I heard two workers say, "This chaos
Will soon be ended."
This chaos will not be ended,
The red and the blue house blended,
Not ended, never and never ended,
The weak man mended,
The man that is poor at night
Attended
Like the man that is rich and right.
The great men will not be blended...
I am the poorest of all.
I know that I can not be mended,
Out of the clouds, pomp of the air,
By which at least I am befriended.
My friend Eric invited me to come to an Isaiah meeting at Westwood Luthern church last night. He’s been working with the group for the past few years on a bunch of different issues, including affordable housing.
The meeting began with two introductory presentations about the problem of affordable housing. The message is pretty simple to state: the current median home price in Minnesota and the nation is significantly higher than the 30% of income that is the threshold for affordability. Anyone working in a service job - nurse, teacher, retail clerk, janitor, food services - makes, on average, less than needed to afford a home or, in some cases, an apartment rental. The only way for a contemporary family to continue to afford housing is for them to have dual incomes, and even then it’s not easy. No wonder so many people feel harried by work and the constant struggle to achieve that modern euphemism of work/life balance.
After the presentations we broke for 30-minutes of small-group discussion. I was at a table with a couple of city staffers, a woman who works for a local land trust, and two people from Isaiah.
I listened to the discussion and was struck by how it wondered in circles around the “complexity” of the problem. Someone would throw out a potential solution to the problem and then another person would say that it’s all more complicated than that. The person who proposed the solution would agree that it really is complicated and then move onto another thread in the discussion.
I tried to steer the question to ask what the barriers to action were. The responses were simple: people’s attitude, money, recalcitrant contractors, and lack of political will. Again the specter of “complexity” was raised.
As a sometimes complexity scholar I have to wonder whether this is really a true description of the problem or a subtle cop-out. To me the problem doesn’t seem that complex at all. The market fails to provide housing. Local governments can act to alleviate this by altering their building codes and requirements. We can all agree on the nature of the problem and the most likely solution. So what is the real problem here?
One suggestions was money. At a deeper level I agree, greed is always a problem in a market economy. But the requirements for affordable housing that set the model across the nation are not onerous. They’re only onerous to those who have been brainwashed to believe that all government action is bad. If you believe that the government can intervene for a collective benefit then the argument should be practically won.
So what stops us from acting?
I am a strong proponent of complexity. A lot of major problems and issues in the world are complex. But this isn’t one of them. It’s pretty simple and straightforward microeconomics. Give builders an incentive, through regulation, and they will build affordable housing. Builders are already regulated so this shouldn’t be hard. We just have to actually do it.
The commons is a new way to express a very old idea—that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good and all.
The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come. The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, oceans and wildlife as well as shared social creations such as libraries, public spaces, scientific research and creative works.
e.g. * biopiracy * cap and dividend * common assets * commons movement * copyleft * corporation * enclosure * externality * gift economy - blood and organ donation, open source, wikis * inalienability * land trusts * open source software * public goods - non-rival, non-excludable: lighthouses, city parks, broadcast programming, global atmosphere * public space * public trust doctrine * tragedy of the commons * trust or stakeholder trust * value
FM - two examples of the commons
K - environmental studies. Garret Hardin’s classic essay on the “Tragedy of the Commons” is required reading in multiple classes. The environment presents lots of challenges for the commons.
Some more examples - the atmosphere, City of Lakes land trust, senior housing in S Minneapolis, common areas for use in apartments or other living spaces, ExCo as a commons, the public domain vs. copyright extension, the Internet.
Possible traits -
From geography - the converging influence of site and situation. Both need to be conducive for a commons to arise. Thus a small group can protect a small space, like Nicollet Island, and reach across multiple generations. For a larger site, like the atmosphere, the situation may be more difficult or require different participants. e.g. the Kyoto treaty or other international agreements (CFCs)
Other ideas that need development - gift economy, work around restrictions/barriers, Native American spirtuality and ethics.
So why are commons threatened? Because people are “as dumb as rocks,” see the Nicollet Island whirlpool. Another mill run seemed like a good idea at the time but proved disasterous. Greed and stupidity make people do things that destroy the commons. Lack of belief in the commons, lack of awareness about the commons, or too encultured to see the commons. Need to design solutions that emphasize the commons and make people part of the experience.
A week or two ago I posted a question about Open Courseware to the LinkedIn Q&A forum.
What’s your personal experience with Open Courseware?
Open courseware is a growing phenomenon among colleges and universities throughout the world. Itunes U, MIT OpenCourseware, the Open Courseware Consortium, and a bunch of other institutions show the growth of the this movement over the last few years. Have you taken a free course online through one of the open courseware portals? What was it like? How well did it work? What would you do differently next time?
I got five responses over a week and here’s a summary of the responses.
Sheila mentioned the knowledge benefit to those who want to learn but don’t need the degree. I’m intrigued by the “don’t need the degree” quote. Are the people accessing Open Courseware really in a position to choose whether to get a degree or not? From outside the U.S. it’s less likely a matter of not needing the degree than being unable to get the degree, even if a desire for the degree exists. Sheila added that OCW gives peope the opportunity to “brush up on courses” before returning to school.
Gerry used the MIT courses as an aid to learning theory, but the labs were lacking. This is where the difference between distance learning and in-the-classroom experience becomes critical. New technology, especially easy video production, may alleviate some of these problems in the future. I should look up some studies on the successes and failure of distance learning over the past 30 years. I know we’ve met this problem before but I don’t know if there is anything we’ve learned from the experience.
Freek observed the disparity in course quality at the MIT site. Some courses have extensive material online — syllabi, recorded lectures, readings, slide presentations, and videos — other courses are bare bones, a syllabi and not much else. I wonder if there is a difference among subject areas. Are the humanities less likely to have online materials because there are fewer labs or experiments and more classroom discussion? This might make an interesting research project.
I wonder just how useful is it to have a recording of a classroom discussion that you didn’t personally attend? I’ve listened to a few examples from Chris Lydon on his radio program Open Source. His interviews are often recorded in classroom audiences at Brown and followed by questions from students. The questions are often very good but only take up 10% of the total program. Lydon’s experience is in radio so he brings a different flavor to a classroom presentation than most teachers. The benefit of his radio experience is in the production values - the audio quality is good, everyone can be heard during the discussion period, there isn’t any annoying background noise. For this to work well in an education session there either needs to be a support staff that records and produces the audio or else teachers need to learn yet another skill.
Manu confirmed the opinion that the courses at MIT still need time to mature in order to be really useful for remote learners.
Christine said she used the courses at Itunes U as benchmarks for comparison with her own courses. I like this hybrid approach that combines the best of OCW with the local knowledge of instructors. This model seems like an ideal target market for the OCW people; don’t claim to replace instructors, instead become a supplement to what they are already doing.
I volunteered at the Push 2008 business conference earlier this week. Overall I give it a mixed review. Some things went well, others were less impressive.
Some of the good things.
My criticisms
What I’d like to see in a half hour media news program, or even ten minute news program.
First, if the story is being reported on by any other major news outlet than we ignore it, for the most part. Fighting in Israel, earthquake in China, cyclone in Myanmar, are all stories we leave to others.
Second, focus on summarizing the international news for an American audience. What happened in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America today, each and every day. What are the big stories in India, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, etc.
Third, forget about scoops. Do the best with the resources we can get to. Rely on local coverage as much as possible to understand the situation.
Fourth, avoid the talking head roundtable. The News Hour is great but little television children die every time they cut away to another talking head roundtable of experts to explain what just happened.
Fifth, regular and consistent focus on science.
Sixth, no celebrity news. None, zip. Never.
I listened to your story about rising gas prices this afternoon and was disappointed by your coverage. It was filled with cliches and lack of creativity.
I have heard man-at-the-pump interviews for the past 6 months. It is time for journalists to come up with a new way of covering this story. Could you not interview an economist or some other expert? Hell, I’d even listen to a public relations person from an oil company if I could be guaranteed that I would not have to hear another man-at-the-pump interview.
This is lazy reporting. It fails to explain the issue it reports on, fails to give the public any additional information, and fails to delve into the very real economic issues that face America. To continue from this story to a report on the week in politics is the laziest form of reporting.
What I need to hear about is why gas prices are so high? Why has it taken so long for auto makers to produce efficient cars? Why has the government failed to invest in alternative energy, especially in comparison to the billions spent on war? So many question could be asked, but instead your correspondent and editors chose the easy way out.
I know journalism is hard. Time is short and deadlines are looming. But please take some time to plan out an investigation of the deeper issues that are causing Americans pain. Don’t tell us about the rise in gas prices every day or every week. Take a month to do a real in-depth story and then broadcast that story over days or weeks. And repeat the in-depth reporting if you have to. Just don’t be lazy.
I left off my NCMR coverage after yesterdays midday report. Saturday afternoon started off with my late entry to a history session looking back at some of the big media reform successes of the past.
Randall Pinkston talked about his rise to become the first black weekday anchor in the South during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They showed part of a documentary about the WLBT struggle, a lengthy effort to get the station’s license revoked by proving racial bias.
Nicholas Johnson, a FCC commissioner during the early 1970s, described his personal efforts to eliminate racial discrimination. He and George Stoney were pioneers in public access television.
The author of Deer Hunting With Jesus stopped by to present an essay on Breaking the Beer Barrier.
Bagent’s key point in the book and his talk is the need for progressives to reach out to the working class, a group of people that have been getting the short end of the political stick for the past 40 years. In particular, poor white people have become Republicans by default because the leaders of the progressive movement either ignore them or talk down to them.
I liked his characterization of the working class as people who are unable to decide when, where, or how to work. They can’t decide when to take a vacation or go on break without getting permission. According to Bagent the working class includes 90 million Americans. The middle class, by contrast, is only 20% of workers.
Bagent’s presentation was witty and fun to watch. He’s getting to be an old man now and isn’t “trying to impress anyone to get laid.” So he speaks his mind, admits to being a commie and moves on.
Listening to him talk made me think about my personal class history. I’m only three generations away from immigrant great-grandparents. My grandfathers worked as a butcher and a fork lift driver. One owned a home and the other rented for most of his life, including a mobile home.
Some other points made by Bagent: why can’t beer and sports be part of a progressive political aesthetic, people in Belize will get together to watch sport championships so there’s no reason for anyone to look down on sports. His most subversive question to ask a poor white person: why are your kids teeth so bad?
Everyone has learned to become helpless. He once asked an audience of college students to stand up and then sit down when they had thought of something they could do after his talk to help another person. Many of them stood dumbly for a minute without thinking of anything. They’d rather listen to some “dumb redneck who has written a cheap book.”
Michael Jacoby Brown led us through a couple of exercises and a short presentation on common issues faced by community organizations. How do you attract people, how do you stay motivated or deal with difficult personalities? His main message was that you need to talk one-on-one with the people you want to attract. Media messages won’t do it, they won’t get you committed people. The personal is key.
For me this is a difficult message. I’d rather focus on the technology and the media but it doesn’t finish the job. Finally he said that people will never join or donate if you don’t ask. And that may be the hardest part.
I think we are too easily seduced and brainwashed by the propaganda of self-reliance in America. For some this means thinking that they are in the top 20% of the income distribution when reality is much different. For others this means looking up information online before asking your neighbor for help.
The closers were a bunch of heavy hitters: Jonathan Adelstein, Louise Erdrich, Amy Goodman, and Van Jones.
I was especially impressed with Amy Goodman. Her story about being a reporter in East Timor and witnessing the massacre of 300 villagers was impressive. Sometimes the duty to report the truth really is a matter of life and death. So much so that you have to bury a newspaper in the back yard in order to keep yourself from being kidnapped by the security police. We need to go to where the silence is. Then we can return and tell it on the mountaintop.
Here are a few blog entries I found through Google Blog Search and Technorati.
Girlmedia Maven on Bill Moyers and the missing female voices and the power of collaboration.
Harold making fun of Bill O’Reilly at WetMachine.
Funferal on the keynote and grassroots organizing.
BitchPhD on copyright and fair use
LocalMN with some in-depth panel coverage.
PF Hyper covering Minneapolist WiFi and the opening
Listics with some short comments.
Uppity Wisconsin also has some interesting notes and praise for Bill Moyers.
Up early this morning to get into town in time for the 8a.m. plenary talk by Bill Moyers. Moyers has spoken at all four NCMRs to date, hosts a rocking show on PBS and spoke eloquently today about the abdication of responsibility by the dominant media over the last 8 years plus. Some great quotes: “the 4th estate has become a 5th column against democracy”; “capitalism breeds destruction unless tempered by an intuition of equality.” See this twitter update by kaeti - I totally agree.
This panel was filled with long-term activists, most of whom have been working in public access television for many years. Technologically it feels like a bit of throwback but as one person concluded - Web2.0 may be an answer to a lot of problems but we can’t forget to ask what is the question we are trying to answer. For the people in this room it was all about getting the stories of people out to the masses.
Louis Massiah started off by describing his work with the Scribe video center in Philadelphia and their project “Precious Places.” They have spent the last 4 years working with local filmmakers, scholars, and community members to create over 40 documentaries about neighborhoods in Philadelphia. He shared with us a portion of the prototype documentary about Francisville which was a really profoundly moving story of 1960s gang members being transformed into community activists. My favorite quote - “You could buy denim here [on main street] that would stay blue for 6 months.”
Peggy Berryhill of the Native Public Media provided another great quote “our lives are so labeled [1st generation urban Indian]…our lives are filled with anthropologists.” She reiterated the need for pride of place and community. Her group is working with 30+ native radio stations across the United States to build an infrastructure for Native American radio.
Lauren-Glenn Davitian from Vermont CCTV talked about the success that Vermont has had with public access television. There are 43 access channels in a state with only 600,000 people. Burlington, VT is building its own fiber optic network because the existing infrastructure monopolies, cable and telephone, can’t be trusted to protect the public interest or provide access to the public airwaves. We were lucky to get as much public access TV as we did in the 1970s and 1980s because cable companies are becoming much more stingy over time.
A bunch of cool community project were mentioned during the Q&A. KTNN, native american radio in Arizon, Thurston television center in Washington state, WOJB radio in Wisconsin, People TV from Atlanta, Deep Dish Network Waves of Change.
I thought this panel was going to focus on violations of information privacy by private companies but it ended up being more of a cross between private and governmental invasions of privacy. The central topic was the NSA wiretapping scandal and the complicity of telecom companies.
Lillie Coney from EPIC started out by describing some of the long history of surveillance cooperation between government and private industry, from communication intercepts during the Civil War, to Western Unions intercepting telegrams during WW2 and the Cold War, to the present day. It starts with a declaration of war and a climate of fear that ends up with a general walking into a CEOs office and demanding access to data “for the national interest.”
Tim Jones from EFF talked about their work on the NSA story and the facts they uncovered: domestic surveillance happened, it was a dragnet not a targeted search, and there were 15-20 telecom centers throughout the US that were turned into NSA branch offices. The FISA law was created to protect us because we’ve been down the surveillance road before - COINTELPRO, Church Committee, Project Shamrock at the NSA, Project Chaos at the CIA.
Marcy from Firedoglake described their research efforts surrounding the NSA wiretapping and the three prong strategy of research, education, and mobilization that led to some of the successes we’ve had to date preventing telecom immunity from passing.
Tim Sparapani from the ACLU brought the discussion back to what I thought it would be from the beginning by talking about the commercial data brokers who are creating a privatized dossier system by harvesting public and commercial data. I especially liked the strange loop that occurs as large data aggregators buy public information, like birth and death records, combine it private information about purchasing patterns and internet histories, and then sell that information back to public law enforcement at the state and federal levels. So we pay our taxes to collect this information twice, once as a public good and then again as a private aggregation. It’s another form of data enclosure. It has led to the creation of quasigovernmental companies who get the lucrative federal communications contracts and then give up private data when asked.
Bob Edgar from Common Cause sprinkled a bunch of quotations into his moderation but this one by Martin Luther King, Jr. was my favorite. He used part of this but the whole was too beautiful for me to pass up. The complete speech is here.
Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
I think all of this needs to go into an Openness Manifesto of some kind. Everywhere I turn I’m seeing open courseware, open education, open access, open source, open data, open Congress, open information, public access and more.
I went down to the Minneapolis Convention Center for day 1 of the National Conference on Media reform this afternoon. I skipped the Larry Lessig morning plenary and arrived at about 1 p.m. I wandered through the displays in the ballroom, ate half an over-priced burrito and then headed for the first afternoon panel session.
Josh Wolf kicked things off with his account of being imprisoned for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in 2006. Naturally he concluded his talk with a call to support a federal shield law protecting people who do journalism, not just people who are employed as journalists.
C. Edwin Baker made some short comments about First Amendment legal theory. The First Amendment only protects us from government interference with speech. If a corporation seeks to curtail free speech then you’re legally out of luck. Corporations also argue that the first amendment protects them from coercive legislation that might regulate their right to merge, etc. There are two clauses in the First Amendment: one protecting individual speech, the other protecting the institutions of the press.
Caroline Fredrickson spoke about the ACLU free speech campaigns. I was intrigued by the case of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act that is being promoted by Joe Lieberman. The bill attempts to prevent radical Muslim extremists from spreading their message in America. YouTube was asked to remove some videos as a result of this effort. Videos that violated the community terms of service were removed but others were not.
I was tempted to ask about the intersection/overlap between free speech and website terms of service. What is the case law on this issue? How easily can a website remove content that it deems inappropriate? Would this ever become a first amendment issue? If there are any constitutional lawyers who read this please feel free to leave a comment.
This panel was even better. Right in my personal bailiwick: open-government and all other open knowledge endeavors.
Micha Sifry kicked things off with a short movie showing a nifty use of Google Earth to display congressional earmarks for the defense industry. This was just the beginning of the cool stuff the Sunlight Foundation is doing.
Andre Banks began by describing his project Color of Change which was formed after Katrina to improve the presence of the progressive black population in government. He described the case of the Jena 6 as the perfect storm for online activism. From there Color of Change has made great strides to intervene in the criminal justice system on behalf of the black population.
Matt Stoller went next and talked about a blogging project that took place a year or two ago. Senator Dick Durbin agreed to participate in an online forum around a bill under consideration in Congress. I forget the topic of the bill but the upshot was that new internet tools could penetrate the conversation in Washington D.C. with enough work and persistence.
Russell Newman, a former staffer for Senator Durbin, recounted his experience with the public conversation about the bill from inside the sausage factory. He concluded by emphasizing the banality of policy making: it really is all about access, and a common sense evaluation of legitimacy.
Micha Sifry mentioned a few other projects of interest including qik for streaming video from a cell phone and Open Congress for tracking bills before Congress.
In the Q&A I asked about the sustainability of a project like Open Congress and the transfer of tools like it to the local level. The software that runs Open Congress is open source so it’s available for people to setup on a state or local level. I smell yet another potential project. Long-term sustainability is still up in the air.
One of the most interesting questions from the audience was about dividing resources between old and new institutions. Sifry responded that he would give most of the funding to new institutions. Liberals need to be more adventurous and stop giving to institutions because of sentimentality or past achievements. Others on the panel disagreed and discussion ensued.
Instead of going to the Minnesota caucus I met with James O. in an ad-hoc session to discuss his ideas about communicating liberal ideas to the mainstream. He was full of very interesting proposals and thoughts, ranging from recasting the Superman story, creating a new form of found political poetry based on haiku, starting a new political party, and forming a new 24/7 news channel. It was a fun and interesting conversation. I showed him a couple of social software tools like delicious and Twitter. I wish him the best of luck.
Two ideas I really liked were doing a children’s book based on Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. I replied that it would be great to make it into a stop motion animated video. I encouraged James to think more about cultural peer production as a method to get his ideas into the world. Perhaps we will work on it together.
I made the mistake of watching Hell’s Kitchen last night and the image and sound of Gordon Ramsey swearing for half-an-hour is now etched in my mind. It’s amazing they can put that amount of blasphemy on the air. Of course they bleep it out but that doesn’t fool anyone, not even children.
What made me remember the experience, aside from having a strange Ramsey-like figure haunting my dreams last night, was the shamelessness of the affective appeals to the audience. The whole show is one long exercise in schadenfreude.
We watch just to see the next person start to cry or completely lose track of the orders coming into the kitchen. These people are chumps I thought to myself. Of course I was an even bigger chump to keep watching. But the disaster was just too big to avoid. I was like a deer in the headlights waiting for the car to crash into me.
I’ve never been a fan of reality television for precisely these reasons. Reality television is all affective-crack, all the time. It doesn’t end.
A few weeks ago I was making dinner while my mom watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in the other room. They blew up a house. But first they had the build up, a fridge, a couch, some other miscellaneous items. Then came the house. When the editors saw the footage they must have felt like porn producers who had captured the money shot of the decade. The host screamed at the same time as the house blew up on camera. And they showed it over and over. They must have cut the explosion down to three seconds and repeated it over a dozen times.
Normal dramatic television is different in degree but not in kind. Even news television relies on the same formula of repetition.
I thought McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cold media might help to explain this difference. But I always get the two confused. Watching Hell’s Kitchen felt like a hot experience. According to McLuhan a hot medium is exclusive and highly defined, like radio. A cool medium is participatory and low definition, like television. The only way this fits is if you view emotional appeals as a form of participation and I’m not sure I do.