreement on the last relay station of the Transcontinental Telegraph. Two days later, the Pony Express ceased operations.
Instead, I imagine our moment in media evolution more like a montage of scenes from various World’s Fairs, as reported by newspaper illustrators [my Grandfather being one of the last of this tribe] and engravers.
Picture the montage:
On the rich side of town, their wealthy counterparts continued to commission painted portraits by fine artists, and newspaper illustrators, considering the new photographic portraits inferior in much the same way their ancestors had viewed printed books as inferior to hand-scribed books centuries earlier.
It took some time before the halftone process caught on with newspapers because publishers had a large investment with illustrators and engravers. Also, editors and artists had more control over engraved images. Illustrations were much more easily faked. Unscrupulous publishers liked their news that way.
The newspapermen and the illustrators may not have grasped the importance of Ives’ advancement, but suddenly publishers all over the world did.
Although the quality of the photo was not very good, this small newspaper was proud of the result: ‘Not one newspaper in Holland or abroad has yet achieved this result, nor did the Daily Graphic.’ 1890.
My Grandfather was born in the 1800s and yet worked as a newspaper pencil and ink illustrator through the 1930s. His trade didn’t end overnight like the Pony Express, but it sure ended.
Couric, Dowd, say “Hi” to Judy Miller and the Dodo for me, and I’ll see you later in hell.
I’ve had difficulty explaining my networking concepts without resorting to some exasperated cliche like, “that’s just how I think about it.”
Well, turns out that scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health are coming to the conclusion that that’s actually how the brain thinks.
Of course that’s how I think about it. It’s literally how I think…
In this “small world” architecture of the brain, clusters of cells link to their nearest neighbors with some neurons connecting to distant clusters. It’s the same phenomenon that social networking pioneer Duncan Watts of NYU and Steven Strogatz of Cornell previously showed emerges in the electric-power grid, relationships between professional actors, and the brain cells of worms.
Lucky for us, according to Strogatz and Watts, this kind of small world structure boosts the power and efficiency of the system.
Now to my difficulty: One of the challenges with “social networking” sites is that most are more correctly “social linking” sites.
Most of them are like bad parties where everyone is gathered in small circles with their backs to anyone new. They cluster into cliques. One of the benefits of a good hostess (other than attracting an interesting crowd) is her ability to introduce individuals to other individuals who are likely to share some kind of interest. To my knowledge, no social networking site is particularly good at making introductions and most do not even try. Ergo the need for a full time weaver.
Talented Networkweavers like Justin Krebs of Drinking Liberally are too few, granted, but the function he serves is vital. And now we learn it is actually the literal function of a vigorous mind.
Going back to that pulled quote: “the relationships between professional actors” is in reference to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. That’s just the new name for a law-like phenomenoa:
“The path length between any two randomly chosen people on the planet (N=6.5 billion) is six.”
- Frigyes Karinthy, Chains, 1929
In other words: A knows B who knows C who knows D who knows E who knows F.
But in fact most social networks are not random. If A is friends with B and C, then B is friends with C, therefore triad closure generates highly clustered networks.
Which begs the question ‘How then is it possible that there are only six degrees of separation among billions (and billions) of people?’
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The answer is A Few Long Ties. A few bridge ties between otherwise distant nodes creates “shortcuts” across the graph while preserving the clustering of a “small world” feel.
These Clinical Neurophysiological scientists would agree:
Each brain state goes through three steps, Freeman suggests. Synchronization first emerges among individual neurons. It then spreads to interconnected populations of neurons. Finally, large neural structures with specific duties begin to reverberate in unison on each side of the brain.
This approach to modeling brain function, which Freeman’s group has dubbed neuropercolation, incorporates a small-world network into other neural features. For instance, the model includes some nodes that depress the activity of surrounding nodes and others that excite their neighbors, much as the brain contains cells that specialize in inhibiting or arousing each other.
The whole article is pretty mind blowing. I’m glad to read that it’s just the way I think… about it.
China’s “Netizens” number 130 million – and are growing 30% every year. Second only to the U.S., China is installing Broadband everywhere and internet cafes are the size of K-Marts and as abundant as Starbucks.
In 2005, Dr. Guo Liang of the Chinese Acadamy of Social Sciences published a study showing that only two thirds (and dropping) of Net users had email accounts, and of them, only a third check their email on a daily basis. Forty-two percent of Netizens did not use a search engine. Seventy-five percent had never made an online purchase.
Instead of replacing encyclopedias, newspapers, storefronts, travel agencies, yearbooks, and the U.S. Postal Service, Chinese people, Guo explains, were flocking to Video Gaming virtual worlds and million person-chat rooms. This is not the business-oriented Web of the West.
Dr. Guo’s study revealed that the Chinese internet user’s online presence had very little in common with their real lives; they went online to escape. What and why? Are my questions.
The answer came soon. The numbers of young people truly addicted to gaming and chatting spurred Professor Tao Hongkai to start a counseling hospital where he treats patients for their “addiction.” His breakthrough came from exploring not what Netizens were escaping to, but instead what they were escaping from. The official Chinese State news take on this celebrity doctor is here. His uncensored explanation for why millions get violently addicted to gaming and chatting amounts to an indictment of modern Chinese Society.
WHAT
An American journalist went undercover and took the doctor’s treatment and came back with some even harsher lessons we in the States can learn about our own society to understand why millions are flocking to our social networking sites.
[The Chinese Internet Doctor Tao,] railed against the one-child policy and the xiao huangdi (little emperors) it had created; children whose every material need was met even as spiritual needs were ignored. Instead of having their own hopes, spoiled teenagers carried those of six other people, their parents and two sets of grandparents. They were over protected but underdeveloped, without discipline or a sense of meaning. “They have nothing to hold on to,” he said. “They are empty inside.”
As the State news agency spun the story away from the one-child policy, Tao is portrayed as an advocate for reforming the Chinese education system with it’s heavy dependence on standardized testing.
It is true, Tao instead recommends a quality-oriented education, one which teaches young people how to become useful and successful adults. According to Tao, “the worth of an individual’s overall character rests with psychological, professional and comprehensive qualities. It is not simply a matter of satisfactory test scores.”
Tao notes that students being crushed by slave-driver teachers and the pressure of a single test, the gaokaofor college entrance, have time for only rote memorization–not for singing clubs, or volleyball teams or after-school activities. You got that NCLB?
WHY
The most popular games in China are MirII and World of Warcraft, these are games not of gore but of wits and team-building and winnable battles. These games give the teenagers something society, and especially schools do not: freedom. “If they want to fight, they can fight. If they want to curse, they can curse. If they want to marry, they can marry. Back in real life, Tao said, “every child is a like a little donkey. The teacher grabs his two long ears and pulls and pulls. The parents get behind him and push and push.”
In America, young Netizens are filling social networks. Why? What are they escaping from? What are they replacing online that is missing in their lives?
I would suggest lasting affinity relationships. Not temporary intimate relationships.
Consider how the strength of a relationship in Social Networks is a function of the number of common “friends.” It’s a law like phenomenon, you could call it The Online Law of Transitivity. Stronger relationships can build greater trust based on common values, lifestyle, culture, and viewpoint.
The individual’s identity is affected by participation in a self-governing social unit (in online social networks, the personal identity is important to understand, as I wrote previously). Our modern conception of individual identity in a self-governing social unit was formulated by Locke and Montesquieu — you know, that whole “consent of the governed” principle.
The law of transitivity for identity is as follows: If A=B and B=C, then A=C. For example, if Bruce Wayne is Batman, and Batman is the Caped Crusader, then Bruce Wayne is the Caped Crusader.
Consider this law and how it figures into an application of Locke’s theory of personal identity:
Locke’s theory of personal identity is based on consciousness. Consider person A at time T1, and person B at a later time T2. We can say that person B is the same as person A only if person B has the same consciousness as person A. Specifically, this requires that everything that A remembers, B also remembers. If A remembers that she was bitten by a rabid dog when she was five, then B must have that memory as well.
“should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler . . . everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince’s actions: but who would say it’s the same man.”
Explanation:
Human Identity: same man (as for any organism or mechanism).
- same person (see the prince and the cobbler thought experiment).
- same soul or thinking substance
Personal Identity: same consciousness:
“As far as consciousness can be extended backwards…so far reaches the identity of that person.”
Ergo: The internet makes the above no longer a thought experiment. Strong relationships and shared consciousness is happening in online social networks and online communities. As Howard Dean said recently, the internet is the first organism to have consciousness from before it existed.
This potentiality for Universal History is a thread running through large online communities such as DailyKos or YouTube where any thing must exist at some place in the hive mind, and by belonging to the hive, the object, be it a film clip or a personal observation of a political phenomena, is embedded in the personal identity of the end user even merely as someone with potential access to the object.
With Google, “as far as consciousness can be be extended backwards” is, well, all the way back.
This is something written about in one of the very few books (excepting, of course Larry and the Cluetrain) that contain new political philosophy insights resting on an understanding of the importance and actual function of the internet – this book about the roots of the internet and the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of Digital Utopianism. [hat tip to Stoller for the rec.]
I believe that what Americans are doing on the internet can be a great thing for our democracy, our communities and our relationships. Combined with a virtual-to-field plan of physical gatherings, this tool, this organism could save our Republic as well as restore our vital affinity relationships with each other. Americans are going online to do this because these things were starving and being killed by American society.
I believe the best on the net is an example of millions of us, not escaping, but restoring what was precious and nearly lost.
Ray Oldenburg is an urban sociologist who writes about the importance of informal public gathering places. In his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg demonstrates why these gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other “third places” (in contrast to the first and second places of home and work), are central to local democracy and community vitality.
By exploring how these places work and what roles they serve, Oldenburg offers a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves.
One of the important ingredients in building community is a physical design – the human factors engineering that facilitates social interaction. It is difficult for people to develop the networks that are a crucial part of human social systems unless there are places for encounters to take place. Without casual regular encounters it is very difficult for all the other steps in community building to take place: discussion, organization, action.
Indeed, one of the main points that Benjamin Barber makes in A Place for Us is that enlarging and reinforcing public space is an important element in strengthening civil society.
Public space, in the sense used here, is not restricted to government created space or publicly owned space, but denotes, more generally, anyplace where people are able to congregate and socialize, i.e. where informal social interaction can take place on a regular basis.
These are the sorts of public spaces that I crave. Some essential ingredients for successful third places include:
Unfortunately, American society, in large part, is lacking in third places. This is especially true of the suburbs that grew so dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s, but it also plagues more recent residential developments as many Americans substitute a vision of the ideal home for that of the ideal city. As Oldenburg notes: “They proceed as though a house can substitute for a community if only it is spacious enough, entertaining enough, comfortable enough, splendid enough – and suitably isolated from that common horde that politicians still refer to as our ‘fellow Americans’.”
Third places play a vital role in many parts of the world and different types of third places can provide a nation with its own characteristic charm: cafes in France, beer gardens in Germany, piazzas in Italy, pubs in England and Ireland, teahouses in Japan, are some well-known examples. In the U.S. the role has been played by many different places from local parks to barber shops and hair salons, to soda fountains and bookstores. But increasingly high rents, competition for profits, and the development of national chains, have turned many of the commercial third places into quick service (fast customer turnover), high priced businesses that do not meet the broader needs of citizens.
In this day of the $20 haircut and $3 cup of coffee, who can really afford to linger and socialize in such environments? Likewise, municipal community centers often have rigidly maintained schedules to accommodate different groups of residents, and they lack a casual “drop in” character.
The consequences of the disappearance of third places, and poor urban/suburban planning, are a decline in social capital, and greater stress on intimate relationships (especially the institution of marriage). Oldenburg, joining the voices of Robert Putnam and Margaret Mead and many sociologists who specialize in the family, notes that “In the absence of an informal public life, people’s expectations toward work and family life have escalated beyond the capacity of those institutions to meet them.”
The loss of third places makes it harder to make acquaintances and develop friendship but the need to do so is clear. People who are isolated tend to be less happy and less healthy. Given the nature of work today, and living conditions that isolate people, married couples face more stress as the relationship is unable to fulfill all the needs and expectations that are best met by an extensive social network. The bottom line is that people need both intimacy and affiliation:
“Third place friendships, first of all, complement more intimate relations. Those who study human loneliness generally agree that the individual needs intimate relationships and that he or she also needs affiliation. To affiliate is to be a member of some club, group, or organization. The tie is to the group more than to any of its individual members. There is a great difference between intimacy and affiliation, and there is no substituting one for the other. We need both. Lacking intimacy, affiliation becomes little more than a means of dulling the sense of emptiness in our lives. Lacking affiliation, intimacy becomes overburdened even as it risks the dullness or restricted human contact.”
The best third places are those that are inclusive and local. Particularly beneficial are those “that render the best and fullest service are those to which one may go alone at almost any time of the day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there.” Third places are not important solely on the psychological level, they are (or can be) important on the political level as well. Ruling elites are often aware of the political potential inherent in informal gathering places and actively work to discourage them.
Sweden’s rulers, for example, banned the drinking of coffee in the eighteenth century. Officialdom was convinced that the coffeehouses were dens of subversion where malcontents planned revolts. This was the case in the American Revolution where Bostonian malcontents met at the Green Dragon Tavern pub to talk politics and plan the insurgency. The fear of gathering places continues from Tiananmen Square to Free Speech Zones.
Oldenburg believes that the reinvigoration of grassroots political society is needed but for this to occur the reestablishment of public gathering spaces is essential. Other benefits will accrue as well, as people begin to feel that more and more space outside the home belongs to them. As if generations of taxpaying has paid for it. People who feel a sense of ownership of a place tend to act more responsibly and they monitor what is happening. To be atom-splittingly hackneyed, Third Places help the village raise the child.
Oldenburg points out the valuable psychological, social and political functions served by places commonly referred to as “hangouts.” Second, he gives us a call to action, for all of us to work in the face of the private commercialization of space to preserve existing third places and to develop many new and better ones. Bloggers did just that when they banded together for the Save The Internet Campaign for Net Neutrality.
I think that MySpace and online social networks are the Third Space hangout for most young Americans. Therefore, designing online social networks, or leveraging them, takes knowledge about Human Factors Engineering and the social structures of Third Places. I think properly designed networks are part of the key to restoring our civic democracy. On the side, I also think that Drinking Liberally is the answer.
One more thing, what people are flocking to, and what people are escaping from is explored in this post with lessons from China.
—AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
—AZ-01: Rick Renzi
—AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
—CA-04: John Doolittle
—CA-11: Richard Pombo
—CA-50: Brian Bilbray
—CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
—CO-05: Doug Lamborn
—CO-07: Rick O’Donnell
—CT-04: Christopher Shays
—FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
—FL-16: Joe Negron
—FL-22: Clay Shaw
—ID-01: Bill Sali
—IL-06: Peter Roskam
—IL-10: Mark Kirk
—IL-14: Dennis Hastert
—IN-02: Chris Chocola
—IN-08: John Hostettler
—IA-01: Mike Whalen
—KS-02: Jim Ryun
—KY-03: Anne Northup
—KY-04: Geoff Davis
—MD-Sen: Michael Steele
—MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
—MN-06: Michele Bachmann
— MO-Sen: Jim Talent
—MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
—NV-03: Jon Porter
—NH-02: Charlie Bass
—NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
—NM-01: Heather Wilson
—NY-03: Peter King
—NY-20: John Sweeney
—NY-26: Tom Reynolds
—NY-29: Randy Kuhl
—NC-08: Robin Hayes
—NC-11: Charles Taylor
—OH-01: Steve Chabot
—OH-02: Jean Schmidt
—OH-15: Deborah Pryce
—OH-18: Joy Padgett
—PA-04: Melissa Hart
—PA-07: Curt Weldon
—PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
—PA-10: Don Sherwood
—RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
—TN-Sen: Bob Corker
—VA-Sen: George Allen
—VA-10: Frank Wolf
—WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
—WA-08: Dave Reichert
