Many of those enamored with technology, and the Internet, are quick to claim that the Internet is inherently better at accountability. In fact the rhetors go so far as to attack the old stalwart of accountability, mainstream journalism. With its would-be-could-be populism this sort of uprising has an odd sort of irony to it. If multiple television channels, with their payrolled staff, can't suss a reasonable facsimile of truth from outside, detached observation then what good will infinite channels do, with no such paid staff?
The very notion of the Internet getting our society "closer" to truth, in the platonic sense, is ill-conceived. After all many of the complaints from the new-media gurus revolve around dissatisfaction with the editorialism of one or more of the older-media channels, or personalities. Yet, as I will argue, editorialism and personality are the primary engines of accountability.
There has always been much made of the Internet's role to "speed up" interaction and to thus "bring us the truth sooner." Indeed it is a sort of game played on twitter. Now instead of a major channel offering "breaking news", now such "news" may be scooped by whomever. This is often exampled with the Arab Spring, much was made of the Internet "bringing to light", and "calling attention to" the new matters in the Middle East.
The irony here is in the state of mind of those who then agitated for slacktivist engagement. They themselves only seemed to care when, "social media" became part of the equation, and in this fashion they behaved no different from any other apathetic civically-overloaded westerner. This was a crystallization of moment that Brooke Gladstone alluded to at the end of her book, The Influencing Machine, "We are the Media."
In my conceptual model, the Internet increases the number of "channels" to an infinite degree. Any one and everyone is now capable of becoming a politician, speechmaker, or editorialist (I will leave it to the reader to decide where this blog fits). And as soon as anyone places a set of data or an opinion in such an environment it is subject to accountability. Just as anything "public" always has been.
Now, anyone who has rollicked and shot the bull with honest friends knows what true accountability is. Your friend's will likely call you out on all sorts of matters as they happen. The Internet shares part of its dynamic as in a close group of friends and part as way of letters to the editor. So like real time letters to the editor, an opinion, lets say, for lack of a better term, from an, "Internet personality" is shared via YouTube; and within minutes opinions for against and in-between start to roll in.
Yet just as it was before we notice that the act of accounting even now had no other result other then the shame the editorialist might express or the infamy gained amongst a wider audience. Essentially no different from such functions over other broadcast mediums. An explosive revelation to one group might have little effect on others outside the sway of such a group.
Here I am thinking of the failure of the Occupy Wall Street movement to force broader accountability. The "Occupiers", instead of playing along with the older forms of media (even as they high-handedly demanded such media's undivided attention) we witnessed the Occupiers refuse to submit to the mainstream accountability check of their views and actions. In turn the fairly simple and sympathetic attempts by the mainstream to analyze the movement were rebuffed vigorously and the outcome was not surprising. As those who mostly get their news via the TV, or with limited access to the Internet were probably even more agitated then the reporters lobbing the softball questions.
Thus accountability isn't fundamentally different in the digital age. Really all that has changed is the means of the wider audience to share its many differing views. The "truth" in this environment cannot always be agreed upon, and everyone is subject to the accounting of someone else.
This tendency produces many of the effects that I have discussed at other points in this blog. The main idea that I would like to highlight is that the Internet does not inherently make people or governments more likely to spill their secrets. This is counter to Julien Assange's much touted view that, "Information wants to be free." Rather, the Internet facilitates those who wish to obtain such data for their own ends.
Another irony of the Internet is that new media's political pundits still rely heavily on the traditional media for legitimacy. Many of the major news agencies still command a great number of audience and those online still seek to gain legitimacy from such mainstream recognition. After all the online pundits are trying to affect change in wider society.
So where does this leave us? The Internet does increase the number of people in positions to voice accounting opinions of news, events, and politics. However, the growing editorial nastiness does not in any way fundamentally alter the nature or practice of accountability or increase the likelihood that we as a society will arrive at the truth any sooner.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
The Strange Hypocrisy of Web Domains
I have written many times here about the Anti-Commons, and their resident paradoxes. I have also many times on many sites been chafed by some of the, "free speech" anti-censorship, pro-privacy leaning sites. In my dealings with them I have learned a hard sort of lesson. They may be, "anti-censorship", but this does not prevent them from suppressing opinions on their website that they disagree with. This active suppression of dissent is the strange hypocrisy of private web-fiefdoms.
I am a skeptical person by nature, and I avoid ascribing myself too deeply to any one over-arching politic or ideology. This nature in and of itself causes problems for me when I either ask for more evidence or challenge someone inside of their domain or web-fiefdom. Pointed, journalistic styled, questions or challenges generally leads to poor treatment, by either the operator or moderator.
The way that a politician dodges questions, filibusters, talks-down, and dismisses inquiry during a press conference is an unsettling close approximation to some comment sections on websites that deal with current or political events. Only on the modern website there are also all the acolytes to add to the shaming.
This behavior produces another paradox below the obvious one; site operators, develop an unreasonable expectation that the visitors to their publicly available content will always agree with them. As the conventional wisdom goes, "the web is a big place, I'm sure you can find somewhere that is more comfortable for you."
It is through this conventional wisdom that we have developed a dangerous sort of anti-discourse. These writers and operators have developed a terminology, now widely accepted as truth, that the comment section is full of trolls and angry misanthropes.
This whole state of affairs makes me wonder why people insist on doing anything they know will cause a stir at all. Their website this in public view, what do they expect? After all in normal society if you post something on a billboard, in public view, such a posting is now considered a matter of public discourse. For some reason people when engaging on the public comment sections on a website seem to expect that they will not be asked either pointed or journalistic questions!
Some websites have gotten fed up with the reality of these matters and if their core group is willing these sites generally develop a low barrier pay wall. To me this is the obvious step that web-fiefdoms must take if they wish to avoid any dissenting opinions. The act of payment is a form of vetting, a way of showing that the user agrees with the political leanings of the fiefdom in question.
Now why don't such fiefdoms want to put up pay walls? Here I think things are easier to understand, a pay wall also cuts down on the possible traffic to the site and it prevents the fiefdom from acting as a "channel" (as in a TV Channel) for discourse that is meant to influence the feelings of the greater body politic.
I don't pretend to understand this reality or where this reality might take our society, all I know is that the Internet is a far stranger place then anyone ever intended.
I am a skeptical person by nature, and I avoid ascribing myself too deeply to any one over-arching politic or ideology. This nature in and of itself causes problems for me when I either ask for more evidence or challenge someone inside of their domain or web-fiefdom. Pointed, journalistic styled, questions or challenges generally leads to poor treatment, by either the operator or moderator.
The way that a politician dodges questions, filibusters, talks-down, and dismisses inquiry during a press conference is an unsettling close approximation to some comment sections on websites that deal with current or political events. Only on the modern website there are also all the acolytes to add to the shaming.
This behavior produces another paradox below the obvious one; site operators, develop an unreasonable expectation that the visitors to their publicly available content will always agree with them. As the conventional wisdom goes, "the web is a big place, I'm sure you can find somewhere that is more comfortable for you."
It is through this conventional wisdom that we have developed a dangerous sort of anti-discourse. These writers and operators have developed a terminology, now widely accepted as truth, that the comment section is full of trolls and angry misanthropes.
This whole state of affairs makes me wonder why people insist on doing anything they know will cause a stir at all. Their website this in public view, what do they expect? After all in normal society if you post something on a billboard, in public view, such a posting is now considered a matter of public discourse. For some reason people when engaging on the public comment sections on a website seem to expect that they will not be asked either pointed or journalistic questions!
Some websites have gotten fed up with the reality of these matters and if their core group is willing these sites generally develop a low barrier pay wall. To me this is the obvious step that web-fiefdoms must take if they wish to avoid any dissenting opinions. The act of payment is a form of vetting, a way of showing that the user agrees with the political leanings of the fiefdom in question.
Now why don't such fiefdoms want to put up pay walls? Here I think things are easier to understand, a pay wall also cuts down on the possible traffic to the site and it prevents the fiefdom from acting as a "channel" (as in a TV Channel) for discourse that is meant to influence the feelings of the greater body politic.
I don't pretend to understand this reality or where this reality might take our society, all I know is that the Internet is a far stranger place then anyone ever intended.
Why Computers Should Not be Classified as Machines
My last post dealt with the ideas of "innovation" and how it relates to existing processes. I argued that new software was not "innovative" since any copying (or close facsimile) of code, by definition is not a new or inventive way to address an existing problem. In light of that line of thought I will now make another somewhat non-sequiter argument, a computer should not be classified as a Machine.
In the interests of establishing a baseline we should first define Machine, according to the Merrium-Webster dictionary,
The first thing that strikes me is the lack of specificity. Here we have a noun that can has many meanings and usages. However the word machine can also be a verb, again from Merrium-Webster,
Both the noun, and the verb forms give us working baseline. Now in order to apply the definitions we must establish context.
1) We are not talking about anything "living"
2) We are not appealing to any metaphorical usage.
Now with our baseline and qualifiers I would like to take a closer look at the part of the definitions that we are interested in. Looking at the verb form and at the noun form 1(e)&1(f)
By putting these definitions together we arrive at,
an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy to either process or perform a task.
In the most technical terms a computer is still a machine. It makes use of energy to perform a self-referential task. This is why we refer to computers as "programmable." The tasks a computer performs are "within itself." It is this emergent property that I wish to examine most closely as it represents a complete break with the traditional definition of machine.
What is important to note here is that task is not fully concepted inside of machine's traditional definition. Up until the computer revolution this wouldn't have been an issue, as there was at the time no such "thing" as software.
The very emergent properties of software makes it innovative at its inception yet also calls into question the very identity of the processor itself. No other object can produce, or manipulate intangible self-reference. Now I can see some people here might insist that strictly mechanical processors (the Difference Engine) also have emergent properties. Yet this is not the case, as a change, even a subtle one, to the Difference Engine's hardware will result in a differing operation and function of its calculations.
So why shouldn't we class computers as "machines"? There is a subtle distinction when we look at the verb form of machine, it is a transitive verb. Thus we are to understand that a machine must have both a subject and a direct object. In the traditional understanding the Direct Object of a machine would be its work-piece, a tangible object.
Now in terms of computing the Direct Object of a processor is its software, yet software is itself responsible for the utility and operation of that same processor. Thus the only thing at can emerge from such an arrangement is "higher level" emergent operation. The "higher level" emergent operation will collapse if any of the "lower level" operations fail. This is classically represented by the Blue Screen of Death.
It is by the very propensity, and the mere possibility, for a collapse of emergent operation that we should seek to define the "computer" strictly as a "computer" and not as sub-category of machine. Indeed the Hacktivists are right to point out that we have yet to come to terms with such devices but by calling them "machines" we confuse ourselves into thinking that speech, text, pictures and video are actual objects of industry. When instead they are themselves merely human-emergent additions secondary to the physical process of tool-making which is used to perpetuate our species survival.
Computers are only Computers.
In the interests of establishing a baseline we should first define Machine, according to the Merrium-Webster dictionary,
1a archaic: a constructed thing whether material or immaterialb: conveyance, vehicle; especially: automobilec archaic: a military engined: any of various apparatuses formerly used to produce stage effectse (1): an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner (2): an instrument (as a lever) designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motionf: a mechanically, electrically, or electronically operated device for performing a taskg: a coin-operated device <a cigarette machine> h: machinery —used with the or in plural2a: a living organism or one of its functional systemsb: one that resembles a machine (as in being methodical, tireless, or consistently productive) <a gifted publicist and quote machine— John Lancaster>c (1): a combination of persons acting together for a common end along with the agencies they use (2): a highly organized political group under the leadership of a boss or small clique3: a literary device or contrivance introduced for dramatic effect
The first thing that strikes me is the lack of specificity. Here we have a noun that can has many meanings and usages. However the word machine can also be a verb, again from Merrium-Webster,
transitive verb: to process by or as if by machine; especially: to reduce or finish by or as if by turning, shaping, planing, or milling by machine-operated tools
Both the noun, and the verb forms give us working baseline. Now in order to apply the definitions we must establish context.
1) We are not talking about anything "living"
2) We are not appealing to any metaphorical usage.
Now with our baseline and qualifiers I would like to take a closer look at the part of the definitions that we are interested in. Looking at the verb form and at the noun form 1(e)&1(f)
to process by or as if by machine; especially: to reduce or finish by or as if by turning, shaping, planing, or milling by machine-operated tools
e (1): an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner (2): an instrument (as a lever) designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motionf: a mechanically, electrically, or electronically operated device for performing a task
By putting these definitions together we arrive at,
an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy to either process or perform a task.
In the most technical terms a computer is still a machine. It makes use of energy to perform a self-referential task. This is why we refer to computers as "programmable." The tasks a computer performs are "within itself." It is this emergent property that I wish to examine most closely as it represents a complete break with the traditional definition of machine.
What is important to note here is that task is not fully concepted inside of machine's traditional definition. Up until the computer revolution this wouldn't have been an issue, as there was at the time no such "thing" as software.
The very emergent properties of software makes it innovative at its inception yet also calls into question the very identity of the processor itself. No other object can produce, or manipulate intangible self-reference. Now I can see some people here might insist that strictly mechanical processors (the Difference Engine) also have emergent properties. Yet this is not the case, as a change, even a subtle one, to the Difference Engine's hardware will result in a differing operation and function of its calculations.
So why shouldn't we class computers as "machines"? There is a subtle distinction when we look at the verb form of machine, it is a transitive verb. Thus we are to understand that a machine must have both a subject and a direct object. In the traditional understanding the Direct Object of a machine would be its work-piece, a tangible object.
Now in terms of computing the Direct Object of a processor is its software, yet software is itself responsible for the utility and operation of that same processor. Thus the only thing at can emerge from such an arrangement is "higher level" emergent operation. The "higher level" emergent operation will collapse if any of the "lower level" operations fail. This is classically represented by the Blue Screen of Death.
It is by the very propensity, and the mere possibility, for a collapse of emergent operation that we should seek to define the "computer" strictly as a "computer" and not as sub-category of machine. Indeed the Hacktivists are right to point out that we have yet to come to terms with such devices but by calling them "machines" we confuse ourselves into thinking that speech, text, pictures and video are actual objects of industry. When instead they are themselves merely human-emergent additions secondary to the physical process of tool-making which is used to perpetuate our species survival.
Computers are only Computers.
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