Many believe that the U.S. is at the pinnacle of social and political evolution. One of the consequences of this belief is the tendency to define whatever holds in the U.S. as ideal and, insofar as other countries deviate from that, define them as problematic. For example, many believe that women in the U.S. are the most liberated in the world. Insofar as women in other societies live differently, they are assumed to be oppressed. Of course, women are oppressed elsewhere, but it is a mistake to assume that “they” are oppressed and “we” are liberated. This false binary makes invisible ways in which women elsewhere are not 100% subordinated and women here also suffer from gendered oppression.

If you’re interested, I have a paper showing how Americans make these arguments called Defining Gendered Oppression in U.S. Newspapers: The Strategic Value of “Female Genital Mutilation.”

I offer these thoughts are a preface to a postcard from PostSecret.  The person who sent in the postcard suggests that she’s not sure which is worse: the rigid and extreme standard of beauty in the U.S. and the way that women’s bodies are exposed to scrutiny or the idea of living underneath a burka that disallows certain freedoms, but frees you from evaluative eyes and the consequences of their negative appraisals.

Cartoonist Malcolm Evans drew a similarly compelling illustration of this point, sent along by David B.:

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The table is worth a long look.  Among other things it challenges the assertion that more education is the key to a better employment future.  More education is, of course, generally a good thing.  But, given BLS projections, it appears that our corporations have little interest in creating jobs requiring (and thus paying) a more highly educated workforce.

Of the 30 occupations with the largest projected numerical employment growth, 10 require less than a high school education and an additional 13 require only a high school diploma or its equivalent.  Only 4 require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The following table, which comes from the same report, shows the distribution of projected job openings by education level for all occupations: 79.7% of all projected jobs will require less than a bachelor’s degree.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Sangyoub Park sent in a link to an article at the L.A. Times story about Academy voters. Times reporters were able to verify the identity of 89% of current voters, and the paper provided this breakdown of their demographics; as it turns out, those deciding who wins an Oscar are overwhelmingly White non-Hispanic and male:

Within some categories of voting members, Whites are even more dominant; they make up 98% of writers and executives. Voters are also disproportionately older; the median age is 62, and the Times reports that only 14% were under age 50.

As the Times story illustrates, many inside and outside of the film industry believe the make-up of Oscar voters influences which movies, actors, and directors have a serious chance of winning, with those that appeal to middle-aged White men inherently advantaged because of the lack of diversity among voters.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Is this an Oxymoron?

Most of our interactions with technology are rather mundane. We flip a light switch, buckle our seat belts, or place a phone call. We have a tacit knowledge of how these devices work. In other words, we have relatively standard, institutionalized, ways of interacting with familiar technologies. For example: if I were to drive someone else’s car, even if it is an unfamiliar model, I do not immediately consult the user manual. I look around for the familiar controls, maybe flick the blinkers on while the car is still in the drive way, and off I go. Removal of these technologies (or even significant alterations) can cause confusion. This is immediately evident if you are trying to meet a friend who does not own a cell phone. Typical conventions for finding the person in a crowded public space (“Yeah, I’m here. Near the stage? Yeah I see you waving.”) are not available to you. In years prior to widespread cell phone adoption, you might have made more detailed plans before heading out (“We’ll meet by the stage at 11PM.”) but now we work out the details on the fly. Operating cars and using cell phones are just a few mundane examples of how technologies shape social behavior beyond the actions needed to operate and maintain them. The widespread adoption of technologies, and the decisions by individual groups to utilize technologies can have a profound impact on the social order of communities. This second part of the Tactical Survey will help academics, activists, and activist academics assess the roll of information technology in a movement and make better decisions on when and how to use tools like social media, live video, and other forms of computer-mediated communication.

“The Master’s Tools” or, The Apparent Hypocrisy of Apple Computers in Zuccotti Park

Skeptical journalists and talking heads were quick to point out an apparent hypocrisy within the Occupy Wall Street movement. How can these hippies protest corporations when they are using Apple computers? The earliest of these pronouncements came from a New York Times piece that ended with:

One day, a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Adam Sarzen, a decade or so older than many of the protesters, came to Zuccotti Park seemingly just to shake his head. “Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers,” he said. “Apple, one of the biggest monopolies in the world. It trades at $400 a share. Do they even know that?”

These sorts of observations are usually left unchallenged. Eric Randall, writing in The Atlantic, noticed this trend and wrote:

Depicting protestors sitting on their MacBooks fits in with the broader narrative the media has settled on, one that depicts a disorganized group of well-educated college grads who can’t figure out how to stay on message. The MacBook seems always to be used as a sort of tongue-in-cheek “stuff white people like” condemnation of the jobless, disenfranchised protestors who can somehow swing a $1,300 computer.

This is nothing new. Ever since the “Battle for Seattle” Western news outlets have used this particular narrative to discredit activists and reasserts the legitimacy of status quo consumerism. Sociologist Richard J.F. Day comments on this rhetorical device in his book Gramsci is Dead: “This is an extremely common trope of exclusion by inclusion, which works by trying to show that They (anarchist activists) are no less tainted with the stain of capitalist individualism than We (good capitalist citizens) are, and therefore have no right to criticize the status quo.”

Members of OWS have responded to these sorts of accusations, but (predictably) little has changed. Randall quotes the occupywallst.org blog‘s response:

This is a specious argument, that if taken to its conclusion would preclude the use of any product to those angered by the injustice of its producer. If you disagree with the policy of GE’s board, you cannot own a refrigerator, if a major paper conglomerate cooks its books you may not use toilet paper. This protest is against injustice committed by the greedy, not commerce itself or the products of corporations.

This appears to be an intractable problem. The powerful get to where they are by making lots of people need (and therefore buy) their stuff. They become an obligatory point of passage.  An alternative is to engage in “lifestyle politics” and avoid the use of technologies that are incompatible with your politics. This, however, usually means you are spending considerable time and effort building new capacities from the ground up, and not using your energy and resources to actually fight what you see as wrong in the world. To the extent that fighting for change and building alternative capacities are mutually exclusive tactics, a collective must make a decision on time horizons and overall goals. In a pluralist social movement like #OWS, there is enough capacity to do both. Some can fight with the problematic tools that are currently available (e.g. Apple computers and Twitter) while others work on new technologies that are less connected to the corporations.

Building Alternative Capacity

The Global Square is a new social networking site built for and by activists.

Since the eviction of almost every physical occupation in the United States, occupiers (especially the geeky ones) have been hard at work finding new and inventive ways of coordinating and connecting. One of these efforts is TheGlobalSquare.org- a multilingual, open-source social networking platform that would offer a “platform for the movement.” The media has already billed the project as “Occupy Wall Street Builds Facebook Alternative” but that only tells half the story. Building an alternative to Facebook also means building an alternative set of behaviors. Services like Twitter and Facebook are built with a certain kind of user in mind. They can be used for activism, but they are built for monetizing social activity. This means identity-protecting pseudonyms are forbidden, and censorship is negotiable.

Social media technologies are built with equal parts computer code and social norms. The assumed relationship of the individual to the collective is built into the system. For Facebook that means being open to everyone. Its institutionalized through and by the default settings of your account and the corporate business model. For Twitter, it means talk and connect as much as possible, but within the bounds and abilities of state authorities to suppress free speech on the web. Global Square’s stated philosophy is (in part):

The Global Square recognizes the principles of personal privacy as a basic right of individuals and transparency to all users as an obligation for public systems. While User Profiles will allow for as much privacy as the individual desires (technology permitting), Squares, Events, and Task Groups must be, at minimum, completely transparent to their user groups, and Systems must be completely transparent for full auditing capability by all Users.

Here, again, we see the delicate interplay of transparency and privacy that characterizes Occupy Wall Street. For Global Square, privacy of the individual is paramount, but that privacy is nested within two levels of transparency- transparency of collectives to its constituent individuals, and global transparency of governing sociotechnical systems to all users. Chris Kelty used the term recursive publics in his book Two Bits to describe communities of open-source coders that develop platforms that allow for and sustain the community. Global Square represents a similar social recursion: it is a platform to build capacity for new platforms of capacity building.

Coda

Arduino is an open-source hardware platform popular with hobbyists and DIY programmers but has been used in commercial products and academic settings.

Granted, the recursion can only go so deep. The code for Facebook or Global Square still run on the problematic hardware part 2 opened up with. The construction of open source hardware is much more complicated and resource intensive. This begs the question: Is it possible to have widely available digital technology in a world without exploited labor? Are the rare earth metals in our smart phones counter-revolutionary? What would a socially just version of Moore’s Law look like? These are questions left to future posts and other authors. What activists can and must do now, is enroll the expertise of engineers and scientist to explore these questions. This might mean activists learning the skills of engineering and science, but it might also mean creating a revolutionary computer science. Creating a computer for the people will be no easy task, and might mean creating a totally new technical artifact. It may also mean redefining technological progress to include lateral shifts that produce similar computational power but in more socially just ways. It is not enough to use these tools for good, we have to make new tools that are good.

But notably absent is a pronounced gap in Internet access by race and ethnicity. While some differences in Internet access exist, they are small in comparison to age, class and education gaps. This is particularly true when you look at cell phone adoption rates. By the end of 2011, 87% of Americans surveyed by Pew had a cell phone.

Jamilah King has an outstanding piece up on Colorlines that highlights a less talked about digital divide:

Nearly a fifth—18 percent—of African American wireless subscribers use only their cell phones to get online, as do 16 percent of Latinos. Just 10 percent of whites say the same. While 33 percent of white subscribers use their cell phones to surf the Internet, 51 percent of Latinos and 46 percent of African Americans do.

In fact, Blacks and Latinos on average use their phones for a much broader set of tasks than Whites.

King notes that the increased use of smart phones to access the Internet on the part of Black and Latino users is largely about affordability. But while a smartphone is cheaper than a computer, King notes that wireless providers are much less regulated than their broadband counterparts to whom strict net neutrality rules apply. While broadband carriers are limited in their ability to restrict content, wireless providers can more easily block content. As an example:

Verizon customers, for instance, learned the hard way in 2007 that they’re not in control of the content on their cell phones. NARAL Pro-Choice America, like many political candidates and advocacy groups, decided that year that text messaging was an effective tool to communicate with people who care about abortion rights. But Verizon disagreed—and decided its users wouldn’t receive NARAL’s texts. The company said that it had the right to block what it deemed “controversial or unsavory” messages.

“Our internal policy is in fact neutral on the position,” Verizon spokesperson Jeffrey Nelson told The New York Times, in a rather confusing bit of Big Brother speak. “It is the topic itself [abortion] that has been on our list.”

This reality begs Douglass Rushkoff’s question — “do we want a real Internet”? and its analogue question “do we want a real democracy”? The answer may ultimately be no, we’re cool. But for the most marginalized in society, a controlled Internet can help cultivate voice and forge connections to challenge authority and centralized control. But if the less well off are restricted in what they can access, then their democratic power is reduced.

There’s been a solid critique of how whites, youth, and those with college access have a larger voice on this site, as well as dismissive responses from those on the right, but I’m struck by the rhetoric used. One word stands out to me as particularly jarring: Luck.

[Written for a child] “I am 3 years old and lucky to go to preschool, have a roof over my head and spaghetti-o’s in my belly. I am lucky to have Medicaid while my parents don’t qualify.”

“i am 22, living in a trailer in exchange for labor… We eat 69c mac’n'cheez or ramen; i drive a car illegal with disrepairs. And i’m lucky.”

“I am lucky my husband has a decent job because before I was on his health insurance my coverage  denied normal, annual GYN visits because ‘Being a woman is a pre existing condition.’ And we are the lucky ones!!”

“But I am one of the lucky ones. I was finally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder I am properly medicated”

“I’m one of the lucky ones. I enjoy my part-time job… yet… [have a] $65,000 [student] loan. 4 side jobs – not enough for rent. No health insurance. No children, so I don’t qualify for any aid, but I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“I am a lucky one. I have enough money to eat 3 of 4 weeks of the month…”

Luck is a word that comes up incredibly frequently among the 99 percenters, alongside words like debt, crisis, and unemployment. But what kind of luck is this? What does it mean to be “one of the lucky ones?”

In these posts, people struggling to hold multiple jobs call themselves “lucky” for having food most of the month, enough work to survive, or health care for part of their family — even as they report drowning in debt, losing work, and losing hope.

This isn’t our usual meaning for luck, and it only makes sense in comparison — to the “unlucky ones.” But if the “99 percent” is lucky, who exactly is unlucky? And how does this “luck” relate to the accompanying uncertainty, stalled careers, and failure to attain personal and collective dreams?

After sending in an early picture, I was startled to realize I’d also used the rhetoric of luck as a frame for my complaint. Of course I live in relative privilege to others, but why subsume my experience of uncertainty and dislocation beneath that privilege?

On the one hand, the rhetoric of luck acknowledges our relationships to other human beings, including those with greater struggles. To observant readers, it can also point to the structural and economic challenges that even “lucky” people face.

But I’d argue that the same rhetoric turns our lives into happenstance. It moves our stories harmlessly to the side, so that larger — and often deceptive — narratives about luck, hard work, and the American Dream can continue as planned. By prefacing our stories with an admission of luck, we displace our own voices and cast doubt on our experiences as something that just “happened to us.”

Yet the current economic and political situation didn’t just happen to either the “lucky” or the “unlucky” ones. As in other periods of U.S. economic history since the 1700s, the underemployment, debt, financial instability, and lack of affordable life-goods that Americans face are the result of deliberate policies designed to streamline and protect growth for investors, large corporations, and other profiteers — often at the expense of individual citizens, workers and business owners without large amounts of capital or political access.

So rather than slip into the rhetoric of luck, what other frames can we use to talk about our experiences? Framing our experiences in light of multiple takes on economic history may allow us to draw from previous generations in assessing our options for greater involvement in setting the guidelines for our society. Initiating discussion on the civic responsibility of every stakeholder may involve bringing to task those who have instituted policies beneficial only to a small minority of elite Americans. And collective effort from the left and the right could enable us to ensure that economic activity bears appropriate fruit for individuals, households, and families, and that the people actually have a voice in our towns, states, and nation at least equivalent to other sources of power.

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Celia Emmelhainz, M.A., is an economic anthropologist who conducts ongoing research on citizenship, economics, and religion in Central Asia. With a degree in anthropology from Texas A&M University, she currently works as an academic librarian in Kazakhstan.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

If you’re not in the middle of the revelry, enjoy these Mardi Gras posts from previous years:

• Where Mardi Gras Beads Come From
• Mardi Gras Krewes, Tourism, and Segregation (pictured)
• Race, Class, and Collective Mardi Gras Memory
• The Evolution of Beads for Boobs

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Initially , the pill came in bottles, like other prescriptions:

Notice the bottle contains 100 pills; there was no effort to package it into quantities for a single month. Women were supposed to take 20 pills in a row, then none during their period. It was up to them to keep track of everything and remember when it was time to start taking the pills again.

In 1962, an engineer created a prototype of a dispenser pack, designed to hold exactly a month’s worth of pills and help women remember to take them correctly:

The first contraceptive in a pack of this type, Dialpak, appeared the next year; oral contraceptives packaging has been designed to help women remember to take them accurately ever since. This became a major selling point, with Dialpak 21 even offering a small calendar you could attach to a special watch band so you could more easily keep track of whether you’d taken the pill:

In 1965, Eli Lilly introduced a new packaging design, with differently-colored pills arranged in a sequence; however, it didn’t label the days of the week, so it didn’t help women figure out if they’d remembered to take their pill on any given day:

Norinyl came in a package that took the sequential design but added several features that enhanced compliance. An extra pill was added, so that pills with active ingredients were taken for 21 days, not 20. Then a row of placebo pills were added so that women took a pill every day of the month, so they were less likely to forget to start a new pack:

When we think about the emergence and success of the pill, we tend to focus on the product itself. But the packaging tells an interesting story on its own. The pharmacological effectiveness of oral contraceptives meant little if women forgot to take them reliably. The design of the packaging helped play a crucial role, increasing users’ ability to follow the prescribed schedule.

Today, there’s an entire trade organization, the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council, dedicated to promoting attention to the design of packaging as an important element in all areas of healthcare. The pill was the first prescription drug sold in a so-called “compliance pack,” serving as an example of the potential effectiveness of packaging design as a way to encourage patients’ conformity to prescribed medication regimens.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

As Langdon Winner aptly points out, artifacts have politics. They have politics built into them, are used with political intention, and interpreted through political lenses. Often times, however, the politics of an artifact are hidden from view, disguised, or misleading.  Here at Cyborgology we often deconstruct the political meanings and implications of different kinds of artifacts. Today, I want to deconstruct two artifacts that operate with the potential for, and under the guise of, technologically facilitated feminist liberation. Specifically, I look at the Fuck Skinny Bitches internet memes, and the now vastly present and prevalent female-coded masturbation devices (i.e. vibrators and dildos)[i]. I argue that these artifacts, rather than dissolving hierarchical gendered boundaries of bodily control and sexual pleasure, surreptitiously trace over these boundaries with invisible ink, only to be revealed under the light of critical sociological analysis.

Recently, we have seen in influx of internet memes that attempt to provide a feminist rejection of hegemonic standards of the beautiful body. These memes contrast images of curvaceous women to very slender women and include text that preferences the larger body/bodies. These are portrayed as the feminist answer to the unrealistic body sizes showcased and revered on runways, red carpets, and the annually released  Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. I call these Fuck Skinny Bitches memes. A couple of examples are pictured below.

Although these memes successfully call into question the valuing and concomitant degradation of two specific body types (i.e. very thin and curvaceous respectively) they in no way move women’s bodies outside of the male gaze. As Heather Cromarty posted over at Sociological images, these memes pit women against each other in antagonistic comparison, and reinforce male approval as the pinnacle of female success. Rather than escape the male gaze, these attempts at feminist liberation work only to reformulate the desirable ends towards which women control their bodies. In short, the female body continues to be an apparatus of (heterosexual)male pleasure.

Like Fuck Skinny Bitches memes, we also might begin with feminist liberatory assumptions surrounding the vast availability of female-coded masturbation technologies. These devices—of all varieties— are openly made, sold, and discussed, as “sex toy parties” have become as acceptable and common in middle class circles as Tupperware, MaryKay, or Scentsy demonstrations.  Moreover, masturbation technologies are made and marketed disproportionately for and towards women (as opposed to men). A quick Google search of “sex toys” produces a plethora of vibrators—marketed for women—with only the occasional synthetic mouth, vagina, or full RealDoll marketed towards (heterosexual) men. In apparent contradiction to the patriarchal subjugation of female desire, we see here a prevalence of devices that not only acknowledge, but grant women control over their own sexual pleasure—no man (or partner) required.

I argue however, that these technologies, as historically and contemporarily used and marketed, may not be as empowering as they at first seem. Specifically, I argue that they reinforce the polemic dichotomy between male and female sexual desire—the former seen as natural, it’s satisfaction the responsibility of the Other, the latter seen as unnatural, it’s satisfaction the responsibility of the self.

Advertisement for "Passion Parties": The erotic alternative to Tupperware Parties

Male sexual desire is assumed. It is natural and organic. He needs no electronic device, only his fantasies, the touch of the skilled female pleasure giver, or an inanimate female form to receive him. The satisfaction of male sexual desire falls upon female objects—real or fantasied— who display and arrange themselves for his visual and physical pleasures. Female desire, however, is inorganic and marginal. It is her own concern, to be achieved not at the hands of a lover, nor even by her own hands, but outsourced to a foreign mechanical object: The Vibrator.

As delineated in Rachel Maines’ historical sketch of the electromechanical vibrator, the device was created in the 1880s as a non-sexual medical tool used to treat women with “hysteria.” Doctor’s prescribed and sometimes administered stimulation to orgasm for this illness of an unstable mind. This, of course, was no more than the medicalization of female sexual suppression/oppression. Foucault goes as far as to contend that “hysteria” was one of the “four great strategic unities… which formed specific mechanisms of knowledge and power centering on sex” (p. 103).  It reinforced the status of women as mentally weak and the status of her sexual pleasure as an irrelevant concern for her (presumably hetero-male) sexual partner.

 Though we no longer diagnose women with hysteria, we continue to perpetuate her sexual desire as somehow inorganic, of concern only to herself. With the disproportionate availability of female-coded self-stimulation devices, female sexual fulfillment takes the form of a task to be completed outside of coupled relations or an event co-opted for male pleasure—as seen in the prominent genre of female performative masturbation pornography.

 Just as the Fuck Skinny Bitches memes mask continued patriarchal control over female bodies, the vast marketing of female-coded masturbation technologies disguise continued patriarchal control over female sexual pleasure. The image of the contemporary orgasming woman is alone and invisible, quietly armed with the technologies of sexual self-reliance, or she is hot, wet, and screaming out her pleasure for the man who stands above her.

This is not to say that the feminist movements have made no progress. Open attempts to challenge the male gaze are laudable feats in themselves. Open acknowledgment of female sexual desire and pleasure are a far cry from diagnoses of hysteria. Moreover, both memes and masturbation technologies have strong liberatory potential—some of which has been realized. Indeed some feminist internet memes problematize hegemonic body standards without falling prey to the problems of the widely circulated Fuck Skinny Bitches memes; and  masturbation  devices can and are used to enhance the experience of female (and male and queer) pleasure, often in ways un-depicted in mainstream pornography or marketing.  This analysis suggests, however, that the path ahead is longer and rockier than it seems at first glance, and that the layers of liberatory technologies must be pulled apart to reveal the complexity of their political contents.

The many “Stand Up to Cancer” ads, for example, urge people to donate money (or just use their credit card for purchases) to help fund the development of cancer treatments:

When media attention is focused on the causes of cancer, it usually takes an individualistic tone. Risk factors (smoking, poor diet, etc.) are blamed for various forms of cancer.

The thing is: there’s no money in prevention.

Mainstream media outlets have a vested interest in not exposing the causes of cancer.  The companies that pay to advertise on their channels, and often their parent companies or subsidiaries, often traffic in known carcinogens. Pharmaceutical companies, likewise, have a perverse incentive. Healthy people make them no money, neither do dead people; sick people though, they’re a goldmine.  Many organizations, including the multi-million dollar Susan G. Komen Foundation, are in the business of raising money “for the cure,” more so than prevention.

The politics of cancer, then suffer from the individualism characteristic of modern American and capitalist imperatives, leaving the causes of the cancer epidemic invisible and, accordingly, the unethical and illegal behavior of companies like Hooker Chemical.

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(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

In 1964, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, a case regarding an allegedly obscene film, Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter Stewart famously wrote in his opinion,

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [of hard-core pornography]…But I know it when I see it…

Of course, the problem is that not everyone has the same reaction to what they see. While the 1964 case specifically dealt with a film, and a judgment on whether it crossed the line from pornographic (legal) to obscene (not), similar arguments are common regarding what is appropriate on TV. The Federal Communications Commission may impose penalties, including large fines or revoking a broadcaster’s license, on networks that air “indecent or profane programming during certain hours.” Last month the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding the FCC’s regulations and whether they violate free speech guarantees.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a segment from The Daily Show that highlights some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in the FCC’s standards for prime time, and the seeming arbitrariness of decisions about what is “indecent”:

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

According to the authors, Daniel Rosenfeld and Thomas Bell, the cause is pollution caused by commuting.  Charles Choi, writing for National Geographic, explains:

…moisture gathers around specks of pollutants, which leads to more cloud droplets. Computer models suggest these droplets get lofted up to higher, colder air, leading to more plentiful and larger hail.

Understanding how pollution can generate more tornadoes is a bit trickier. First, the large icy particles of hail that pollutants help seed possess less surface area than an equal mass of smaller “hydrometeors”—that is, particles of condensed water or ice.

As such, these large hydrometeors evaporate more slowly, and thus are not as likely to suck heat from the air. This makes it easier for warm air to help form a “supercell,” the cloud type that usually produces tornadoes and large hail.

So, there you have it. No need to choose between nature and nurture. We interact with our environment and shape it, just as it shapes us.

(Via BoingBoing.)

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

This past week, several public incidents have solidified the sad fact that many Americans still think that we are already in a colorblind society and as such, they can basically say anything they want about Jeremy, including offensive references to him as a Chinese American. Unfortunately there have been several examples of racial insensitivity in the past couple of weeks, but in this post I will focus on two in particular.

First, after the Knicks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in which Jeremy scored 38 points, FoxSports.com columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight.” Whitlock later apologized for the remark, but you can’t unring that bell — clearly he thought it was perfectly acceptable to invoke the emasculating racial stereotype about Asian men having small penises.

But wait, there’s more.

A few days later, after Jeremy committed nine turnovers in a game that the Knicks eventually lost, thereby snapping their 7-game winning streak, the following headline made it onto ESPN’s mobile website (screenshot below): “Chinks in the Armor: Jeremy Lin’s 9 Turnovers Cost Knicks in Streak-Snapping Loss to Hornets.”

The headline was apparently taken down after being public for 35 minutes but again, the damage was done — the editors at ESPN apparently had no idea or did not care that the term “chink” is a blatantly racist term against all Asian Americans but particularly and deeply offensive to Chinese Americans. I might expect people outside the U.S., such as Spain’s national basketball team, not to know that the term “chink” is racist, but it is very disappointing to learn that many Americans still think it’s perfectly fine to use in reference to a Chinese American.

Disappointing, but unfortunately not really surprising.

That is because many Americans already believe, consciously or unconsciously, that we are already a colorblind society. As such, they have been taught, socialized, and desensitized to naively think that all racial groups are equal now, that no racial discrimination ever takes place nowadays, and therefore, it’s fine to casually use terms such as “chink” in everyday conversation.

These particular incidents may not be as blatantly offensive as the racial taunts Jeremy encountered back when he played for Harvard, but they nonetheless illustrate a woeful level of ignorance and lack of sensitivity about Asian Americans, our history, and our community.

Imagine what the public’s reaction would have been if Jason Whitlock was referring to a Black player and his remark invoked the racial stereotype about Black men having large penises. What would the public’s reaction had been if ESPN went public with some headline that referred to a Black player using the ‘N’ word? I think it would be safe to say that the American public would be shocked, outraged, and furious if these hypothetical examples occurred in reference to a Black player.

To Whitlock’s and ESPN’s credit, they both apologized and in ESPN’s case, fired the person responsible for the website headline and suspended one of their sportscasters, Max Bretos, who repeated the “chink in the armor” phrase on air. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and decisively ESPN acted in regard to these incidents. In the past, more than likely, ESPN would have taken days to issue a half-hearted apology and probably would not have disciplined any of their staff involved. I suppose ESPN’s actions in this matter do represent an encouraging sign of progress.

Fortunately, there are others in the mainstream media who “get it” — those who understand the contradiction and inequality that exist when such racial/ethnic stereotypes are in reference to, say Blacks, versus when they reference Asian Americans. Specifically, leave it the crew at Saturday Night Live to use comedy and satire to deftly illustrate this contradiction:

So I suppose that it does represent progress that when these types of racially ignorant incidents happen, the mainstream media nowadays does recognize it and take disciplinary action (or use satire to point out the absurdity of such ignorance) more quickly than in the past. Now if we can just get to the point where such incidents don’t happen in the first place.

This easy-to-read and informative paper explores many topics relevant to your students. Here are a few:

• Do sports play a role in maintaining racial stereotypes, in particular the athletic prowess and intellectual deficiency of black men?
• Similarly, how do gendered stereotypes of ability and interest in sports get reproduced? And how can such stereotypes be understood damaging for women?
• Should sports be understood as a site where boys learn how to “perform” a hegemonic brand of dominant and physical manhood?
• Are sports the “opiate of the masses”—something mindless to occupy the working class’s time and energy, which might otherwise be invested in creating drastic political change?
• How can we understand the infusion of sports language and metaphors in politics? Why do politicians use such language and what are the possible repercussions of this type of language?
• How should we understand the display of anthems, flags, and military personnel (or fighter jets) at sporting events of all kinds (e.g. standing for the national anthem)?
• Should tax dollars be used to fund professional sports stadiums? How has this taken-for-granted link between state government and for-profit sports teams been formed?

We engage in the public consumption of images of the rich and famous as a way of life now. They live under an intensely bright and hot spotlight. Baldwin relates this quite eloquently.  In the process of Sonny’s recovery from heroin addiction, he returns to doing what he loves best –playing jazz piano. Sonny’s older brother agrees to accompany him to one of his performances. The brother, seated in a dark corner of the club, watches Sonny and his band mates prepare to perform. While sitting there he contemplates just how many of them have struggled with addiction like Sonny and how they would negotiate Sonny’s homecoming performance. The narration reads:

Then I watched… while they horsed around, standing just below the bandstand. The light from the bandstand spilled just a little short of them and, watching them laughing and gesturing and moving about, I had the feeling that they, nevertheless, were being most careful not to step into that circle of light too suddenly; that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in flame.

Baldwin provides a powerful metaphor for the dangers of the spotlight and stepping into it too soon. When I read that passage, I thought of this image of Whitney from her 2009 American Music Awards performance. She sang “I Didn’t Know my Own Strength.” It was a “comeback” performance in which Whitney was trying to reclaim her image. She is wearing white, which looks absolutely beautiful against her cinnamon caramel skin. The stage is black and Whitney is lit from the back with a piercingly bright spotlight. In that moment we can see her balancing darkness with light, hope with pain, insularity with exposure.

We loved her voice. We rooted for her comeback. But perhaps she moved into the spotlight too suddenly. Perhaps the flame from the light burned her in places no one could see. As I write this, there have been no rulings on the cause of her death. So I do not want to speculate what contributed to her untimely passing. But I love this image because it is how I would like to remember Whitney. Regal, angelic, light and dark, embodying the very essence of humanity and its many contradictions.

————————

Stacie McCormick, PhD, is a literature scholar whose work focuses primarily on African Diaspora and Women’s literature. Presently she is working on a project exploring the black female body and how it is represented in print and visual culture (photographs, artist renderings, the theatrical stage, etc.).

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Marketers are happy to respond to and create insecurities.  Here’s one we haven’t covered before, shoes and inserts for men that covertly increase their height:

Borrowed from The Social Complex, a heightism blog. See also guest posts from The Social Complex introducing the concept of heightism as a gendered prejudice and discussing heightism (and other icky stuff) at Hooters.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The most provocative session was a huge plenary on public engagement titled Science is Not Enough, moderated by former CNN correspondent and anchor Frank Cesno. The panelists were James Hansen (climate change scientist and author of Storms of my Grandchildren), Olivia Judson (evolutionary biologist and author of Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation), and the irrepressible Hans Rosling (international health innovator, known for his amazing TED talks and, of course, a TSP podcast).  

Their themes will be familiar to TSP readers:  (1) science is in a “street fight” with anti-science; (2) we could and should do a better job communicating scientific evidence to broader publics; (3) science reporting is often geared less toward accurately characterizing the state of knowledge in a field and more toward conveying two extreme positions; (4) the continuing struggle to simplify, clarify, and communicate our research without dumbing it down or burying important caveats; and, (5) the tensions between value-neutral objectivity and advocacy in public communication. 

The panelists came from distinctly different places on these issues and their conversation seemed to echo conversations I’ve had with Doug Hartmann at our weekly editorial meetings. Dr. Judson saw her role as stoking scientific imaginations with the curiosity to know and the passion to care. Dr. Hansen more sharply emphasized how money and power could overwhelm scientific mesages (e.g., the petrochemical industry on climate change) and our responsibility as scientists to subsequent generations. Dr. Rosling viewed his role as seizing upon and illuminating intersections of public ignorance and indisputable scientific consensus.

There were lighter moments, of course, and a good bit more scatological humor than one might expect at the AAAS meetings. Hans Robling was incredulous when other panelists claimed not to have time for facebook or twitter, for example, saying “that’s like not having time to use paper on the toilet.” He also got off a nice line about “peeing your trousers in winter” that I’ll just have to save for my next lecture.

My own talk was in an early morning session on mass incarceration, organized by Bill Pridemore and Bob Crutchfield on behalf of the American Society of Criminology. The papers were strong, the audience offered great insights and questions, and some supersharp journalists followed-up afterwards with the sort of  penetrating questions that took me years to formulate.

And I guess that’s the challenge and the promise of good science communication. If a roomful of curious non-experts can somehow apprehend the crux of the biscuit at 8 am on a Saturday, there’s no reason that sites like TSP can’t do our bit to bring social scientific knowledge and information to broader public visibility and influence.

The book combines a print reader with an impressive website that provides a wide variety of innovative material including interactive annotations of key readings, summaries of key concepts, biographies of theorists and schools, writing activities with interactive capabilities, and an array of supplemental texts and videos. The reader itself is organized around five vignettes, which range from the financial crisis to our Facebook profiles, and includes original excerpts from Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and Simmel, as well as Judith Butler, Patricia Hill Collins, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, and many more. The combination of a print reader with a truly interactive website make this book a useful contribution to any social theory class, whether it is online, in person, or somewhere in between. You can order an exam copy of the book here and peruse portions of the website here.

Wes is currently an assistant professor in the business school at Emory University. Dan is finishing his PhD in sociology at the University of Minnesota.

A new study from Pew, based upon a large national survey, found that people reported a lot more cruelty and the absence of kindness that many would expect. This implies that social networking sites (SNS) could use a lot more compassion.

Among adults, 85% say that their experience on the sites is that people are mostly kind. Fewer teens said the same, only 69%.  More, social networking sites contributed to real life problems: including arguments and physical fights with friends, family members, teachers, or co-workers.  In all categories, teens were about twice as likely to report that SNS got them into trouble:

Racial minority populations encountered an even more cruel environment on SNS. Forty-two percent of Black and 33% of Hispanic SNS users said they frequently or sometimes saw language, images, or humor that they found offensive, compared with 22% of White SNS users.

Interestingly, people who used social networking sites on a daily basis were far more likely to report experiencing negative things:

SNS users also reported positive experiences, suggesting that, for many, social networking is a mixed bag of good and bad:

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Ron Anderson, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, has written many books and hundreds of articles, mostly on technology. In his retirement, he is doing research and writing on compassion and suffering and maintains the website CompassionateSocieties.org.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Via BoingBoing.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The Chronicle summarizes the book:

Mr. Murray’s newest book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (Crown Forum), makes a pretense of making nice. It bills itself as an attempt to alleviate divisiveness in American society by calling attention to a growing cultural gap between the wealthy and the working class.

Focused on white people in order to set aside considerations of race and ethnicity, it discusses trends, like the growing geographic concentration of the rich and steadily declining churchgoing rates among the poor, that social scientists of all ideological leanings have documented for decades. It espouses the virtues of apple-pie values like commitment to work and family.

But Mr. Murray, a Harvard and MIT-educated political scientist, seems wired like a South Boston bar brawler in his inability to resist the urge to provoke. In the midst of all of his talk about togetherness, he puts out there his belief that the economic problems of America’s working class are largely its own fault, stemming from factors like the presence of a lot of lazy men and morally loose women who have kids out of wedlock. Moreover, he argues, because of Americans’ growing tendency to pair up with the similarly educated, working-class children are increasingly genetically predisposed to be on the dim side.

(This is the point where heads turn, fists clench, and a hush is broken by the sound of liberal commenters muttering, “Oh no he didn’t.”)

Even Murray seems to know that his conclusions and brand of social scientific analysis and commentary may not sit well in academic circles:

“I am sure there are still sociology departments where people would cross themselves if I came into the room,” he said in an interview last week.

While some sociologists, such as Claude S. Fischer, think that Murray’s book will likely not get much play in scholarly circles, Dalton Conley notes that Murray is:

“probably the most influential social-policy thinker in America” thanks to his engaging writing style and his ability to make complex ideas accessible to wide audiences. “He is like the Carl Sagan of social policy,” Mr. Conley said, “but with an ideological slant.”

A flashpoint for many social scientists has long been Murray’s use of social scientific research, methods, and rhetoric. Conley explains how Murray’s use of social science may mislead readers on both theoretical and methodological grounds:

Although his descriptions of societal problems echo a lot of research performed by other scholars, he takes leaps in naming the causes or proposing solutions. Mr. Conley …said the idea that certain values, such as religiosity, lead to financial success “is a big, big assumption that outpaces the evidence,” because social scientists cannot conclusively prove such causal relationships without conducting randomized experiments on humans.

It is entirely possible, he said, that religiosity and financial success go hand in hand not because the former causes the latter, but because the latter causes the former, or both are the product of some other force not being considered.

Katherine Newman also adds:

Most social scientists continue to argue that it is economic hardship that leads to deterioration of working-class social conditions, not the other way around. “I don’t think there is any question that Americans in the working class, and those below the poverty line, have been hammered by the economic transformations that have robbed them of stable employment, and privileged those who are really well educated, giving them access to the only good jobs we have…”

In light of this disconnect, The Chronicle argues:

At the end of the day, the cultural and economic divide most illuminated by Coming Apart might be one found in scholarly publishing. On one side are authors and publishers who produce nuanced books that offer only conclusions stemming from research, and tend to be too esoteric for wide readership. On the other side are authors and publishers who cash in by producing best-selling polemics, in which research is used to buttress foregone conclusions.

Here at TSP, we’re trying to do something to bridge this very divide!

The commercial was created by the anti-union Center for Union Facts, an astroturf organization founded by DC lobbyist Richard Berman and supported by big business interests. Astroturf organizations are advocacy groups promoting a political or corporate agenda but designed to make it appear like a grassroots movement. Note that one of the union “actors” in the video is played by Berman himself. These photos show Berman as he appears in the ad and in his normal attire as an anti-union lobbyist:

[Via Republic Report.]

Federal law requires that at least 50% of a company’s workforce vote in favor of the formation of a union, and most union members join unions formed years before, so it’s not surprising that many workers today weren’t involved in the votes that founded their unions. Furthermore, according to independent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, laws like the Employee Rights Act hurt workers by leading to lower pensions; workers in unions actually have higher wages and health benefits because they can use their collective bargaining power to improve their working conditions.

In The German Ideology, Karl Marx argued that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas … The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production.”  This ad demonstrates the use of ideology, or dominant ideas that help to perpetuate inequality. An advertisement (which cost about $3.5 million to air during the Super Bowl) produced by a large corporate-funded organization is meant to shape workers’ perception of unions in a negative light. With greater wealth (“the means of production”) and access to media (“the means of mental production”), they seek to discourage workers from joining unions, or even to leave those they are already members of, in hopes of making them easier to control. Ultimately, the goal is to convince workers to accept the ideology of the ruling class and act against their own class interests.

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Paul Dean is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on social inequality, including his dissertation which examines social responsibility movements that promote more socially responsible and sustainable business practices. He is also co-founder and co-editor of The Sociological Cinema.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The contrast between then and now reveals that how-to-act-when-someone’s-taking-your-picture is a social construction. Smiling didn’t come naturally, it had to evolve socially.  Today parents teach their children how to smile for photographs and, perhaps, even to act gleeful with toys.

More at Retronaut.

UPDATE: There’s a great conversation going on in the comments.  Some have pointed out that early photograph technology required a long exposure time, making smiling impractical.  Others are sharing their experiences in other countries, where it is still the norm to stop smiling when the camera comes out, even if everyone is having a jolly time.  Lots of stuff to think about…

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The Atlantic writer Laura McKenna recently reflected on parenting and came to the conclusion that she is the product of her social class.

Jonah, did you ask your French teacher about why you got that B on that assignment? At 5:00 p.m. today, you have an orthodontist appointment. We’ll pick up Thai food on the way home and then you’ll finish your English homework. Don’t forget to put a book cover on your essay. A book cover always bumps a grade up half a point….

The reader can almost envision McKenna shaking her head at herself as she notes, “Every once in a while, you step back from yourself as a parent and say, ‘Dude! Did I actually just say that? I used to be cool. Did some alien take over my brain and turn me into this Mom Machine?’”

Instead of running with the alien theory, McKenna turned to Annette Lareau’s 2003 book Unequal Childhoods, in which she studied how 88 families from different backgrounds were raising their kids.

Lareau writes that the working class and the middle class have very different methods of raising their children. Poor and working-class parents practice what Lareau calls accomplishment of natural growth parenting. Their children have long periods of unstructured time where they shoot the breeze with neighbors and cousins, roam around the neighborhood, and watch TV with their large, extended families. Parents give orders to the children, rather than soliciting their opinions. Parents believe that they should care for their children, but kids reach adulthood naturally without too much interference from adults.

In contrast, middle-class kids are driven to soccer practice and band recitals, are involved in family debates at dinner time, and are told that to ask their teacher why they received a B on a French exam. They talk, talk, talk to their kids all the time. Even discipline becomes a matter of negotiation and bargaining between the child and the adult. Lareau calls this style of parenting concerted cultivation.

McKenna worries that, while her children may learn how to navigate bureaucracy and manage their time, they may be overscheduled.  “It’s hard to step back and relax when everyone around you is speeding up. My kids can’t go out for a spontaneous game of tag when every other kid on the block is at a band concert or at soccer practice.”

Even more worrisome to her is the idea that different parenting styles may be reinforcing class divisions in the U.S., which is something that a book cover can’t fix.

The name may not ring a bell, but Boisjoly’s place in history certainly will: He was the engineer who tried in vain to persuade NASA that it was unsafe to launch the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986.

The Challenger explosion remains today one of our most evocative images of technology gone wrong. This is due in part to the personal nature of the tragedy – the schoolteacher onboard, the family members watching – and in part to the subsequent revelations that NASA proceeded with the launch despite Boisjoly’s warnings.

My intention here is not to rehash the chain of events that led to the Challenger’s demise, but to show how some of those events demonstrate patterns of error that are commonplace – indeed, almost inevitable – in the operation of complex technological systems.

These thoughts have been inspired mainly by the analysis of the Challenger explosion provided by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch in their book, The Golem at Large: What You Should Know About Technology. Other key sources include Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies and Jay Hamburg’s reporting in The Orlando Sentinel.

I’ll group the patterns to be discussed – let’s call them Underappreciated Contributing Dynamics – in two categories, the first involving the question of certainty, the second involving the consequences of human interaction with machines.

Underappreciated Contributing Dynamic #1: There is no certainty.

The Challenger explosion is thought to have occurred because the O-rings separating sections of the booster rockets that powered the shuttle’s ascent into space failed to seal properly. The failure of the seals allowed a tiny gap to form between the sections. Flaming gas leaked through the gap and exploded.

The conventional wisdom is that NASA bureaucrats, anxious to press forward with the launch largely for public relations reasons, ignored the warnings of Boisjoly and others who recognized the danger and tried to stop the launch. There’s truth to that narrative – comforting truth, because it reassures us that if we only follow the proper procedures, such accidents can be prevented. In practice, it’s not that simple.

Engineers at NASA and Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for building the booster rockets, had known for years that there was a problem with the seals. The question was not only what was causing the problem and how to fix it, but also whether the problem was significant enough to require fixing.

According to Collins and Pinch, the O-rings were just one of many shuttle components that didn’t perform perfectly and about which engineers had doubts. To this day, they add, we can’t be sure the O-rings were the sole cause of the explosion. “It is wrong,” they write,

to set up standards of absolute certainty from which to criticize the engineers. The development of an unknown technology like the Space Shuttle is always going to be subject to risk and uncertainties. It was recognized by the working engineers that, in the end, the amount of risk was something which could not be known for sure.

Part of the uncertainty regarding the O-rings was that NASA and Morton Thiokol could never determine exactly how large the gaps in the seals became in liftoff conditions, and thus how serious a danger they represented. Countless tests were run trying to answer that question, but they consistently produced inconsistent results. This was so in part because NASA’s and Morton Thiokol’s engineers couldn’t agree on which measuring technique to trust. Each side, say Collins and Pinch, believed its methods were “more scientific,” and therefore more reliable.

Charles Perrow writes that the inability to pinpoint the source of technical failures is especially common in what he calls “transformation” systems, such as rocket launches or nuclear power plants: the intricacy of the relationships between parts and processes (“tight coupling”) makes it impossible to separate cause and effect. “Where chemical reactions, high temperature and pressure, or air, vapor or water turbulence [are] involved,” he writes,

we cannot see what is going on or even, at times, understand the principles. In many transformation systems we generally know what works, but sometimes do not know why. These systems are particularly vulnerable to small failures that ‘propagate’ unexpectedly, due to complexity and tight coupling.

Roger Boisjoly’s suspicion that cold weather was the source of the Challenger’s O-ring problem was just that – a suspicion. As of the night before the Challenger launch, he had some evidence to back up his suspicion, but not enough to prove it. On the strength of Boisjoly’s concerns, his superiors at Morton Thiokol initially recommended that the launch be delayed, but NASA’s managers insisted on seeing data that quantified the risk. Unable to provide it, Morton Thiokol’s managers reversed their recommendation, and the launch was approved.

Roger Boisjoly

Underappreciated Contributing Dynamic #2: The Double Bind of the Human Factor

We know now that Morton Thiokol’s managers should have supported their engineer’s conclusions and held their ground, and that NASA, upon hearing there was a possibility of catastrophic failure in cold weather, should have exercised caution and postponed the launch. Again, all that is true, but it’s not the whole truth. To pin the blame on irresolute and impatient managers is to underestimate the complexities of the human dynamics that led to the decision.

We like to think that sophisticated machines are reliable in part because they eliminate human error. In truth complex technological systems always include a human component, and therein lies the dilemma. There’s no shortage of examples before and after Challenger proving that the interaction of human beings and machine can end badly. It’s also well known that we ask for trouble when we unleash powerful technologies without including human judgment in the mix. Human beings: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

A subcategory of the human factor dilemma is what Charles Perrow calls the “double penalty” of high-risk systems. The complexity of those systems means that no single person can know all there is to know about the myriad elements that comprise them. At the same time when the system is up and running one central person needs to be in control. This is especially true in crisis situations when the person in control is called upon to take, as Perrow puts it, “independent and sometimes quite creative action.” Thus complex technological systems present us with built-in “organizational contradictions.”

Communication issues can exacerbate those organizational contradictions. Middle level managers, for example, may decide that it’s unnecessary to pass relevant information up the chain of command. In Challenger’s case, many of NASA’s senior executives were unaware of the ongoing questions regarding the booster seals. It’s likely no one told the astronauts, either. Opportunities for misunderstanding also arise from the manner in which information is offered and from the manner in which it’s interpreted. On at least two occasions NASA managers shrugged off engineers’ warnings about the risks of cold-weather launches because the engineers themselves didn’t seem, as far as NASA’s managers could tell, that alarmed about them.

Collins and Pinch stress that in many respects the arguments between NASA and Morton Thiokol the night before the Challenger launch were typical of the sorts of arguments engineers and their bosses (also engineers, usually) routinely engage in as they iron out problems in complex technological operations. And, as mentioned above, these were continuations of discussions that NASA and Morton Thiokol had been having over the O-ring problem literally for years.

The longevity of those arguments actually became a barrier to their resolution. Some of the engineers at NASA and Morton Thiokol had invested so much time and energy in the O-rings that they developed a sort of psychological intimacy with them. Believing the problem fell within acceptable margins of risk, they grew comfortable wrestling with it. It was a problem they knew. This is an example of a phenomenon called “technological momentum.” Simply put, habits of organizational thought and action become embedded and increasingly resistant to change. Devising an entirely new approach to the booster seals – one that would surely have had its own problems – was a step the shuttle engineers were reluctant to take, given the pressure they were under to move the project forward. Roger Boisjoly was able to look at the booster problem differently because he joined Morton Thiokol several years after the shuttle project had begun.

A major reason NASA’s engineers were inclined to resist Morton Thiokol’s recommendation that the launch be scrubbed because of the cold weather was that temperature had never before been presented to them as a determinative element in a launch/no launch decision. This wasn’t Roger Boisjoly’s fault: the freezing temperatures on the eve of the launch were a fluke, and therefore presented conditions that hadn’t been encountered before. Nonetheless the novelty of Boisjoly’s theory helped sway the consensus against him, as did his admitted lack of definitive data.

“What the people who had to make the difficult decision about the shuttle launch faced,” Collins and Pinch write,

was something they were rather familiar with, dissenting engineering opinions. One opinion won and another lost, they looked at all the evidence they could, used their best technical standards and came up with a recommendation.

This may seem a cold assessment in light of what occurred, and Collins and Pinch aren’t arguing that the decision the engineers made that night was correct. Obviously it wasn’t. Still, the question must be asked: Isn’t this exactly the sort of rational decision-making we generally prize in our scientists and technicians?

We understand that human judgment is fallible. Still, when complex technological systems go awry, we want to insist that it shouldn’t be. Which is to wish for another sort of double jeopardy: to have our cake and eat it too.

Originally posted on “The Question Concerning Technology.”

T.S. Eliot thought that April was the cruelest month. I disagree. For me, spring is a time of rebirth and rejuvenation. I would argue that autumn is the most cold-hearted time of year.

Last fall I was afflicted with a mysterious neuropathy that baffled my neurologist. A couple of months later I had hip replacement surgery and a fortuitous x-ray revealed tumors on my lungs. They diagnosed me with stage 3 granular pulmonary lymphoma, a cancer so rare that there are only 500 to 600 cases in the medical literature. Turns out that neuropathy is a symptom of the disease. Who knew?

The prognosis is poor. The median survival from diagnosis is 14 months. More than 60 percent of patients die within five years. I completed chemotherapy in July and the cancer was in remission. However, within a month troubling symptoms appeared. I was increasingly short of breath, gasping after 15-20 paces.  Pulmonary embolisms formed. Most days I took two naps. I had no energy; the smallest tasks were beyond me. Walking became a precarious adventure.

Heart function is one potential victim of chemotherapy. Mine has declined to 20-30 percent. The neuropathy has also worsened. My legs are numb from the knees down and I have minimal feeling in my feet. The outlook is grim. For me, autumn is akin to what Dylan Thomas called “the dying of the light.”

Even as a small boy, I found fall the saddest season. I grew up on an isolated rural homestead and rode the bus to a country school. As the autumn light rapidly diminished, I trudged up our half-mile lane each evening in a darkening and bleak landscape. The few flickering lights in the house and barn were of little consolation. The prairie’s sinister spell of fall twilight lifted once I moved to the city.

Only after I bought a rustic cabin on a river 22 years ago did those distant mood swings return with full force. I remain exuberant until the Summer Solstice. Then the days begin to shorten, only so minutely through July and August. The dying of the light accelerates rapidly from September until the Winter Solstice, and my spirit correspondingly withers. I always close down my cabin on the weekend when Daylight Saving Time ends. As I finish the final tasks, this idyllic setting is awash in dead leaves and darkness. I go into emotional hibernation until the next spring.

This autumn has been particularly difficult. My retired brother flew in from Vancouver Island for two weeks to close down the cabin and winterize our home in the city. While I appreciated his visit and help, it only heightened my sense of helplessness. This must be what the late autumn of life feels like.

I held up remarkably well during chemotherapy. However, the damaging aftereffects of chemo and the doctors’ dim prognosis for recovery have finally broken my spirit. My primary doctor recently gave me a questionnaire for depression: “Little interest or pleasure in doing things;” “Feeling down, depressed or hopeless;” “Feeling tired or having little energy;” Feeling bad about yourself;” “Trouble concentrating on things.”

The results were, frankly, depressing. I have a new stamp on my passport—Prozac Nation. I am now taking an anti-depression drug. When it kicks in, I hope it raises my low spirits. Regardless, no mood-altering drug will change the results of my latest checkup. Autumn just got a bit more cold-hearted.

The cancer is back. It has re-appeared in my lungs and spread to my liver. I feel no urge to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Nevertheless, I am not yet ready for a calm acceptance of the coming darkness. I will rejuvenate soon, in spirit if not body. I look forward to opening my cabin in the spring and watching the Yellow River flow, where one day my ashes will be scattered.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/monte)

JD Hildebrant in SD Times makes the case that piracy is actually good for content providers because it serves as a “try before you buy” mechanism.   While that may or may not be true because you can’t prove a counterfactual, the ethical question remains.. “why shouldn’t content creators be compensated for their work?”  Don’t those who produce content and those who provide content have a right to monetize the web?

Critics of SOPA point to the real danger that companies could be liberal with their efforts to “take down” sites that might be violating copyright and as a result unduly dampen the exercise of free speech on the web.  The basis of the on-line protests against SOPA and PIPA was rooted largely in the belief that shutting down sites like PirateBay and BitTorrent were akin to a prior-restraint free speech violation.   An interesting study by the Oxford Internet Institute finds an emerging global internet culture that increasingly sees Internet access as a fundamental right:

But the problem arises when you define “data” as “speech.”  Indeed, most data is speech.  But just like in the US where we have tiered level of speech protection (e.g. commercial speech has less protection than political speech), it would seem fair to suggest that content creators have a right to fully monetize their product.  This is the basis of liberal capitalism.  If you create a good, you should be entitled to be compensated for your labor.  But because the Internet is oblivious to the type of data being disseminated, treating data as speech becomes a challenging nut to crack.  It is preferable to an alternative view of data as product or data as commerce.