In our politically charged environment when anyone who opposes a popular or, depending on your ideology, the morally correct opinion, it is pleasant to be occasionally reminded that law and governance, however impersonal, are still objective arenas of discourse. It's true that we're overly litigious, however. Briefly: A man sentenced to 10 years for DWI and vehicular manslaughter was sued by the victim's family. Not satisfied with a sentence that probably wouldn't go lower than five years with good behavior, they wanted damages. He counter-sued and claimed their teenage son's disobedience of bicycle helmet laws contributed to his death and his own jail sentence. Some in the media portrayed his suit as morbid but I believed it illustrated the neutered way in which society takes the little things that make up life and puts them under a magnifying glass whenever we get our panties in a bunch. The civil suit against OJ was bad enough but he was a free man and still had plenty of money--this guy wasn't going to be earning much money in prison. His suit put the absurdity of the lawsuit into the open and transformed the public's perception of grieving parents seeking justice to vengeful parents seeking a paycheck.
The panel on the use of the Kindle was more genial but reminded me of this case nonetheless. The first presenter walked the audience into their mind-set that the device was simply being tested, rather than mandated, and having no blind students, they could not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Quite intentionally the coming lawsuit seemed asinine. Another example of overly litigious citizens using the state to lower standards to the commonest denominators to disadvantage the majority of Americans who have fully functioning eyes. But after another speaker described "print disabled" persons and attempts to ensure that these persons are not left out of the discussions which develop these paperless technologies and mandate accessibility, the frivolous lawsuit took on important symbolic meanings intended to increase awareness. Perhaps I run the risk of seeming prejudiced when I say that people with untreatable mental disorders that keep them from learning effectively without outside assistance should probably not go to college in the first place. People who are deaf or blind or have reduced use of their limbs can and should be reasonably accommodated--but only if their disabilities demonstratively limit their talent. Stephen Hawking stands out as an extreme example: A Brilliant mind trapped inside a nearly lifeless shell. Many persons suffering from retardation are given High School diplomas as more of a gesture but potential employers realize this. High School is no longer a "Secondary School" that only the most well off Americans completed but rather an assumed minimum educational qualification and it doesn't behoove America well to turn college into the new gold standard. This is not Harrison Bergeron.
The second video, save for discussions of the ways libraries can be more attractive to students with a coffeeshop like atmosphere, was much less stimulating. The southern woman's accent was one of the strongest I've heard from an obviously intelligent person. My experience has been that the strongest accents have the worst grammar and thus perpetuate the image of the ignorant southerner. This sort of spoils things for proud southerners who freely use "y'all", and English would benefit from a second-person plural, but refrain from double-negatives. Her frequent interruptions of other speakers irked me but she usually contributed to thoughtful discussion so she came out ahead--as far as I'm concerned.
It is a cliche but still no less true that libraries must re-invent themselves as their users change. I recall an anecdote of a campus which mandated laptops and, because the library did nothing to provide services and instruction to fit this new paradigm, eventually dissolved the library. While I prefer an actual coffee-house to a hybrid library, many of my peers don't and I recognize this must be exploited. This will become especially important as generations of children are given handmedown PCs and laptops and lose the physicality which gave birth to the terms "file" or "cut and paste."
The audience input was also quite fascinating. Not being a tech person I failed to understand, at least at first, why Google wouldn't want metadata for more complete and accurate searching. From my understanding of the subsequent discussion, the fault with Google's search mechanisms which allows Google Bombing would be exacerbated if they accepted metadata.
After these videos, however, I kind of want a Kindle for PDFs. Unlike most of my peers I don't print them but I don't like to carry my laptop everywhere. It's a heavy mofo and has destroyed two of the three zipper compartments in my expensive leather messenger bag. I still have no idea how much repairs might be... perhaps I should sue?
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Conceptual Issues in Government Publications and the Coming Apocolypse
Perhaps because Nancy Mulhern, someone I've known for several years now, is leading the government publications discussion, the readings were a little heavy on conceptual matters. This heavy conceptual basis is the same for most of our class's readings but then again I'd've hardly appreciated an explanation of SUDOC classification and "Digital Democracy" covered the pragmatic side pretty well.
The CWD article approached information from an apparently unique perspective but, looking at them both, someone should consider the consequences of diminished government print documentation and the various information/citizen types many people willfully avoid or do not have reliable infrastructure for the computer and Internet access. My girlfriend's father lives in a cabin that's better than some proper homes I've visited but is completely off the grid. Until this year he didn't have running water and he relies on solar power to charge car batteries used for his radio, portable DVD player, and occasional amp. He'd need utilities hooked up in order to support a power sucking computer with a slow connection in order to view documents but he has no desire to do this. My suspicion that many of the types of citizens who believe the state is exaggerating the danger of CWD would object if a previously held privilege were lost. Surely they can use the computer at their local library but what if their budget is so low there's only one and its primarily for the catalog? Or, what if there's a half-hour limit and the citizens wants to write the treatise on some obscure act or law?
The Nerves of Government chapter was an interesting libertarian examination of government and communications and perhaps a uniquely American outlook. In the United States we're ambivalent to the dangers of powerful government: Democrats would prefer a government that assists political, social, and economic equality in the face of change and Republicans favor actions which spur development and growth but may leave some people out of it. We're not used to thinking about the government as a free speech agent because the first amendment is our guarantor and our history still convinces us that our government in small. We've never had, for example, pirate radio competing with the monopolistic paternalism of the BBC. Our version of this conflict is Clinton signing a law deregulating the commercial radio industry which allowed Clear Channel Communications to buy out practically any station it wanted.
Our government is actually quite large but it's federated so most of the control is local or state level but there's always a trace of "What if--" in the American psyche which usually leads to these types of discussions. What if the feds use the commerce clause to exercise total control? What if they control the means of communication? What if the Canadians invade? What if the Ruskies finally go through with it? We'd better stock up on every type of gun the liberal American weapons laws allow, and some they don't, build a bunker and stock it with dehydrated food. Down there, the Internet will just be a pleasant memory of naked women and eBay.
Any digital democracy model must find a place for Americans like my girlfriend's father and the conspiracy theorists or else they may start another Whiskey Rebellion.
The CWD article approached information from an apparently unique perspective but, looking at them both, someone should consider the consequences of diminished government print documentation and the various information/citizen types many people willfully avoid or do not have reliable infrastructure for the computer and Internet access. My girlfriend's father lives in a cabin that's better than some proper homes I've visited but is completely off the grid. Until this year he didn't have running water and he relies on solar power to charge car batteries used for his radio, portable DVD player, and occasional amp. He'd need utilities hooked up in order to support a power sucking computer with a slow connection in order to view documents but he has no desire to do this. My suspicion that many of the types of citizens who believe the state is exaggerating the danger of CWD would object if a previously held privilege were lost. Surely they can use the computer at their local library but what if their budget is so low there's only one and its primarily for the catalog? Or, what if there's a half-hour limit and the citizens wants to write the treatise on some obscure act or law?
The Nerves of Government chapter was an interesting libertarian examination of government and communications and perhaps a uniquely American outlook. In the United States we're ambivalent to the dangers of powerful government: Democrats would prefer a government that assists political, social, and economic equality in the face of change and Republicans favor actions which spur development and growth but may leave some people out of it. We're not used to thinking about the government as a free speech agent because the first amendment is our guarantor and our history still convinces us that our government in small. We've never had, for example, pirate radio competing with the monopolistic paternalism of the BBC. Our version of this conflict is Clinton signing a law deregulating the commercial radio industry which allowed Clear Channel Communications to buy out practically any station it wanted.
Our government is actually quite large but it's federated so most of the control is local or state level but there's always a trace of "What if--" in the American psyche which usually leads to these types of discussions. What if the feds use the commerce clause to exercise total control? What if they control the means of communication? What if the Canadians invade? What if the Ruskies finally go through with it? We'd better stock up on every type of gun the liberal American weapons laws allow, and some they don't, build a bunker and stock it with dehydrated food. Down there, the Internet will just be a pleasant memory of naked women and eBay.
Any digital democracy model must find a place for Americans like my girlfriend's father and the conspiracy theorists or else they may start another Whiskey Rebellion.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
As the World Turns
I suspect this week's readings are right up Alan's alley but, with the exception of a few portions in each article, they were predominately at the cross-roads of law and economics--two subjects I don't care to study. The soap-opera like conditions in Telling Tales Out of School were a useful wrapper in the discussion of ownership in corporatist universities but at times reminded me of Henrietta Lacks, Revisited.
While I knew something about the ways in which copyright law has evolved over the centuries, the long quote in Intellectual Property and the Liberal State reminded me how irrational it sounds to justify a decision, any decision really, by claiming it will undermine a whole host of related activities. That an author loses all control of their work as it is disseminated was covered in a previous reading, which one I am unsure, but that only considered the intellectual component. Perhaps the Labor Theory that incorporated millers and printers into a book was relevant in a time when books were still something of an art form in an age of poor literacy relatively poor rates of reproducibility. As more people have the intelligence and leisure to read books and printing is less arduous the financial incentive increases with this new capacity. It seems....
I also enjoyed the nuances of the Cultures and Copyrights article which elaborated on the creolization of copyright law in Australia. The author claimed that sacredness was being injected into copyright law but I feel the case was reasonably made by Intell Prop in Lib State when it argued that the romantic idea of authorship, mainly inspiration and originality by using community resources like language, culture, etc, injected sacredness into copyright law quite some time ago.
Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age made an interesting and admittedly flawed argument in favor of vernacular laws based on common sense in an age of wide dissemination. Too often our societies can't deal with problems of such a scale because any sweeping action would instigate large and powerful groups and change our very conception of, in this case, copyright law. In politics these are called "Third Rail" issues. President Bush knew Social Security had problems and proposed a privatization scheme which may have alleviated the coming crisis but is instead a signature domestic failure for a president who will probably be remembered for foreign policy. Health care is a similar third rail. By the author of Revising Copyright Law looking at the problem and proposing solutions, he's assisting the necessary dialogue as the controlling means of information are lost or disseminated. I doubt much has or will come of it, however. Greed and shortsightedness are fairly common attributes of agents whose primary concern is profit.
While I knew something about the ways in which copyright law has evolved over the centuries, the long quote in Intellectual Property and the Liberal State reminded me how irrational it sounds to justify a decision, any decision really, by claiming it will undermine a whole host of related activities. That an author loses all control of their work as it is disseminated was covered in a previous reading, which one I am unsure, but that only considered the intellectual component. Perhaps the Labor Theory that incorporated millers and printers into a book was relevant in a time when books were still something of an art form in an age of poor literacy relatively poor rates of reproducibility. As more people have the intelligence and leisure to read books and printing is less arduous the financial incentive increases with this new capacity. It seems....
I also enjoyed the nuances of the Cultures and Copyrights article which elaborated on the creolization of copyright law in Australia. The author claimed that sacredness was being injected into copyright law but I feel the case was reasonably made by Intell Prop in Lib State when it argued that the romantic idea of authorship, mainly inspiration and originality by using community resources like language, culture, etc, injected sacredness into copyright law quite some time ago.
Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age made an interesting and admittedly flawed argument in favor of vernacular laws based on common sense in an age of wide dissemination. Too often our societies can't deal with problems of such a scale because any sweeping action would instigate large and powerful groups and change our very conception of, in this case, copyright law. In politics these are called "Third Rail" issues. President Bush knew Social Security had problems and proposed a privatization scheme which may have alleviated the coming crisis but is instead a signature domestic failure for a president who will probably be remembered for foreign policy. Health care is a similar third rail. By the author of Revising Copyright Law looking at the problem and proposing solutions, he's assisting the necessary dialogue as the controlling means of information are lost or disseminated. I doubt much has or will come of it, however. Greed and shortsightedness are fairly common attributes of agents whose primary concern is profit.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Negro Views
Deborah Brandt is right that we take literacy for granted but until this book I simply hadn't considered the innate differences between learning to write and learning to read. It wasn't until my early adulthood that I realized exactly how a person could read a foreign language without speaking it and it naturally follows that a person could learn to read without being able to write effectively. I found the chapter "The Sacred and the Profane" illuminating in the small-p politics of conflict surrounding them.
But indicative of my internal issues with race, "The Power of It" profoundly annoyed me with its emphasis on civil rights and church. Brandt was documenting people as she saw them, so she can't be faulted for working with what she found, but it's annoying that the black image hasn't gone past this yet. The reminders of injustice and exclusion of the not-so-old South always make my blood boil but the non-believer in me abhors the extensive use of the Bible as a reading primer and dominance of the church in black life. Were I a former slave, or the son of slaves, who took the time to consider which religion to choose, I hope I would refuse the one of my masters and tormentors. Use of artifacts, like that three year old who loved a particular pen, were touching anecdotes but nearly the entire chapter had racism and slavery looming in the corner. I enjoy feeling angry but only about certain things which are arguable.
But indicative of my internal issues with race, "The Power of It" profoundly annoyed me with its emphasis on civil rights and church. Brandt was documenting people as she saw them, so she can't be faulted for working with what she found, but it's annoying that the black image hasn't gone past this yet. The reminders of injustice and exclusion of the not-so-old South always make my blood boil but the non-believer in me abhors the extensive use of the Bible as a reading primer and dominance of the church in black life. Were I a former slave, or the son of slaves, who took the time to consider which religion to choose, I hope I would refuse the one of my masters and tormentors. Use of artifacts, like that three year old who loved a particular pen, were touching anecdotes but nearly the entire chapter had racism and slavery looming in the corner. I enjoy feeling angry but only about certain things which are arguable.
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