Jay Rosen on media after the iPad

Um, moving past the blatant anti-intellectual message that to be cool we should “be stupid,” there’s a whole lot here that’s problematic.   Women as sex objects perhaps?  The preference for balls over brains?  The image of “stupid” (i.e. cool) as a white middle-class youth we may presume has had the privilege of a good education?  Oh, and I just love that these ads (though I’m sure they appear elsewhere) line the subway tunnel right by NYU–one of the most prestigious universities in the country.

Call me “smart,” but I don’ think this ad campaign is as “stupid” (i.e. cool) as it thinks itself to be.

Unlike many of my friends (but perhaps not those who consider themselves professional rhetoricians) I’m in the habit of actually reading credit card policy updates and other fine-print heavy documents, like contracts, nutritional notes–you know–”enlarged to show texture”-type stuff.  It certainly isn’t born out of some rigid sense of responsibility; it’s much more of a perverse delight in how much communication is swept under the proverbial rug.  (If you’d like to catch this bug, I suggest you spend sometime at Mouse Print, a site dedicated to exposing the fine-strings-attached in 8 pt. font.)

So when I read through this letter I was tickled (not sure if that’s the right word) to find out that part of its purpose was about, yep, fine print.

One of the requirements included in the “Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act,” which was signed into law by President Obama on May 22, 2009,  is a redesigning of billing statements.

One of the main changes?  Font size.  After years of years the fine print, this one looked almost childish with it massive, clumsy 12-pt font!

Although it’s not the language that is used in the legislation, the Obama administration has been promoting a rhetoric of “Plain Language in Plain Site.”

Credit card contract terms will be disclosed in language that consumers can see and understand so they can avoid unnecessary costs and manage their finances … These disclosures will help consumers make informed choices about using the right financial products and managing their own financial needs.

Something like this is very easy to make fun of when touted as “real reform,” but I’m in a generous mood and right now I’m of the persuasion that this is a step in the right direction.  For instance, who is really going to take the time to read through something like this and connect the dots:

Don’t those call-out boxes, bolded terms, and line-breaks just naturally guide your eye?!  They basically interpret the information for you!  Unless you’re a fine-print-freak (like moi), this statement probably goes right in the recycling bin.  (Which is probably why people are shocked to discovered their rates get jacked every year without them really being aware.)

Right now my class and I are finishing up a project on data visualization, so I’m thinking about how much our credit/debt-lifestyles would change with some powerful graphs that displayed the same information in compelling ways.  For example, what if you were given a graph that compared your payment to the amount of time it would take for you to get out of debt?  Take data like this …

… and render it visually persuasive?  What if we had info-graphic specialists that worked in conjunction with consumer protection agencies to present this information in such a way that actually made people cognizant of where their money was going?

Perhaps something like this, but even better?

(Dennis Campbell: Center for Plain Language Symposium)

What if we started to radically reimagine the use of info-graphics and data visualization to improve daily practice toward something more sane and sustainable?

• What if every plastic bottle had a visually compelling graphic of how long it would stay in the earth (roughly 5,000 years) compared to how long most people usually use it (less than five minutes)?

• What if every gas station pump had a bar chart that revealed peak-oil information?  Perhaps a timeline of when oil actually went into mainstream production for automobiles along side a graph that showed how much is left in the earth?  Maybe include how long it took to actually make the s**t?

• What if trash bins had graphs that showed the amount of garbage we put in the earth?  Maybe even put a mirror next to it so the person could look themselves in the eye before they committed?  (Or what if trash cans were renamed to be more accurate: LANDFILL containers?)

• What if the meat you buy at the supermarket came with a stunning graph on the (stunning) amount of water it took to produce it?  (Or even oil: it takes 75 gallons of oil to bring a steer to slaughter.)

• What if instead of just the name of the country your shirt was stitched in it actually had a map with the country highlighted?  Perhaps put in a dotted line that showed how far it had to travel to be put on your back?  Or maybe it could have a mandatory comparison graphic that revealed how much the worker was paid to the cost of the shirt to the profit made through it?

And what if we didn’t wait for anyone else to start doing this? What if we took it upon ourselves to inform others through creative measures?  What if we bettered our communities through something as simple as a compelling graphic? What if we worked together to do it?

But it turns out plenty of people reacted much more strongly — and for good reasons. What I didn’t look too closely at was an immense consolidation and public-ization of Google-related activities: “Your Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public albums, and Google Chat status messages will automatically appear as posts in Buzz.” And I was automatically linked in — “14 people are already following you.” Creeeeepy.

Google’s ready-made network revealed common email/chat contacts, leading to all kinds of privacy breaches. And in this case, the stakes are far higher than the romantic escapades common to Facebookers. In today’s NYT coverage, Miguel Helft points to the difference:

E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists. And Google, so recently a hero to many people for threatening to leave China after hacking attempts against the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, now finds itself being pilloried as a clumsy violator of privacy.

As Evgeny Morozov wrote in a blog post for Foreign Policy, “If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government.”

The key point here, of course, is that despite the publicity trends online, people still think of email as a private realm — and Google ripped down that curtain, leaving people feeling exposed and vulnerable. And they’re pissed.

Google is known for releasing new products before they are fully ready and then improving them over time. But its decision to do so with Buzz, coupled with its introduction to all 176 million Gmail users by default, appears to have backfired.

“It was a terrible mistake,” said Danny Sullivan, a specialist on Google and editor of SearchEngineLand, an industry blog. “I don’t think people expected that Google would show the world who you are connected with. And if there was a way to opt out, it was really easy to miss.”

It seems that Google was just so darn excited — and expecting its users to be same — about the idea of enabling more seamless access and interaction to think much about the consequences… which is just funny, consider how astutely my undergrads note the risks. You’d think the Google team could keep up with our “intro to digital media” conversations.

A local magazine, UWeekly, wrote an article recently about “Text Dating–” the phenomenon of getting to know a person through text first before having much real world interaction with them (which I find kinda funny–most people would have already met in person in order to exchange numbers, no?). According to the article, this makes it more difficult for people to know how they should act once they are in real world contact. Ain’t that interesting?

I’ve often wondered if all this texting is similar to old time letters in any way. A fair amount of letters that were written during the civil war, for example, had such tenderness. I mean, yeah, they were soldiers who talked about people dying too, but the feeling they displayed for the recipient of the letter was heartfelt. Here’s the thing, though. They almost had to be forward in their feelings, because there weren’t other forms of accessible communication–they couldn’t just call, text, email, facebook, etc. Being forthright in their written communication was necessary to maintaining their relationships. Texting is not always a forthright thing (and sometimes it’s too forthright). So, attempting to create a relationship based on digital communication can be a hard thing to do. Perhaps it’s because it hasn’t been done to the same degree that other forms have. Maybe there is a reason why we choose that form–it’s distancing, but still revealing.

By choosing this digital form, it’s as if people learn a lot of facts about each other–schools attended, parties attended, favorite books, etc–but without knowing a person’s soul. Oooo, deep moment for today, right? But really, can you really get to know a person via the digital? If you can’t interact with that person and see how they shut the fridge door with their foot or chew on their pen caps, then can you be clued in to all that necessary non-verbal communication? Plus, do these digital digs give us the opportunity to always present our best (or worse) selves? Does that mean that a person feels connected to another or to the representation that that person gives?

Technology has a significance in our lives. When someone defriends you, it stings. It would still sting to the most selfless person ever, but where is the line between using technology as a tool for staying connected and expecting technology to do all the work for us?

But poetry specifically. Let’s talk about that. Olena (oh yes, I’m going with the first name [attribute it to being a bad motherf______--my mother doesn't like it when I say that word]) asks in her post, “are we living our lives differently? better? or are we just making stupid poetry ‘moves’?.”

Is it not those “stupid poetry moves” that contain the persuasiveness of poetry? James Longenbach writes in his book, The Resistance To Poetry:

[T]he marginality of poetry is in many ways the source of its power, a power contingent on poetry’s capacity to resist itself more strenuously than it is resisted by the culture at large.

Throughout this entire book, Longenbach emphasizes that the audience of poetry interacts with that particular genre because we find enjoyment in the challenge. Yes, poetry can be difficult, but, to quote Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, “the hard is what makes it great.” (Heck yeah, I just dropped an eighteen year old movie reference on you.)

So, aren’t those poetry moves absolutely pertinent to poetry? If poets stopped choosing to persuade their audience in the way that they do, then, at that moment, wouldn’t they stop being bad motherfuckers?

The discussion began when the medieval literature professor said she was troubled by students asking if they could read ebook versions of the assigned texts in her course.  She knew her answer to the students was no, but she said she also knew she had to think more about why that was her immediate answer.  Certainly, she said, it’s important for literature students to read the specific edition she chose (because she chose it for a particular purpose), and certainly students need shared editions so when the class performs a close reading of a particular passage, they are all looking at the same text and can easily find it with the same pagination.  But she knew there was another reason she said no to ebooks and it was more about the value of reading printed texts as opposed to etexts–about the different reading experiences students would have whether they read the text in print or online.

I quickly snapped in points about the cost of books and how ebooks could cut down on students’ expenses (a good thing, I believe) and also the changing nature of our students’ reading experiences and processes.  Many of our students are now growing up reading online and reading etexts, so I tried to argue perhaps students could have valuable reading experiences reading online the same texts we first encountered in a hardbound book.

The medievalist and the poet disagreed, and the poet added that she will not submit her poems to a publication that exists only online.  She doesn’t want her poems read in an electronic version, she said.  She wants them read on paper.

And this got me thinking about Harlot, and about our readers’ reading experiences.  All of us sitting around the table agreed that online publications can contain multi-media texts that can’t be reproduced in print journals, but a few at the table insisted that the same written text printed in an online publication could not possible be read the same way as it could be on paper.  Agreeing that the reading experiences would certainly be different (as of course the reading experience depends on so many factors, not just the form in which it appears), I was a bit concerned by the undertone of a value judgment being attached to those differences.  The woman who works in the rare books department of a well-known book store added to the conversation the issue of how “valuable texts” can only be bought by those with the proper resources, and how hard it is for her to observe people buying rare books solely for the purpose of owning them, rather than for an appreciation of the text itself.

All this is to say that I’d like to participate in and hear more discussion of people’s reading experiences with publications like Harlot. What do our readers gain and lose by experiencing our submissions solely online?

i.e. Girl Talk:

i.e. Kate’s last post about Buffy and Twilight or, one of my favorites, “40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes:”

But! Check this out. Now, people are mashing together different kinds of video games. Seriously, go play Tuper Tario Tros. This flash game combines Mario Bros. and Tetris (both personal nostalgic favorites) into one game, where it is necessary to switch back and forth between the two in order to win the game. I find this particularly interesting, because instead of the mashup living in the traditional static manner, this forces the consumer to interact with the mashup and to decide when to switch from one to the other. It’s a new era of mashup.

Other video games like DJ Hero have similar vibes, but a player cannot independently decide when to switch over. The challenge there is to follow what is already constructed. Plus, it’s still jazzing off the the same music mash idea, but Tuper Tario Tros doesn’t and it’s totally up to the player to decide when to switch over. If the player thinks that they can get Mario to make a jump, then they can stay in Mario Bros. mode, but if they’d like the extra help of some blocks, then they can switch over to Tetris mode to build up a bridge or something. It gives the player choice.

If we want to analyze this youngerish generation as being a remix culture, then this creation of choice is crazy pertinent. Doesn’t this indicate that in this progressing remix culture, it’s not only important to be able to bring our multiple resources together, but to choose when we do so and to choose how we interact with it. Ooooo, I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.

(Tuper Tario Tros link via facebook.)

It made me so happy, for a couple of reasons:

As a longtime Buffy fan (not to mention feminist), I can’t get on board with the Twilight phenomenon. Last year a student of mine wrote a rhetorical analysis of the first novel. She choose the text because although she really enjoyed the books, she felt kind of uncomfortable about the idealized relationship between Edward and Bella. And rightfully so: Her astute analysis finally led her to the conclusion that Edward fits the Harvard psychological profile of an abusiver stalker, and that Meyer’s version of love and abstinence disempowers her predominantly young, female fan base. (For more, see Christine Seifert’s “Bite Me (or Don’t)” or Anita Sarkeesian’s “The Real Reason Guys Should Hate Twilight,” among innumerable others.) This remix does a great job, I think, of humorously highlighting just those problems–and the comparative awesomeness of Buffy.

From another angle, I can’t wait to use more of McIntosh’s work in the classroom. The digital media course, which I’m centering around narrative genre(s), has me thinking a lot about fair use, remix, and how everyday composers can engage in public conversations about the texts that affect them and their culture. And this sleek, smart, and legal film works to demonstrate how effective and fun such rhetorical narratives can be.

For more from McIntosh about this remix, see his guest blog post on WIMN’s Voices. And definitely check out his other works at Rebellious Pixels.

We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes, and great love for this land…With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.

At first I was simply intrigued by the skillful circumvention of that devilishly accurate term: genocide.  But then I found myself enthralled by the questions this curious genre raises: Under what circumstances can one apologize for actions done by others?  Especially those done several hundred years ago?  What are the differences between an apology from a collective and one from an individual?  What are the consequences of an apology that deals with crimes against humanity?  And among all the atrocious acts that have been committed/commissioned by governments, how do you choose which ones get an official apology?

While this particular instance hit me hard (perhaps because Thanksgiving is such a perversely appropriate time to contemplate apologies), I must confess that I had already been thinking about the genre because of all the large-scale, national apologies we saw in 2009:

• Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, apologized on behalf of the Parliament to the thousands of orphans that had been sent to Australia from Britain under the pretenses of a better life, only to be forced into a life of exploitative labor and systematic degradation.

• In summer the US Senate passed a “concurrent resolution apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African Americans,” which “acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws [and] Apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws.”

• The Senate also heard another proposal calling for an official, national apology to Native Americans (there have been several before).  Joint Resolution 14 “acknowledge[s] a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer[s] an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.

That last bill will probably die, however, because its language has managed to sneak in elsewhere.  Just last week the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Buried in the billions of dollars of spending on new weapons and other items in the 2010 defense appropriations bill is a little-noticed expression of regret over how the U.S. had in the past used its power.  The bill contains an ‘apology to Native Peoples of the United States.’”  How apropos.  In our defense budget documentation is the sentence, “the United States, acting through Congress…recognizes that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes.” **

(Now, I don’t think anyone with a shred of integrity can suggest that the “policies” of the government were simply “ill-conceived,” but that rant is for another day.)

So what’s being communicated here? What is the government trying to persuade us of?  What’s being accomplished with this quickly developing genre?  And what’s the best way to leverage these apologies for more (significant, noble) change?  For fear of a long tirade I’ll hold my breath on this until I hear some of you chime in, but these are important questions to ask, I think, especially because the “official apology” is only going to increase, and because it is a conspicuous shift in US policy.

I remember, for example, being 11 years old and hearing Bush Sr. repeatedly claim that he will never apologize for America.

This stance was actually a key component in how Bush constructed a staunchly American ethos when running for President:

• “I don’t care what the facts are…I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”

• “If I am elected president, I will never apologize for the United States.  I will strengthen her and maker her a beacon of freedom and liberty.”

• “We must never apologize for the United States of America.”  (see Bush’s WikiQuote page for original contexts)

This post is getting a tad big, so I’m going to continue it later this week; it’s simply too intriguing of a topic to stop here.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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** If you’re like me, you’re probably stewing on whether or not an apology like this could be used in the legal system against the United States.  After all, if the government acknowledges broken treaties (33% of the landmass is still held illegally, actually, because many broken treaties never had their legal-standing fully dissolved post-population removal) and apologizes for this, it could have massive legal consequences.  But don’t worry–they thought about that ahead of time.  Included in the document is some fine print: “[This apology] isn’t intended to support any lawsuit claims against the government.”

Hmm, looks like the US learned something from their official apology to Hawaiians for invading the country and exploiting its people and resources.  Hawaii’s Supreme Court is using the apology as evidence for ceding 1.2 million acres of land away from US control.

This is the first time, from what I can gather, that an apology is being used as legal evidence.  The consequences of this case could be huge–and the US knows that.  Here’s a snippet from the Wall Street Journal article that’s linked above:

Upholding the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling could discourage Congress from making similar apologies for other historic wrongs, the Justice Department warned, adding that the Apology Resolution was only symbolic.

A year after the Apology Resolution, the [Office of Hawaiian Affairs] filed suit..leading to the high-court case. “The Western concept of land ownership was very foreign to Hawaiians,” says Hawaiian Affairs Administrator Clyde Namuo. In traditional culture, “property is not a commodity that is bought and sold but it is used to benefit people who live and reside on the land.”