To make an annotation more fun, I think I'll introduce it with a video.
Wood, Denis. Rethinking the Power of Maps. Guilford Press: New York, 2010.
Rethinking the Power of Maps is a follow up to Denis Wood’s 1992 book, The Power of Maps. It takes a historical/theoretical approach to interrogating both the way maps have been used to constitute and reify the nation state, as well as the map-based responses to those map-based expressions of traditional power. Each point Wood raises is backed up by a couple of historical examples, which he proceeds to unpack to reveal the theoretical underpinnings that allowed maps to have such a pervasive influence.
Despite engaging with many heavily theoretical texts and dealing with topics, such as power, traditionally steeped in opaquely academic language, Wood’s writing is highly accessible if not informal. There are numerous ellipses throughout the book, and he frequently makes his point through a series of rhetorical questions rather than argumentation, limiting his usefulness for direct quotation, though not for citation.
Though much of the book illuminates the historical function of maps, the most salient and unique arguments come from part two, when Wood moves past state-based mapping arguments and explores contemporary mapping practices such as protest maps, critical cartography, counter-mapping, counter-counter-mapping. Many of these topics have limited theoretical discussion because of their recent development, but Wood not only explains the impact of the examples, but also effectively situates them in relation to past mapping practices.
Ultimately, Wood’s analysis of maps is an excellent primer for thinking about how maps re-entrench dominant ideologies by passing off subjective perception as objective fact. Though the analysis in the first half of the book is not entirely unique, it does provide an essential background for understanding the contemporary role of maps and mapping generally. So not only is the book useful for understanding the power of maps generally, it also extends the discourse of cartographic power into present practices. It critically examines both the effect of modern mapping systems like Geographic Information Systems and the technophilic discourses surrounding them – even if it is sometimes closer to a rant than a well-structured and thorough critique.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Comments
Two quick notes:
1. I don’t know how I feel about having to post things like these comments on my blog if I’m supposed to also put it out there – makes me feel like I’m putting out a class assignment rather than my own actual blog.
2. On the first blog my comment is queued, so we’ll see if they ever wind up posted.
Regardlss, here are the comments and links to the original articles:
AU Center for Social Media – Universal Broadband
When I first saw this post, I was really excited at the issues I thought it might address given that I felt like the call for universal broadband access was one of the most central, but least developed portions of the Knight Commission’s previous white paper. Ultimately, however, I’m not sure I feel significantly better after reading this proposal than I did after reading the initial one.
One thing I do find important is pointing out digital literacy and relevance as being factors in addition to cost of why people don’t already have access, which I think correctly hints that access is not the only important factor in preventing the existence of a second class citizenry. At the same time, however, I think there are a lot of issues this still skirts over. Primarily, it re-entrenches the privileging of certain uses of technology over others (in this case, broadband versus phone) which seems to re-entrench the prejudice that the speaking/analyzing groups are the tool-users while the others lag behind, even though it may be more a different set of tools being used (I think this is clearest in the discussion of television).
I still feel like the lack of attention to how technical access relates to other issues is problematic, but I don’t feel like that criticism applies as much to this article given its much narrower focus, but I’m definitely still worried about what emphasizing access may lead to a celebration when/if universal access comes to be. Access doesn’t strike me as actually an issue of alleviating hierarchical forces so much as not instituting new segregated spaces of privilege, and I worry that working primarily against the latter will divert attention from the former. In short, focusing on access will ensure that unequal access won’t be the cause of a second class citizenry, but it doesn’t do anything to correct the already disadvantaged situation of people with less time, smaller vocabularies, etc and if anything just covers up that situation and may present it as solved for the digital age.
The second post is... Perhaps a Revolution is Not What We Need
I think the point about Twitter’s flexibility and that its “norms emerge, mutate, collide, and fade away” fluidly is a really important point and adds another layer in which Gladwell’s false distinction between online and traditional activism seems cracked. By using the example of SNCC at Woolworth’s, Gladwell is isolating an effective sit-in some 50 years after its occurrence when its impact can be fairly well understood (though I think Ron Burnett makes a good point about other sit-ins not lasting in our cultural memories). In this context, of course Twitter and other social media platforms aren’t going to compare – they’re in their nascent stages and are surrounded by rapidly shifting norms (to say nothing of the lack of parallel between sit-ins and Twitter – a better comparison would be the conversations that made people beyond those in Greensboro aware of the sit-ins and Twitter).
More than anything else, this serves to make the parallel between “Frown Power” and “It Gets Better” more interesting because it draws a parallel between two different network-based solutions – but I think it ultimately runs into a similar problem as what I mentioned with Twitter. Savage’s YouTube campaign could create social change and make teens feel like it gets better, but it may not ultimately have a large impact (though certainly there has been a lot of buzz around it, I think most of that is due to its timeliness and potential, not effectiveness).
I guess this leads to me to my ultimate question and reason for posting this – how do we focus on outcomes when the development of these tools and campaigns is still occurring? I feel like emphasizing outcomes sometimes begets sometimes premature historicizing where we write about technology as if it has created the sort of change we dream it will.
More, I wonder about the focus on outcomes in non-hierarchical, grassroots change because I feel like it encourages inappropriate application of metrics, and I wonder if that’s part of where Gladwell’s problem lies. He seems to value concrete progress above anything else, and while we can see laws change, it’s almost impossible to see perspectives change except retroactively. So I guess while I agree about the importance of outcomes, I wonder how we can actually employ that in contemporary analyses of social media.
1. I don’t know how I feel about having to post things like these comments on my blog if I’m supposed to also put it out there – makes me feel like I’m putting out a class assignment rather than my own actual blog.
2. On the first blog my comment is queued, so we’ll see if they ever wind up posted.
Regardlss, here are the comments and links to the original articles:
AU Center for Social Media – Universal Broadband
When I first saw this post, I was really excited at the issues I thought it might address given that I felt like the call for universal broadband access was one of the most central, but least developed portions of the Knight Commission’s previous white paper. Ultimately, however, I’m not sure I feel significantly better after reading this proposal than I did after reading the initial one.
One thing I do find important is pointing out digital literacy and relevance as being factors in addition to cost of why people don’t already have access, which I think correctly hints that access is not the only important factor in preventing the existence of a second class citizenry. At the same time, however, I think there are a lot of issues this still skirts over. Primarily, it re-entrenches the privileging of certain uses of technology over others (in this case, broadband versus phone) which seems to re-entrench the prejudice that the speaking/analyzing groups are the tool-users while the others lag behind, even though it may be more a different set of tools being used (I think this is clearest in the discussion of television).
I still feel like the lack of attention to how technical access relates to other issues is problematic, but I don’t feel like that criticism applies as much to this article given its much narrower focus, but I’m definitely still worried about what emphasizing access may lead to a celebration when/if universal access comes to be. Access doesn’t strike me as actually an issue of alleviating hierarchical forces so much as not instituting new segregated spaces of privilege, and I worry that working primarily against the latter will divert attention from the former. In short, focusing on access will ensure that unequal access won’t be the cause of a second class citizenry, but it doesn’t do anything to correct the already disadvantaged situation of people with less time, smaller vocabularies, etc and if anything just covers up that situation and may present it as solved for the digital age.
The second post is... Perhaps a Revolution is Not What We Need
I think the point about Twitter’s flexibility and that its “norms emerge, mutate, collide, and fade away” fluidly is a really important point and adds another layer in which Gladwell’s false distinction between online and traditional activism seems cracked. By using the example of SNCC at Woolworth’s, Gladwell is isolating an effective sit-in some 50 years after its occurrence when its impact can be fairly well understood (though I think Ron Burnett makes a good point about other sit-ins not lasting in our cultural memories). In this context, of course Twitter and other social media platforms aren’t going to compare – they’re in their nascent stages and are surrounded by rapidly shifting norms (to say nothing of the lack of parallel between sit-ins and Twitter – a better comparison would be the conversations that made people beyond those in Greensboro aware of the sit-ins and Twitter).
More than anything else, this serves to make the parallel between “Frown Power” and “It Gets Better” more interesting because it draws a parallel between two different network-based solutions – but I think it ultimately runs into a similar problem as what I mentioned with Twitter. Savage’s YouTube campaign could create social change and make teens feel like it gets better, but it may not ultimately have a large impact (though certainly there has been a lot of buzz around it, I think most of that is due to its timeliness and potential, not effectiveness).
I guess this leads to me to my ultimate question and reason for posting this – how do we focus on outcomes when the development of these tools and campaigns is still occurring? I feel like emphasizing outcomes sometimes begets sometimes premature historicizing where we write about technology as if it has created the sort of change we dream it will.
More, I wonder about the focus on outcomes in non-hierarchical, grassroots change because I feel like it encourages inappropriate application of metrics, and I wonder if that’s part of where Gladwell’s problem lies. He seems to value concrete progress above anything else, and while we can see laws change, it’s almost impossible to see perspectives change except retroactively. So I guess while I agree about the importance of outcomes, I wonder how we can actually employ that in contemporary analyses of social media.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Quick Thoughts on Small Change
Originally this was just going to be a link, but I had a few quick thoughts I figured I may as well share.
After hearing high school debaters talk about whether or not economic sanctions ought to be used to achieve foreign policy objects for five months, I can honestly say thank god for Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker this month. Not because I endorse the entirety of what he argues, but because I can finally get high school debaters to understand that their argument that uses Twitter in Iran as proof that technology solves for tyrannical control is absolutely absurd.
Even so, I have a real love/hate relationship with the article. He gets so much right, but at the same time, he gets so much wrong. The points about twitter and social media really are astute and critical observations that expose the techno-utopian desires for exactly what they are. Twitter doesn’t support Farsi – so why would it be a huge site for organizing? A quote that Gladwell picked out from Golnaz Esfandiari I think situates the discourse really effectively: “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection.”
But at the same time, I really dislike how he sets up traditional and online activism as two different poles, or as in opposition to each other. Perhaps there is reason to think that offline activism is being supplanted, but I don't see that sort of analysis in the article and I think that, ultimately, Gladwell's argumentation really breaks down once he starts discussing activism and different sorts of ties because it was treated more as a vehicle for the major point he was making, rather than a fully fleshed out analysis of activism in the digital age.
Maybe I’ll write about this in more detail later, but since I was just reading the article again I thought I’d post something quickly about it.
After hearing high school debaters talk about whether or not economic sanctions ought to be used to achieve foreign policy objects for five months, I can honestly say thank god for Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker this month. Not because I endorse the entirety of what he argues, but because I can finally get high school debaters to understand that their argument that uses Twitter in Iran as proof that technology solves for tyrannical control is absolutely absurd.
Even so, I have a real love/hate relationship with the article. He gets so much right, but at the same time, he gets so much wrong. The points about twitter and social media really are astute and critical observations that expose the techno-utopian desires for exactly what they are. Twitter doesn’t support Farsi – so why would it be a huge site for organizing? A quote that Gladwell picked out from Golnaz Esfandiari I think situates the discourse really effectively: “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection.”
But at the same time, I really dislike how he sets up traditional and online activism as two different poles, or as in opposition to each other. Perhaps there is reason to think that offline activism is being supplanted, but I don't see that sort of analysis in the article and I think that, ultimately, Gladwell's argumentation really breaks down once he starts discussing activism and different sorts of ties because it was treated more as a vehicle for the major point he was making, rather than a fully fleshed out analysis of activism in the digital age.
Maybe I’ll write about this in more detail later, but since I was just reading the article again I thought I’d post something quickly about it.
Righthaven and The Copyright-Quo
Over the last decade and a half it’s become abundantly clear that something about the current institution of news distribution has to change. The internet has pretty well shot print journalism’s reader base by offering not only more up to the moment news but also a wider variety of sources and often without a direct monetary expenditure. That’s not to say that no one reads newspapers anymore, but to say its readership has declined is a bit of an understatement.
Most newspaper companies have tried to adapt by hosting content online, and in the early days they tried various monetization techniques – they partnered with subscription services like AOL, employed micropayments for articles, tried to make their content less shareable, and various other tactics.
Few, if any of these practices have been sustainable – largely because they all hold strongly to traditional monologist notions of information dissemination. But, as Gordy Thompson put it to Clay Shirky. “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you,” it’s clear that more radical shifts in business practices are necessary. Of course, given that the current moguls rose to power under the current structures, it’s not surprising that more complete overhauls have been largely resisted.
But that does not even remotely explain (much less make acceptable) some of the developments of the last 6 months.
Taking a page from the recording companies’ ongoing though lessening lawsuits against peer-to-peer music sharers and the more recent BitTorrent cases targeting seeders and leechers of films such as The Hurt Locker, a Nevada based lawfirm, Righthaven LLC (which represents a few papers, most notably the Las Vegas Review-Journal) is trying to monetize news on the backend by suing bloggers, non-profits, and individuals whose sites contain reproductions of their articles in part or in full.
I have so many problems with this it’s hard to even know where to begin. On a very basic level, I think it has the potential to cause a really serious chilling effect on internet discussion since the reposting of facts garnered from news articles could become a hazard if Righthaven is successful. And that is an assault on the way most internet discussion goes. You read something, do research, and bring the fruit of your research back to the original discussion – often copy/pasting tidbits of information and linking back/quoting for longer statements.
“The basis of the lawsuit was what was scary,” said Erik Altieri, an employee of NORML, one of the first organizations to be sued by Righthaven. “That someone could just sell the rights to their material to a law firm who patrols the internet for use infringement, even if it was years ago, even if it was sourced out. Even if you cited them and linked back to their original articles.”
Now, Righthaven says their goal is deterring copyright theft, but to me, the interview Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson did with Wired speaks pretty directly against that (of course this is slightly slanted since the quotes are from an article and not me taking them from the full text of what he said, so I may be cherry picking from a cherry picker, but still). I’d imagine the argument for their strategy as optimizing the level of deterrence might go something like this:
We only buy rights when we know we can sue, and we don’t send take down notices because few websites comply explicitly with the DMCA so the “infringers” are not even protected. More, since they are largely individuals, even if they would deserve a take down notice, it’s probably cheaper for them to settle, so it still serves the same purpose of scaring people. On top of that, though, the same Wired article “Righthaven has other media clients that he [Gibson] won’t name until the lawsuits start rolling out,” so you shouldn’t post anything from any article from any newspaper because they may be working with us.
The portion that speaks towards this sue-first style as a short-term business model that intends to capitalize on changing norms of content sharing rather than be a lasting solution comes from the very end of the Wired article - “Frankly, I think we’re having tremendous success at a number of levels,” Gibson says. “We file new complaints every day.” That success includes rolling out suits hints that their goal is not to stop people from what they see as infringement, but to profit off of what they know is going to continue to be the norm – people will quote and link to them, and then they can continue to sue and settle. They’ve already filed over 130 claims, and settled at least 29 of them for roughly $116,000, and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Really, if deterrence were really Righthaven’s goal, the only success would be when there are no more suits that could be filed.
Granted, I think the business model is a little bit more complex than that. I think part of the motivation is also to create a short-term buzz around the LVRJ so that they get more traffic. I, for one, had never heard of the LVRJ much less visited their site before the Righthaven cases – now I’ve read a grand total of 3 articles (all on their views of suing infringers). Of course, this seems like a terribly silly long-term practice because at the same time they are causing fewer other people to link to their site, which hurts their rank on search engines like Google, but for now, I bet their advertising revenue is up because controversy means clicks and eyes.
But their success as a business is not what troubles me about these suits, obviously. Honestly, I really hope I’m seriously overstating the quality of their business model (sorry if the length of that tangent was a bit much). What bothers me most about it is that it works to prop up a breaking if not broken status quo. As I said at the beginning of this post, clearly something has radically changed if the people your business has to fear are your fans and not your foes. Righthaven is doing its best to avoid letting its fans actually celebrate the work the newspaper does and trying to preserve an outdated model where the newspaper is the only place that can supply news.
What’s worse is that it’s using governmental policy and federal structures to prop up the system. Law is meant to be a shield against immorality, something that protects people and businesses from abuse – not stand in the way of change (honestly, these practices seem oddly reminiscient of pre-Civil Rights era law abuses that tried to prevent the enfranchisement of African Americans). Righthaven is treating the law like a sword to cut out the legs of what is clearly a new way of viewing content that clearly the majority of people feel. And unless judges rule on it, it’s really unlikely to change given that law moves glacially compared to practices surrounding technology.
I think Righthaven knows all of this – especially the last part, about how nothing will change until rulings come in. Which is why I think Righthaven has primarily targeted individuals and groups who are largely trying to work towards some sort of change from the status quo. They do not have the time nor the money to fight against Righthaven suits, so they settle out of court – at least partially legitimizing Righthaven’s suits.
Righthaven’s suits are nothing but a desperate attempt to hold on to a status quo that has long since ceased to be what people see as the norm. The RIAA dealt with this years ago and has tried to change content models to make online distribution possible, and most newspapers are trying to work with, rather than against their readers. The Las Vegas Sun, which has been covering its competitor’s suits, for example, has been trying to turn “infringers into allies” by not suing, but asking “that they take down our material and replace it with a link and at most a paragraph or two from the story. Such links drive traffic to our site, which is a good thing, especially for our advertisers.”
But the perpetuation is more than just of the copyright-quo. Since the suits are targeting those small groups who are frequently trying to change some current policy, it also saps the already limited resources of groups like NORML, and makes their fight that much more difficult.
“In the end we probably could’ve fought it and won,” said Altieri. “But it would’ve consumed a crazy amount of our time money and resources and not have advanced the fight for marijuana legalization. Most of us involved agreed it was something we wish we had the resources to fight on principle, but it really would’ve consumed us.”
Most newspaper companies have tried to adapt by hosting content online, and in the early days they tried various monetization techniques – they partnered with subscription services like AOL, employed micropayments for articles, tried to make their content less shareable, and various other tactics.
Few, if any of these practices have been sustainable – largely because they all hold strongly to traditional monologist notions of information dissemination. But, as Gordy Thompson put it to Clay Shirky. “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you,” it’s clear that more radical shifts in business practices are necessary. Of course, given that the current moguls rose to power under the current structures, it’s not surprising that more complete overhauls have been largely resisted.
But that does not even remotely explain (much less make acceptable) some of the developments of the last 6 months.
Taking a page from the recording companies’ ongoing though lessening lawsuits against peer-to-peer music sharers and the more recent BitTorrent cases targeting seeders and leechers of films such as The Hurt Locker, a Nevada based lawfirm, Righthaven LLC (which represents a few papers, most notably the Las Vegas Review-Journal) is trying to monetize news on the backend by suing bloggers, non-profits, and individuals whose sites contain reproductions of their articles in part or in full.
I have so many problems with this it’s hard to even know where to begin. On a very basic level, I think it has the potential to cause a really serious chilling effect on internet discussion since the reposting of facts garnered from news articles could become a hazard if Righthaven is successful. And that is an assault on the way most internet discussion goes. You read something, do research, and bring the fruit of your research back to the original discussion – often copy/pasting tidbits of information and linking back/quoting for longer statements.
“The basis of the lawsuit was what was scary,” said Erik Altieri, an employee of NORML, one of the first organizations to be sued by Righthaven. “That someone could just sell the rights to their material to a law firm who patrols the internet for use infringement, even if it was years ago, even if it was sourced out. Even if you cited them and linked back to their original articles.”
Now, Righthaven says their goal is deterring copyright theft, but to me, the interview Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson did with Wired speaks pretty directly against that (of course this is slightly slanted since the quotes are from an article and not me taking them from the full text of what he said, so I may be cherry picking from a cherry picker, but still). I’d imagine the argument for their strategy as optimizing the level of deterrence might go something like this:
We only buy rights when we know we can sue, and we don’t send take down notices because few websites comply explicitly with the DMCA so the “infringers” are not even protected. More, since they are largely individuals, even if they would deserve a take down notice, it’s probably cheaper for them to settle, so it still serves the same purpose of scaring people. On top of that, though, the same Wired article “Righthaven has other media clients that he [Gibson] won’t name until the lawsuits start rolling out,” so you shouldn’t post anything from any article from any newspaper because they may be working with us.
The portion that speaks towards this sue-first style as a short-term business model that intends to capitalize on changing norms of content sharing rather than be a lasting solution comes from the very end of the Wired article - “Frankly, I think we’re having tremendous success at a number of levels,” Gibson says. “We file new complaints every day.” That success includes rolling out suits hints that their goal is not to stop people from what they see as infringement, but to profit off of what they know is going to continue to be the norm – people will quote and link to them, and then they can continue to sue and settle. They’ve already filed over 130 claims, and settled at least 29 of them for roughly $116,000, and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Really, if deterrence were really Righthaven’s goal, the only success would be when there are no more suits that could be filed.
Granted, I think the business model is a little bit more complex than that. I think part of the motivation is also to create a short-term buzz around the LVRJ so that they get more traffic. I, for one, had never heard of the LVRJ much less visited their site before the Righthaven cases – now I’ve read a grand total of 3 articles (all on their views of suing infringers). Of course, this seems like a terribly silly long-term practice because at the same time they are causing fewer other people to link to their site, which hurts their rank on search engines like Google, but for now, I bet their advertising revenue is up because controversy means clicks and eyes.
But their success as a business is not what troubles me about these suits, obviously. Honestly, I really hope I’m seriously overstating the quality of their business model (sorry if the length of that tangent was a bit much). What bothers me most about it is that it works to prop up a breaking if not broken status quo. As I said at the beginning of this post, clearly something has radically changed if the people your business has to fear are your fans and not your foes. Righthaven is doing its best to avoid letting its fans actually celebrate the work the newspaper does and trying to preserve an outdated model where the newspaper is the only place that can supply news.
What’s worse is that it’s using governmental policy and federal structures to prop up the system. Law is meant to be a shield against immorality, something that protects people and businesses from abuse – not stand in the way of change (honestly, these practices seem oddly reminiscient of pre-Civil Rights era law abuses that tried to prevent the enfranchisement of African Americans). Righthaven is treating the law like a sword to cut out the legs of what is clearly a new way of viewing content that clearly the majority of people feel. And unless judges rule on it, it’s really unlikely to change given that law moves glacially compared to practices surrounding technology.
I think Righthaven knows all of this – especially the last part, about how nothing will change until rulings come in. Which is why I think Righthaven has primarily targeted individuals and groups who are largely trying to work towards some sort of change from the status quo. They do not have the time nor the money to fight against Righthaven suits, so they settle out of court – at least partially legitimizing Righthaven’s suits.
Righthaven’s suits are nothing but a desperate attempt to hold on to a status quo that has long since ceased to be what people see as the norm. The RIAA dealt with this years ago and has tried to change content models to make online distribution possible, and most newspapers are trying to work with, rather than against their readers. The Las Vegas Sun, which has been covering its competitor’s suits, for example, has been trying to turn “infringers into allies” by not suing, but asking “that they take down our material and replace it with a link and at most a paragraph or two from the story. Such links drive traffic to our site, which is a good thing, especially for our advertisers.”
But the perpetuation is more than just of the copyright-quo. Since the suits are targeting those small groups who are frequently trying to change some current policy, it also saps the already limited resources of groups like NORML, and makes their fight that much more difficult.
“In the end we probably could’ve fought it and won,” said Altieri. “But it would’ve consumed a crazy amount of our time money and resources and not have advanced the fight for marijuana legalization. Most of us involved agreed it was something we wish we had the resources to fight on principle, but it really would’ve consumed us.”
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