Posted 17:38 by Mark Federman permanent link


And as Marshall McLuhan said, "As for my critics, don't even bother to ignore them!"
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Posted 17:34 by Mark Federman permanent link


For what it's worth, here are my several pennies worth, weighing in on Mr. Bennett's comments:

Thank you Adam Greenfield and Boris for directing me to this interesting conversation among various people and the loquacious Richard Bennett. (BTW, my blog entry regarding this thread is actually here.) In that entry I describe that Ito-san's seminal paper, "explores the true role of the Internet in a form of democracy that is neither representative, nor participational, democracy. It is filled with the kernals of many important ideas that relate to the potential dangers of technologies used by our conventional representative democracies, and the practical problems of dealing with complex issues that plague a participational model."

Mr. Bennett: I suggest to you that our current form of democracy - regardless of how it is actually implemented in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, France or elsewhere - is the result of a very long process or continual refinement. This does not necessarily mean that it is the optimal form of governance, merely that it is the surviving form of governance in the developed world.

We know (well, sorry, I know... I don't mean to speak for the knowledge of the rest of the world, or even the rest of the participants in this lively discussion) that most people are unaware of the effects of the things we conceive or create at the time they are indeed conceived or created. It is only after the passage of a great deal of time do we look back and realize, "Ohhhhh.... so THAT'S what I did...." often followed by the "if I had only known then what I know now..."

We have fallen into our current systems of democracy by these default (and some may say, defaulted) actions over time. The reason they have survived is that they work, more or less, for most of the people who are not particularly paying attention all the time. And, let's face it, at steady state, not much is required in the way of imaginative initiatives or inspired leadership to keep things going, more or less.

However, we are hampered in our analysis by this precise inability to perceive the ground, that is, the context, of our actions in our own time. We have all grown up in a representational democracy, in a world whose culture has been dominated by the effects of the book, the press, and the television. The collection of those media (and yes, representational democracy is a medium, as are the mass-media I identified, pretty much anything else we come up with - I often ask my students to contemplate the media effects of pizza, but that's another story...) prevent us from perceiving how they have structured our thinking. (See Derrick de Kerckhove's book, Brainframes, or even go back to McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy.) The natural question that emerges is, "given that we are measuring our democracy against other forms of government that all exist in the same context, and emerged through the same historical period, how do we know that it is (a) absolutely the best; and (b) will remain the best as our culture structurally changes.

"Structurally changes," you ask, Mr. Bennett? Yes, indeed. As predicted by McLuhan in Understanding Media and elsewhere, the underpinnings of our modern society have structurally changed, from one founded on the basis of literacy and "the book culture" (accelerated by friend Gutenberg) to one that retrieves the orality of Ancient Greece, due to the Reversal effects of instantaneous, multi-way communications. This reversal is profound, as we have become tribally restructured. Easy contemporary evidence of this is seen when what potentially might happen to members of our tribe in Iraq causes pain and reaction in members of our tribe elsewhere in the (sorry for the obvious cliché) Global Village (but given where I sit, I'll claim authentic usage of the phrase.)

Other evidence of these effects are seen in the rise of a universal language (English) as a response to the reversal of literate culture (that itself led to the fragmentation of language and the acceleration of vernacular or national languages.) These aspects of scholarship are well documented by people who are much smarter than I.

This simple realization, that our world is in the throws of such a significant reversal means that our cultural institutions (including the ones by which we govern ourselves) must, of necessity, change. This sort of change is anathema to those whose interests are vested in the current systems, in other words, the experts, or if you prefer, the "subject matter expert politicians" who have spent 20 to 30 years of their lives vesting in the existing system. Of course they would resist the change by raising arguments that amount to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Any change in the existing system belies their expertise - they can't be experts in a system that is founded on a different ground. Of course they will be completely unable to see, not necessarily the deficiencies, but certainly any advantages an alternative system would bring. Such awareness, as McLuhan reminds us, is like asking a fish to suddenly become aware of water. One thing about which fish know absolutely nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment that would allow them to become aware of the element they live in.

So it is with those who are both vested in the current system, and those who are unaware of the restructuring effects of the very medium we are using to probe this issue.

Mr. Bennett criticizes and would terminate the exploration proposed by Ito-san and the many other contributers to this embryonic effort, simply because we cannot, a priori describe the benefits of what may be the eventual outcome. However, an exploration is precisely that: the search for what MAY be found at the end of the exploration. There may be value in what is discovered along the way, and there may be new paths that are found that lead to entirely unforeseen destinations. After all, that's how the "New World" was found in the first place.

Hence, it is irrelevant to debate the merits of what anyone may conceive to be the endpoint of "Emergent Democracy." It is the exploration itself, in the context of the realization that we have indeed restructured the underpinnings of our civilization, that has value.

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Posted 17:31 by Mark Federman permanent link


What a feisty debate! Over at Joi Ito's blog, there is a thread on controlling our lust for power that emerged from the posting on Emergent Democracy. Well, a fellow by the name of Richard Bennett wrote a rather dismissive response in his blog, and carried the debate to Joi's comments page. His postings were, unfortunately, rather insulting in some cases, and puerile in others, necessitating Joi's banning of Mr. Bennett from the site, without, of course, taking away Bennett's own voice to the world from the vantage point of his own "omphalos" (Bennett's word, not mine).

And that is an interesting demonstration of the difference between Emergent Democracy and our current representational-democracy-with-all-the-trimmings right there, wouldn't you say?

Discuss

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Posted 15:02 by Mark Federman permanent link


Last summer, we were part of DECONference, Decontextualizing and Decontaminating Deconstructionism (although it works in any order), with Steve Mann. Out of that event, and much thinking and discussion since, CTHEORY.net has just published Steve's article The Post-Cyborg Path to Deconism.

"Although the rise of dot commerce, and with it, the growth of spam, certainly destroyed the distinction between culture jamming and culture spamming, Terrorism, and perhaps, more significantly, the response to terrorism, have given birth to a new impotency of inverse culture."

It is classic Mann, and worth the read, as it is provocative and insightful, and most certainly informs our society of the reversals occurring daily in our terror-addled world. The article also draws from some new thinking, some of which I've discussed here, that is in active dialog among Steve's Humanistic Computing Lab, the McLuhan Program, and other friends and acquaintences. The results of some of these conversations will be manifest at an upcoming event at Deconism Gallery later in March. Watch this blog!

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Posted 13:18 by Mark Federman permanent link


Last evening my class went on a field trip to hear Bob Willard talk about his book, The Sustainability Advantage at Toronto's Design Exchange. Willard's book presents a compelling business argument in favour of sustainable, and environmentally responsible, business practices. He uses the "language of business people" - management jargon, spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations - to make the case that tremendous profit gains are attainable by switching to operational and organizational programs that demonstrate the company's "Corporate Social Responsibility."

The case he is selling is, as they say in B-grade detective films, open and shut. His spreadsheet analysis works well - in fact, it works too well to be credible, if the comments made privately after the presentation by some of the audience are any indication. My class next week (Wednesday, March 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the Coach House) will probe Willard's argument using "Applied McLuhanistics" thinking tools. Willard certainly demonstrated the enhancements, extensions and enablers, and the obsolescences are somewhat evident. What I'm interested in seeing are the reversals and the retrievals.

Even if Willard is shown to be, shall we say, not entirely correct in his model over time, I do hope that The Sustainability Advantage will be a management fad that catches on. It will be the first one that promises both fantastic profitability and a way to save the planet, all in one neat package.

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Posted 23:25 by Mark Federman permanent link


Just when you thought the Cold War was over. The Los Alamos Study Group is a "non-profit, research-oriented, nuclear disarmament organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico." They have just issued a Press Release that describes the minutes of a meeting of thirty-two senior nuclear weapons managers from U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories. The purpose of the meeting? "The purpose of the January meeting was to plan a secret conference, to be held at U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska – during “the week of August 4, 2003” if possible – to discuss what new nuclear weapons to build, how they might be tested, how these weapons might be mated to new delivery systems, and even how the process for granting authority to build small quantities of new nuclear weapons might be changed."

The implications of this meeting, and the proposed secret conference, are stark and frightening. There is a renewed initiative to develop and deploy tactical, theatre nuclear weapons, which means, essentially giving a battlefield commander the hardware and authority to use nuclear weapons on such "bunker busting" missions as we recently saw in Afghanistan, and, under the guise of "limited collateral damage," possibly even in conflicts like the expected impending war in Iraq. One major part of the conference will essentially how to sell this plan to a Congress that increasingly appears to be accepting militaristic approaches with fewer and fewer critical questions.

"It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the existing nuclear test moratorium, and U.S. compliance with Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1970 and is now binding law in the United States. Said Study Group director Mello, “These plans deserve outrage – first in the United States, and throughout the world.""

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Posted 17:07 by Mark Federman permanent link


Declan McCullagh shares hisPerspective: Get ready to be fleeced. He's referring to new copyright legislation pending in the U.S. Congress that will impose regulations from the "fair use" side of the debate. From the article: " I can understand the frustration felt by the "fair use" folks. Congress enacted three worrisome copyright laws in quick succession in the late 1990s: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the No Electronic Theft Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act. Only now are we seeing the ridiculous ways that they're being wielded--to block third-party toner cartridges for laser printers and possibly toss the average peer-to-peer user in prison for up to three years. Last month's rejection by the Supreme Court of a challenge to the copyright extension didn't help either. ... But as tempting as it may be, the solution is not to follow Hollings' lead and use the political process to demand the kind of regulations that "fair use" advocates think are appropriate. The right thing to do is try to repeal the worst sections of those three laws--hey, it could eventually happen--and then leave Congress out of it."

Isn't it fascinating that the bastion of free market economics, the United States, continues to push for more and more government regulations, where the market itself should be doing the regulating. Yet another example of the superpower extended beyond the limit of its potential, and reversing its former characteristics?

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Posted 16:04 by Mark Federman permanent link


Did you ever notice that the acronym for President of the United States is actually a slogan that goes against the war on drugs?

POT US! Yaaaaaaayyyy!

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Posted 15:58 by Mark Federman permanent link


CBS News reports that Saddam Challenges Bush To Debate, live, on international television and radio. "Saddam envisions it as being along the lines of U.S. presidential campaign debates." Of course the White House denounces such an offer. "Ari Fleischer tells CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller that it's "not a serious statement." Fleischer said, "This is not about a debate. This is about disarmament and complying with the worlds instructions that Iraq disarm.""

Actually, Fleischer has it wrong. It is, in fact, more like the U.S. presidential campaign: Each side is attempting to garner sufficient votes among the world's "electoral college," a.k.a. The United Nations Security Council, to win the vote on who will occupy the top job - Saddam or "W." If the people of the world were called to vote, of course, the vote would go against POTUS. But the world is not a participatory democracy, it is more of a representative democracy, that is, when such an illusion suits the five permanent members of the UNSecCouncil.

What Saddam has accomplished with this stunning, media-savvy, move is to create an anti-environment from which the world can perceive the upcoming second vote at the UNSC cast against the same ground as the last U.S. Presidential election. And the latter did George-the-younger's image absolutely no good at all. This round in the media war goes to the man with the big moustache!

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Posted 10:34 by Mark Federman permanent link


Another fascinating and thought-provoking piece by John Perry Barlow. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL questions the possible method behind the White House's apparent madness, by focusing on the behind-the-scenes policy-meister, Dick Cheney.

From the article: "Whenever I saw a bus barrelling down the centerline at me, I would start driving unpredictably, weaving from shoulder to shoulder as though muy borracho. As soon as I started to radiate dangerously low regard for my own preservation, the bus would slow down and move over. As it turned out, this is more or less what Cheney and his phalanx of Big Stategic Thinkers were doing, if one imagined the Soviet Union as a speeding Mexican bus. ... I¹m starting to wonder if were aren¹t watching something like the same strategy again."

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Posted 23:37 by Mark Federman permanent link


Mark March 25 on your calendar! That's when Paul Rogers says the war will start. From the openDemocracy article: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the latter part of March is considered by the military to be an appropriate time for an invasion, as the cloudy winter weather will have largely been replaced by clear days. Another preference is for moonless nights, enabling more effective use of night-vision equipment where the US forces have a huge advantage. With a full moon due on 18 March, this would make 25 March the most likely starting date of the war – quite a lot later than most analysts have been predicting."
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Posted 20:49 by Mark Federman permanent link


A few entries ago, we had the see-through coat from Japan. Now, once again from Japan, we have clothing as a cool medium - the see-through skirt! Is it really their panties and bare legs you can see?

Before anyone gets all self-righteous here, remember that Japan is the country that is constitutionally prohibited from waging war... What was that slogan again?
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Posted 20:29 by Mark Federman permanent link


Joichi Ito asks "am I alienating non-bloggers on my weblog? He goes on to note that "the blogging community is accelerating and as the tools become second nature, we begin to take many things for granted. The blog is a conversation about many things that only bloggers really understand and with inside jokes and keywords whose explanations span many blogs. On the other hand to most people my blog is a just a web page that is getting more and more strange."

Many of the comments that appear seem to focus on the content of the blog as being useful or confusing, or a little from column A and a little from column B. But Joi, himself, provides his own answer when he notes that the blog (as a medium in toto) is a conversation.

It is the effect of the medium that informs us of its nature and characteristics. [McLuhan 101: Medium = anything we conceive or create from which emerges change; Message = the changes or effects that so emerge. Medium = Message means that the nature of a Medium is precisely equal to the emergent changes. It has precisely nothing to do with the TV and its program...] The blog as a conversation (not as a "medium of conversation") means that a newbie to the blogging world will be as confused as someone who steps into the midst of a small group at a cocktail party in the middle of their conversation. One of two things will happen: Either the person will "pick up" the conversation and join in, or they will quit the group and move on - possibly to the buffet table to load up on more "content." While someone may, in context, recap aspects of the converation up to a particular point, few will take time to explain the rules of conversation, the context of conversation and so forth... at least during the party. However, there are indeed venues for such education, particularly when one is crossing into a different, and unfamiliar, cultural ground.

Relatively few in the general population know (or care) what a blog is, and the rest completely ignore the effects of the blog and the blogging community on our society. The same "rest" ignored the Web a few years ago, dismissing it as a computerish fad... But then again, most people march backward into the future, watching where they're going through the rear-view mirror.

One additional interesting effect to note: The internet exposed us all to the odd construct of the "asynchronous conversation." This is what one experiences in email, for instance, or via threaded postings, in which a conversation among several people occurs over not-extensively-long periods of time. Unlike a conventional face-to-face, or over the telephone, conversation, there are no clues as to the conversants' mood or reaction. The added factor in asynchronous communication is the passage of time, and hence, the change in mood or feeling on the parts of all participants by the time responses are received. McLuhan noted that in television or via the telephone, "the sender is sent." With asynchronous communications, as in email, and to a much greater extent in conversation via weblog, the receiver is received.
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Posted 17:51 by Mark Federman permanent link


Travel Advisory for the United States: A sad and sorry reversal of Lady Liberty's universal invitation: "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." ... so long as you are white, and don't speak with a funny accent. Even a Canadian passport is no protection from a country that seems to respect no one else's sovereignty.
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Posted 17:41 by Mark Federman permanent link


A great image from last week's anti-war protest. The demonstrators in Santa Monica, California, arranged themselves into an image of Picasso's famous Face of Peace on the beach.

Update: And here's a great collection of photos from around the world.
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Posted 17:16 by Mark Federman permanent link


Mediocreations of Mediocurators: Curating the Mediocre, from our friend and colleague, Steve Mann (and also here).

Many traditional curators love mediocre artists, because they provide an intellectually blank canvas upon which they can paint their curatorial and philosophical discourses. Especially loved are groups of mediocre artists, who share a sufficiently shallow vision (or no vision at all), such that the curatorial creativity shines through. Often we also see a mixture of mediocre living artists, put together with famous dead artists. The famous dead artists don't challenge our intellect because their art is so well known, that it no longer surprises us or makes us think anymore than when presented with the works of mediocre living artists. Thus a curatorial canvas may be painted from the cliche colors of the dead, overlaid with light and fluffy hues of the living limp. As a result, none of the artists really makes us stop and think. Instead, we are struck by the profoundness of the curator's vision in putting together these mind-numbing artists in a creative new way.

Update: Ariel responds to Steve:
The curator is a hard role, because one who curates is supposed to do so without ego. However, ego invariably gets in the way, so much so that curators often forget that the WORK is tantamount, not what the curator has to say about the work.

With that in mind, if a curator is choosing work that speaks, the curator is further silenced. And no ego wants that. I don't think that is is a conscious choice to choose mediocre work so it can be bent to the will of the curator, rather that there is alot more mediocre work out there than there is good work. There is even less good work that is accessible (accessibility, in the more pretentious circles of art, often detracting form its 'goodness' or 'depth'.

People like things that are pleasant, comfortable and vetted. People like things they have seen before, and thus can feel that they have knowledge and control over the subject- people looking at old masters' paintings get the glowing satisfaction that they are participating appreciating the realm known as 'art'. They get even more excited when they can feel cultured by recognizing, for example, a creation artist's style, or which genre it belongs to. This is not to take away from the beauty, skill level, success at provoking aesthetic emotion, etc, of such works. Nor is it to say these works are not challenging the boundaries of art, for in there day they were the pieces that were breaking new ground and challenging artistic conventions (except for, e.g. court painting, which is interesting and worth a gander for its own socio-historical interest).

Yes, curators curate for the audience. But isn't everything we do for an audience?

DO curators curate for themselves? OF course- it would be naive to think anyone did anything not for themselves.

Does this mean that a lot of good art is being ignored by curators? No. Curators want to be involved in things that are 'cutting edge', because then they can jump on the bandwagon of the next best thing. Can they help it if the only way they can contribute to this bandwagon is, not by producing the art itself but by producing copious volumes of writing on it, thus in some way, feeling as if they too have exerted their will to power? Sadly, it seems, no.


Update: My response to both:

In an interesting fashion, the curator is a performance artist, whose media include the art itself, the physical environment of the showing, and (in the case of a particularly "cool" exhibition) the audience.

I liken the curator's role to that of the orchestra conductor: Why is it that the same orchestra (or choir, for that matter) can sound completely different when playing the same piece of music, conducted by different conductors? The orchestra/choir is the conductor's instrument, and the talent of the conductor is revealed by the quality of the music - as subjective as that revelation might be.

Similarly, two exhibitions of the same art can be shown to very different effects through the ground-ing (sic) of two very different curators, with two distinct curatorial approaches. Curation is more than mere picture hanging, and more than an ego competition with the work. However, curators who believe the latter, tend to attempt turning the former into an art form.

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Posted 14:24 by Mark Federman permanent link


Joichi Ito has just posted the first draft of Emergent Democracy, that explores the true role of the Internet in a form of democracy that is neither representative, nor participational, democracy. It is filled with the kernals of many important ideas that relate to the potential dangers of technologies used by our conventional representative democracies, and the practical problems of dealing with complex issues that plague a participational model.

This is an important paper that has itself emerged from a technology-enabled emergent process, one that is exemplary of the Emergent Democracy that Ito begins to explore. From his conclusion: "The world needs emergent democracy more than ever. The issues are too complex for representative governments to understand. Representatives of sovereign nations negotiating with each other in global dialog are also very limited in their ability to solve global issues. The monolithic media and their increasingly simplistic representation of the world can not provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach consensus. Emergent democracy has the potential to solve many of the problems we face in the exceedingly complex world at both the national and global scale. The community of toolmakers will build the tools necessary for an emergent democracy if the people support the effort and resist those who try to stifle this effort and destroy the commons.

We must make spectrum open and available to the people, resist increasing control of intellectual property, and resist the implementation of architectures that are not inclusive and open. We must encourage everyone to think for themselves, question authority and participate actively in the emerging weblog culture as a builder, a writer, a voter and a human being with a point of view, active in their local community and concerned about the world."
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Posted 13:24 by Mark Federman permanent link


"If I had a nickel for every piece of spam I received... Ever get that feeling? Well, there's good news, as reported by Declan McCullagh, with the full story at CNET News.com. " The concept has been discussed in technology circles for the better part of a decade, but Sydney resident Bernard Palmer, 59, has decided to try to turn the concept into a business. "Spammers aren't going to be sending many spams to you if you charge them 50 cents," Palmer said. "A spam would cost them $2 million." Palmer's service, which he plans to announce on Thursday, is called CashRamSpam.com. After people pay $36 with a credit card to sign up for a CashRamSpam account, users may set their contact fee to be anywhere from a few pennies to as high as they think anyone would be willing to pay."

The reversal and retrieval are obvious in this case, as is the justification. But, as the article points out, the reversal of this service provides the obsolescence of "instantaneous multi-way communication," that is the heart soul of the Internet. Brad Templeton, chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, "We're putting an artificial cost on communication, free expression. It would have a chilling effect on speech if it were widespread. It shouldn't cost you money to talk to someone for no other reason than to cost your money. You have a right to demand that people pay your money for your attention, but it's overall not a good idea."
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Posted 00:40 by Mark Federman permanent link


CNN reports that the common practice of running Ads before movies prompt a class-action lawsuit. A high school teacher in the Chicago area has filed a suit against the Loews chain, attempting to obtain compensation for the time she, and other movie patrons, spend - after having paid for the privilege of - watching commercials before the main feature.

Unfortunately, the litigant in this case has missed the point of reversal in our accelerated society. Advertising is as much entertainment as movies or TV shows - and, in some cases, more so. Many advertisements, especially the ones that are intended for the big screen, are filmed by big-name music video directors. The commercials that win the prestigious Clio awards are eagerly sought for viewing by millions around the world. Even the Superbowl is watched primarily for the new commercials, with the football game interrupting every so often.

Advertising reverses us as consumers into the product, that is delivered via the TV or movie screen to the advertisers. And what does advertising really advertise? "All advertising advertises advertising!"
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Posted 13:36 by Mark Federman permanent link


Toronto's Design Exchange is hosting Bob Willard in the next of its Sustainable Cities Lecture Series. The Sustainability Advantage: Seven Business Case Benefits of a Triple Bottom Line will be presented on Wednesday, February 26, 2003, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. For tickets, call the DX box office at 416-216-2150. Download a pdf poster for the event, suitable for sticking up on your woolly wall here.

As a special bonus for this event, DX is planning to open their RE DESIGN - daily products of the 21st century exhibit. This is an exhibition and experiment about material culture and design, in which thirty-two Japanese architects, artists, and designers were challenged to rethink common products tied to the lifestyle and cultural vernacular of daily life in Japan.
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Posted 13:24 by Mark Federman permanent link


We have written previously on the steady erosion of personal rights, and governments' (plural!) co-opting of our digiSelves for the purposes of "data surveillance" (dataveillance). Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs Blog points us to an important report by the American Civil Liberties Union, entitled, Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society.

The introduction notes that, "Americans need to step back from the daily drum of privacy stories and absorb the big picture: the United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. The fact is, Orwell’s vision of "Big Brother" is now, for the first time, technologically possible." It's actually far, far worse than Orwell. Thanks to the amalgamation of inferred behaviours of our many digiSelves, and sophisticated, but apparently innocuous, tracking technologies that are now being deployed, we are mere baby-steps away from the type of invasive surveillance, and societal consequences, described in the movie, Minority Report.
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Posted 17:46 by Mark Federman permanent link


An email making its way around the 'net offers the following slogans that were apparently seen on signs in front of the U.N. on the weekend:

"NY GAYS DON'T WANT BUSH"
LESBIANS SAY "I HATE DICK"
"Al Qaeda had a first-strike policy, too."
"Will trade Bush for peace"
My sign is peace
Peace is not a fringe movement (needless to say, the sign was ringed with turquoise fringe)
Colin Powell, you're from the Bronx. SHAME ON YOU!
Draft the Bush Twins!
One nation under surveillance
Regime change at the White House
Reasons for war are Bushit. We support the UN and we are not irrelevant
BUSH / BLAIR: AXIS OF ARROGANCE
A peace sign made from silver duct tape: DUCT TAPE FOR PEACE.
Deport me to France
"Is it Fascism yet?"
Frodo has failed! Bush has the ring!"
Peace takes brains
"No blood for morons"
I ASKED FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AND ALL I GOT WAS THESE LOUSY CRUISE MISSILES
FIGHT PLAQUE, NOT IRAQ
"i don't care what the people think; they didn't vote for me anyway" -- president bush
"Duct tape and plastic are petroluem products!"
How did our oil get underneath their sand?
Stop Mad Cowboy Disease!
'regime change begins at home'
'empty war-heads discovered in washington'
"Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot."
Osama Bin Forgotten????
"If we wanted a war we would have elected him."

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Posted 17:41 by Mark Federman permanent link


I suppose it would be just too easy to comment on the weekend's massive peace demonstration. But then again, everyone (except perhaps the White House Troika) noticed what was, without exaggeration, the largest simultaneous peace demonstration in history. So what's left to notice?

A couple of interesting observations, perhaps: Unlike the peace protests of the Vietnam era (that were retrieved so effectively) what is shaping up to be a "pre-emptive war" has engendered a "pre-emptive peace demonstration." Similarly, if anyone needed verification that we do, indeed, live in a Global Village, the remarkable worldwide coordination of the protest for a (virtually) single demonstration to occur at (virtually) the same time is amazing. Back in the day, it was an accomplishment to have simultaneous marches in two or three cities. Today, thanks to the implosive effects of instantaneous communications, the same event occurred at the same time across nearly 150 countries.
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Posted 17:13 by Mark Federman permanent link


Japanese scientist invents 'invisibility cloak', as reported in Ananova. We have argued for some time that the body is in Obsolescence. The clearest evidence is the use of the body as art, from the world of tattooing ("body art") to the realizations of the intricate and strange mind of Stelarc. Professor Susumu Tachi at Tokyo University has effectively obsolesced the body by making it invisible. You have to see it to believe it.
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Posted 00:30 by Mark Federman permanent link


Cultural Paradox of the Global Village, the paper I presented on the panel in Tokyo, is now posted on the main McLuhan Program website. Buy your digiSelf a virtual coffee and enjoy!
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Posted 23:45 by Mark Federman permanent link


Charlie Clements, MD, just returned from a 10-day emergency mission to Iraq with other public health experts to assess the vulnerability of the civilian population to another war. His Report from Iraq is both heart-wrenching and serves as a dire warning to the Western World about the Reversal effects we can expect once the U.S. bombs start falling. From the letter: "we may well unleash forces of hatred and resentment that will haunt us for decades to come in every corner of the world. I can just hear Osama Bin Laden saying now, "Please President Bush, attack Iraq. There's nothing better you could do to help the cause of Al Qaeda!"" If you read anything about the current world crisis this week, read the article.
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Posted 23:34 by Mark Federman permanent link


Piracy is not responsible for the downturn in CD sales, according to this analysis in BusinessWeek. While we can take many lessons from this article - don't jump to conclusions or solutions, check ALL the numbers before laying blame, when you point a finger at someone there are three more pointing back at you (go ahead, try it!) - I see an object lesson in figure and ground.

Here are some ground effects probes for the RIAA relative to CD sales, of which neither the general public nor legislators may not be aware: What was the total decline in new CD releases over the same period? What new entertainment devices, and their corresponding media, were released over the same period? (Hint: It begins with a "D" and ends with a "D".) What is the relative price for a disk of the soundtrack of a movie as compared to a disk of the entire movie (plus extras)? How many megahit stars rose to prominence during the base period, as compared to the subsequent, decline period?

If we are unaware of the ground, the figure(s) have no meaning.
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Posted 22:59 by Mark Federman permanent link


Another idea that Kato-san introduced during his keynote was the concept of "Universality of Values" relative to a cultural context. As art, he says, represents the values of a culture, Kato expressed that, "The more particular the art becomes, the more universal it becomes." Interestingly, this expression reflects McLuhan's Obsolescence law, or at least a characteristic of it: One sign that something is in Obsolescence is ubiquity. Here, Kato's universal expression of values via art speaks to its particularity or uniqueness. When the art becomes part of the mass-production culture business, it loses its influence and power to affect us and effect change in society. Hence, Obsolescence. The importance of art, and the role of the artist, in society, is to provide a probe that provides insight into our world and, in Kato's terms, uncovers potentially universal values.
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Posted 17:43 by Mark Federman permanent link


The Symposium opened with Suichi Kato's keynote. Japan's and Europe's Identity Challenged by Americanization. Kato-san trained as a medical doctor, and has become one of Japan's leading art and literary critics. He has made it his life's work to serve as a mediator between Japanese/East Asian culture and that of the West.

Among many interesting and insightful things, Kato-san noted that the link between globalization and culture is capitalism. He said that the profit-motive of capitalism created an infinite capacity for growth, and hence led to the inevitability of globalization as we are now experiencing it. The free markets of capitalism/globalization lead to what Kato called "the law of the jungle," under which the strong survive and the weak are subsumed. Workers are commodities ("including university professors who are available in convenience stores called academic meetings..."), mass produced and available at ever-decreasing prices. Culture, too, is a commodity, and is mass-produced by profit-oriented entities. Globalization shrinks the earth, and brings with it both the extension and reversal of culture: All can access world cultural aspects, but local cultures will tend to become forgotten, belittled or swept aside in favour of the strong, market-dominant cultures. There is a homogenizing effect that dimishes the value and acceptance of local cultures. This will lead to the sacrifice of individuality, according to Kato.

I'm not as pessimistic as Kato-san on this issue. I see the intervention of the 'net and 'net-oriented culture serves to mitigate the homogenizing effects of mass-media and market domination by cultural capitalists. In a similar way that small, local companies can reach out via the net and access world markets, and that a new cultural ethos is emerging, as evidenced by the ethic displayed among webloggers, online artists and what Eric McLuhan likes to call "electric crowds," local culture can still flourish via access to world connectivity. The internet provides more of a "law of the desert" in which it takes some time to find the real life that exists and learn the adaptations. However, once one learns how to both survive and thrive in this potentially hostile environment, oases of culture become evident. More to come...
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Posted 17:10 by Mark Federman permanent link


Ohayo gozaimasu or konichiwa, depending on when you're reading this. It was quite a remarkable experience travelling to experience a culture that is so completely different from the one to which I am accustomed, yet with so many familiar "Western-flavoured" markers. I'll share my thoughts over the next few days - I decided to decyborg myself and have little to do with explicit computer- or net-technology while I was on the other side of the world. That in itself was a refreshing experience.

The loose theme of this EU-meets-Japan Symposium was Globalization and Culture. The undertone was often the imposition of Americanization on the rest of the world. I came away with the considerable impression that the United States is alienating itself from the rest of the world, regardless of the outcome of the current machinations between Washington and the Chamber of the United Nations Security Council.

There is indeed a new order to the world. My perception from the anti-environment of constitutionally pacifist Japan, and contact with several European views, is that the United States's current approach will encourage the Rest of the World to form new cultural, social and economic alliances that will increasingly isolate America. The more its leaders attempt to justify itself - by linking the recent bin Laden tapes to Iraqi support of terrorism, or by terrorizing its own citizens with unfounded threats of North Korea's ability to heave nuclear weapons at the U.S. west coast - the more America will be held up for ridicule on the world stage, and the less credibility it will have in world forums.

There was much that came from the Symposium that resonated with this... how to put it... not anti-Americanism per se... rather, a ground of anti-American-dominance in culture, business, diplomacy, and agenda-setting.
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Posted 09:04 by Mark Federman permanent link


I'm off to the The EU-Japan Fest 10th Anniversary Commemorative Symposium on The Role of Culture in the Age of Advancing Globalization in Tokyo. I'm on a panel exploring Digitization of Information and the Future of Culture on which I'll present a short exploration on the Cultural Paradox of the Internet. Once I'm back I'll post the paper and will try to blog as often as I can find a Kinko's!

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Posted 00:17 by Mark Federman permanent link


We're syndicated! (more or less) Thanks to Ben Hammersley for his advice on how to RSS on the cheap!
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Posted 22:30 by Mark Federman permanent link


Where would our North American society be without an effective anti-environment? Perhaps the greatest continuous probe - make that extra-sharp probe - into our society is provided by The Simpsons. Now approaching its official 300th episode, Entertainment Weekly has posted their choices for the Best 25 Episodes of The Simpsons Ever! The list is so spot on, that the pundits at Slashdot even agree (with most of the choices, anyway).

The genius of The Simpsons, of course, is that it can skewer everything from pop culture to philosophy to politics to religion with equal aplomb. In case you were wondering, my favourite Simpsons moment is in episode 3F02, in which Bart sells his soul. Lisa: Hmm. Pablo Neruda said, "Laughter is the language of the soul." Bart: I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda."
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Posted 10:00 by Mark Federman permanent link


As if we needed further evidence of the Reversal of America's formerly high principles and ideals. (OK, bear with me here...) Although the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) was passed a while ago, this article came to our attention recently. According to the provisions in MEHPA, non-elected public health officers have the power to,
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Posted 09:03 by Mark Federman permanent link


Finally, some happy news about the digiSelf! In a story in the Globe and Mail this morning, a woman's life was saved through the quick action of her online friends. Darlene Laurie, a resident of Burnaby, British Columbia, was chatting with friends at a chat site linked to an online casino. Known online only as her digiSelf, "Hatless Bug," she typed the characters, "911" before she collapsed at her workstation with a stroke. Other digiSelves who were online at the time each had only discrete pieces of information that would link her digiSelf to the physical Ms. Laurie. However, collectively, they were able to piece together a sufficiently complete identification to allow the local RCMP detatchment to bring emergency medical assistance. "Ms. Laurie said she spends most of the day on the computer. People she knows only through the computer "make my life," she said." Even Ms. Laurie knows the reality of the digiSelf, and, indeed, how it makes our lives.
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Posted 08:53 by Mark Federman permanent link


In today's news, Regina police report that the missing hard disk has been recovered. Containing personal information on more than 500,000 Canadians, the hard disk that was stolen from outsourcer ISM had sufficient data to potentially be the source of the largest mass identity theft ever in Canada. Of course, given all the publicity, such was unlikely to actually occur. What this incident actually did was to provide an anti-environment for the Canadian public to realize that their individual digiSelves are relatively unprotected. In this case, the level of security and protection - or respective lack thereof - is fairly obvious. However, for countless commercial and institutional databases, the potential intrusion on our privacy, and unauthorized (that is, by us) co-opting of our digiSelves must give us pause. When arguably democratic governments, like that in the United States, can come up with not only the design of Total Information Awareness, but the funding and wherewithall for it as well, the safety and security of our digiSelves have never been under greater threat. As a society, we achieved individual freedom after centuries of struggle for tolerance and psychological inviolability. How are we going to guarantee similar rights to the digiSelf when it can be violated without our knowledge, consent or even physical presence?
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Posted 00:32 by Mark Federman permanent link


The right 'zine interviews the right guy. Mother Jones interviews John Perry Barlow, and the results are classic Barlow. Some gems: "The thing that spooks me about the Total Information Awareness program is that that it's inside DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. And unlike the CIA or the NSA, DARPA has a great track record of actually going out and making big technology happen ... Right now, it's very easy for your standard suburban television idiot to assume that this is all about people who are not like him. And his rights are not involved. By the time he finds out that his rights have been involved, they may have been so thoroughly eroded that he may never be able to get them back. ... Counterculture appreciates irony -- as opposed to the administration, which clearly has an irony deficiency. ... Right at the moment it would strike me that the Internet is counterproductive to peace. ... Economic success in an information economy depends not on scarcity, but on familiarity."
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Posted 01:19 by Mark Federman permanent link


Italian Catholics are searching for a patron saint for the Internet. The CNN article notes, " So far, about 5,000 visitors are casting their votes daily on www.santiebeati.it, something that delights Monsignor James P. Moroney, an expert on prayer and worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Everyone needs patrons in the Kingdom of Heaven, and perhaps the Internet as a very young child needs the interventions of a saint all the more," he said. "

Look no farther than Marshall McLuhan himself. A devout Roman Catholic, McLuhan was the one who first noted, "having extended … our central nervous system into the electromagnetic technology, … [we] transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well.” Like many saints who saw visions, McLuhan saw the vision of a future we are now living, and he saw it nearly fifty years ago.
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