CorporatePR

Technology: Witness to Violence

I found this article ("Art as a target for vandals: The cost of freedom") in this morning's International Herald Tribune interesting and disturbing for a variety of reasons.  Not least of which is this paragraph towards the end:

Getting attention is always the bottom line. That the hooded Swedes with crowbars in Lund went straight to YouTube (the video has since been removed) was predictable and ominous, a case of Internet self-promotion that is minor compared with the beheadings in Iraq, but with the same idea: that direct technological access promotes acts of violence whose basic requirement is to be witnessed.

It is that last sentence, which I have highlighted in red, that is truly disturbing.  It is stated as a fact, but I wonder if that is the case.  On the surface, it seems common sensical to suppose that this statement could be valid, but I don't have any studies at my fingertips (truly I haven't looked yet) that would demonstrate a connection between technological access and (especially) visually "interesting" violence.  If it is true, it is certainly alarming given the growth of services such as YouTube.

This would be a great study for SNCR to pursue and/or publish in its Journal.  Please drop me a line if you are interested.

India Blocks Blogs

So much for the "world's largest democracy".  According to the story I read in the International Herald Tribune this morning, the Indian government has blocked access to blog hosting sites:

For reasons yet to be articulated by the authorities, the government has directed local Internet service providers to block access to a handful of Web sites that are hosts to blogs, including the popular blogspot.com, according to government officials and some of the providers.

As ususal, it is all about fear and control.  Disturbing news indeed.  To me, democracy demands free speech.  Without that basic right, "democracy" is simply a screen for autocratic power.  Hopefully the government will do the right thing and back down from this simply awful choice.

Investing in "Science" Means the Humanities Too

If you got your college degree in one of the disciplines that falls under "Humanities", as I did, you probably had a series of similar experiences.  1) Many stairwell/lounge arguments about the value of what you were interested in studying vs. the skeptical engineering/math/science "our stuff is so much more difficult and important and useful" students.  2)  Going to class in old, weird, buildings (my college was an old car garage and the elevators could fit 2 cars in them) while watching billion-dollar state-of-the-art biology, physics, chemistry etc. buildings going up all around you. 3) Zillion dollar alumni donations to science/technical programs while your own program barely could keep its ancient computers functioning.  4) Etc. etc. etc.

So, you could say I am a little sensitive to the ongoing (often subliminal) denigration of the value of humanities/social sciences that shows up every day in the media as more programs for investments in science are introduced, apocalyptic studies about how the US is falling behind are discussed, etc.  I rant about this occasionally here, so I thought I'd rant again today.

Let us state this truth:  There are practically no (I'd argue zero, but maybe there are a couple obscure ones) disciplines that can function today without scientific/technical knowledge and techniques of practice.  And NO discipline functions without societal/people issues.

To draw a line between groups, that says "this is science" or "this is technics", leaving everyone on the other side scrambling for crumbs is completely ridiculous and will only hurt our countries' competitiveness in the end.

All you have to do is look at business, for example, where it is becoming increasingly clear that people issues are the greatest challenge they are facing.  How do we share knowledge in teams?  How do people cooperate?  How do we increase productivity of knowledge workers? How do we make better decisions?  In fact, science laboratories are facing the same questions.

Answers to these questions will demand a thorough integration of scientific, mathematical and humanities disciplines.  Just now, when the challenges we face as humans on a shrinking globe are increasing in complexity daily, breaking down the artificial boundaries between science and social is the most important thing we can do.  That is where enormous amounts of public and private funding should be invested.

If you have worked, as I have, in high technology PR, you have been a bridge -- a translator -- between engineers and laypeople.  You have had to understand technology and understand human persuasion.  I have learned that even the most technical of knowledge can be explained in a way that non-technical people can understand its importance and its benefits, if not its details. By constantly telling people they are stupid (falling behind etc.) we are reinforcing the mythic power of science/technology. 

The rhetoric--the ideology--of science/technics must be challenged if we are truly to be able to solve our problems. 

Rant over.

State of the Future and a Call to Action

I wrote an article for this week's New Communications Blogzine entitled State of the Future.  It looked at four challenges (out of 15 identified by the the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University State of the Future Report), and discussed their implications on communications. 

The challenges of most interest to the communications community include:

- How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?

- How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?

- How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?

- How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

 

I wrote:

All of the challenges are interrelated, so progress in one will affect others. In fact, you could say that these challenges, by requiring collaborative action among institutions and individuals around the globe, are important steps towards increasing collective intelligence.

As we look forward to 2006, I thought it would be useful to explore the four challenges I have listed in some detail, based on the SOTF’s findings. I also propose a challenge to our community of readers:

Pick one challenge and devote some of your time in 2006 to working to solve it. Report on your progress throughout the year via your blog. Tag your related posts with the Technorati tag Global Challenge (Global Challenge) and let’s regroup at the end of the year and see what we’ve accomplished. Actions don’t need to be big ones! Even small steps count.

Please take a look at the whole article, and let me know what you think.

We are the Web

I loved this article by Kevin Kelly at Wired.  The section on 2015 is eye-opening!

Attention Trust

I've applied.

Join Now

If you believe in and are willing to adhere to the following four  principles, you are invited to apply to the AttentionTrust:

Property

You own your attention and can store it wherever you wish.

Mobility

You can securely move your attention wherever you want  whenever you want to.

Economy

You can pay attention to whomever you wish and receive value  in return.

Transparency

You can see exactly how your attention is being used.

Newsweek Debacle

I am absolutely irate about this. After much exclaiming and arm waving this morning as my SO headed out the door (agreeing with me in his cool French way, but grinning at my American exuberance) I sat down to post.  But first I visited Buzzmachine, and, of course, Jeff Jarvis said it better than I could in "When a Story Gets in the Way of the Truth."

Given that none of those if's was true -- the informant did not have the balls, the event was not witnessed by a source, the event was not confirmed independently -- and given the knowledge that such a report could only be incendiary, then why report it except to play one of two games:

Show-off -- in which the journalist delights in knowing something no one else knows and wants to tell the world before everyone else does, even if it's not assuredly true.

Gotcha -- in which the reporter think he has exposed something somebody wanted to hide.

An incident such as this should force us to ask what the end result of journalism should be. Is it to expose anything we can expose? Is it to beat the other guy to tell you something you didn't know?

Or is it to tell the truth?

And if you don't know it to be true, is it reporting? If you rely on unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports, is it journalism?

To sum up journalism as "tell the truth" sounds so damned simplistic. But that is what journalism is about, isn't it? Or shouldn't it be?

I'm not saying that Newsweek lied. But they didn't know the truth before they said what they said. They put the gotcha scoop ahead of the truth and ahead of nothing less than the good of mankind.

The old saw says that with power comes responsibility.  Well, responsibility also comes with influence.  Newsweek failed. And their editor's lame non-apology doesn't begin to address the harm they have done.

 

Freedom of Speech

Jeff Jarvis has been doing some brilliant advocating against the FCC and for the Bill of Rights over at BuzzMachine.  A sample:

That's where we are in this country: If a few people might complain, that draws the line in the sand that the rest of us are not allowed to cross. We can't hear or speak or debate in this democracy -- on our own public airwaves, I'll add -- because a few might complain.

This has become a culture of complaint, ruled by the tyranny of the fear of the few.

And the fault lies with the few fools who ignore the community as a whole and listen to those few complainers instead.

He is also calling for Bloggers Legal Defense Society.

When Systems Make Mistakes

What databases are you listed on?  Do you know what they say about you?  This article from the Washington Post describes how retailers are using databases to deny merchandise returns to customers who are abusing the system.  But, as usual, mistakes can be made.  I like this quote:

"Technology has made it cheap to do all kinds of surveillance and watch over people and make sure they obey the rules. But when a system makes a mistake, what can you do?" said Richard Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant.

As consumers, we have the right to see our credit records.  And Express, the store mentioned in this article, says consumers have the right to see their exchange records (but they don't seem to advertise the fact).  But, as with the TSA records, most databases are black boxes which cannot be entered by the average person. 

Passports and RFID

This story from BusinessWeek is disturbing in its implications:  when passports and driver's licenses have RFID tags embedded in them (as early as next year), the data can be read from a distance.  The problem:

"We do need passports with more data," says computer security expert Bruce Schneier. "But they chose a chip that can be queried remotely and surreptitiously. I can't think of any reason why the government would do that, other than that they want surreptitious access." And if airport and border security guards can read everyone's passports on the sly, so could anyone with a radio-chip reader, from terrorists to identity thieves.

The government's response to privacy advocates:  "Trust us."