Universal Veritas

The Emergence of Digital Photography in an Analog World

2011-10-03T11:24:00.002-04:00

Kodak Brownie Hawkeye
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

“We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art” (Valéry, 1964, p. 225).

Executive Summery

Introduced in 1935, Kodachrome was one of the world’s first commercially successful color photographic films. Its unique color characteristics, and forgiving exposure tolerances led to its adoption by millions of amateur and professional photographers throughout the 20th century. However, the Eastman Kodak Company recently announced that they would no longer be producing Kodachrome film, or the chemicals necessary for its complex development process (Eastman Kodak, 2009).

Kodak’s sudden discontinuation of their iconic film sent shockwaves through the photographic community because the company attributed the decision not only to the laborious development process, but also to a drastic drop in demand brought about by emerging digital technologies (Ibid). The implications of one of modern photography’s most revered film stocks dying out due to lack of demand prompted numerous bloggers and online pundits to announce to the world that digital photography had killed film (Sandström, 2009). Fortunately for film enthusiasts, such hyperbolic declarations are flawed in the same ways as previous claims that film would obsolete the paintbrush.

New technologies have consistently redefined photography since Daguerre and Talbot revealed their world changing inventions. Digital cameras and online sharing are simply the latest progressions in the continuum of photographic advancement. Digital cameras and photo-editing computer software provide ordinary people with access to photographic opportunities that were once only available to professionals and serious hobbyists with home darkrooms.

Electronic sensors in digital cameras have functionally displaced the once popular small format cameras, and have precipitated a decline in the demand for corresponding films like 35mm. This decline, along with the rise of the Internet, has led to a dramatic decrease in the amount of physical prints being made as people increasingly edit, store and view their images electronically.

In order to understand the ramifications of the latest technological progression, it is important to examine how photographic formats have been significant in the past and what the evolution of technology has done to the practice of taking and sharing photos. The way people share photographs has changed dramatically since the emergence of the Internet, and this evolution is playing a pivotal role in the ways people converge upon photography as art and as a source of information.

Within this convergence (Jenkins, 2006, p. 3), the popular use of digital photography in online media has helped define new types of social interaction and participatory culture. Film and digital are co-existing as artistic outlets, and hybrid forms of media are emerging as respected documents and art forms.

The Analog Age

In 1839, Louis Jacque Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot unveiled groundbreaking scientific processes that made practical photography possible. Their two different methods for permanently fixing camera images on physical media paved the way for modern photography, and revolutionized the process of creating visual artwork and documenting the world. However, scientists and scholars had known about the properties of light, exposure and camera technology for many centuries before Daguerre and Talbot publicized their findings to the world.

As early as 384 B.C., Aristotle chronicled his knowledge about the properties of the camera obscura in observations of how a partial solar eclipse was visible in reverse through small holes in palm branches (Gernsheim, 1969, p. 6). The camera obscura, literally “dark room” in Latin, consisted of a room, box or other dark enclosure that had a small hole on one side that allowed light to enter and reflect off an opposing interior wall, creating an upside down image of the outside world. Curious scientists and scholars used the camera obscura to study principles of light and optics (Ibid, p. 11). With the incorporation of convex mirrors and optical lenses, artists were later able to manipulate the placement of images in order to use them as outlines for highly accurate drawings and paintings.

The chemical precursors to modern film were also well known many years before the introduction of the direct and negative image processes. In the 1200s, Albertus Magnus described the basic properties of silver nitrate, including its sensitivity to sunlight. Angelo Sala also provided extensive documentation of these phenomena in 1614 (Davidson, 2003). Johann Heinrich Schulze exploited earlier chemical science discoveries through optical means in 1725, but it was not until Nicéphore Niépce recorded his now famous View from the Window at Le Gras in 1826, that photography truly emerged in its now recognizable form (Gernsheim, 1969, p. 31).

Niépce captured his heliograph, or sun drawing, using a camera obscura to focus light on a pewter plate covered with light-sensitive bitumen of Judea. After an 8-hour exposure, Niépce developed his image by washing the plate with lavender oil and white petroleum, which dissolved the parts of bitumen that had not been polymerized by exposure to light (Newhall, 1982, p. 14). This process created a positive image on the plate of the landscape as seen from Niépce’s workshop window.

Daguerre and Talbot further refined the photographic medium by employing materials that were much more sensitive to light, thus requiring drastically shorter exposure times than Niépce’s process. Daguerre’s process used mercury vapor to develop images on silver-halide coated copper plates (Gernsheim, 1969, p. 42). Daguerreotypes, as pictures formed using Daguerre’s process became know, created a negative image that could be seen as either negative or positive depending on one’s viewing angle to the highly polished silver surface upon which the image was etched. As a result, Daguerreotypes, while a significant step forward in photographic science, were unique pieces that could not be duplicated.

Talbot’s calotype, on the other hand, used silver iodide-coated paper to record negative images that could be reproduced as positive prints. Introduced the same year as the Daguerreotype, the calotype process quickly rose to prominence because of its capacity for duplication. This highly sought after feature led to the further developments in negative process photography, and later to the emergence of photographic prints.

Following the landmark introduction of the aforementioned processes, rapid advancements in chemical science and optical technology brought about improved photographic methods, and helped reduced the overhead costs associated with its practice. As the technology progressed, photography began to spread around the world, and new uses for the medium also began to emerge.

The tintype, patented by American inventor Hamilton Smith in 1856, was one early production method that lent itself to quick, inexpensive mass-production of positive images. Like the Daguerreotype, tintypes created a direct positive, reversed left-to-right, image of the subject. However, unlike expensive and impossible to reproduce Daguerreotypes, tintypes were produced on cheap, and readily accessible iron sheets, (not tin as the name implies). They did require mounting in a case and were not as delicate as other photographs that used glass for support. These features led to tintype’s adoption as the premier medium for early “snapshots” (Rinhart, Rinhart & Wagner, 1999, pgs. 6-7). Tintype’s flexibility and ease of reproduction also helped to spawn a culture of portraiture and photo sharing (Ibid, pgs. 84-85).

In the intervening 150 years since the tintypes glory days, multiple refinements in the technology of creating and sharing photographs have led to medium’s wide acceptance as a respected outlet for art, entertainment and documentation. Photogravure printing, pictorialism and modern art movements, stroboscopic lighting, the half-tone process, photojournalism, The Negative, the introduction of Kodak’s Brownie camera, and the invention of Polaroid film are only a small fraction of the photographic innovations that have led up to today’s digital revolution.

The theme that has remained constant throughout this entire continuum, that is, until the introduction of the digital format, has been the tangibility of the finished photograph. Whether printed on glossy card stock, mounted on canvas, half-toned into newspapers, or displayed on giant billboards, photos have always been something the viewer could interact with inside the three-dimensional world. Even photographs that appeared on television were based upon real, physical media that had been rerecorded for broadcast dissemination.

The emergence of digital photography has, arguably, reshaped this paradigm. The digital format has replaced film and print as the dominant method for creating and sharing photography. By introducing an environment in which people can examine and distribute photography without having to physically interact with a tangible photograph, digital technology and the Internet are completely redefining the photographic medium.

Ghost in the Shell

Describing how the photographer’s vision is only realized after he prints his work, Ansel Adam’s once wrote that “The negative is the score, the print is the performance” (Weston, 2007, p. 8) This statement helps explain the difference between the rote mechanical operation of a camera, and the artistic manipulation required to translate a captured image into a something with which a viewer can interact.

Adam’s quote is especially relevant in an age where the majority of photographs are no longer created as a direct reaction of light upon chemicals in an emulsion, but instead as electronic data filtered through silicon computer chips and magnetic storage media. The digital recording process is a system of functions that work together to produce a readable, standardized output file, which can be electronically displayed as an image on screen, or translated into a physical form by printers. In digital photography there is no longer one medium that both captures and stores an image like film. The ways in which digital photography creates imagery are more closely related to the way the human visual system functions than with the way cameras of old produced photos on film. As such, the inner workings of digital cameras are surprisingly complex considering the ease with which they can be operated.

Fixed and interchangeable lenses provide digital cameras with the same “eyes” as many of their film counterparts, but the inner workings of those eyes have evolved significantly since the introduction of the simple meniscus lens. Charge-coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) sensors act as the digital camera’s “retina”. These sensors are made up of millions of electronic photodiode receptors known as pixels (the metaphorical rods and cones), which capture light and translate it into electrical voltage (Mcmahon & Rawlinson, 2008, p. 12).

When the camera shutter opens, pixels in the sensor measure luminance at each photosite, and through various filtering technologies, assign red, green and blue color values to the data. Microprocessors and circuitry within the camera act as the “optic nerve”, converting and interpolating pixel values through various mathematical algorithms before relaying them as binary code to the camera’s “brain”. In the brain (often a proprietary computer chip that varies in functionality depending on the manufacturer) this raw data is converted into a standardized digital image file format, and then packed away into magnetic or flash memory banks for later retrieval (Ibid, pg. 13). The format of the final digital file can be read by photo-editing and/or viewing software within, and outside of the camera.

The end result of this complex capture and interpretation process is a digital photograph. Just like most previous forms of photography, the final image as displayed on screen or printed out, represents an approximation of what the photographer originally framed in his viewfinder. However, there are several features that make these new types of image very different from the older formats.

One major difference between current digital photography and film is in tonal mapping. The human eye and photo emulsion both process tonal gradations along a gamma curve, and are more sensitive to shadow details than to highlights. Digital files record tonal values on a linear scale, and allot decreasing amounts of digital information as dynamic values decrease (Ibid, pg. 14). Modern digital cameras are capable of recording a dynamic range of about six stops, as opposed the eight stops the human eye and film have been demonstrated to be able to process (Hoefflinger, 2007, pg. 1). This disparity is less pronounced in newer sensors that utilize 16-bits per pixel to record tonal information. However, even expensive digital cameras that feature this updated technology cannot yet approach the tonal quality and subtlety of inexpensive black & white print film.

Along with these technical variations, the precise definition of photography as a medium seems to have become muddled in this technological era where a computer chip “creates” an image from a compilation of electronic data. This fact raises questions about what, exactly, is the “ghost” (the essence of the photo) in the technological “shell”? The term “Ghost in the Shell” is borrowed from a Japanese science-fiction series of the same name (Smith, 2005), and refers to the difficult task of quantifying the boundary between human attempts to record the outside world, and a machine’s interpretation and mediation of that recording process. As digital technology progresses further the distinction between the two may continue to become more philosophical than physical.

The Rise of Digital Photography

Edwin Land released the world’s first instant camera in 1948, and kick-started an instant gratification revolution. Land’s Polaroid used a unique film and chemical process to rapidly create printed images straight from the camera, and the public reacted enthusiastically to the product. The near-instant visual feedback available from Polaroid’s proprietary process made the camera an instant classic, and helped it established itself as an iconic format amidst an industry otherwise dominated by darkroom-developed films (Lyons, 2008).

Like the candle that burns twice as bright, Polaroid was a victim of the very chemical process that gave it its most desirable traits. The film was expensive, and the prints it produced decayed rapidly. Despite its ability to give users quick access to their photographs, the Polaroid never came close to supplanting emulsion films as the industry leading photo format. Though Land Cameras did find a few commercial applications, the company boxed itself into a corner as a niche product by failing to adapt to the requirements of professionals. Camera bodies lacking interchangeable lenses; limitations on practical print sizes; no reproducible negatives; and the inability to make enlargements all contributed to the Polaroid format’s relegation to mostly recreational uses.

Last year, in the face of staggering market-share losses to digital photography, the struggling Polaroid company declared bankruptcy, and announced their intention to cease production of all their cameras and film stocks by the end of 2009 (Ibid). Again, as in the case of Kodachrome, digital photography has maneuvered itself into another niche of the photographic market. However, digital imaging was not an overnight success.

The lowly digital document scanner played a large role in the development of the technologies required to make digital photography practical. Before digital cameras were popular, or even practical, many photo labs offered film processing that included scanning prints into digital formats. Digitization of images got the ball rolling for online sharing, and photo editing software suites like Photoshop gave it another big push forward. As the Internet gained momentum and widespread usage rates increased, people began looking for ways to skip the intermediate process of scanning, and instead simply create digital images straight out of the camera.

While digital camera technology had existed since at least 1951 (Bellis, 2009), practical and affordable systems that could perform on the same level as lower-end film cameras did not emerge until the mid-1980s. Kodak released the first professional digital camera system with a 1.3 megapixel sensor in 1991. The breakthrough camera was aimed at the photojournalism market, but with a huge memory module and an extremely heavy battery dominating the lower half of what was essentially a retrofitted Nikon F-3 body, the camera was anything but a hit (Ibid). Though Kodak and Nikon were both early entrants in the digital market, only Nikon continued to invest heavily digital technology despite the public’s initially tepid response to the DCS. As a result, Nikon grew with the developing industry, and has continued to thrive in the professional digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) market.

Nikon has always derived their profits from the sales of cameras and lenses, so while they continued to produce high-end film cameras to meet industry needs, their business model did not hamper them when they chose to embrace digital. Unlike Nikon, Kodak was committed to film, and reluctant after its initial expenditure to continue investing heavily in a technology that would undermine its established business. By the time the tide had begun to turn in favor of digital, Kodak had waited too long to reenter the professional DSLR market.

The decreasing costs of digital photography have also continued to be a relevant factor in why the public has so widely embraced the format (Hedgecoe, 2001, p. 110). Digital photography costs are capitalized into the hardware purchases, meaning that once a user buys a camera and storage media, there are often no other fees involved in creating digital images. By comparison, film photography expenditures are recurring. Film users must pay for every picture three times, first for the initial hardware investment, second for the film, and third for processing and printing. There can also be addition costs associated with sharing the printed picture as well. With film, after the shutter clicks, everything costs additional money. As Kodak’s once popular slogan proudly proclaimed in the heady days of film’s photo market dominance, “You press the button, we do the rest.”

The rise of digital imaging took an overwhelming economic toll on firms that had aligned themselves with this mantra. According to Sandström (2009), film companies like Polaroid, Kodak, Agfa and Fujifilm were all vertically integrated into the recurring cost business model. These companies provided almost every service in the entire value chain including “basic research, manufacturing, sales, marketing and photo-finishing” (Ibid). With the decrease in demand for film, these companies, and others like them, have either developed new ways to compete in the photographic industry or gone out of business. Planned obsolescence in digital camera technology appears to be one of ways in which digitally integrated companies have sought to redevelop the recurring cost business model.

It is not simply the reduced cost of digital, or its increased convenience over film that has helped the format entrench itself so deeply in our social consciousness. The way the public views photographs today is very different from how they viewed in the film era. Digital photos are backlit and projected at the viewer through high-resolution LCD or LED computer screens. Instead of only being able to passively view images as light reflected off the surface of a traditional print, viewers are now actively engaged with it. This digital display process is reshaping the way in which people view photography because it is much more dynamic than print viewing ever was.

Electronic displays have not replaced high-quality prints, but they have made it much easier for people to live without them. Most consumers just don’t want to go to the “hassle” of driving to the local photo lab, and waiting and hour, when they can instead view reasonable quality images on their omnipresent computer screens. Whereas a trip to the mini-lab was the only way for a person to see their results in the past, now they can look at the back of the camera or upload photos to their computer in less than a minute. Just as lower quality, but more convenient digital music formats like MP3s have replaced higher quality, but more cumbersome, analog formats like vinyl records, so are lower quality image formats replacing print for average consumers (Patterson, 2009).

People can now email or upload their images to online printing sites, or go to the local drug store chains for 10-cent prints. Even then, many people are still scanning their film so they can share it in a digital environment. Again, convenience has beaten out quality. However, the idea that digital photography will obsolete every film format is mistaken. Film and digital will continue to coexist in complementary roles, but as a result of the digital conversion, many smaller print labs are doomed to obsolescence.

The Digital/Film Divide

With the fall of the small labs, so go the interpersonal relationships and trust between photographers and the technicians who printed their images. There is now little if any interaction between the photographer and online lab techs. Home photo printers have advanced significantly in the past decade, but the quality of photos on archival-quality photo paper, when printed by trained technicians, is still unmatched. People who still want these professional prints, but no longer have access to their trusted labs, can find respected print services online. Instead of driving to a physical lab, photographers now have to upload their photo files to the Internet and wait for the prints by mail (all the while praying that their monitors are correctly calibrated to match the online laboratory’s color profiles).

In the past, many pros and serious amateurs avoided these issues all together by setting up home darkrooms to develop and print their own film. Unfortunately, this process was expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming. Today, any photographer with a computer can capture, process, enhance and print high-quality images with minimal training or experience. One of the main reasons for digital photography’s broad acceptance and commercial success is because the new format has simplified the workflow process and given all photographers (enthusiast, amateur and professional) more control. Digital has also opened up a whole new world of possibility to those for whom the medium was once cost and time prohibitive.

Film novices once took much greater care over every shot, but also missed opportunities to experiment and explore because of the cost of film. Digital has enabled budding photographers to affordably learn from experience, since they can shoot as many frames as the want, and adjust their technique based on the camera’s instant feedback. In this way, digital is helping make better photographers.

By introducing more people to learning tools and a wider selection of photographic genres, the Internet makes it possible for the average person to view an enormous volume of digital photography. Pre-digital photographers couldn’t see the entire catalogs of photographic masters like they can today, or even enough “good” work by their contemporaries to use as benchmarks for their own progression. They also didn’t have access to the now seemingly endless supply of tutorials on lighting, framing and editing that are available now.

Jenkins (2006) discusses the impact that digital photography has had on politics and culture in recent years. He explains how Internet users converged around digital photos of candidates during the 2004 election by editing, cropping and reinterpreting the content of the shots to fit differing ideological purposes (pgs. 224-226). The main difference between this participation and similar forms of convergence in past eras is the immense accessibility people now have to photographic content, and the speed with which they can share, edit and disseminate. This continued social movement has led to what Jenkins describes as participatory culture.

Viewing has never been a static process, but technological evolution has presented us with new ways of interacting with photography. Today we can rewrite captions, change meanings and redisseminate photos in seconds. Sontag (2003) wrote about how the reinterpretation of photo meanings is not concept that began with the emergence of digital in her book Regarding the Pain of Others. She described how members of warring factions have used the same or similar photographs to support vastly different ideological rhetoric, by reshaping the meaning of those photos through external mediation. Participatory culture has created an environment that nurtures external mediation on a grand scale.

The fact that more and more snapshots are being taken in place of a few carefully composed shots means that more people contributing to a growing “ecology of images” (Sontag, 2001). Sontag retracted her statements about the feasibility of such an idea (2002, p. 97), but it appears that online photo sharing sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish and Shutterfly have continued to push the ecology of images forward. That a person can now take 1000+ pictures of a subject if they so choose, means that they improve their ratios for ending up with at least one or two good shots. This fact implies that quality is a function of quantity, but the reality is much different.

Cameras integrated into mobile phones now render the same quality photographs as early professional digital cameras. These technologies, which allow us to share information so quickly and easily, have led to the production of unprecedented amounts of photographic content. That means that images that would once have been considered outstanding are now judged against thousands of others like them, and sometimes get lost in the noise. As Sontag said, “The vast maw of modernity has chewed up reality and spat the whole mess out as images” (2002, p. 97).

Butterflies, sunsets and flowers may have always been popular subjects for photography, but they were never as prevalent as they are in online photo forums today. Now anyone can find dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of photos of these subjects with a few simple keystrokes and mouse clicks. It is possible to create an original work even when photographing a subject that others have photographed multiple times. Those with the artistic “eye” find unique angles, compositions and cropping methods to make their work stand out from the rest. The challenging nature of this process is what makes original work so highly prized.

That so many people now post photos online could say something about their desire for recognition, or it could simply be a logical step in the evolution of the family photo album. However, with such a glut of content now available, some professional photographers are worried that their jobs may be in jeopardy.

Many of today’s controversies surrounding digital photography’s supposed displacement of film are remarkably similar to those that arose at the introduction of other photographic benchmarks. During the pictorialism era of photography, some painters snubbed their noses at photographers because they didn’t see their work as an equivalent art form. Photographers were using their new medium to replicate traditional painting techniques because they had not yet seen how the camera could be used in new and exciting ways. The same holds true for digital photography today. Some film artists are giving digital photographers the cold shoulder because they see digital format is a pedestrian attempt at art, but what they’re really disquieted about is the fact that their work may by supplanted.

Kodak’s introduction of the now legendary Brownie line of cameras caused a similar stir. Brownies made photography simple and relatively affordable for the masses, and many pro photographers feared that the influx of mass-produced content from enthusiasts would destroy or undermine the value of their work. Similarly, when amateur photographer Robert Lam recently sold one of his digital photos to Time Magazine for $30 (as opposed to the $3000 artists typically charge for cover art), many in the professional photographic community decried his actions as an attack on their livelihoods (Sklar, 2009). However, digital is no more a threat to professional photography or the medium in general, than the Brownie was.

Digital has removed the barrier to the once exclusive realm of artistic photography, and has democratized the process of sharing this art with the world. As digital technology continues to improve and processing methods further allow digital prints to emulate film, the distinction between the artistic merits of the two formats will become even less relevant.

For all of digital photography’s innovations, one tool it has not replaced is the artist’s eye. Today’s camera technologies can automatically select flash levels that adequately fill harsh shadows or overpowering light sources. They can ensure that dominant elements of the frame are in focus, and can even meter scenes with advanced light sensors that perfectly balance exposures. What none of these technologies can, or will ever be able to do is replace the artistic touch necessary to impart nuance through the subtle manipulation of light, color and composition.

Walter Benjamin (1968) wrote in his treatise on the subject of art in the age of mechanical reproduction that, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (p. 1). It is an artist’s interaction with the technology, with the medium, that dictates the final output. John Hedgecoe (2001, p. 6) refers to this intangible element as artistic “choice”. Where the photographer stands, how he crops, and where he focuses are all elements upon which technological advancement has little bearing. Barthes (1981) would probably have attributed this intangible element to “punctum,” or an aesthetic element that allows a photo to break through the banality of the “stadium,” or study of other photos within the photo’s same genre (pgs. 26-27).

A top-tier digital camera used in program mode by someone with limited skills may produce sharp, well-exposed images, but that doesn’t mean the final shot will be great. It still takes practice to develop the basic skills needed to master photography. How one composes a scene, focuses on a subject, selects an aperture and shutter speed, uses lighting and edits the final image are all variables that make up a great photographer. A 24-megapixel sensor can no more create Adams’ “Moon and Half Dome” than a Steinway piano can create Beethoven’s “Für Elise”. The output of technology alone can only ever hope to imitate an artist’s work, but never replicate it.

Conclusion

Digital has established itself as the dominant format in photography today. The advancement of photography is a continuing progression that does not look to relent anytime in the foreseeable future. In this burgeoning digital era it might be tempting to romanticize the shrinking traditional photo industry by proclaiming that the latest technologies can never take film’s place, but there are usually sound reasons for why new technologies functionally displace older ones. The incandescent bulb, for all its faults, proved to be a safer, and more efficient, way of lighting homes than the candle or oil lamp.

Conversely, the convenience and accessibility of digital photography must be weighed against its perceived impermanence and disposability. Film will not simply die out, especially among professionals who shoot medium and large formats. While digital technology has proven itself to be a genuine rival to the smaller film formats, it still has a long way to go before it can challenge large format resolution and affordability.

At their introduction, Daguerreotypes were expensive, one-off pieces of art and therefore only the most highly prized subjects were photographed. It is possible that artists may return to the idea of giving only important subjects the film treatment. Those photographers who enjoy this artistic process may also continue to gravitate toward film because it requires careful planning and attention to detail. There is purity in that fact that film has no redo/delete button.

Another reason why film and print will continue to exist in the digital world is because of their tangibility and longevity. Archival prints last well over 100 years. One cannot smell or feel a digital image like they can an old photograph. Perhaps we associate more emotional value to film and print because of unique abilities to physically preserve our memories.

Digital has not yet assured the public that it can last the test of time. Very few digital storage media can boast the type of longevity of paper, and digital storage standards change all the time. What is easy to access now may be hard, or impossible to access 10 years from now.

The answer to this new storage dilemma is found online. While people may not be saving photos in shoeboxes anymore, they are certainly not throwing away the new digital pictures they create. Instead they upload millions of photos to Internet social networks and photo-sharing sites everyday. These sites act as redundant storage vaults for users’ photos, and ensure that if their computers break down that they can still retrieve copies of their work online.

As has been stated, the way people take and share photography today has redefined the medium and the industry. Newer, less expensive, more convenient and more easily sharable forms of photography will continue to emerge, and as a result film photography looks to become a boutique industry. In the future, it may not matter that people know how to develop film anymore than they know how to operate a movable-type press, but the skills required for making and printing great photographs will not change. This fact means that talented photographers will continue to flourish regardless of whether they chose film or digital, and that the very best will be defined by their ability to continue making great photos with either.

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Heading into the Wind

2011-08-27T21:42:00.001-04:00

Heading into the Wind
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

A man fights against tropical storm-force winds and driving rain as he makes his way along the Potomac River in Old Town, Alexandria, Va., Aug. 27. DC-area residents dealt with strong winds and heavy rainfall late Saturday as Hurricane Irene continued her Northward track along the U.S. East Coast.

Waiting for Word

2011-08-24T00:12:00.001-04:00

Waiting for Word
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

Amid a crowd of other Federal employees, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Sue Condon waits for word about the earthquake during an evacuation of Coast Guard Headquarters in Southwest Washington D.C.

Girl and Dog at Café

2011-06-23T15:13:00.001-04:00

Girl and Dog at Café
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

Taken with a Mamiya 645 1000S on 120-format Kodak Pan-X Plus 125. I used my Nikon D3X to Matrix-meter the scene.

Rain-covered Gear

2011-05-02T19:16:00.001-04:00

Rain-covered Gear
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

My water covered camera gear sitting in the back of my rental car after shooting Midwest flood response photos in the pouring rain May 2.

Sometimes the Feeling Wavers

2011-03-31T20:52:00.001-04:00

Sometimes the Feeling Wavers
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

Tuned In, Turned On, Tapped Out

2010-11-30T18:23:00.001-05:00

In our class discussions these past few weeks, several themes emerged that help us make sense of how technology transformed social networks in the past, and how it continues to shape the world today. Much of the research we covered suggests that technological innovation has consistently redefined and expanded the complex socioeconomic ties that hold people together. Yochai Benkler delves deeper into this rabbit hole of social and technological interconnection by examining the power of network effects in his book The Wealth of Networks.

Benkler focuses on the reciprocal relationship that exists between technology, networks and economic development. He delves into the importance of networks by explaining how the increasing peer production trend relies on a technologically-driven set of motivations. His findings suggest that while people may be defined by the very technologies that they innovate, they can also dictate the ways in which those technologies evolve.

Benkler argues that as technological advances have slashed economic entry barriers and transaction costs, there have emerged non-monetary, non-proprietary incentives for people to generate and share information. He explains how traditional forms of communication media, like newspapers, suffered greatly during the recent economic downturn because they had high fixed-costs due to the investment required to own a press and distribution network. Content generators were thus compelled to seek monetary compensation or put forward some form of proprietary agenda in order to justify their overhead costs and labor.

However, in the same time period, peer-produced content skyrocketed because the digital information production model demanded much less temporal and financial commitment. As a result people have continued producing content to satisfy needs other than financial gain during the recession. Network effects have also led to an exponential growth in the use of peer-to- peer (P2P) file sharing in the same time frame.

Benkler explains how technological development has led to new forms of media that people can generate and consume without interfering with the consumption and generation of others. “Information, is a non-rival public good whose marginal cost, once produced, is zero” (Benkler, 2006, pg. 85). This paradigm allows for many small groups of content creators to create data sets that rival and even surpass those of large corporate media outlets. Driven by curiosity, personal fulfillment and/or plain boredom, millions of people have become the long tail of the information economy. As a result, the peer production model has emerged as a viable counterpoint to the idea of increasingly concentrated media control.

Music Industry Shake-Up

2010-11-15T11:58:00.000-05:00

The invention of sound recording media and playback devices in the late 19th century revolutionized the music industry and launched a global love affair with music on demand. Recorded sound introduced new ways for people to access and enjoy their favorite music. Instead of having to attend live performances, people could simply turn on a device that played the media format of their era, and listen to their favorite artists and genres. As a result, a vibrant industry emerged around the discovery, development, production and distribution of music.

While the hardware and media used for recording and listening to music have changed dramatically over the past century, the underlying structure of the recording industry has remained relatively constant. Scale economies and network effects have consistently led to a concentration of power in the industry’s business model. Despite media format battles, competitions with broadcast outlets and technological growing pains, the recording industry has evolved into a massive, vertically integrated, highly concentrated oligopoly. However, in the past decade, a series of Internet-powered technological advances, and a shift in social ideas about music sharing, have sent tremors through the industry.

The widespread adoption of online peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, the decline of physical storage media as the preeminent form of music consumption, and the decentralization of music production and distribution have begun to reshape an industry that has generally been dominated by a small, but powerful, group of content producers, licensing agencies and distributors since its inception. Where there were once limited, and highly selective outlets for sharing music with the world, there are now multiple online platforms that allow for self-publication and mass distribution.

“Music, like all information, is a non-rival public good whose marginal cost, once produced, is zero” (Benkler, 2006, pg. 85). Considering the current distribution model, it is simply a matter of efficiency that peer-to-peer users would spend the social costs involved with replicating music files for free instead of paying the creator (Benkler, 2006, pg. 86).

The recording industry has attempted to strike back against copyright infringement in these new forms of online music file sharing by taking legal action against companies that facilitate the practice, and even against their own customers. While these efforts have been successful at marginalizing and/or shutting down some of the original offending services, myriad other technologies have replaced them. These new file-sharing technologies are undermining the record companies’ attempts to reassert control over the music market. New legal forms of online music distribution, like iTunes, have also emerged as serious challengers to the corporate oligarchy. As a result of these attacks on their business model, major record labels are staggering to find ways to survive in the digital era.

References

Benkler, Y., (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Reaching for Technological Evolution

2010-11-02T14:29:00.002-04:00

Brian Arthur's argument that technological evolution is a self-sustaining process suggests that technology shapes society in spite of itself. His agency denuding argument suggests that like ripples in a pool of water, so too are man's actions dictated by some external force. Emergence of new technology is not random in Arthur's paradigm, but rather the result of humans' attempts to reconfigure existent tools to meet their evolving needs. These new technologies create new "problems", and a feedback loop that drives technological evolution forms as a result. In this system, technology is an exogenous force that dictates social evolution.

Eric Beinhocker presents a slightly different narrative. He suggests that emergence in complex systems, like human society, is not only the result of exogenous inputs, but also relies on the ways that actors behave and how the system is structured. The idea of emergence is a defining characteristic of his argument. It implies that changes at the individual, or micro, level lead to cumulative changes that manifest themselves at the macro level. In biology this phenomenon is observable in mass extinctions, while in business it is seen in economic depressions and booms. Beinhocker argues that these same drastic variations in normal patterns occur in technological evolution. In true evolutionary form, humans use their deductive capacities to select emergent technologies that display the greatest fitness potential. As they adapt these technologies to suit their needs, they set the groundwork for new forms of technological emergence.

Beinhocker's perspective most closely resembles Arthur's when he states that "...no technology is built in isolation. All technologies depend on a web of relationships with other technologies..." (pg. 175). However, the two men differ when it comes to defining which actors/readers are responsible for initiating and recognizing instances of emergent variance. Unlike Arthur, Beinhocker suggests that human actors hold significant sway over the evolution of technology. He argues that physical technology emerged when our human ancestors a.) learned to create artifacts rather than simply adapting "naturfacts", and b.) when they began transmitting knowledge of these creative skills to their offspring (pg. 242).

Beinhocker fast-forwards several million years and applies this same line of reasoning to the development of complex technological tools. He argues that humans, through their deductive processes, act as "readers" of technological instructions in the evolutionary system.

This model is not completely incompatible with Arthur's. Beinhocker agrees that physical technology feeds its own growth, but unlike Arthur, he argues that it does so by creating the possibility of newer technologies, not the inevitability. He also places technology in the role of adaptable instruction manual, rather than a fixed track from which deviation is impossible. This suggests that human choices about how to use technology, rather than their obligation to use it, is what truly drives technological evolution.

Where the two authors significantly diverge is in their understanding of evolutionary pacing. Arthur sees technological development as a form of phyletic gradualism wherein technologies slowly evolve over time as we adapt them to our needs. Beinhocker, on the other hand, argues that technological permutations can lead to emergent outcomes, which rapidly move technology from stasis to advancement in relatively short periods of time. This punctuated equilibrium is a result of exogenous influences on the system meeting with endogenous changes, like the cumulative effects of micro-level change. As a result, innovation is actually possible in Beinhocker's model, whereas Arthur would simply argue that any new technological development is simply a reinterpretation of existing technologies.

Technology Begets Technology

2010-10-26T00:58:00.001-04:00

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. – Gen. 1:3

Did God invent light? Not unless he was building off someone else's work. Such a rebuttal would probably be the sarcastic answer of economist-cum-technologist, Brian Arthur. In his highly enlightening book, The Nature of Technology, Arthur argues for a new understanding of innovation as an evolutionary process rather than as singular moments of inspiration. He views technological development as a series of incremental adaptations of natural phenomena and existent technologies. As people adapt and refine existent technologies into new ones, they encounter problems that can only be solved by the development of even newer technologies.

One of the ways in which Arthur defines technology is by saying that it fulfills a human purpose. This definition infers human agency because it suggests that human actors actually have to figure out how to rearrange the technologies around them into useful forms. However, Arthur also suggests that the process of developing new technologies introduces complex variables into the social system. These variables lead to new requirements and generate new human purposes. Thus technology development forms a sort of positive feedback loop that constantly increases the complexity of society.

Arthur's "driving force" characterization of technological development is very deterministic. His argument that innovation begets innovation suggests that technology does indeed have a will of its own. Accordingly, it doesn't take a great leap to marry his idea with the concept of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT is based on the notion that every component of a network provides an essential function in support of the whole. As components improve, or new components are substituted with enhanced functionality, the system evolves. This is exactly the same paradigm as the one Arthur posits for technology.

Both ANT and Arthur's theory seem to provide an explanation for why the pace of technological change has accelerated in recent years. The emergence of technologies that allow rapid or instantaneous communication between geographically disparate segments of the population has created an incubator for technology development. People are now able to share and build upon each others' ideas at an unprecedented pace. As a result, they are creating new technologies more frequently than at any other point in history. This phenomena means that the system is becoming exponentially complex, which raises the question of whether or not it is possible to reach a point of creative critical mass.

Some scholars suggest that runaway growth in complexity is prevented by economic incentives to make technologies less generative. Arthur's model borrows the idea of generativity as one of the prerequisites for technological development from Harvard Professor, Jonathan Zittrain. In his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Zittrain describes generativity as "a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contribution from broad and varied audiences."

Like Arthur, Zittrain suggests that the principle reason technological development has flourished over the past century is because new technologies have been designed in such ways as to be easily reconfigured, manipulated and improved. Zittrain argues that we will not reach critical mass in technological development any time soon because manufacturers and consumers are starting to move towards closed systems (less generative) as security issues associated with the openness of generative technologies increase.This type of technological lock-down could serve as a limiting force in technology development, and even lead to a regression in innovation.

Network Economics

2010-10-18T14:01:00.003-04:00

Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian (1999) suggest that information goods have supplanted industrial goods as key drivers of world markets, and that networks play a significant role in this new economy. The authors examine the idea that a product or service’s value increases as more people use it. They also delve the second and third order effects of the network system.

A social network like Facebook serves as helpful example for the type of direct network effects that the duo describes. As more people subscribe to the service, the pool of available contacts increases, and the service becomes more valuable to the individual user who is looking to interact with more people. The historical analog to this modern communications platform is the telephone system. Shapiro and Varian also analyze the effects of indirect network effects, a process whereby a greater number of complementary services, rather than a greater number of communications outlets, is responsible for an increase in the value of a network. This idea can be seen in Facebook applications development by third-party vendors, and it is especially well illustrated by the video game platform analogy. The more people that invest in a particular platform, the more likely developers are to create new games for that platform. Here the network effects benefit the users, original producers and derivatives producers.

All of these examples highlight Shapiro and Varian’s idea that large networks are more valuable than small ones. As people learn to rely on network effects to make value judgments about particular consumption choices, a positive feedback loop develops. This feedback is the main reason that a network’s value increases exponentially as it increases in size, and why value differences between large and small networks are so lopsided.

David Evans (2006) incorporates positive feedback and network effects discussions into his book, Invisible Engines, about how software platforms are driving innovation and economics. According to Evans, “software platforms power, to varying degrees, many modern industries, including digital music, mobile phones, on-line auctions, personal computers, video games, Web-based advertising, and online searches”. Evans argues that these platforms create two-sided markets that provide valuable services to people who use computing devices, as well as developers who write applications. Businesses, like those in the video game industry, which rely on software platforms, must work to attract consumers and developers if they wish to harness the power of positive feedback. Evans summarizes the idea of two-sided markets thus, “Users value more applications, and applications developers value more users.”

Evans two-sided market discussion highlights the overwhelming impact that network effects and new technologies have had on the broader market. It serves to explain why and how some of the world’s most successful technology firms have been able to capture and retain control of such large swaths of the market, and how aspiring techno-entrepreneurs can learn from their example. In a world increasingly dominated by deterministic assertions about the unstoppable force of technological progress, Evan’s readings provide a more proactive approach. His arguments suggest that we may be better served to question and interact with the development of technological platforms that drive our society rather than just holding on to our hats and enjoying the ride.

References

Evans, D., Hagiu, A., & Schmalensee, R. (2006). Invisible Engines. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Shapiro, C., & Varian, H. (1999). Information Rules. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Regulating the Modern Oracle

2010-10-12T10:30:00.001-04:00

In the past, the speed and ease with which people were able to communicate was limited by technological constraints, first by typeset, then telegraph, radio, telephone, television and cable. With the advent the electronic age, a proprietary information-exchanging computer network between government and educational institutions emerged as a means for people to share their ideas with others in real-time. ARPANET, introduced in the late 1960’s, ushered in a new model of communication that could facilitate enhanced technological and social progress through a digital revolution. From its humble roots as an apolitical research tool, the Internet has evolved into an international resource for knowledge and commerce that reaches billions of people every day.

The Internet has made it possible for a single person with access to a computer to easily accomplish the kind of mass distribution of information that giant media empires labored to achieve only a century ago. Today, with a few simple keystrokes and mouse clicks, anyone can become a publisher. This paradigm shift in the flow of information is changing the way people perceive themselves and others, and the ways in which information is gathered and disseminated. The Internet, however, is more than a technological medium for repurposing news. It has become the go-to place for people around the world to pose questions and offer solutions. What was once a humble research tool has morphed into a modern Oracle of Delphi, a liminal space where people gather together to create, share and challenge ideas.

However, Internet-driven social progress has not come without a reciprocal push back from established power structures. Increasing government censorship of Internet content in numerous countries has sparked international controversy about the ways in which these new modes of communication and speech can and should be regulated. Politicians, business leaders and news makers are going to great lengths to make sure their viewpoints are conveyed to audiences through multiple online media outlets. By utilizing the metaphorical “global megaphone” available through the Internet and by manipulating the economic superstructure, these actors maintain their grip on content distribution to the public. If left to their own devices, small, powerful groups could manipulate huge segments of the population through this new technology. In order to prevent these types of abuses, a delicate balance must be struck between the development of policies that encourage economic competition and those that promote free speech and political dialogue.

In countries like China, where the government imposes laws that limit individual freedoms, particularly speech, the Internet has served as a catalyst for social change. There, and in other countries ruled by authoritarian governments, where censorship is the status quo, the Internet becomes a refuge for those seeking truth. However, in recent years, oppressive regimes have targeted Internet services that provide access to subversive or unapproved news and entertainment. Some regimes even resort to violent enforcement measures when online authors express personal opinions that contradict government-accepted positions. Fortunately, the Internet is not as easily defined or controlled a medium as scarcity-limited outlets like newspaper, radio or television. It exists as a compendium of disparate information sources distributed throughout multiple technological platforms and protocols. Its technological and economic framework is not only built upon existing telephone, wireless and cable network models, but also upon a litany of hybrid technologies and revenue streams.

The Internet’s ability to function as a free speech conduit is one of its greatest assets. In fact, millions of bloggers, tweeters and laptop pundits are now adding their insights to the global communication marketplace in spite of oppressive governments’ attempts to deter them. This influx of voices is effectively serving to counterbalance suppressive rhetoric, and demonstrates why the Internet has become the most powerful force for political communication today. The Internet has come to function very much like a public forum, a metaphorical marketplace of ideas. Any future policy that seeks to regulate the Internet must recognize and protect this evolution.

Balling with Social Engineers

2010-10-11T12:22:00.001-04:00

When I saw the author’s name on one of my recently assigned academic papers, I was filled with a sense of youthful anticipation at the prospect of examining technological development through the lens of one of the greatest athletes to ever walk the face of the earth. Indeed, up until the fateful moment that I opened the PDF file containing the text, I maintained illusions of Michael Jordan explaining the intricacies of social construction through the lens of the sport he dominated for nearly two decades. What I found instead was a much more opaque lens through which to view technological development, one provided not by a living basketball legend, but instead by one John Michael Jordan, a rather intelligent (but decidedly dry) social historian. However, as I soon discovered, John Michael Jordan’s dense account of social and ideological forces that shaped policy-making and scientific development in the early 20th Century had a great deal more relevance to our ongoing discussion than three-point shots at the buzzer and slam dunks would have. (sigh)

Jordan suggests that socially constructed ideological motivations like efficiency, and management regimes spawned by efficiency, emerged from the scientifically-driven engineering craze of the early 20th Century. In what I can only described as one of the most daydream-inspiring readings I have yet undertaken, I was able to glean the notion that intellectuals of the era began to push against ideology-based political structures in an attempt to move policy in a more scientific direction. These quasi-political, scientifically-minded, intellectuals began to rally around a new way of viewing the world, and by the late 1800s they had adopted the term “engineer” to describe themselves.

The engineers applied their reasoning skills to social, political and economic issues, and developed an almost canonical, scientific approach to addressing issues in these fields. The main tenant of the engineers’ new “religion” was the idea of efficiency. Early definitions of efficiency varied widely, but among the scientific, business and political communities, the term became synonymous with streamlined operations, which maximized production, minimized cost and generally increased the overall tempo of output, often to the detriment of the worker. The efficiency model quickly spread throughout society in the form of managerial structures and political organization, but its effects were perhaps most noticeable in the development of new technologies.

I may not have been spoon fed the conclusion by 6-time NBA Most Valuable Player, Michael Jordan, but the other Jordan certainly helped me see the implications of the engineer-dominated social regime on technology development. If engineers shape social construction, and their ideology of efficiency becomes the standard practice, then technologies developed during their tenure will reflect the efficiency paradigm. This idea seems to support the social constructivist viewpoint of technology development, and is well born out in practice by the replacement of human labor in many industries by more efficient, mechanized tools. Technology development is not the only area where the efficiency dogma has converted new members. In nearly all developed societies, the push for faster, cheaper, stronger, smarter [everything] seems to pervade every facet of life. This ever-present quest for superlatives is often achieved by eliminating anything seen as extemporaneous.

The downside to the underlying model of efficiency is that the human being is sometimes, if not often, the element of the equation seen as inhibiting better efficiency. What would society look like if a new ideology emerged, one that favored personal fulfillment and individual freedom? Could the efficiency model be replaced with another that esteems quality of life over production? Technological determinists would probably say that we’ve already wandered too far down our current path to go back, but I’m not so sure that a concerted and sustained social shift could not alter our course. If a new breed of social constructivist arose to proffer an alternative to the efficiency model, perhaps the resultant social changes would also begin to manifest themselves in emerging technologies. I for one, would be very interested in working towards a future where human life is valued more highly than the bottom line. Perhaps then I could actually read something by the Michael Jordan that makes me happier, if not smarter.

The Long Tail

2010-10-05T17:53:00.001-04:00

“…the sum of many small markets is worth as much, if not more, than a few large markets.” —Jason Foster

One of the recent phenomena associated with the rise of the digital age is the widespread distribution of peer-produced content. In his book, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky (2008) talks about the definitions of this user-created content and suggests that as the media entry barriers have fallen, there have emerged non-monetary, non-proprietary ways for people to generate and share information. Older forms of traditional media, like newspapers and television, had high fixed-costs because of the investment required to own a press and distribution network, or the camera equipment and broadcasting studios needed to produce a television show. Content generators were thus compelled to seek monetary compensation or put forward some form of proprietary agenda in order to pay for their overhead costs and labor.

Because the current information production model demands much less temporal and financial commitment, people have began producing content to satisfy other needs. The non-rival nature of the digital media model also allows people to generate and consume content without interfering in the consumption and generation of others. This paradigm allows for many small groups of content creators to create data sets that rival and even surpass those of large corporate media outlets. Driven by curiosity, personal fulfillment and/or plain boredom, millions of people have become the long tail of the information economy. Unlike in the commercial world, where sales out in the far reaches of the long tail pay for themselves, in the blogosphere the power law ensures that only a select few at the top get most of the attention.

According to Jonathan Zittrain (2008),five principle factors determine whether or not a technological system is capable of this type of evolutionary tinkering including: Leverage, Adaptability, Ease of Mastery, Accessibility and Transferability. Systems that lack any one of these attributes are not necessarily doomed to obsolescence, but they must be refined if people are to use them as platforms for economic and technological development. Zittrain’s main example of a generative technology is the personal computer.

Early PCs were designed to be reprogrammable by their end users in order to accomplish different tasks as needed. This modularity allowed them to take over the roles of “dumb” technologies, which were limited to performing a ridged set of pre-programmed tasks. Creators of the early digital communications network adopted a similarly open platform, which allowed them to collaborate across technological barriers and develop more effective systems. The downside to this openness was, and to a large extent remains, the issue of security.

While early programmers had unwritten rules about “doing no harm” to the system, no such idealism exists among users of the modern Internet. Zittrain argues that manufacturers and consumers are moving towards closed systems (less generative) as security issues associated with the openness of generative devices increase. He believes that this type of technological lockdown could lead to a regression in innovation, and possible threaten free and open communication.

HFT as Control Technology

2010-10-04T11:47:00.000-04:00

David Noble's (1979) discussion about the rise of automated machine tools, or rather the socioeconomic choices that led to the widespread adoption of this technological evolution, serves as a useful analog for describing the recent movement in the finance industry toward computer-driven high-frequency trading (HFT). Behind both of these technological movements is a decidedly ideological decision-making process, a human process. The quest for greater control over their environment (shades of Hughes) seems to shape the way scientists, engineers and business professionals made choices in the formative stages of both these case-studies.

In the case of machine tool automation, Noble suggests that the digitized process did not emerge and thrive simply because it was the only, or the most efficient, system. Instead, he suggests that a number of social and economic decisions contributed to a form of path-dependency for the technology. Automation increased the control that managers and end-product customers had over the production chain, and thus reinforced further development and adoption of the technology. In the rush to maximize control, ethical considerations about the impact of this new technology upon the established workforce often fell to the wayside. Langdon Winner (1993) would argue that these ethical oversights are the inevitable outcome of any technologically deterministic analytical process.

How then does this scenario apply to HFT? In many ways, the automated machining process became a technological manifestation of a socioeconomic paradigm. HFT is a similarly indicative technological construct, one that reflects the cultural infrastructure of the industry in which it has been developed. I would argue that financial professionals have migrated toward this computer-mediated trading model, because it removes human variables from the "production" chain in much the same way that automated machine tools did. HFT has emerged in a society with a deep-seted distrust of a financial industry that has been mismanaged and poorly handled to the point of failure. Development of a digital process that removes the potential for human failings to be factored into the trading process seems like a logical step in reasserting control over a broken system.

However, Winner might (rightly) be concerned with the way modern economists are moving toward a dehumanized system. The mentality that the market is simply a "black-box" whose internal machinations can be manipulated by computers with the right combination of algorithms, suggests an alarming level of hubris. We have seen how this same technologically deterministic thought process worked out for dust bowl settlers who thought they could tame the land with technology. How were they any different from today's traders who think technology can tame a complex market? Perhaps a more troubling factor in HFT development is the innate lack of ethics within a machine-to-machine system. Logic does not equal morality. HFT proponents might conversely argue that logic is not immoral either, but is instead a process through which trade can be handled in a neutral manner. Perhaps that idea is true, but I suspect that something important, perhaps intangible, is lost when we cede complete control to technology.

There may not yet be enough data to draw any conclusions about the righteousness of HFT systems, or their impact on society, but there is certainly a historical precedent for us to use caution lest we move forward with this new technology in a cocksure and deterministic way. Complex systems like the economy, may be rendered less intimidating by automated processes like HFT, but not less complex. Thus, it is critical that we understand the social forces that shape new technologies like automated machine tools and HFT. By evaluating the reciprocal relationship between technologies and their underlying social structures, we gain a more accurate picture of how new technological processes effect the complex socioeconomic web.

References

Noble, D. F. (1979). Social choice in machine design: The case of automatically controlled machine tools. In A. Zimbalist (Ed.), Case Studies in the Labor Process (pp. 161-176). New York: Monthly Review Press.

Winner, L. (1993). Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: Social constructivism and the philosophy of technology. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 18(3), 362-378.

Technology and Media Concentration

2010-09-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

Eli Noam (2009) tackles the subject of communications hegemony in his discussion about the progressive decentralization of media control over the past century. He looks at how media optimists and pessimists differ in their analysis of what role the digital revolution is playing in media concentration. The two sides differ on whether the digital communications platforms serve to further diversify the media or, conversely, bring them back to a more concentrated state.

In his discussion about the formative years of radio and television, Noam explains how large corporations dominated the media markets. In this “Limited Media” environment, even older forms of communications media, like newspapers and records, were controlled by a select group of distributors. A gradual shift in the concentration model occurred over the next half century as new forms of media began to propagate, and as the government began aggressively targeting media monopolies like AT&T. In this post-Orwellian era, “Multichannel Media” emerged as hardware and software innovations put amateur-level movie production capabilities in the homes of ordinary people, and as the garage experiments of a brash group of teenagers playing with wires and circuits grew into a national industry of personal computing. Cable television provided consumers with viewing options other than those found on the “Big 3” networks, and concentration of media decreased as a result.

In the early 1990s, a new phase in the concentration model began as computer communications began to take hold in the mainstream. A networked communications technology that had once been the realm of scientists, engineers and government agencies, spread into the public sector, and rapidly catapulted communications into the digital age. According to Noam, “Digital Media” is characterized by digitization of information, whether text, audio or video, into code that can be read, transmitted and decoded by computers. This computer language is ultimately reencoded in such a way that the end user can decode it as well. The stream of 1s and 0s that make up this digital language is not limited to hard-wired distribution platforms, but can be transmitted wirelessly through increasingly complex broadcasting and satellite networks. The ingrained flexibility of the digital medium means that it can also be distributed in exciting new ways. This has led to media convergence, the effects of which we see today in the one-stop shop communications devices like the iPhone, which people can use to generate, consume and distribute content.

Noam views the potential for the current evolution of media to continue diversifying media with a certain amount of skepticism. Unlike media optimists who see the influx of new media outlets as proof of a more diverse control structure, Noam points at the potential of entry barriers, network effects and scale economies to increase vertical concentration. The current system that drives innovation, he argues, also serves to consolidate media control. Even if digitization has made it is easier for more people to enter the communications market, network effects limit their influence. Corporate mergers allow companies to expand their networks and remain competitive in this type of economic structure, but also concentrate the pool of those who have direct control over media outlets.

Noam’s findings tend to reinforce the pessimist argument that scale economies will continue to concentrate media control in the long-term, but he sees the process as dynamic. Because new technologies may further reduce the barriers to entry, there will continue to be fluctuations in the level of media concentration as individuals and smaller firms reassert their presence in the market. This process could result in media concentrating into niche markets.

References

Noam, E., (2009). Media Ownership and Concentration in America. City: Oxford University Press, USA.

Political Influence on Technological Development

2010-09-27T13:42:00.001-04:00

In my last post I examined the historical narrative of technological determinism, which Deborah Spar uses to frame her discussion of technological development since the 1500s. One element that I found noticeably absent in her analysis was the idea that social factors play an influential role in the evolution of technology and society. One author that I feel takes a more ecumenical approach to this subject is Paul Starr.

Like Spar, Starr (2005) begins his argument with a look back at Gutenberg’s printing press, examining the way this novel technology ushered in an age of modernity. While he similarly argues that nearly all communications innovations since the press have reshaped power structures in societies around the world, Starr places the responsibility for these changes in the hands of political leaders who have learned how to manipulate them to fit national agendas. He believes that political choices and regulations dictate the pace of technological change, and he illustrates his point with an examination of America’s development as a superpower.

Starr views America’s creation of a nationalized postal system and the progressive development of balanced communications regulations as the main reasons for the United States’ emergence as a global leader at the end of the 19th Century. He contends that communications media only have the power to shape society, when they are regulated in ways that allow their developers and users to profit from them, socially and economically. Regulatory precedents are difficult, if not impossible, to deviate from as technologies mature, and as derivative innovations evolve from them. Accordingly, political and social structures in place at the outset of new media technologies have long-term effects on future developments.

American policies of private media ownership and free press have created an incubator for new media growth that continues to push the country forward to this day. As a result, the U.S. has been extremely effective at using communications media as a form of global power projection. Whether through telegraph, radio, television or the Internet, America has disseminated its cultural and economic viewpoints more effectively than competing states, and has entrenched its viewpoints in the collective consciousness.

One important take-away from Starr’s argument is the notion that legislators and private industry must collaborate on development of new policies that regulate communications media. Starr believes that leaders must narrowly tailor media regulations in order to prevent technological stagnation and negative forms of path dependency. These regulations must protect economic incentives for innovators, while also promoting the development of new forms of media at the margins. They must also work to distribute control of media platforms over a broad area in order to prevent media hegemony.

References

Starr, P., (2004). The Creation of the Media. New York: Basic Books.

A Historical Narrative

2010-09-21T14:32:00.003-04:00

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
—Mark Twain

Many people like to look to history as a way of hedging their bets against missteps in the future. However, there are many different narratives to describe the way societies adapt and interact with technology. One such narrative suggests that since the Middle Age, emerging technologies have been responsible for bringing about significant changes in the power structures of the societies in which they were introduced, and have eventually led to changes on a global scale. These changes have not always come about rapidly, but have instead been the product of a slow-boil chain of events, according to Deborah Spar (2001).

In her book, Ruling the Waves, Spar posits the technologically deterministic narrative that new technologies go through distinct, predictable phases on their journeys from outlier prototypes to mass-produced cultural artifacts. She argues that every technology since Gutenberg’s printing press has followed a consistent evolutionary path that includes innovation, commercialization, creative anarchy and rule development, a catalyst phase which leads to a new cycle of innovation. Spar’s narrative suggests that emerging technologies also provide mechanisms for people to challenge existent social power structures.

Spar uses the development of movable type and the press as an example to support her position, explaining that new technologies opened communications outlets to the general public that had once been available only to a select group of social elites and leaders. This communications boon initially allowed people to challenge church authority, and led to a cultural revolution, which included the dissection of the Catholic Church and a shift in the power structure of 15^th Century Europe. However, the church quickly learned to leverage the capabilities of the press as well, and ironically used this same technology to wrest back some of the control it had lost early on.

Spar’s historical narrative suggests that revolutionaries and church leaders are not the only ones that have learned to leverage innovation for political and economic gain. As new technologies like the press evolve, they become powerful economic engines. With the press, it was printers and publishers capitalizing on the public demand for books, newspapers, fliers and other publications. Likewise, the advent of the radio, television and Internet, has spawned new generations of capitalists looking to cash in on these new communications platforms. Spar sees the commercialization process as a transformative stage where the technology leaps from the margins to the mainstream.

Along with this leap comes a corresponding demand for regulation, usually in the form of governmental intervention. While a technology may flourish in the early stages without governmental interference, it ultimately requires regulation if anyone wants to profit from it. While elements of society push back against this regulation during the creative anarchy phase, the passage of rules eventually allow a technology to be standardized, and the process of innovation begins anew. Ignoring the fact that Spar’s narrative discounts the influence of political intervention in technology development and deployment, this paradigm serves as a helpful explanation for why technological development has remained so dynamic over the past several centuries.

References

Spar, D., (2001). Ruling the Waves. San Diego: Harcourt.

Digital Magazines: Revolution or Rehash?

2010-09-16T14:34:00.003-04:00

I recently read an article by Lev Manovich's titled "What is New Media?: Eight Propositions." In his article, Manovich describes the what he sees as differences between cyberculture and New Media, the former being focused on society and networks and the latter on culture and computing. His section on "New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform" makes very cogent points about the computing-related artifacts that he sees as new media, but I think he also paints with too broad a brush when he excludes reimagined forms of traditional media like the online magazine.

While it is true that paper copy magazines have traditionally relied on non-computer forms of delivery, a new business model has emerged that promises to change the industry. Editors have experimented with re-purposed online versions of their paper magazines for the last decade, but are now looking to capitalize on multimedia technology to replace the physical magazine with a digital version. Even though it might have a physical analog, this immersive, computer-driven medium would have much more in common with other forms of digital media than with its paper counterpart, and would thus qualify as a form of New Media according to Manovich's definition.

The video above illustrates how one traditional print organization, Wired, has envisioned an all digital future for their publication. Even if they continue to mail out paper copies of their magazine, the online version has so many more capabilities and features that it could truly be thought of a a separate form of media. One of the designers in the above video also sees this new distribution form as a way to reset the economics of the print industry saying, "...for the first time people may value this experience so much that they may pay for it." This statement introduces another wrinkle to the New Media arguement, the adaptive business model.

Manovich clings to the idea of automation as an important test for his New Media artifacts, and nowhere would software-driven algorithms be more evident and effective than in advertising for online publications. Various online outlets already mine information about users who access their sites in order to tailor demographic-specific advertisement for them. How much more effective would this type of business model be for a niche publication whose readers self-identify just by subscribing? Designers for the online version could even tailor editorial content to reflect individual readers' interests by redirecting to archives or other current news that fits into their demonstrated interest areas.

The digital publication has the potential to completely reshape the traditional print industry if publishers and editors can really design effective business models that take advantage of the online marketplace. Because it would change the way people interact with news and information sources, this form of New Media could also lead to the development of new portable hardware platforms that make accessing information easier on the go. Perhaps we're already seeing the beginnings of this movement with the introduction of devices like the iPad and Kindle. However, I think the real revolution in portable media delivery systems has yet to reveal itself. When it does, it will be vastly different from what anyone imagined, and may lead to the next step in the technological evolution paradigm.

Exemplification in News Coverage of the 2010 Blizzard

2010-02-15T15:21:00.035-05:00

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

During the television news coverage of the record-breaking snowstorms that blanketed the Capitol region last week, I was struck by the disparity between the TV reportage and my actual experience of the events. I noticed that many of the reporters employed para-social behaviors (Horton & Wohl, 1956), audience cultivating visual communications strategies (Messaris, 1994), and proximity techniques (Zelizer, 1990) to connect with viewers, establish an impression of authority and ultimately convey a fear-laced exaggerated narrative. Dickens couldn’t have written a better introduction for the televised news coverage of “Snowmaggedon 2010”.

Many of the early news reports relied heavily on speculation and presented what I believed to be unrealistic, or overly sensationalist, interpretations of the early stages of the storm. I experienced the storm first-hand in downtown Washington D.C. and later in Northern Virginia, and I recorded my experiences to compare them against the local and national televised news coverage. Below is a photo I took of a CNN reporter standing on a snow-covered patch of ground beside the National Mall Friday, Feb. 5, at 4:14 PM.

If you look closely you can see that a truck was driving by on clear roads behind her, but the camera was angled down at the reporter in such a way as to maximize the impact of the little snow that had accumulated on unpaved areas by that point in the afternoon. At the same time, the reporter was advising viewers that many Washington D.C.-area residents were already cloistering themselves away inside their homes because of the severity of the oncoming storm. She also warned viewers against venturing out because conditions were worsening, “as you can see”.

This particular news report illustrates several points from Zelizer’s article on TV authorship (1990). Place of event, place of reporter and place of broadcast (Ibid, pgs. 40-41) were all established in this short report from the National Mall. The anchor introduced the reporter as being “downtown right now” with a report about the big storm about to hit the nation’s capital. The anchor’s introduction alone established all three types of proximity, but the reporter drove the point home by saying “here on the National Mall…”, and through her signoff where she specifically stated that she was reporting from Washington D.C. Finally, just in case a viewer had inadvertently muted their TV, the screen graphics also informed the viewer that the reporter was in “Washington”, and that the “Monster Storm” was aimed at “DC”.

Throughout this particular broadcast I also observed distinct para-social interactions (Horton & Wohl, 1956) between the CNN news anchor and the viewers, and between the reporter and audience members. In introducing the reporter, the anchor used casual, conversational dialogue with the audience member as an invisible counterpart. For example, the anchor said something to the effect of “I know a lot of you are worried, and wondering what to expect. [Reporter] is on the National Mall with that information.” The reporter then maintained this informal relationship by directly addressing the audience in a concerned and familiar way, even encouraging the viewer to “just be careful out here.”

While the reporter’s statements about the impending storm were not altogether incorrect, I felt that they were still exaggerated and (along with the strategic camera) angle seemed intended instill fear in viewer instead of simply reporting conditions as they were at the time. What I found after comparing my experiences to those portrayed on TV was that I had not experienced the fear or sense of urgency that news reports suggested my counterparts were experiencing.

What were conditions really like at the time? Ten blocks away from the CNN reporter, in Chinatown, I was sitting down in a packed bar enjoying a few beers with my buddy and marveling at the amount of foot- and vehicle traffic on the streets in light of the reporter’s dire statements. But don’t just take my word for it.

I took the picture above one minute after the picture of the reporter’s live coverage. Here you see a group of apparently unconcerned ladies enjoying a smoke outside as other people walk behind them on the sidewalk across the street. The shot below, taken minutes after the smoking ladies, shows a lonely snow plow waiting for the snow to arrive as commuters and D.C. residents go about their daily lives with relative normalcy.

In their groundbreaking sociological study Lang & Lang (1953) encountered a similar disconnect between the televised portrayal of a major event and the perceived experience of people who witnessed the event in person. The MacArthur Day parade in Chicago, while widely hyped on television did not strike a particularly potent chord with attendees. The video aspects of MacArthur Day, they argued, served to preserve rather than disappoint the viewers expectations of the event (Ibid, p.6).

While the news coverage of the recent blizzard actually did a rather good job of reflecting the severity of the storm’s impact on travel and commerce, I feel like the editorial licenses that many reporters took, and Ad nauseam proximity references, made the event seem more hazardous, supported a dominant message of fear and reinforced viewers’ expectations instead of offering contradictory information.

Another thing this case study highlights is the surprising similarity between shooting techniques and narrative themes found in current reportage and those employed during the MacArthur Day parade coverage. The narrative choices that news producers made in presenting storm coverage suggested that the major networks were targeting a specific segment of their overall audience. By examining the characters (field reporters and anchors), settings (on-location and studio) and major events of the narrative propel the story forward I dissected who the producer’s intended (ideal) audience was, and therefore the implied viewer.

As we discussed in class, one of the benefits to enhanced visual literacy is that we as viewers can recognize realism strategies that producers employ. These strategies allow producers to limit the extent to which viewers can challenge the materials being presented (Messaris, 1994). One often-implemented technique is continuity editing, which works to “mask” the cuts between scenes so as to present a natural flow and rhythm to the viewer and prevent distraction. Directors use various camera and post-production techniques to ensure continuity. These include eye-line matching shots where shots are directed to areas on screen where the principle character is looking, and action match cuts where moving characters or objects are used to transition from one scene to the next.

These shooting and editing techniques create the illusion of realism and give the viewer dominant specularity, a viewpoint from which they can watch events unfold from a position of omniscience and safety. Even a critical viewer can be lured into accepting certain premises that they would otherwise challenge when they become emotionally vested in the visual production. This leads to manipulations of audience interpretations of the ideology being portrayed (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002). Producers and directors go to great lengths to make sure their intended meaning is being conveyed to the audience. Using the aforementioned production techniques, they can shape their story in such a way as to very narrowly focus the audiences’ perceptions.

Pre-produced news reports use many of these techniques to bring their audience into the show and to guide their interpretation of the events. This fact is apparent in the Associated Press video (below) when it is compared against my unedited home video of the same blizzard on Feb. 7.

AP VIDEO

MY VIDEO

The main differences between the two video examples are really the way the messages in each are encoded. Stuart Hall (2001) discussed how television signs are encoded in such a way as to convey an intended meaning. Viewers are prodded toward accepting the dominant meaning, which Hall (p. 174) and members of the Frankfurt school (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002, p. 131) would argue is a hegemonic position that supports a powerful minority of leaders in business and government. However, the audience can also negotiate a middle ground meaning, or refute the dominant meaning and take an oppositional stance.

As my video shows, I came to a negotiated understanding of the newscasters’ portrayal of the snowstorm and posted my personal experiences online for friends and family. My video and statements supported the idea that there was indeed a severe snowstorm in progress, but I encoded my message in a relatively documentary format that did not include heavy external editorial influences. Interestingly, United Press International University (UPIU) picked up a photo essay that I shot at the same time as the video, and they ran it on the front page of their Web site throughout the duration of the storm. Perhaps my photographs of the storm supported the dominant TV portrayal of the snow event closely enough that my interpretations of the days’ events were deemed credible by UPIU’s editors.

This neo-Marxist outlook of hegemony in media messages is counteracted by the notion of opinion leadership, which is part of the Limited Effects Theory of Mass Communication. This theory is one of several models that try to explain the diffusion of innovations, ideas, or commercial products. One of the concepts we discussed in class was how the opinion leadership concept arose out of the theory of two-step flow of communication propounded by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz. The opinion leader is the agent who is an active media user and who interprets the meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users (Gladwell, 2002). Gladwell argues that the opinion leader is held in high esteem by those that accept his or her opinions. Opinion leadership tends to be subject specific, that is, a person that is an opinion leader in one field may be a follower in another field.

Lazarsfeld believed that the media’s presentation of events actually has quite limited effects on their audiences. Hagen and Wasko’s research incorporated the limited effects theory by explaining that variables in television production can be altered to make a communication more or less effective to a particular segment of the overall audience (2000, pgs. 41-42). Television producers place considerable emphasis on these variables, especially social factors such as group membership, which limits the persuasiveness of a message.

In the case of the snowstorm coverage, I have a feeling that while many people heeded the reporter’s warnings about not driving on slippery streets, they also looked to opinion leaders among their friends, family or non-traditional media outlets before making their final decisions. My goal in recording my experiences with video and photos was to serve as one of those leaders, and provide an alternate perspective from which media consumers could approach news about the great blizzard of 2010.

References

Gladwell, M., (2002). The Tipping Point. Boston: Back Bay Books.

Hagen, I., & Wasko, J. (2000). Consuming Audiences?. Cresskill: Hampton Press.

Hall, S. (2001). “Encoding/Decoding.” In M.G. Durham & D.M. Kellner (Eds.), Media
and cultural studies keyworks. Blackwell Publishers.

Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T., & Schmid, N. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass Communication and para-social interaction:
Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry, 19.

Lang, K. & Lang, G.E. (1953). The unique perspective of television and its effect: A
pilot study. American Sociological Review, 18 (1).

Levy, M. R. (1979). Watching TV news as para-social interaction. Journal of
Broadcasting, 23.

Messaris, P., (1994). Visual "Literacy". Boulder: Westview Press.

Zelizer, B. (1990). “Where is the author in American TV news? On the construction and presentation of Proximity, Authorship and Journalistic Authority.”
Semiotica, 80 (1-2).

Suffering and Catharsis

2009-11-23T16:19:00.014-05:00

Perhaps one of life’s most difficult trials is having to bear witness to friends or loved ones as they suffer through hardship, pain or death. Paradoxically, our society seems to gravitate towards images that depict these same occurrences in other people’s lives. Numerous authors have discussed the social and psychological implications of our fascination with viewing scenes of carnage, death and suffering, so long as we are not in some way connected to the victims. Their findings highlight an unsettling link between viewer interest and proximity. The farther away a depiction of suffering takes place, either geographically, socioeconomically and/or culturally, the less likely we are to be repulsed by it. Scenes of suffering become exotic abstractions, depersonalized by their lack of contextual cues and by our ignorance or dismissiveness of the subject matter.

The book, Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, examines the ethics behind overtly predatory photographic practices, which seek to capitalize upon the misfortune or subjugation of others, as well as more subtle photographic transgressions. It ponders the question of whether or not it is wrong to seek aesthetic pleasure in the pain of others, and if so why? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag addresses the ways in which warring forces exploit battlefield photographs as propaganda, sometimes using the same photos with different captions to support differing ideological viewpoints. Sontag also looks at scenarios where the photographer, by his mere presence, becomes a catalyst for the violence that takes place in front of the lens. One photograph that I found to be indicative of some of these characterizations can be seen in a series of photo stills pulled from a news video shot in the Gaza Strip, Sept. 30, 2000.

The last of five frames extracted from a France 2 recording by Talal Abu Rahma, depicts the apparent death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, as his father tries futilely to shield him from (allegedly) Israeli gunfire. In the first two frames, the father crouches defensively behind a barrel and wraps his right arm around the crying boy to protect him from flying shrapnel and bullets that are impacting all around them. The third frame shows the father looking pleadingly at the camera, and screaming for help as bullets riddle the wall behind him and his son. The fourth frame shows a zoomed-out view of the scene with a large dust cloud partially obscuring the view of the boy and his father, but it is apparent that the father has slumped over. The final frame shows a zoomed-in shot of the father with his son crumpled over in his lap. The father lolls in semi-consciousness after being hit by hostile fire, and his son lays, as though asleep with hands over his eyes, on his injured father’s lap.

By all appearances, these photos capture a heartrending scene of war’s unnecessary toll on the innocent. Palestinians held the photos up as proof that Israeli gunman had callously murdered an unarmed man and his child, and Israeli authorities even took responsibility after the photos were published. The father and his son became national icons and their photos were emblazoned on Jordanian stamps with the word “martyr” beneath them. However, the truth behind what really occurred has since been called into question. Was the videographer a Palestinian sympathizer who selectively edited his video by cutting single scenes that would unfairly bias the viewer? Were the bullets really fired by Israeli soldiers, or by Palestinian police and gunmen as subsequent investigations have suggested? Was the boy really killed after all?

These photos do not offer the viewer any truth, but rather a basis from which a caption writer can construct a truth. We are led to believe, or perhaps we want to believe, that we have been given a privileged glimpse at a terrible tragedy. We choose to believe this because it allows us to proffer an emotional response, a self-righteous judgment that abdicates responsibility while at the same time holding someone else accountable. If we are told that the photo does not show death, that there is no antagonist to blame, we are left unsettled and impotent. The viewer demands a tragic ending in order to achieve a sense of finality, and ultimately, catharsis.

Nowhere is this suffering-death-catharsis paradigm more evident than in Sacramento Bee photographer Renee C. Byer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo essay, "A Mother's Journey". The photo essay from 2007, chronicles 11-year-old Derek French’s nearly two-year battle against neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer that primarily affects children. Byer expertly leads her audience through Derek’s painful treatments, his all-too-few moments of youthful levity and his eventual passing. Byer also highlights Derek’s mother, Cyndie, as she struggles at first to save her terminally ill son, and later to come to terms with the inevitability of his death.

The most powerful photo in the series shows Cyndie and family friends gathered around Derek’s bed in the waning moments of his life. Bloated by the tumor in his abdomen and closeted off from the outside world by his pain medications, Derek succumbs silently as his mother tearfully rocks him to sleep. As the pall of death glosses over the fragile, emaciated boy’s face, Cyndie tells Derek, "It's OK, baby. I love you, little man. I love you, brave boy. I love you. I love you."

Derek is dead. Through a series of images and captions, the viewer has witnessed the beauty of his life, his valiant struggle and the intimacy of his final moments. There is a feeling of completion in this ending that would not be possible if Byer had chosen to end her essay in any other way than with the young boy’s untimely death, along with a subsequent photo of his funeral.

Byer’s photos do not exploit Derek’s pain in the way other depictions of suffering often do. Instead, they honor his bravery. His struggle empowers us. His and Cyndie’s perseverance in the face of losing odds, while tragic, presents us with the prospect of hope. We as viewers know that Derek's painful trial has ended, and that his mother has ultimately found peace. In the end their suffering cleanses us, and we are left whole again.

Beauty in the Breakdown

2009-11-18T12:47:00.010-05:00

Phill Davison, an English carpenter by trade, has taken to photographing the decaying urban landscape of his beloved British countryside as a hobby. The 42-year-old amateur photographer from Leeds, UK, posts his photos online under the nom de guerre phill.d, and has drawn an impressive following for his dystopic portraits of urban breakdown and natural order. The results of his efforts are amazing, unsettling landscapes that act as portals into forgotten worlds. Davison’s photos challenge viewers to cast aside their preconceptions of beauty in favor of a less idealized, but no less engrossing perspective of the world.

One of Davison’s more evocative photos is his interior landscape of the now defunct High Royds Lunatic Asylum in West Riding, UK. The shot entitled, What do you do when you get lonely?, shows a long split corridor that once separated men’s and women’s wards. The divergent hallways reek of neglect and show all the signs of slow entropy. Fading floor tiles, peeling paint and broken light fixtures all stand as reminders of time’s relentless march against order.

Though sunlight pours through the windows in the right hallway, it seems muted and suppressed in the left hallway. The cold blue tones and oddly patterned tiles of the left hallway swallow the brightness from the yellow paint and warm earth tones of the floor tile on the right side. These odd contrasts create an eerie bifurcated feeling to the space, and hint at the type of divergent processes that may have taken place inside the heads of the patients who roamed these hallways years ago.

There is another sort of fractured unevenness to the shot that unnerves me. The divergent lines lead my eyes off into two directions and force me to look beyond the literal hallway and instead through a time portal. The lines guide me from one side to the other. The movement of light and lines from left to right alludes to a continuum where the viewer is led from a dark foreboding past to an intersection in the center of the frame (the present). From there the viewer continues on toward a warmer, brighter future. It could just as easily work in reverse, but I prefer this left to right viewing.

Another of Davison’s gems is Take the train, it’s greener. Again, he has chosen another forgotten interior space in which to capture beauty in decay. In this shot, a vibrant fern defiantly grows in between the seats of a gutted passenger train car in North Yorkshire, UK. The bright green plant glows optimistically in the center of the frame, backlit by sunlight bouncing off a bright white wall outside the broken window of the train car. The wall is itself another scrapped train car, as evidenced by a sliver of window through which the viewer can see inside the other car.

This interior landscape is particularly potent because it breaks from romanticized ideas of unspoiled natural beauty, instead highlighting the beauty of emerging life in a man-made environ. The solitary plant willing itself skyward amidst a rotting alien landscape is a passionate subject. The car floor, ruined by water damage and covered in shattered glass, begins to reveal itself as a more organic surface like that of a moss-covered forest floor. The mildewed passenger seats rise like tree trunks around the lone plant and frame it as something to be revered in an otherworldly forest temple.

Davison’s secret garden pays homage to natural order on a microcosmic scale. His plucky little plant is a harbinger of life in a vast train graveyard. It signifies at once both the futility of technology to conquer nature, and the eventuality of life to spring from death. The framing, lighting and choice of locale all indicate that Davison not only understands these concepts but also revels in them.

My final selection is an interior landscape with both historical and social overtones. Davison’s Abandoned Harpurhey Swimming Baths Manchester, is a hauntingly beautiful image of a condemned bathhouse in Manchester, UK. Immediately noticeable are the disparate light sources that work to create an ethereal feel in this cathedral-like space. Davison very purposefully manipulated the lighting in the scene by placing tea light candles in cubicles around the pool for this nighttime shot. The orange glow of the flames contrasts splendidly with the blue moonlight radiating down through the oculus in the ceiling.

Davison’s choice of lighting seems to reinfuse life into this once vibrant space. Until the early 1900s, public baths were a community hub in England. Once indoor plumbing and bathrooms became standard in homes, public baths died away. Here, Davison uses candles to allude to the life that once filled this now defunct space. The austere beauty of the vaulted room is also highlighted by the cool blue tones throughout, and by the pleasing symmetry of the many diagonal lines intersecting in the frame.

Again, Davison’s recurring theme of nature conquering technology reveals itself in the center of the bathhouse photo. A green form grows in the middle of the pool and reaches out towards the rest of the room as though trying to cover all of what man hath wrought. The lichen or moss growing in this empty structure, once again challenges the viewer to accept the idea that man has but a short lease on this earth. In the end, all will be one with nature and life will prevail.

Visit Davison's Web site for more amazing photography.

Photography is Not a Crime

2009-07-28T14:31:00.003-04:00

Some people are either terribly misinformed about, or threatened by, our Constitutional rights. As a working photojournalist, I frequently encounter “enforcers” whose ignorance of these rights creates a hostile working environment for me and my fellow journalists. However, what some people fail to recognize is that the ordinary citizen’s rights are also being threatened when police and other authority figures ignore or misinterpret the law as in the case of journalists and protesters. Journalists and other freedom advocates are merely the lightning rods for civil liberties challenges. The rights of all American citizens are what really hang in the balance with these types of confrontations.

My World: Rehoboth Beach

2009-07-22T17:04:00.001-04:00

My World: Rehoboth Beach
Originally uploaded by Warriorwriter

Here's a panoramic shot I took at Rehoboth Beach over the weekend. It took 90 photos and a lot of Photoshop magic to create this piece.

Photoshopped Diversity

2009-07-01T09:19:00.004-04:00

If you’re a designer or otherwise work in graphic arts, take note: This is wrong. Like, really, really wrong.

Wow!

Analysis of "Fahrenheit 9/11"

2009-06-23T10:53:00.005-04:00

Michael Moore is not a big fan of former president George W. Bush. At least that’s the feeling I came away with when I recently revisited his unashamedly anti-Bush film, Fahrenheit 9/11. This political documentary, released in 2004, serves as a treatise against the Bush administration, and highlights what Moore sees as governmental corruption and disinformation by the former president and his staff in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, and in the lead up to the American invasion of Iraq. At the time of its release, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a critical success, sparking widespread debate about the United States’ involvement in Iraq and raising public outcry against Bush administration policies. But how was Moore able to have such a profound impact on the public with such a subversive film?

Moore pulls no punches in Fahrenheit 9/11, and as a result, the film serves as a cultural forum from which the general public is introduced to ideas that would otherwise be suppressed in mainstream media (Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983). Although Todd Gitlin (1979) suggested that counter-culture ideas might be contained or domesticated in television texts, his theory is also applicable to the big screen. While many directors might try to temper their texts in order to appeal to a larger demographic, Moore chooses an altogether different path. Instead of domesticating his abrasive message, Moore intercuts the graphic violence of real war-zone footage with formal White House dinners to produce gut-level reactions. These connotations and allusions are meant to highlight the brutality of war and the perceived indifference of America’s former leaders.

When the film was released in 2004, America was at war, public consent was still mostly on the side of the Bush administration, and people were afraid of a repeat terrorist attack. Considering the social climate at that time, Moore’s film should not have found such a receptive audience in the U.S. However, he was able to use narrative and semiological strategies to covey his ideologies to an otherwise unreceptive audience. By juxtaposing iconic symbols and video montages of former President Bush against grisly war scenes and emotional personal interviews, Moore develops a number of second order meanings for corruption and greed, and ends up helping the viewer relate to his message. He first builds rapport with his audience and then gradually introduces his own ideologies. He does this by relying on the established documentary film genre to draw his viewers in and create an aura of credibility. He then subverts the genre with a heavily biased presentation of his own political ideology.

According to Jonathan Gray, “Genres depend on receptive audiences who are willing to grant credibility to the conventions of the genre to the extent that those conventions become invisible” (2006, pg. 28). Moore used the established generic format of the documentary because he realized that his viewers would consciously and unconsciously group his text with other documentary texts that they had seen before. As a result, he was able to smoothly integrate ideological messages into the established documentary format. Because people use generic conventions to make sense of other texts (Gray, 2006), viewers of Fahrenheit 9/11 might have come into the film expecting an objective documentary portrayal of events. However, genres are cultural categories that are subject to change and redefinition. Moore used his audience's preconceptions and understandings of the genre to his advantage, and introduced highly discordant material into his film, thus redefining the political documentary.

Was it all just a dream? That’s the question Moore asks at the beginning of Fahrenheit 9/11 in response to George W. Bush’s defeat of Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election. In the scenes thereafter Moore intercuts shots of various news agencies misreporting Al Gore’s presumed victory in Florida and their embarrassed retractions that George W. Bush had actually won. Moore’s intent is to portray the national media as foolish and unreliable, and to get the audience in a cynical frame of mind. A semiotic analysis of Moore’s work further reveals that he very carefully chose all of his shots from a large set of possible options (paradigms) and arranged those shots, sometimes deceptively, in a very particular (syntagmatic) way so as to convey a specific ideology.

One of the most effective paradigmatic choices Moore makes isn’t seen, but rather heard early in the film. After a series of shots with voiceover describing Bush as a lame duck president, Moore suggestively asks the audience what could salvage Bush’s first term in office. Moore then cuts to a black screen. For nearly two minutes there is no image on the screen, but the background sounds are instantly recognizable: loud explosions, wailing sirens, screaming people, news reports of aircraft hitting the World Trade Center and weeping women. By using only sound, Moore deftly manipulates his audience, forcing them to relive the tragic events of 9/11 in their own minds. This paradigmatic choice is chillingly effective. The first time I watched this film I actually remember seeing people crying in the theater when the screen slowly faded back to scenes from ground zero. Their personal recollections of that horrible day were undoubtedly more painful than anything Moore could have shown them on the screen.

The aforementioned sequence masterfully sets the emotional stage for Moore's ensuing tirade against Bush, and serves as a kernel (or major plot point) for the entire film. As we learned in class, the narrative choices that the producer makes in presenting his ideology suggest an implied viewer. By examining the characters, settings, kernels and satellites (minor plot points), we can determine who the implied viewers are. By introducing the events of 9/11 as the focal point of his film, Moore’s implied viewers are people who were negatively impacted by the events of 9/11, and those who feel like the government didn’t do enough to prevent the terrorist attacks.

Since the events of 9/11 serve as a catalyst for everything else in the film, Moore introduces satellite story arcs to develop the plot and further his message. One such satellite is an interview with Marine Corporal Abdul Henderson. Corporal Henderson claims that after serving in Iraq, he realized that the Bush administration had lied to Americans about why troops were sent there. Henderson reveals to Moore that he would refuse to go back to Iraq if he were reactivated. This exchange, though brief, sets the scene for Moore’s guerilla street operation to stop congress members and have them sign their children up for military service.

Editing is the most dominant weapon in Moore’s arsenal. It’s obvious from Moore’s syntagmatic decisions that suppressing the audience’s realization of authorship is secondary to creating very strong signifieds from signs. For example, Moore highlights the buffoonery of the national press by juxtaposing a shot of a distraught Iraqi woman who has just lost her family to an American bombing attack against a bubble-gum chewing Brittany Spears who says she thinks that Americans should “just trust our president” during a CNN interview. This syntagmatic editing decision is obviously aimed at showing the viewer how out of tune the American people, and to some extent the national press, were with the state of affairs in Iraq. Another edit shows masked insurgents hoisting their weapons in the air as the lyrics to “The Roof is on Fire” play in the background. American soldiers interviewed by Moore admitted that they had listened to this same song, with the lyrics “Come on party people, throw your hands in the air” as they drove their tanks into Baghdad and “blew stuff up.” Again, this is not a very subtle allusion.

Perhaps the most effective editing sequence in the movie is the scene where President Bush lands aboard an aircraft carrier to announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Moore sarcastically plays the theme song from 1970s sitcom “The Greatest American Hero” to underscore the absurdity of Bush’s remarks. However, the real punch from the scene comes right as Bush announces “Mission Accomplished”. The scene immediately jump cuts from a shot of the Mission Accomplished sign on the ship to a shot of two soldiers on patrol in Iraq right as an improvised explosive device explodes and knocks one of them to the ground. Moore is using syntagmatic choices and strategic editing to assign a new meaning to the Mission Accomplished sign. Now, instead of simply being a sign that denotes an accomplished mission, it stands for a failed military strategy and the arrogance of American's leaders.

The movie ends with Bush’s paraphrased quote of “fool me once…” after which Moore quips, “For once we agreed.” Fahrenheit 9/11 had a lasting effect on the social consciousness and led to a convergence of politically targeted documentary films. This highlights the participatory culture that Jenkins describes in his book (2007, pg. 24). As the Internet culture evolves, audiences are demanding the right to participate in media culture and are pulling together to produce answers and solutions (Jenkins, 2007). Fans of the film connected through the Internet and created similar texts that criticized the Bush administration. One such fan-film “Loose Change”, built upon Moore’s idea that large corporations actually benefited from 9/11 by postiting a government conspiricy and cover-up. Unfortunately for Moore, these fan films weren’t able to rally enough support to force Bush out of office or prevent his reelection. However, many of the fan films were released online and received widespread recognition. Their messages, inspired by Moore, continue to influence popular culture today.

References

Gitlin, T. (1979). Prime time ideology: The hegemonic process in prime time television. Social Problems, 26(3), 251-266.

Gray, J. (2006). Watching with The Simpsons: Television, parody, and intertextuality. New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, H. (2007). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: NYU Press.

Newcomb, H., & Hirsch, P. (1983). Television as a cultural forum: implications for research. Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 45-55.

When Man Plays God

2009-03-31T16:07:00.004-04:00

I have been researching cults for a paper I'm writing, and came across an organization that has played a pivotal (read: negative) role in my perspective on and perception of religion, and Christianity in general. I wanted to provide a central resource area for information that I've gathered during the course of my investigation about Maranatha Christian Ministries. The previous links and those below are some of the sources I have found useful. Sorry for the short, URL-filled, post, but I'm pressed for time today. I'll undoubtedly elaborate much further on this subject in the future.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/maranatha/maranatha3.html
http://lisatrust.bogie.nl/Media/general-maranatha.htm
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/17055/a-statement-of-evaluation-regarding-maranatha-campus-ministriesmaranatha-christian-ministriesmaranatha-christian-church

What Does $787B Buy?

2009-02-17T15:55:00.006-05:00

Oh wow! The President just signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Do you actually have any idea what that means? Where is your $787 billion going? If you're feeling left out of the loop for not having read the legislation you're not alone. There are certainly plenty of people complaining about Congress' lack of transparency. It would be refreshing to hear some intelligent discussion about certain aspects of this enormous expenditure rather than the litany of generalities being thrown about, but that requires an informed public. How are we supposed to make an informed decision about a landmark bill whose 1100+ pages were not disclosed until hours before its passage? Worry now.

One Ping Only

2008-11-05T19:17:00.002-05:00

Ping enabled.

Fear the Veeper

2008-10-27T15:18:00.005-04:00

How awesome will it be to have someone with Gov. Sarah Palin's experience one heartbeat from the presidency. I'm stoked. The video below gives a pretty good idea of where Palin is coming from.

American Veteran Magazine

2008-08-28T15:04:00.006-04:00

The Summer 2008 issue of American Veteran Magazine is fresh off the press and available online. This issue features interviews with Gary Sinise and AMVETS' new ARCA stock car driver as well as a special section detailing AMVETS education and scholarship programs. More information is available about these stories on AMVETS homepage .

Also of interest in the current magazine are letters that rebutt the critical reviews recieved last issue concerning Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) appearing in the Winter 2007 issue. As the editor, I address these comments and answer other questions in my American Veteran letters section.

We're continue to work on our Web site overhaul. We will continue to add additional content to the online magazine as work on the site continues. Enjoy.

Web Research II

2008-04-22T15:18:00.002-04:00

Like all research, historical research conducted on the Internet requires a great deal of patience and a critical eye. I have researched many topics through the traditional library and archive routes, as well as through the online universe. Every source of information has its pros and cons. What they all share in common is the need to be verified—compared against one another and to primary sources.

In the process of my research I have learned that the Internet is rapidly becoming the go-to source for information and (in my humble opinion) will soon overtake paper-based research methods because of it’s relative ease of use and time saving features. I found this latter fact to be particularly true in my research on Amphibious Warfare in United States Military. Using the Web site criteria from a previous research assignment I selected five different Web sites for the following research project. Without the aid of the Internet I would have been forced to travel to several different libraries and browse through military research databases to find the same information.

The first Web site I used for my research (and the site I almost always use first) was one of the most comprehensive and most used search engines in the world, Google. Google helped me find a starting point for my research by listing Web sites that featured results from my search on Amphibious Warfare in United States Military. Google helps me narrow my focus down to more specific topic and often provides links to primary, secondary and tertiary sources.

I tend to rate search engines higher on my Web site criteria list than some of the sources they link to. This is because search engines like Google serve mostly as portals to other information and do not overtly purport to provide answers to questions. Advertising revenue drives the business behind search engines, so it is often necessary to scroll through several pages of results before finding Web sites that are actually relevant to the research at hand. I was fortunate because the first site listed in my Google query was exactly what I was looking for.

The site Google brought me to was Wikipedia, the largest user-edited online encyclopedia (another of my favorites). Wikipedia had an entry on the history of amphibious warfare with dated hyperlinks for each century. Since my topic concerned the United States military I clicked on the 17th century link and was taken to a page that claimed that the American military’s first amphibious engagement was led by Continental Marine Captain Samuel Nicholas and took place at New Providence, Bahamas, March 2-3, 1776.
Since Wikipedia is a user-edited Web site it falls lower down on my Web site criteria scale. Even though there were a number of cited references throughout the article, I knew that it was important to get an official source to back up the tertiary source provided by Wikipedia. Having worked for the Marine Corps History Division in the past, I knew exactly where to look for confirmation of Wikipedia’s information.

I typed Marine Corps History into Google and clicked the link for the Marine Corps History Division. This site is bursting with secondary and semi-primary sources about the Marine Corps. It ranks very highly on my scale because I have actually seen with my own eyes many of the primary sources that are referenced on the site. The site is also edited by solely by military researchers and scholars, thus the information contained is tightly controlled.
Having learned the name of the Marine involved in the first amphibious assault from Wikipedia, I typed his information into the History Division’s search engine and was redirected to a page that verified my tertiary source and also provided additional information about other landmark amphibious assaults carried out by the Marine Corps.

According to the History Division Web site, one such assault took place during World War II on a small Pacific island known as Guadalcanal. This battle heralded the modern age of amphibious warfare and ensconced the United States Marine Corps’ as the world’s preeminent amphibious force. One negative aspect of the History Division site is that it is fairly difficult to navigate. For that reason I went back to Wikipedia to find out details about the battle of Guadalcanal.
Wikipedia gave a very detailed account of the Battle of Guadalcanal, but I knew that I would need another source to back up the information I had found. I went to another trusted source to find documents, photos and other primary and secondary sources that would positively verify the Wikipedia entry.

Again using Google I found the Web site for the official magazine of Marines, Leatherneck. Having worked as an editor for Leatherneck Magazine in the past, I was very confident that I would get valid and reliable secondary, semi-primary and primary source information from the site. The magazine’s Web site archive featured numerous articles written by Marines who participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal as well as history articles written by other researchers. Unfortunately, Leatherneck charges a fee for outside users to see anything more than a stub of the articles. Even though I have access to Leatherneck’s archives I decided to put myself in another researcher’s shoes and went looking for another source of information that could back up the Wikipedia sources free of charge.

The Defense Technical Information Center serves as a search engine and database with official and scholarly information sources on Department of Defense-related topics. Because most of the content is easily and freely accessible I chose to find further information about Guadalcanal and other U.S. amphibious assaults here.

Aside from the knowledge I was able to retrieve about my research topic, the most interesting thing I learned from the entire process was that the Internet is a burgeoning source of credible research information. At the same time, it takes a great deal of due diligence on the part of the researcher to ensure that the sources they are provided meet the established standards.

One of my recent history projects asked me to consider why professionals continue to rely mainly on library and archive sources rather than those found online, however I think the question should be, “Why do some professionals continue to rely mainly on library and archive sources when the Internet can provide digital access to the same types of information once found only in paper format?” I think that ‘professionals,’ whoever they are, who shun online research do so because they are out of touch with technology, or because they have a flawed idea of the valid nature of Internet research.

It is understandable that there may still be a limited number of subjects for which valid sources of information are not yet available online. However, as search engine technology evolves and even more content is added to the Web, that excuse will soon no longer apply. The holdout “paper-only researchers” will either migrate over to the digital information highway or be relegated to niche topics. Those who reject online research altogether face obsolescence.
Doom and gloom aside, there will always be a place for paper and other tangible primary sources in the digital world; after there is only so much information one can glean from a 2-D computer screen. The Internet will simply take up a more prominent place in the research process, and perhaps become the sole source for information for Web-related subjects like social networks and online commerce. Regardless, with so much information literally at researchers’ fingertips, the future is sure to be filled with a glut of new discoveries.

American Veteran Magazine

2008-04-18T14:16:00.004-04:00

The Spring 2008 issue of American Veteran Magazine is fresh off the press and available online. This issue features interviews with the Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, a Marine-turned-Padres pitcher and a wounded Army vet who is recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You can watch video excerpts from several of the interviews by clicking the links on the right-hand side of the AMVETS homepage .

Also of interest in the current magazine are the scathing letters of criticism that I received from readers concerning my interview with Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) last issue. As the editor, I address their concerns and answer other questions in my American Veteran letters section.

We're in the middle of a complete Web site overhaul, so bear with us over the next few months as we get our new interactive Web site online. We will still be adding additional content to the online magazine as work on the site continues. Enjoy.

iSmoke

2008-04-17T14:45:00.004-04:00

Sorry I've been so quiet on my blog of late. I've been devoting every second of my non-work time to a project for my online journalism class called iSmoke. iSmoke is a pastiche of conversations and photos that seeks to take an inside look at the culture and mindset of cigarette smokers. Darkly humorous, sometimes tragic, and often ironic, these personal interviews explore the love/hate relationship between smokers and their addiction--their savior and their vice. Click here to see for yourself what all my hard work has wrought.

Lee Rainie Interview

2008-04-08T14:10:00.004-04:00

Lee Rainie, founding Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, was the most recent speaker during my online journalism class' ongoing New Media series. He joined us April 3, via teleconference from the Cable Center in Denver, and was (as the format dictates) interviewed and entertained by the ever-effervescent Steve Scully, senior executive producer and political editor for C-SPAN.

Students from the three participating universities bombarded Rainie with questions about how the Internet has risen to its position as the preeminent source of news and information, and what the future holds for traditional media outlets in the wake of this digital era.

I was more curious about the impact of so many independent news sources on credibility and public perception, so I asked a question along those lines. He answered saying that he believes various forms of oversight will emerge to help hold bloggers and independent journalists accountable for their words. The movement leading this charge is today's version of peer review.

Bloggers and other online pundits can be, and often are, rated by their readers. This type of instant feedback is visible to other readers who visit that particular site, and can serve as a barometer for the site's relevence and validity. Rainie said he sees a refinement of this process to someday work to bring the credibility of small-scale news sources up to the levels of the large "trusted" national media outlets.

Web Research Tips

2008-04-01T12:36:00.006-04:00

The following are 9 criteria that serve as tools for rating the accuracy, validity and overall usefulness of a given Web site as a source of information for journalistic or scholarly research. The list is organized in descending order of importance.

Relevance: Just because a Web site has a universal record locator (URL) that appears to represent the sought after subject matter doesn’t mean that it actually delivers that type of content. For example, the United States Marine Corps recruiting website, www.marines.com, while an authoritative source created by USMC, does not contain information relevant to historical research. Even the Corps’ official military site, www.usmc.mil, lacks in-depth historical information. Only the difficult-to-find USMC History Division Web site, www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/, contains info that could be useful to someone researching Marine Corps history.

Editorial Category: Some Web sites derive their content from a close-knit group of subject-matter experts, and are edited exclusively by the content providers and Webmaster. The information found on these Web sites tends to be more reliable than that found on the increasingly prevalent open-source, or Wiki, Web sites. Wiki sites like the world’s largest online encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org, allow multiple external users to manipulate data anywhere on the site’s pages. This rubric allows for a large amount of information to be developed and shared in a very small amount of time, but the reliability of this information suffers because there is little oversight over such a vast amount of constantly changing data.

Authoritative Source: Information about a given subject tends to be more accurate and valid from the authority on that subject. The USDA, for example, would be a more reliable primary source for U.S. agricultural figures than “Farmer John’s” Bean Blog.

Citation: Does the Web site give a detailed accounting for its sources of information? A good way to filter out unreliable Web sites is to look for a works-cited page, references, attributed content or bibliography. If the site has none of the above it might not be a credible source of information.

Contact Information: Researchers should be able to contact a Webmaster with questions about anything on their website. As such, contact information should be easily and openly accessible. Pages without contact info should be treated skeptically.

Presentation of Facts: It is difficult to find a Web site that doesn’t have an overt agenda behind the information it contains. Look for the least biased sources and search for sites with different viewpoints on the same subject in order to get a more well-rounded perspective.

Diversity of Media: Words are good. Words with pictures are better. Words with pictures, videos, graphs, illustrations, woodcarvings, interviews, wax-cylinder recordings and any other type of media are better.

Redundancy: The information from one Web site should match up to similar info on other credible sites. Example: Three different news sites might have different approaches to reporting a Presidential debate, but each must still accurately reflect that the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of the event.

Navigability: A difficult to navigate page is more work than it’s worth. Look for Web sites that are logically organized and intuitively laid out.

Journalism Meets Technology

2008-03-18T14:50:00.018-04:00

Noted author John Steele Gordon recently penned (typed?) an article that compared the present-day digital revolution, or “technological revolution,” to the late 19th century Industrial Revolution. Gordon’s article detailed the rise of James Gordon Bennett, founder and editor of the New York Herald. Bennett incorporated the technology of the day into his media business and became one of the industry’s icons.

Gordon’s article also drew parallels between the socioeconomic consequences affected by each revolution, and focused on the impact that technological progress has had on the dissemination of news and information.

Traditional news, in all of its, big bureau, paper format glory, is giving way to a grassroots reporting movement based on hyperlocal news and instantaneous mass-distribution. Much as the Industrial Age created new methods of delivery and transformed the media landscape in the early 20th century, the current news revolution is seeing a technology-driven transformation.

The explosion of timelier, more accurate and more relevant news has spawned new ethical dilemmas as well. Gordon explained that “the truth was not a major concern of the news business in earlier times,” but as journalists have become trusted resources they have had to conform to a set of guidelines to maintain their credibility. As today’s idea of what defines a journalist has changed, so have the rules that govern their actions.

The Internet has today made it possible for a single person with a computer to do what Bennett’s giant media empire did in the early 1900’s. With a few simple keystrokes and mouse clicks, anyone can become a publisher. Corporations can now create and circulate news that promotes their agendas. This raises many difficult questions about who “valid” reporters are and what constitutes “news.”

The answers to these questions will be revealed as the news industry is forced to adapt their practices to survive the evolution of mass media. Millions of eyes and voices in the global communication marketplace will effectively act to balance out corporate media rhetoric an perhaps emerge as the new primary source of news and information. The video below illustrates how the changing face of media affects you.

Click, Click, BOOM!

2008-03-17T12:59:00.005-04:00

Second Amendment supporters around the nation may have a reason to celebrate tomorrow if the Supreme Court upholds an historic Washington D.C. Circuit Court ruling that overturned what was one of the nation's toughest handgun-restriction laws last year. In a 2-1 vote, the court disagreed with the District's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which had held that only militia members were provided for under the Constitution. Washington D.C. law had, for three decades, criminalized the public possession of firearms for nearly every citizen not involved in law-enforcement. Last year the court overturned the ban in private residences, and tomorrow's decision promises to do the same for public spaces. The ruling also paved the way for what is sure to be a heated Supreme Court showdown.

In March 2007, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty took the predictable stance of denouncing the federal appeals court's ruling, arguing that repeal of the handgun ban will put more weapons in the hands of young people. However, Second Amendment advocates have for years challenged the gun ban on the grounds that it denied them their Constitutional right and ensured that only criminals were armed. Strengthening their argument were post-ban crime statistics like those in the mid-1990's that showed the District of Columbia to be the "murder capital" of the United States.

D.C. officials had promised to challenge any ruling that lifted the ban, and will have their day before the the nation's highest court tomorrow. The case will be the largest 2nd Amendment challenge in nearly 70 years, and if upheld could pave the way for redaction of similar gun bans in other cities and states around the country. See illustrated map below, which details the recent history of right-to-carry in the United States.

Thus Saith the Lord?

2008-03-14T14:41:00.011-04:00

Does anyone else wonder why a racial chasm remains in the United States so many years after the abolition of slavery, integration of schools and civil rights movement? Maybe the pretentious drivel being spewed from the pulpit by zealots like Trinity United Church of Christ's Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., is contributing to the continued animosity between "Black America" and "White America." I can't stand those pejorative labels. Last time I checked it was United States of America.

Whatever happened to separation of church and state? If anyone else finds videos like those below, videos that show clergy members reinforcing bigotry by using their positions of authority to deliver political rhetoric, please feel free to copy the URL into a comment on this blog post. This type of thing riles me up.

Rage Against the Top 10 List

2008-03-14T10:15:00.011-04:00

My wife, Shannon, sent me an e-mail this morning the contents of which both infuriated and inspired me. From the link she sent me it seems that an amateur music critic has compiled what he/she believes to be the Top 10 songs that reflect the creativity and originality of singer, songwriter, producer and former wunderkind Beck Hansen (AKA Beck).

Shannon had just finished listening to the playlist of songs recommended by the aforementioned music expert and was (not surprisingly) apathetic about most of the supposedly "amazing" selections. It's no wonder that her reaction was tepid considering that our part-time music reviewer had, with an appalling lack of imagination, selected the most popular singles from Guero, Odelay and Mellow Gold as three of the Top 10. That's like including Stairway to Heaven and When the Levee Breaks in a Top 10 list of Led Zeppelin songs. No $#!t.

The reviewer further insulted Beck by rounding out the rest of the list with mostly uninspiring filler songs. Even though I agree that Devil's Haircut and Nicotine & Gravy are excellent songs, how about including some less overplayed titles that expound on the artist's skills set?

Accordingly, I've compiled a completely unprofessional, 100 percent biased, overly-opinionated Top 10 List of songs that I think showcase Beck's musical genius more accurately. This list is not comprehensive, nor do I suggest that it is the definitive guide to Beck's musical catalog. This is simply my rebuttal to the silly reviewer who didn't have the foresight to caveat his publicly published music review.

Isaac's Top 10 Beck Songs:

10. High 5 (Rock the Catskills) - Odelay - Listen
9. Mixed Bizness - Midnite Vultures - Listen
8. Girl - Guero - Listen
7. Get Real Paid - Midnite Vultures - Listen
6. Lonesome Tears - Sea Change - Listen
5. Tropicalia - Mutations - Listen
4. This Is My Crew - Midnite Vultures [Bonus Disk]
3. Soul Suckin' Jerk - Mellow Gold - Listen
2. Jack-Ass - Odelay - Listen
1. Sexx Laws* - Midnite Vultures - Listen

*note: The "Malibu Mix" version of this song from Midnight Vultures [Bonus Disk] is also very good.

Final Countdown

2008-03-13T12:40:00.006-04:00

Here's a depressing Web site that features a running tally of some of the world's most grievous ills. Although the site claims to use several credible sources for its information I'm not sure how scientific the clock developers were in integrating said data. Still it's an interesting and morbidly amusing way to pass the seconds. Get it? Pass the seconds? Never mind. The clock lets you set the time range by current day, week, month or year.

As an aside, I figured it was only right to include the 1986 power ballad that partially inspired the title of this post. Enjoy the long hair, lipstick and leather. Click here.

Hippies!!!

2008-03-11T13:57:00.008-04:00

Here's a Daily Show follow-up to the Code Pink protest of Marine Corps Recruiters in Berkley, Calif. I detailed this story in my "Think Before You Pink" post last month. Watch the high-quality video here or the low quality video below. I'm still laughing.

Innovation Station

2008-03-07T12:21:00.017-05:00

Rob Curley, vice-president of New Media for Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive is a Mac. Or so said the "too geek to be chic" t-shirt he wore during his interactive presentation to George Mason University Communications Students, March 4.

A Kansas transplant, Curley is proud of his corn belt roots and likes to boast about his ignorance of "big city" issues. However, this deceptively homey facade belies the brilliance of one of the media industry's most innovative figures. Curley has helped transform the digital landscape of one of the nation's premiere local newspapers, the Washington Post, and is the creative force behind the Post's OnBeing, a video interview series that has been lauded for its unique approach to storytelling.

During his GMU presentation, Curley detailed some of the roadblocks he and his team have faced from print media traditionalists. He sees the Internet as the logical evolution of news dissemination and is working with industry leaders on the other side of the print/Web divide to find solutions that meet the needs of both parties and subscribers.

Curley also explained the importance of Web integration and hyperlocal news. His team is working to develop an online local news network for the Capitol region and is already testing a functional prototype in Virginia's Loudoun County.

Loudoun County's site features deeply interactive content like navigable regional restaurant lists that allow users to search according to hours of operation, and myriad content delivery options. A calendar feature sends subscribers phone or e-mail reminders and updates about everything from local church services to community events. The site also uses advanced database technology that cross-updates multiple pages based on ever-changing content.

Curley's demonstration of the new Web site's capabilities had an obviously positive effect on GMU students who were overheard oohing and ahhing throughout the presentation.

"This is amazing stuff," said Steven Ball, an Online Journalism student. "This is the kind of thing that I want to do."

Other students echoed Ball's remarks and many of them took time after the presentation to chat with Curley and ask questions during an informal gathering at the Student Media center in Student Union I. Read what other student thought about the event here, and watch a video clip from the interview below.

Heavily Deluded

2008-03-04T12:19:00.018-05:00

Americans are overweight, and it's killing them. This harsh truth is glaringly illustrated by the American Heart Association's list of the three leading causes of death in America: heart disease, cancer and respiratory/lung diseases. All three killers can be directly linked to lifestyle choices made by the growing (pun intended) population of adults and children who choose not to live healthy lifestyles.

How does one define this seemingly-mythical “healthy lifestyle?” While it's true that Americans are dying from obesity and its related illnesses, what could they be doing to curb the trend? Doctors nationwide are answering these questions by encouraging their hefty patients to eschew the extra portions at dinner time, and hit their local gym instead of the Blockbuster Video store.

"Big is Beautiful" proponents could argue that their lifestyles are teeming with untold carnal joys―epicurean delights that their carb-counting, exercise conscious counterparts would never be able to understand. They could point to maligned studies, which claim that sumo-like body proportions are in fact healthy for a select few who have chosen the path of the daytime soap opera instead of the outdoor jog. They could even go as far as to say that the almighty creator in his infinite wisdom blessed them with jumbo-sized skeletons.

While these are all entertaining theories, none are able to stand up to cold hard science. Yes, it's true that by eating two-dozen jelly-filled Krispy Kremes solo, the overweight epicure could leave the average, carrot-munching Joe feeling like he's missing out on a super-sweet treat. Fortunately for our humbled Joe, he's also missing out on about 3,200 calories (enough to feed an active 200lb. male for a day), and enough saturated fat to fill two cups.

Forget about the doughnuts for a second. Maybe there's truth to the other argument that low-activity, heavy-bodied lifestyles are just as healthy as those of the treadmill addicted “skinnies.” Sorry to burst your blubber, but there are no long-term studies that disprove the already well established fact that people who exercise regularly and eat a healthy, balanced diet of fruits, grains and vegetables, end up living longer, happier, healthier lives. Recent studies have even proved that healthy, active adults have steamier sex lives. Sorry Roseanne.

Perhaps there really is a portion of our society cursed with the oft-heard “big-boned” syndrome. According to biologists, this group does exist, but not how our buffet-loving cousins would like us to believe. Kashin-Beck disease, as it’s known in the medical community, is the real “big bone” syndrome. According to MedicineNet.com, the disorder of the bones and joints of the hands and fingers, elbows, knees, and ankles affects children and adolescents who “slowly develop stiff deformed joints, shortened limb length and short stature due to necrosis (death) of the growth plates of bones and of joint cartilage.” Americans aren't even known to suffer from this plight, which is endemic to eastern Siberia, Korea, China and Tibet, and is “probably of environmental origin.”

With these possible arguments disproved, the facts and numbers may still seem like much ado about nothing, but their significance becomes a bit more important when one considers how the body absorbs and disposes of all the excess. The body, unable to use the surplus food energy, converts all the sugars, starches, fats… (you see where I'm going with this) into stored energy reserves. In an active adult, these reserves are called upon by the body to use as fuel during exercise. However, in the couch potato, these same reserves become another beautiful, bubbly layer of fat.

All this fat adds extra weight, which the body has to work harder to support. It compensates for the crushing weight on its frame by increasing blood pressure to a heart working overtime (with no extra pay), and by shutting down overworked organs that have forgotten how to break down and synthesize sugars and proteins. These symptoms are further exacerbated by other unhealthy activities such as binge drinking and smoking.

In laymen's terms, heart failure, diabetes, lung cancer and all these other horrible ailments could be prevented if certain members of our society would get off their couches every once in a while; put down the bear claws, and walk the equivalent of five football fields a day. It's a steep price to pay, all that exercise and dieting, but in the end U.S. citizens may just be able to live longer, healthier lives. Who knows, in they process they may even be able to carve out a slice of the best kind of pie, you know, the American kind.

The Beat on Repeat, Repeat

2008-02-27T14:00:00.013-05:00

Stop whatever it is you're doing right now and watch the video below. It's a trippy house beat by a group of Norwegian musical geniuses collectively known as Röyksopp. I've had it playing on repeat all day today. I love the ethereal vibe of the synthesizers throughout, and the looping beat is audial crack. If you're not tempted to listen to it 20 times in a row then you're either a dull person or your speakers exploded due to the sheer amazingness* of playing this song once. *(note: not a real word)

Some of you may have already heard this song since Apple uses it as the intro music on some of their software. I found it through other means and have been listening to Röyksopp's music for a couple of years, so I feel a little less like you bandwagon-jumping Feist fans who went out and bought her album The Reminder after she performed "1,2,3,4" on that iPod Nano commercial (Oh wait, that was me). I like the parody too. Röyksopp also wrote "Only This Moment" and the song "Remind Me," the original version of which is featured on one of Geico's "so easy, a caveman could do it" commercials.

Anyway, watch "Eple" right now. It's awesome.

Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-20T23:05:00.017-05:00

I had planned on getting a couple of extra hours of shut-eye tonight, but my wife woke me up at 9PM because as she was surfing the net she read that a rare, total lunar eclipse would be visible from our location at 10PM EST. Never one to miss out on a Kodak moment, I grabbed my digital camera (Nikon D200, 300mm f/4 AF @ ISO 100 and ISO 1600, shutter priority) and headed out into the freezing night to catch the moon in action. Below are my shots, a series of time lapse photographs taken over the period of an hour, which show the moon slowing trekking across the sky to its hiding spot behind the earth's shadow. Enjoy!

Static (Part 1)

2008-02-20T08:48:00.021-05:00

The following is a small autobiographical excerpt that I submitted as a creative writing assignment some time ago. This story, like the war in Iraq, has elements of truth intertwined with a good deal of fiction. I plan to write more as I catch up on my memoirs. Enjoy.

Static: One Marine's Tale of PTSD, IEDs, and other Iraqronyms

Anyone who travels frequently knows what ill-effects flying great distances through multiple time zones has on the body. It's the least glamorous part of the jet-setter lifestyle—that drowsy, zombie-like state where the body is willing but the mind is…well, the mind is on Boston time. In all my years traveling the world as a United States Marine I've braved my fair share of plastic, single-serving meals, less-than-friendly flight attendants and yes, the dreaded onset of jet lag.

My body's particularly eccentric response to the phenomenon is to shut down until I've slept what it considers an adequate number of "catch-up" hours. I've become convinced that this number is arbitrary, selected by my body depending on what will inconvenience me most the next day. Normally this inevitable physical response would only be an annoyance, but the day I landed in the war zone of Iraq—with mortars dropping like incendiary hail and tan-suited strangers screaming for me to take cover—well, it was downright otherworldly.

A whole company of us, about 140 jarheads, began our journey at the Tampa, Fla., International Airport and since departing we'd acronym hopped from one stateside airport to another picking up leathernecks at each stop. Surprisingly, I began to relax a little after finally going wheels up out of DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport). This false sense of calm certainly had more to do with the fact that I'd seen my last Burger King for seven months (or so I thought), than with the 16-hour trans-Atlantic nightmare I was about to endure at 35,000 feet. Now, half a world away with enemy bombs raining down around me, I felt decidedly less of that inner peace.

"Take cover!" Someone was screaming over the sound of incoming explosions and unwinding C-130 propellers. My travel-weary brain, not yet off idle mode, was somehow able to piece together a coherent set of commands to get my limbs moving up and out of my seat aboard the world's largest sitting duck, and down the plane's aisle toward the exit. I soon found myself weaving frantically through a veritable minefield of olive-green duffels and desert-brown ruck sacks, which had been strewn across the tarmac by Air Force baggage handlers who'd wisely chosen to save the unpacking for later.

Ignoring the overwhelming smell of cordite (a distinctively pungent component of explosives), I tore across the landing strip toward a concrete bunker in the distance. There I could faintly see a group of similarly confused Marines milling around a singular figure who turned out to be a rather unamused Marine Gunnery Sergeant.

Thick brown tobacco juice sluiced from his sun-chapped lips as he leaned against the side of the upside-down, U-shaped concrete enclave. His face wore the tired, grizzled expression of someone who has seen the edge and just barely managed to look away. His faded uniform, threadbare in the knees and faintly stained with rusty blotches in several places, attested to a hard fought tour, and stood in stark contrast to the dozen or so freshly issued uniforms huddling behind him. "Gunny" looked over his shoulder at the young Marines and cracked a wry smile.

"They're just taking pot shots devil dogs," the old salt quipped reassuringly. "It's their way of saying 'welcome to Iraq.' "

"We ain't scared anyway Guns," stammered a previously unseen lance corporal.

Gunny turned to face his impromptu squad, his steel gray eyes scanning each of us as he searched for the Marine who'd spoken up.

"It's not the one's you can hear that you need to be worried about," he said, redirecting his glance back toward the airfield. The ones that kill you don't make a sound until it's too late."

The Gunny stared off into the distance as if trying to recall a story to back up his claim, then he turned back abruptly.

"Aww hell, after a while you won't even notice the damn things," he said, spitting dip and tobacco juice as he spoke. "Just fight when you need to fight, and keep your heads down otherwise. Do that and you'll be alright."

This sudden bit of encouragement seemed to bolster the spirits of the gathered Marines, and before long several of them were hurling obscenities at each incoming round, mocking the enemy's apparent inability to kill us with the type of false bravado that only the inexperienced can muster. The impacts, which had become increasingly more distant and less frequent, eventually ceased altogether, and after some time we all gathered our gear and headed to our respective units.

I came under attack many more times during my seven-month deployment, but never really learned to distinguish "good" explosions from the "oh shit" variety. I saw things I hope to someday forget. What will stay with me forever though, are the words of that Gunny on my first day in country. In the midst of the chaos he offered a pearl of wisdom that sustained me through many other trying times. I don't even remember his name, but his words—words broadly applicable to life even outside the war zone—ring fresh in my memory today.

In our own ways each of us fight for what we believe in when we must. We face life's challenges with resolve and weather the storms as they arise. That old war-torn gunnery sergeant of Marines may not have realized how profound his advice really was, but it changed the lives of more than one Marine that first day in Iraq.

Blu-Skies Ahead for HD Fans

2008-02-19T14:31:00.008-05:00

My gamble that Sony's Playstation 3 would emerge as a respectable opponent in the seventh generation console wars seems to have finally paid off. Toshiba announced today that they will be discontinuing production of their HD-DVD format high definition movie players.

This concession effectively seals the deal for HD-DVD's competitor Blu-Ray, and makes it possible for Sony to take over the blossoming HD home movie industry. That's where my savvy choice of gaming console comes into play. Sony's PS3, while originally twice the price of competing consoles, had a secret weapon in it's arsenal that is both responsible for the initially tepid consumer response, and now essential to its survival.

Much to the chagrin of the budget conscious gaming audience they were targeting, Sony rolled the dice on their expensive Blu-Ray technology by including it in every PS3. Upon its release in 2006, sales of the PS3 in the U.S. were considerably lower than those of Microsoft's Xbox 360 (which had already been out for an entire year) and Nintendo's Wii.

However, with the late 2007 release of a highly discounted base model, sales of PS3s among casual gamers and HD movie fans increased dramatically over the ensuing holiday season. It seems that some of the smarter consumers realized that they could get an entire entertainment system with Blu-Ray movie and gaming capabilities for a fraction of the price of dedicated HD-DVD players. I happened to be one of the smart ones.

Those consumers who bet the house on a new HD-DVD collection shouldn't beat themselves up too much. At least they now have a conversation starter for those boring nights at their parent's house when everyone is just sitting around watching Betamax movies. Ha ha. Suckers.

Janet Brown Interview

2008-02-15T13:54:00.011-05:00

For the third time this semester Prof. Steve Klein's online journalism class participated in a C-SPAN distance learning program. The program gives students a chance to pose questions and listen in on discussions between prominent political figures and the program's host Steve Scully, senior executive producer and political editor for C-SPAN. Yesterday, Janet Brown, Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates joined the students. Brown fielded questions from George Mason, Pace and Denver University students, and shared insights into the history of Presidential debates. See the interview (Requires free realPlayer download).

Here are some photos I took of my class during the discussion.

(Above) Prof. Steve Klein and students from COMM 361 listen as Steve Scully introduces a video clip in yesterday's C-SPAN's distance learning program featuring Janet Brown, Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

(Above) Prof. Klein discusses questions with students before the start of the program. COMM 361 helps GMU's aspiring journalists develop their interview skills via dynamic discussions with noted political figures on C-SPAN's distance learning program.

Watch the interview in its entirety today at 5 PM, E.S.T on C-SPAN3.

Potomac Primary Insider

2008-02-12T11:53:00.003-05:00

I waited in line with my voter registration card in hand for nearly an hour this morning at the Lee Center in Alexandria, Va. Dozens of my fellow Virginians lined the community center hallway, each waiting his or her turn to cast a ballot in one of the most closely watched primary election battles in recent history. While waiting, I snapped some photos of the democratic process in action. I then had my say at a digital ballot box that looked like an overgrown Palm Pilot.
Although Republican Party front-runner, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a near mathematical shoe-in for the Republican Presidential nomination, the Democratic Party contest remains too close to call. Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL) leads in the Virginia and Maryland polls by large margins, and another rout of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) would undoubtedly add increased momentum to his resurgent campaign. However, Clinton's camp is undaunted by the prospect of another Obama sweep. Clinton officials say she is already looking ahead to power states like Ohio and Texas where polls show her as the early leader.
Even if Obama wins in all three "Potomac Primary" regions (Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.) he would still need to do exceptionally well in the remaining states to clinch the number of delegates necessary to receive the nomination. If the recent "Super Tuesday" primaries are any indicator of future results, that feat will be quite a challenge.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee remains a vocal, although barely viable, candidate in the Republican primary race. He has repeatedly declined to bow out, claiming that the issues he supports are too important to not be heard. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is also staying in the Republican race although only by principle since he is no longer a viable candidate.

If the final tally of today's Republican vote skews toward McCain, Huckabee will no longer be a viable candidate, and will likely concede, or suspend his candidacy. On the other hand, the Democratic race will undoubtedly continue well past the Potomac Primaries, and some analysts have predicted, all the way to the Democratic National Convention.

Think Before You Pink

2008-02-11T15:42:00.000-05:00

This really irks me. Instead of making themselves heard at the polls like millions of other responsible Americans, this protest group decides to attack the Marines who are defending their freedom of speech. The Berkley, Calif., city council encouraged this behavior and the local police just stood by and watched as protesters denied public access to the recruiting office. I wonder if the police would be so passive if the protesters were anti-abortionists trying to prevent women from entering a clinic?

Watch the videos that inspired this post:
Code Pink Blocks Access to Recruiting Station. Click Here.
Berkley City Council Wages War on Marines. Click Here

With Friends Like These ...

2008-02-11T13:03:00.000-05:00

The Voice of Christians?
The Voice of Conservatives?
The Voice of Reason?
The Voice of Women?
The Voice of America?

... who needs enemies?

Get to know Ann Coulter through her own words.

I'll probably be accused of choosing an easy target for this post but believe it or not there are still people out there who think Ann Coulter is credible. This woman is crazycakes (yes that's a new compound word, write it down). She speaks the very slander that she accuses her detractors of using. She targets, and unabashedly spews hatred toward, any person or group that chooses not to endorse her ultra right-wing, extremist viewpoints.

I don't know how videos of anyone saying the things that Ann Coulter says can be interpreted any other way than the way they are meant. Can you even put a positive spin on any of her words? If you doubt the validity of her televised statements just check out her books. She has written most of her rhetoric down in several New York Times best-sellers. The fact that enough people are buying her books to make them best-sellers is a frightening fact in and of itself.

Watch this entertaining and telling pastiche.

More info available here and here.

Walter Mondale Interview

2008-02-07T15:32:00.000-05:00

Former Vice-President and 1984 Presidential candidate Walter Mondale spoke with students from George Mason, Pace and Denver Universities during a distance learning program Feb. 2, hosted by Steve Scully, C-SPAN senior executive producer and political editor. See the interview (Requires free realPlayer download).

Mondale, who is best-known both for his reinvention of the Vice Presidential office during Jimmy Carter's presidency and for his historic selection of a female running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, during the 1984 Presidential elections, spoke fondly of his relationship with former President Jimmy Carter and of his executive office role.

Mondale bemoaned the fact that the current administration has lost sight of the ideals he helped establish for the Vice Presidential office. He said he feels like the current Vice President has detached himself from the Oval Office and taken on an entirely separate Executive function. Mondale also addressed the roles of race and gender in politics, saying a diverse talent base has always existed in America, but will only thrive if negative discrimination is eliminated.

Mondale praised the character and accomplishments of Geraldine Ferraro and drew comparisons between his former running mate and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) whom he has vocally supported in the current Presidential campaign. According to Mondale, much of the success or failure of the Democratic Party in the upcoming general elections will depend on the eventual candidate's choice of Vice President.

Check out the full story and video.

Legal Larceny (Part 2)

2008-02-05T16:44:00.001-05:00

My earlier diatribe about crooked oil men (imagine that) at Jiffy Lube touched on what I feel is an all too prevalent trend in retail America today. Many big box businesses have become so engorged on their fill of consumer dependence that honesty, ethics and customer service have all but disappeared.

Today's example of bad buisness comes from the electronics store I love to hate, Best Buy. I can't walk down one of Best Buy's gleaming, electronics-laden aisles of wonderment without tearing up and whistling the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I'm that moved by the merchandise. It's like pornography for technophiles. Unfortunately, Best Buy's customer service is about as good as prehistoric man's comprehension of the monolith. Since that metaphor will be lost on all non-nerds I'll simplify--Best Buy sucks at customer service.

On multiple occasions I've spent 30+ minutes waiting by a heavily-armored merchandise counter for one of Best Buy's pre-teen workers to recognize that I actually needed assistance. "What? Did you think I was going to magically teleport the $100 memory card from your electrified security cage guarded by wizards and trained bears?" I think not.

Frog Blog

2008-02-05T15:47:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of sharing as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, I've developed a foreign language blog for George Mason University students. Frog Blog is a seperate blog from Universal Veritas and was initially designed as a blog for students in my French class to share learning tools and other information.

Frog Blog could serve as a forum for all GMU language students to share their insights into the particular culture they happen to be studying at the time. To get involved simply e-mail me with your name, e-mail and class info. I'll add you to the author list and you'll be posting topics of interest in no time. Your voice (in whatever language it happens to be) is important.

Ari Fleischer Interview

2008-02-01T08:57:00.000-05:00

George Mason University online journalism students met at one of GMU’s television studios yesterday to participate in a C-SPAN distance learning teleconference between GMU, Pace University and the University of Denver. Steve Scully, senior executive producer and political editor for C-SPAN hosted the program, and Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer joined in as the guest speaker. See the interview (Requires free realPlayer download).

During the first half of the interview Fleischer gave a brief overview of his background and then discussed his supporting role during George W. Bush's first presidential campaign in 2000. He also delved into corollaries between the current Presidential primary battles and those issues that Bush faced in the last two elections. Fleischer shared his personal account of 9/11, detailing his travels and dealings with the President in the hours following the attacks. The interview was interwoven with questions from Scully and video clips of past primary debates and campaign speeches.

For the remainder of the interview Fleischer fielded questions from students, a decidedly less professional set of inquisitors than the White House press corps. Frank Clifford, a Pace student, was given the first opportunity to ask a question, but instead chose to launch an ill-advised attack on Fleischer’s integrity and the Bush administration. In the rambling diatribe Clifford accused Fleischer of knowingly lying to the American public on a regular basis during his term as press secretary.

Fleischer, who routinely dealt with hostile media during his tenure at the White House, had little trouble dismantling the matchstick house of indictments levied by Clifford. During his rebuttal, Fleischer admitted that the Bush administration had drawn incorrect conclusions about Iraq’s nuclear and biological weapons capabilities, but had based those conclusions on intelligence that had been widely verified by multiple agencies and sources.

The Pace student's performance was not a hard act to follow. George Mason University was given the next opportunity to ask a question, and Professor Steve Klein turned the microphone over to me. I thanked Mr. Fleischer for participating in the teleconference and asked him if there were instances during his time as White House press secretary where he was forced to compromise his beliefs or morals in order to report to the media things he disagreed with.

Fleischer's response to my question as well as those from other students can be downloaded or streamed here. The interview will be aired in its entirety today at 5 PM, E.S.T on C-SPAN3. Clifford’s comments begin at timestamp 00:40:57:00, George Mason University comments begin at timestamp 00:46:37:00 and my comments begin shortly thereafter. Check out the Web-news formatted version of this blog post, with full quotes from Fleischer and students, Feb. 4, at Universal Veritas.

Legal Larceny (Part 1)

2008-01-30T09:25:00.001-05:00

I could, and probably should, start an entirely new blog about the abundance of scam artists that plague mainstream society today. However, right now I'll just rant a bit about how several "legitimate" businesses have recently attempted to rip me off.

Anyone who has opened an unsolicited e-mail this millennium has undoubtedly come across a scam artist peddling his wares via spam. These passive-aggressive criminals craftily try to breach your security, gain your trust and steal your money with ploys ranging from the shady (I can only trust you with safeguarding a recently discovered chest of Krugerrands), the arbitrarily daunting (Your PayPal account has been charged [insert dollar amount here]) and the downright silly (I for you would like for to make love arrangement).

That's right. The nice, Christian, Nigerian gentleman who desperately needs your help exchanging 15,000,000 naira, which he inherited from his wealthy, wheat-processing-magnate great-uncle, in order to buy medical supplies for sick missionary children, is actually a sweaty, balding, middle age, World of Warcraft-playing, computer programmer named Lawrence, and he lives in Omaha.

If my stereotypical description of spam-artists has offended any of my readers I apologize. I didn't realize that double-wides had Internet access.

That aside, I'm really more upset that supposedly above-board companies continue to treat me and my family like easy marks. For example, when my wife Shannon went to get the oil changed in her Honda hybrid yesterday, Jiffy Lube decided to play the old, "she's a dumb blond," routine on her. They explained (Note: sarcasm has been enhanced for print) that her "exotic" car takes only a rare, specially formulated motor oil refined from the crushed shells of a near-extinct Amazonian beetle. Against all odds, and "considering that it's illegal to import the oil into the States," Jiffy Lube in Alexandria, Va., just happened to have 2 bottles on hand. "Fortunately" for my wife, Jiffy Lube's oil-insertion specialists were gentlemen of the first order and offered, for a modest fee ($75), to risk prison time by pouring those precious quarts into her car.

Interestingly, my wife is not a spring chicken, or for that matter a member of the bird family. As politely as she could manage, without yelling shenanigans, Shannon explained that her vehicle had always been serviced with decidedly less-exotic 10W-40, and for a decidedly less-ridiculous price. When the oil peddlers stuck to their story, Shannon told them that she would be taking her business elsewhere in the future, and she walked out.

This is not the only time I've caught Jiffy Lube red-handed. Once, they "replaced" my air-filter with the same dirty one that was already in the car, and they charged me for a new one. Knowing their penchant for buggery, I was watching them work through the lobby window the entire time and called them out on their deception afterwards. The ASA-certified, 9th grade drop-out, manager of the oil-changers assured me that it was an honest mistake. I told him to grab a new filter off the shelf and replace it in front of me. Whoops! They were all out. In fact, they never had any air filters for my car in the first place. Refund please.

I could go on about all the companies that have been ball-checking me of late, but this post has already reached critical-mass for adjectives. I'll save some venom for Comcast Cable, Locksmiths of America, Verizon Wireless and Best Buy in future posts.

Today's lesson: Don't be a sucker.

A Fresh Perspective

2008-01-29T11:31:00.000-05:00

As part of my GMU online journalism course I've been tasked with designing and publishing my own Web site and blog. I've decided to name my site Universal Veritas, an English/Latin mash-up meaning universal truth. This title is great because it's an optimistic oxymoron (let that alliteration sink in).

So far as most scientists are concerned there is no universally accepted singular truth. Even the most solidly established fundamental laws of physics break down at certain levels and become subjective. Today's mass media has not received this memo.

Media outlets would have us believe that their versions of the story are the only versions of the story and that the other agencies' representations of the story are biased by some type of subversive agenda. All this posturing means that we the people get stuck with a trickle down, moderated, skimified (sic), sodium-reduced version of the news, but not the whole truth.

Technology is making it easier for us to cut out the "Major Media Inc." middleman and share unrefined, organic, no growth-hormone-enhanced news as it happens. Blogs, personal Web sites, RSS feeds, and podcasts are putting the search for truth back in the people's hands.

Sure, there will always be biased reporting sources but say, for example, if 50 people decide to write separate blogs about an event they all witnessed, we the readers will have a larger pool from which to draw our own conclusions. Universal Veritas will be my contribution toward that end.