Sep 192005
Sep 182005
For Clay’s Thinking About Networks class we read a chapter out of each of The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage and The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs.
The Victorian Internet is about the telegraph and how it was the first technology to really make the world perceptibly “smaller” by allowing information to travel signficantly faster than objects over large distances – news could outstrip ships and horses. It was interesting to think of the telegraph in these kinds of social and media terms, having thought about it in more technical terms when reading Code: The hidden langage of computer hardware and software by Charles Petzold. (A book I heartily recommend for anyone even remotely interested in computers and how they work)
The Jacobs piece was utterly engaging and incredibly easy to read and agree with. She spoke to a lot of my own prejudices in her contention that people exist more happily in human scale streets rather than in high-rise blocks of flats. The idea of a middle ground for socialising – a place that is public but that involves plenty of regular, quotidian contact with neighbours was new to me and it makes a lot of sense. The possibility of these kinds of connections makes it possible for people to meet without a need for the intimacy of invitations into one’s home. Where that is the only possibility for contact, many people choose no contact at all.
It did strike me though that Jacobs is perhaps overly enthusiastic for making all neighbourhoods like her own. For many years I’ve thought that people have an incredibly propensity for colonising the built environment, no matter how alienating it might seem. New York itself, which Jacobs holds up (with considerable justification) as a model for happy civic life must have seemed alienating and weird to people moving here from villages in Connemara where public space would have been defined entirely differently and day-to-day non-intimate contact would have had other rhythms. When I worked in Finglas in Dublin several years ago I remember thinking one day as I drove through the neighbourhood how a place that seemed so vast and uniform to me as an outsider was for my students a place full of social context that made each house and cul de sac and green patch individual.
It seems to me that it is in newly built areas, where the location for this middle ground communication hasn’t yet been identified, that people are most likely to be alienated from one another. Further to that I also believe that young people who grow up in an environment tend to find it easy to figure out how to live in it successfully and connectedly. Clay pointed out in class that this is analagous to the way that the young were the first to successfully use the Internet as a primarily social space, with applications such as Live Journal. This is an interesting idea, and one that I shall give more thought to over the next few weeks.
Sep 182005
This week for Technologies of Persuasion class we watched the BBC documentary The Century of the Self (Parts 1 & 2) and read some of Propaganda by Edward Bernays. I had swottily volunteered to lead the discussion of the Century of the Self.
Here were some of my thoughts on the watching and the reading:
Proposition: the people are irrational and cannot be trusted
1. Who are the people?
2. By whom can’t they be trusted?
3. If an elite needs to control the masses, who will constitute this elite and how can their rationality, and therefore trustworthiness, be established?
4. Who suppresses the savage barbarism of the elite as they suppress that of the masses?
The elite is constituted by those in power right now and those who can grab power – so it is not determined rationally but by the powerful and ruthless, not the rational.
Does anyone see themselves as being a member of the masses? Are the masses always something other than the self that talks about them? Me vs. everybody else.
Is the irrationality of the masses consituted by not acting in the interests of the people deeming them to be irrational?
Change from Citizenship to Consumerism:
Will Hutton: Shopping and Tut Tutting
“The opinion-forming classes are so busy delivering their views while juggling their overcrowded lives that they rarely have the time to surrender to savouring that moment when they might unexpectedly enhance their lives by finding another diverting item on which to spend money – in short, by shopping.
They deplore the outcome – industrialised shopping malls, mass advertising, the manipulation of desire by producers and retailers – as if the consumers at the other end of all this effort were just brainwashed dolts colluding unwillingly in the destruction of their spiritual life and the interpersonal relationships which are central to their happiness. Shopping on this scale and with this degree of commitment, in this worldview, is a form of psychosis.”
This was a really bizarre article to read by an esteemed thinker like Hutton. The premise of his article – that shopping is a form of self expression that should be enjoyed with abandon is simplistic and uncritical. He makes some good points though about the arguments that are often made against shopping and consuming as a form of expression – there is an interesting overlap between arguments about the dumb shopping machines created by consumerism and Bernays’s contempt for the stupid masses.
Propaganda and relative truth
Is something true if enough people think it is true?
“So how do the media work around their inability to deliver scientific evidence? They use authority figures, the very antithesis of what science is about, as if they were priests, or politicians, or parent figures. ‘Scientists today said … scientists revealed … scientists warned.’ And if they want balance, you’ll get two scientists disagreeing, although with no explanation of why (an approach at its most dangerous with the myth that scientists were “divided” over the safety of MMR). One scientist will ‘reveal’ something, and then another will ‘challenge’ it. A bit like Jedi knights.”
The notion that the truth of an idea rests on how many people are convinced it is true is one that has considerable currency among many people. High profile examples that occur to me are:
*Government money going to “complementary therapies” in the UK
*Blair’s focus groups
*Law against incitement to religious hatred
PR
We had to bring an example of an article that showed evidence of PR to class. I brought an article about the iPod nano that appeared on the BBC website. There is something awesome and worrying to me about the fact that a news organisation that is paid for by British tax payers and which is not allowed to advertise would be happy to publish what was clearly an advertisement poorly disguised as a press release that they clearly hadn’t bothered to add any information of value to those other than potential customers of Apple, and all that for free.
What a great PR job Apple’s people have done to convince so many people that their product releases are news – the web, newspapers, and blogs were full of articles about a personal stereo just because they were selling it. Bernays would have approved.
Sep 182005
I’m taking a class in Tisch School of the Arts called Primetime: The Game of Television. The whole semester is one long role-playing game based on the TV industry.
The first season is three weeks long and I’m working with two girls from my class as a Production Company called Rockett Productions. We sold five shows to two networks.
Here are the descriptions of the shows:
Family Guy
“MIND OVER MURDER”
Peter gets in trouble with the law after hitting a pregnant woman at Chris’ soccer game and is put under house arrest. After having a vision of the Pawtucket Patriot he opens a bar in the basement and soon Lois lives out her dreams as a singer. Meanwhile Stewie is having teething problems so decides to build a time machine so that he can speed up the process.
One Liner:
Stewie Griffin: “For the love of God, shake me! Shake me like a British nanny!
Extras
A new six-part comedy series set in the world of film and television and focused in particular on the mundane tedium of life as an extra. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, makers of The Office, are back together for more cringe-making, must-see hilarity. Ricky (The Office’s David Brent) will play Andy Millman – a jobbing extra with aspirations.
The Nun episode: Andy pretends there’s a God and get a date while Maggie takes lessons on phone filth from a wimple-wearing Kate Winslet.
One Liner:
Makers of the Office and Celebrity Guest Stars poke fun at the TV industry and its denizens.
The Stars Tonight with Rachel Bilson
Trendy young star and OC actress Rachel Bilson hosts a
30-minute entertainment show on the latest news about the rising stars and celebrities from a young and hip perspective. Entertainment news stories cover up-and-coming young celebrities, as well as follow
emerging music, fashion and lifestyle trends. University grounds will
often be location for news segments, and provide subjects for stories.
Reporting both lighthearted and serious issues the young want to be
informed of, four segments related to Hurricane Katrina will make up the first episode: coverage of Oprah’s Benefit Bakesale, the Music Katrina Benefit Concert, Survivor Interviews and Celebrity Responses.
One Liner:
Watch the stars come out tonight – Oprah’s bakesale
Coasting
Natalie Portman stars as Claire – a smart twenty-something trying to make her way in the competitive world of a TV network. Her scruples are constantly tested as she comes into contact with the sordid dealings and lifestyle peccadilloes of her bosses and the big players in the TV game. This week Claire finds out more than she wanted to know about her colleague Matthew – but now that she knows, a big decision needs to be made. Can she do the right thing and avoid alienating the one person she trusts at work? Luckily she can go home and mull it over with a glass of wine and some pizza. But roommate Beth has different ideas…
One Liner: The intriguing world of working in TV and living in New York through the eyes of a smart young woman. Starring Natalie Portman
Academia Erotica
Student-volunteer dancers from universities around the nation compete
in an American Idol-style erotic show. Open auditions in which each
university chooses its erotic-student representation will be held in
the beginning of the one-hour show. After a series of eliminating
rounds, the final five groups from the universities compete for the
Academia Erotica Title. Professional dance instructors, erotic
entertainers and adult-movie directors will make up the panel of
judges who will arbitrate the nationwide competition. Student dancers
come up with their most fantastical erotic costumes and props for
their dance presentations, and playroll from any of the three themes:
S & M, student-teacher play and school girl/school boy tease. No
nudity is allowed, and there’s an extensive rules that govern the
role-playing. A full education package will be given to the student
winners.
One Liner: A different kind of eduction – the nation’s students compete to be the nation’s Erotic Idol
