Posted 14:57 by Mark Federman permanent link
Being Connected is Good for Democracy

The common mythology is that the Internet promotes the so-called echo chamber effect, in which people will tend to read only those opinions that correspond to their preconceived notions. This, as the story goes, promotes less diversity of ideas, more isolation, and less critical thinking than partaking of other sources of news and information. While this might be a compelling idea - especially to those whose interests are vested in literate or broadcast cultures, there is now convincing evidence that it is simply not true.

A new report called, Internet and Democratic Debate, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project maintains that "wired Americans hear more points of view about candidates and key issues than other citizens. They are not using the internet to screen out ideas with which they disagree. ... It shows that internet users have greater overall exposure political arguments, including those that challenge their candidate preferences and their positions on some key issues."

That being connected is good for the democratic process is taken almost as an article of faith among the digerati. Now there is empirical evidence to support that view. But there are additional observations that make this notion all the more significant. We are seeing a significant increase in popularity of voting for all sorts of seemingly bizarre things: your favourite colour of a popular candy, your favourite singing idol, the Greatest Canadian, and whether you think a picture on a billboard is "fat or fab." The change of voting from the expression of democratic will to a game, essentially a recreational pastime, suggests that voting as the practical manifestation of democratic will may be entering its obsolescence aspect. A new medium relative to democratic participation must be emerging to take its place. And the emphasis is on the word, participation. Over the next decade, we will see random acts of democracy occurring transmedially between cyber- and physical spaces, with political campaigns looking more like engaged conversation, debate and the Howard Dean Experience, and (hopefully) less like the shameful Bush-Kerry trance-inducing partisan slugfest.
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Posted 14:46 by Mark Federman permanent link
Caught on Tape

Listen for the comment right at the end of the clip. His true attitude to his country and the rest of the world revealed in a moment of candour.

Shameful.
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Posted 08:18 by Mark Federman permanent link
Really Rockin' the Vote

I understand what Rock the Vote! is trying to do. I understand that its "mission" (oh, how I hate that word!) is to encourage youth - and especially first-time voters - to cast their ballots at the November 2 US Presidential election. I also understand that, as noble as their intentions are, they are misguided and lack even a scintilla of understanding of their constituency. They are an artefact of broadcast politics - the same broadcast politics that have effectively disenfranchised millions of young voters by creating an attitude of frustration that turns to apathy.

There are few, among those to whom RTV attempts to appeal, that are not cynical about manufactured celebrity. To young voters, RTV is yet another easily-seen-through, hot medium celebrity endorsement that merely reinforces an impression that "the system" - the quotation marks are for the benefit of the fogeys writing and reading this - is stacked against them. Like the rest of hot medium advertising, RTV is easy to ignore and even ridicule.

On the other hand, Eminem is not easy to ignore, even for a fogey like yours truly. In Mosh, his new political music video, this rapper speaks directly to, and in the language of, his constituency. It is a brilliant piece of work in its authenticity and passion, and more importantly, in its complete understanding of the medium is the message. Watch this video and tell me if you aren't moved to vote. More important, if you know an eligible voter under the age of 25, get them to watch this video.
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Posted 13:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Obsolescence of News?

Interesting question, eh? If you're a Jon Stewart fan, or if you have been contemplating what a different sort of 24-hour news network might look like, this American Perspectives broadcast on CSPAN is for you. A full hour of Jon expanding on themes he introduced on Crossfire about the relationship between broadcast journalism and broadcast politics.

And, for those who want to remember what real journalism is about, this Wednesday, October 27, beginning at 18:30 at the Coach House, we are hosting a conversation called, Views of the News. Join us as we welcome this year's winner of the Philippines McLuhan Fellowship Award for Journalism, Ms. Tess Bacalla. Each year, the Canadian Embassy in Manila, Philippines selects one journalist to honour for outstanding investigative reportage. This year's winner is a journalist from the prestigious Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism. Her award-winning story, "BIR [federal tax department] Officials Amass Unexplained Wealth" is posted here. Ms. Bacalla will give us a talk about this investigation and the state of investigative journalism in the Philippines.

Following Ms. Bacalla's talk, we will screen John Stewart's now famous appearance on Crossfire, and have a general discussion on the state of mass-media news, its effects on politics, whether it is now in its obsolescence phase (as some of us observe), and the dynamics of what might be replacing it.
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Posted 16:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
What is a Person? Philosophy Cafe Starts This Sunday

Join an outstanding group of scholars, moderated by Senior McLuhan Fellow, Twyla Gibson, for a presentation and discussion of this provocative question from a variety of perspectives. All sessions take place on Sundays from 11:30am to 1:00pm at 158 St. George Street, are free of charge and include continental brunch. You can see the complete line-up by downloading the poster. Advance registration is required - call 416-978-2400 or go to the Continuing Education Website – and use the course number to search for each session.

This week, Sunday, October 24, session SCS 1424-001, features Bernard Dickens considering the issue of The Legal Approach to Personhood.

For more information, contact Joanna Beyersbergen at 416-978-5527, or Twyla Gibson.
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Posted 14:55 by Mark Federman permanent link
The End, and Beginning, of Mass Media

By now, there is a good chance you have seen the famous John Stewart on Crossfire episode, and perhaps Stewart being self-congratulatory about it:

Stewart, back on his own show, to Crossfire's Tucker Carlson: "Tomorrow I'll go back to being funny, but your show will still blow."

Stewart committed the ultimate sin for a television personality. He revealed the deep hidden ground of TV news, that being, "it is theater." Traditional mass media television (and other) news is, indeed, entertainment - sometimes tragedy, sometimes comedy - but always entertainment. It is beyond post-modern, as when it attempts to comment on itself (either with feigned sincerity or satirically, from Andy Rooney to Weekend Update) because it no longer even attempts the charade of reality, objectivity or even accurate reportage. We are all latter-day Diogenes-es, searching fruitlessly with our lamps for a scintilla of... well, it certainly isn't truth, unless we accept Agatha Christie's Parker Pyne, Detective's view of What is Truth?

Truth is what upsets the applecart.

Here's an experiment that each of us can try in the comfort of our own homes. Take an excerpt from a (non-news) television program that shows something that is relatively current, and an equivalent on-the-scene clip from TV news. Show both to an unsuspecting vict... volunteer, and see if s/he can tell the difference. Aside from production values (hint: the "real" event is probably better lit,) I'm willing to bet that they can't do it.

News is entertainment; it takes on an aesthetic quality and becomes art and recreation. With the advent of multiple 24-hour news channels and giveaway newspapers in the transit system, news is ubiquitous. These are two tell-tale qualities of a medium in obsolescence. Given that the news-media have been referred to as the "fourth estate" of government, it is quite clear that, instead of becoming the watchdog of government, it behaves more like the lapdog of government - or governments-in-waiting. Beyond the news, mass media itself is in obsolescence.

A mass medium was once thought of as one in which a mass of people experienced the same thing at the same time from different locales. It was typified by broadcast – radio, television and the early incarnation of the Internet, whose first use as a new medium was the emulation of the old media. But now, we can further refine our understanding of mass media culture as it is emerging today – that which allows massive participation in the creation of cultural artefacts at different physical times, from different physical locales, with the individual perception of simultaneity and immediate proximity.
--The Ephemeral Artefact: Visions of Cultural Experience

In this new world that we are collectively creating, "We, the Media" - as Dan Gillmor has so aptly captured it - not only make it up as we go along, we ensure that the collective "we" is aware of it as well, through the emergence of large-scale, transparent, mosaic patterns comprised of individually small tidbits of data.

Political leaders around the world, who rely on the mass hypnotic effects of conventional mass media, run into trouble when their administrations run into the break boundary of emergent transparency. Interestingly, it took the actions of the GWB administration in the United States to spark this effect from latency into dominance. George, we thank you for your contribution to the political history of communication. You are free to go now.

The rest of us have work to do to create the world in Our image.

Postscript: Kudos to CNN for not invoking the "IP Police" when the Stewart/Crossfire conflagration started running through the 'net. Maybe the big content providers are finally beginning to get a clue!
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Posted 11:08 by Mark Federman permanent link
McLuhan EXTREME! - Two More Nights

Politics, the Android Meme, Zen fish, emergence and the reversal of tetrads - They have all been fodder for McLuhan EXTREME! over the past couple of evenings here at the McLuhan Program Coach House. If you ever wanted to experience what Marshall McLuhan's famous Monday night seminars were like, this is probably the closest you'll get to that experience.

Tonight and Saturday, beginning at 20:00, McLuhan anarchivist Bob Dobbs and I provide the sparks - and the entire crowd, the fuel - for a blazing McLuhan bonfire. We're expecting a special "jest of honour" this evening to explore the connections with mysticism and the quantum phase of electricity, and... well, you'll just have to be here to find out.

AND! I'll be doing a "Classes Without Quizzes" lecture tomorrow, Saturday October 16 at 13:00 as part of the University of Toronto Homecoming Weekend. Retrieving Marshall McLuhan: Achiving Awareness in a Complex World will give participants a good introduction into the fundamentals of Marshall McLuhan's thinking, and how to see the world we really live in. Sanford Fleming Building, Room 1105.
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Posted 20:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Real Question: How Does He Know?

BoingBoing is reporting this law enforecement memo, pointing to this site that is reporting it. Apparently U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has told all 93 U.S. Attorneys that, "without a doubt an attack was going to be perpetrated in the US within the next 6 weeks, prior to the elections." Now I can understand an expectation that such might happen, or even that specific intelligence has been obtained that might cause authorities to raise the alert level and increase vigilence. But the specific wording is curious - "without a doubt."

At this point, I think it's pretty clear that a massive attack on U.S. soil would politically favour GWB - it's the whole "don't switch horses in the middle of a crisis" thing, and "we need a strong decisive leader in wartime." But I think it goes much farther - and something I've speculated on previously, and feared, for over a year now: The (indefinite?) postponement of the upcoming Presidential election and the declaration of martial law in the wake of such an attack.

Before anyone accuses me of being an ultra-left, fear-mongering Canadian propagandist, we should remember to look at the effects that precede the causes, particularly with respect to the various articles of the U.S. Bill of Rights that have been temporarily, shall we say, "stretched" because of national security concerns. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are still with us, but only in designated "Free Speech Zones," that resemble POW camps. The right to speedy and due process under the law, but not necessarily if you have adopted Islam, come from certain countries, or have relatives still living in certain countries. The freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, but not when it comes to certain financial or even literary transactions. And so on. The effects precede the cause, meaning, that we experience the effects before we are able to perceive the entirety of the situation in context, and clearly articulate the larger structural issues, something that usually requires the distance of time.

When one contemplates the implications of the retrievals, this is truly a frightening time, not just for our friends in the U.S., but for the entire world.
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Posted 11:07 by Mark Federman permanent link
Effects of Copyright Decisions

Michael Geist's column in the Toronto Star today gives thanks (appropriately enough) for some recent rulings on copyright by various levels of Canada's courts. In particular, he mentions this week's victory in the Ontario Court of Appeals for freelance writers whose work for Thomson Newspapers Corp. (the then publisher of the relatively-clueless-when-it-comes-to-these-things Globe and Mail, now published by Bell GlobeMedia who you would think would have a clue, but doesn't.)

The case involved a lawsuit launched by Heather Robertson, a well-known Canadian author and freelance writer, who wrote two articles that were published in the Globe in 1995. The Globe later included the work in several databases. Robertson sued, arguing that the inclusion of the articles without permission or compensation constituted an infringement of her copyright. For its part, the Globe argued that inclusion of the work in the database fell within its copyright as a collective work or compilation of material.

The court's decision was made in a very McLuhanesque fasion - by understanding the effects, rather than the "content" of the issue. As Geist explains,

The court ruled that in both form and function, the Globe newspaper and database differ. In form, the newspaper is limited to the events of the day, whereas the database expands daily with a new collection of articles. In function, the newspaper's primary purpose is to provide readers with the news, while the database is chiefly used for research. Given the differences, the court was convinced that the effect of a newspaper is lost when placed into a searchable database.

Different effects; different medium - and therefore, different rights for the author.

However, before we start celebrating, there is a move to deliver yet another intellectual property turkey this Thanksgiving (sorry about that, folks.) Publishers and owners of large databases are pushing to establish a new IP right in databases. Data and information that are now not subject to copyright - facts, statistics, public domain information and so forth - would fall under copyright when compiled into a database according to this new proposal. This certainly moves us a lot closer to Richard Stallman's dystopian world that he describes in The Right to Read.

What I'm waiting for is the definitive intellectual property case, either here or in the United States, that tests the strength of the Copyright Act's "fair dealing"/"fair use" provisions against contract law (in End User License Agreements) and technological restrictions imposed by software manufacturers who would, for example, disable copy/paste/print functions for copyright material, even if what is to be copied, pasted or printed is a perfectly acceptable use under the law. And, of course, what about works licensed under Creative Commons that is first protected by copyright, and then opened up according to the creator's choice?
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Posted 00:07 by Mark Federman permanent link
McLuhan International Festival of the Future

The McLuhan Festival is on! It's a grand experiment in a "cool" festival - many venues, many events, that the users, who in the best McLuhan tradition are indeed the content, must fill in. The full program is posted with each days events. At the Coach House, we are hosting two series: Our lunchtime conversations from Monday through Saturday, from 12:00 to 14:00. Each day, several of our Fellows will take one sense and probe it in the best McLuhan fashion, essentially Making SENSE of Marshall McLuhan. Each evening, from Wednesday through Saturday, we host McLuhan EXTREME! with some extreme McLuhan thinkers engaging in some hot, heavy and wild probes. If you'd like to experience some of what the famous Monday Night Seminars were like in McLuhan's day, join us from 21:00 to 23:00 at the Coach House.

Also: Two events especially on Thursday the 14th. THE MEDIUM IS THE MOBILIZATION: 26 Takes on McLuhan & Media is a series of performances all over Toronto, midnight to midnight, coordinated via tactical flash text mob. The McLuhan Global Research Network at the University of Toronto invites the public to join in this flash text mob happening, coordinated virtually (by internet, cell phone and text messaging). Prizes awarded for creative participation and the highest number of pass-port stamps. Come celebrate McLuhan's classic book Understanding Media (published 40 years ago). Come be part of the media future. To participate, please register your contact information and get your pass-ports by emailing admin@mcluhan.ca. And, KMDI and the McLuhan Global Research Network present THE FUTURE OF MEDIA IN A POST-MCLUHAN GALAXY, a panel chaired by Dr Liss Jeffrey. Join Liss and the panel afterwards for conviviality and to continue a dialogue McLuhan started more than half a century ago. Bahen Building (U of T), 40 St George Street.

Finally, if you're walking near the Coach House during the week, you may just hear some of the words and works of Marshall McLuhan surround you in the air. After all, we now are in acoustic space.
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Posted 22:48 by Mark Federman permanent link
eCulture Horizons

While I was away, I attended the eCulture Horizons Symposium, hosted by the Salzburg Research Institute. It was a great conference, covering issues like the preservation of digital heritage, capturing records of performed and embodied culture, the role of the semantic web (with some exciting proposals concerning dynamic ontologies), not to mention some pretty fine apple strudel! I had the privilege of giving both the opening and closing keynotes, the former posted here, and the latter I hope to transcribe (roughly) from the notes I created during the symposium itself.

The Salzburg Research Institute is doing some very interesting work and thinking at the break boundary. They are well worth checking out.
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