wrythings

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Excellent framing of consumption.

Don’t support dictatorial regimes.

Short video linked here is well worth a few minutes, if you would like to explain wiki to those who cling to email:

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

Here’s a longer related article: Wiki and the Perfect Camping Trip | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English

The notion of “astroturf” groups as contrasted with the “grassroots” is now somewhat familiar, but let’s further consider the phenomenon of industry funded institutes or “think tanks”.

These “institutions” are established to give the credibility of scholarly or scientific form to interest driven publications and statements, or to create enough noise so as to distract from or obscure the issues in play in that field. (Much as astroturf groups attempt to lend authentic public voice to particular positions, and keeping in mind that astroturf and industry funded policy think-tanks often operate in coordinated strategy.)

(NB: the science I am invoking here is human knowledge as related to practical activity… it may range from analysis of financial documents to questions of engineering potential, to environmental impact.)

If it were merely the production of ideas, studies, or reports where the content would stand on scientific or discursive merit, it would not be that bad. However, the capacity for publication and promotion of these ideas, along with resources to staff an idea (as opposed to staffing a line of inquiry or research) is the real danger.

One unfortunate result is junk science as basis for policy.

Another is loss of faith in the potential for rational (or even scientific) resolution of particular questions, especially governance and business matters with an increased likelihood that we allow mis-direction of our attention to the “freedom” of market actors.

We subjugate public policy to business interest.

Displacing civic matters with questions of business, finance, and consumption we short-change the equation we need to bring to balance. We exclude key variables.

For questions of communications policy and investment in public infrastructure, can we be objective?

Can we establish a framework for policy makers at local, regional and national levels?

In the wireless and broadband debates, can we leave open the fundamental questions surrounding ownership models, technology choice and range of network/technology/social purpose or utility?

These three questions are central to the effective planning of any infrastructure or technology project, whether in public context, or within an organization.

Among these questions we can outline a appropriate and necessary hierarchy: purpose, possibility, and plan.

Why do we have such propensity to take the plan as given, foreclosing possibilities inherent in technology and topology and tacking on purposes only to achieve sufficient buy-in from select groups? In part it’s the politics of contest, but along with a fairly uncritical acceptance of business assertions and a lack of faith in the rational potential of human discourse, we get the policy we settle for, and we settle for the policy we get.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

– Upton Sinclair
(quoted by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth)

How much stronger does this hold for industry funded institutes or “think tanks”?

What is the difference between funding a pre-determined position (or view) and funding a line of inquiry or research? We’ll take that up shortly in another post. But simply stated, the impetus to “not understand” and the aims of obscuring the matter for others and for public decision making certainly differ in more than degree.

Always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets,but always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.

– Lao Tse on observing the Tao.

I encountered this quote on a playbill for The Shaming of the True many years ago and have always kept a copy of this observation near to hand.

Today (September 22) is One Web Day! Last year I had my act together, and wasn’t dealing with a series of family health matters and together with Dave Chakrabarti conducted a series of interviews leading up to One Web Day. The videos are worth watching… most of the interviews followed a simple convention, and were intended to explore how we use the Internet in our daily life… and my personal favorite part of the questions was when we ask people to describe the Internet.

Listening to people describe the Internet in their own terms and what they actually do with it opens an important space: there is such variety in the Internet, the really interesting things are not the new web 2.0 techniques or the hype surrounding them… it’s the actual interests that people bring to the ‘Net from their own life. When people speak about what they do others are prone to say “wow, I didn’t think about how that might be shared online, but now that I think bout it it makes sense!”

Which is to say there are tons of things online that we probably don’t think about but which pertain to the interests of others and it has become a tool in so many subcultures and obscure pursuits, allowing tremendous variety of community interests (and forms).

With the importance of the Web to our modern life, its use and potential in the full range of human experience and endeavor, it is fitting that we reflect on it’s governance and the basic communication freedoms which we should not take for granted.

This week Chicago played host to the fifth of six public hearings on media ownership convened by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Chicago Organizers did an excellent job in spreading the word and offering testimony.  The phrase “media ownership rules” here reflects an older way of thinking…  the various media - Cable, Broadcast TV and Radio and Print media need to be understood in the context of the Internet and the communications policy and infrastructure that supports it.   We live in a blended world…. the lines are blurred.

I didnt get to offer testimony, but it was quite clear that the people don’t buy the arguments favoring further relaxation of the ownership rules.  The people want the FCC to enforce the rules of the commission.    I’ll try to write more about the hearing later, but concentration of media ownership, and ownership of our communications backbone and last/first mile are clearly related issues, and we need to move towards more local ownership, production and control.  The FCC, and for that matter ICANN need to hear that message.