Crossposted on Rhizomicomm

In 1959, my Chicagoan parents visited Toronto, Ontario and the city left little impression upon them.  Architecturally nondescript, it was seen as an unfortunate product of postwar growth in an uninspired age.  I remembered this and when I was driving from Montréal to Los Angeles in 1992, I didn’t even stop to visit Toronto.  My only recollection of the city was seeing a cluster of highrises in the distance while on a huge swath of a highway with express and collector lanes, the mighty 401.  Living in Toronto over the past few summers, I’ve found the city to be much more fascinating than I gave it credit and a lot has to do with how much of the downtown core is walkable.  I’m reading a book, Walkable City, by Mary Soderstrom that draws heavily on Jane Jacobs, a key urbanist figure here in her adopted Toronto.  Toronto from its inception, started with a grid::

Toronto’s grid, unlike that of New York City’s Manhattan, consisted of short streets and encouraged the development of neighborhoods and community.  José’s blog earlier this year notes how grids are safer than dendritic street patterns.  Jane Jacobs helped to thwart a freeway project, the Spadina Expressway, which would have taken cars from the mighty 401 allowing them access into the heart of the downtown core.  The expressway would have encouraged more sprawled developments outside of the core, but some have argued that Toronto’s anti-car policies have driven development out towards the suburbs, with cheaper land and lower taxes.  One of the outcomes of the Spadina Expressway failure was the creation of the Spadina subway line, which focused development along that corridor.

Flying into Pearson and seeing maps of the Greater Toronto Area, there is no mistake that there is sprawl.  The Toronto I’ve encountered is one of surprises, as the downtown core is walkable and much can be accessed on foot.  While I complain about the local mass transit, the TTC, particularly since it’s often crowded and expensive {cashfare of $2.75 CAN is one of the highest in Canada}, it works.  If you live in the downtown area, one doesn’t need a car and like in Manhattan, a car is often a liability, rather than a convenience.  Nevertheless, I see Toronto as at a city at a crossroads.  Increasingly dependent on automobiles in an era of volatile oil prices, with an infrastructure dependent on gas taxes and registration fees.  Toronto is the largest city in Canada, comparable in size to Boston, but runs the risk of being gridlocked and subject to the “tyranny of the automobile,” as a prescient 1966 Toronto Planning Commission warned.  From a marketing point of view, I see glossy developers’ ads enticing residents with more space and lower prices {and possibly lower taxes} outside of the downtown core, which I’m sure are compelling to many.  Unfortunately, many of these developments aren’t factoring in walking.  While they may be close to mass transit, they often aren’t in vibrant communities with mixed-use {housing and businesses} and adequate amounts of affordable housing.  I’m afraid the thinking is still along the lines of modernity’s arboreal tree, as opposed to the Deleuzean rhizome, but A City Is Not a Tree.

In discussing public financing of infrastructure, a curious split occurs.  When discussing freeways, there’s often a mentality of built more to alleviate the strain.  Like Internet bandwidth, there can never be too much carrying capacity.  The minute one talks about mass-transit, there’s often a discussion of whether or not usage and fare revenues will be sustainable.  Transit-oriented development might be a solution, if increases in property values from proximity from mass transit can be leveraged to finance its construction {an overview of this is here}.

In the past few years, I’ve come across a microculture of mass-transit afficionados.  Some go as far as to create “fantasy” transit maps, particularly of subways or light rail::

I think this stuff needs to get plugged into a Sim-City-like environment, but like any abstraction, it’s only as good as its assumptions.  My utopian vision of Toronto is one with concentrated development along corridors and with a direct connection to Pearson {Airport}.  My idea was a line that went from Pearson to downtown, following Queen in the downtown core, and eventually looping back up to the Bloor-Danforth line.

Any thoughts on your town/city?  Is it walkable?  Does it matter?

Twitterversion:: WalkableCity-#Toronto,Transit& CarCulture.Can TO dvelpmnt be shaped,creating vibrant communities sans cars? http://url.ie/1zuk #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Come To Milton Keynes – The Style Council

In the classroom and with conversations with researchers, I’ve discussed the idea that the environment is a luxury, in light of more pressing matters, such as food, jobs, etc. So, if we have a negative by-product of an activity {an externality such as pollution}, it creates a social cost that may be unfairly borne by others.  A key question is how to allocate such social costs, in light of competing interests?  What if these social costs in the form of taxes harm employers to the point where jobs are threatened?  Which should prevail?

The problem is that the value of the environment is not straightforward, as they often relate to a quality of life that is embedded in particulars, not universals.  When I lived in southern California, life without a car outside of Los Angeles would have been challenging.  My housing choices would be limited, possibly affecting my quality of life.  As it turned out, my decisions were independent of my environmental impact.  I had a 20 mile commute, albeit in a hybrid, but my choices affected everyone’s quality of life in terms of pollution, as well as the amounts of global greenhouse gasses.  Should policy affect choices like this?

In our everyday lives, we all have a set of practices that we take for granted.  In Pierre Bourdieu’s parlance, this would be habitus.  These practices are tied to environmental outcomes, whether we’re aware of them or not.  We only seem to be aware of them through consciousness or cost.

I don’t think the environment is a luxury that should take a back seat in an economic downturn, as it holds sacred the current mode of production and the current practices tied to it.  Of course, this could be disruptive, but should something that’s disruptive be avoided because of the uncertainty it generates?

Let’s assume the environment is a luxury when it comes to sustainable foods.  Organics should be toast in a recession, considered to be an overpriced luxury for most consumers.  In the UK, a Guardian article notes that consumers are less willing to spend on ethically-produced products {e.g., fairtrade} and organics, but are still want quality and are willing to pay a price-premium for locally-grown produce.  This shows how complicated markets can be, how consumers’ preferences shift, and creates implications for local production and land-use in Britain, creating challenges and opportunities for sustainable agriculture.  Habitus.

Policy can “incentivize” innovation, by enforcing standards such as those mandating increased fuel efficiency {CAFE standards in the US; CAFC guidelines in Canada}, state emissions testing, and the sale of lower-emissions vehicles.  Such approaches often are mired within institutional battlegrounds, places where economic sociology offer great insights.  While environmental policies enforcing change are disruptive and force auto manufacturers to move towards a different mode of production, the end societal results can be positive.  I agree with Alexandra Shimo of Macleans that the recession is bad for the environment, as oil prices fall, the incentives for the development of alternatives to fossil fuels wane.

So, is the environment a luxury?  Well, it may well be akin to the diamond-water paradox.  Why are diamonds so expensive relative to water, where the latter we need to live.  Scarcity.  If we just allow the market to dictate decision-making, we unfortunately will only value the environment when we perceive it as growing scarce.  Will that be too late?

Twitterversion:: Some argue that environmentalism and sustainability is a luxury, as when push comes to shove, pragmatics dictate pressing concerns prevail. @Prof_K

Song:: Honey Honey (BBC Sessions) – Feist on the Green Owl compilation – lyrics

Video:: Talking Heads- “Nothing But Flowers” w/ Johnny Marr & Kirsty MacColl

Last week, the Young Republicans got into a dustup over yet another Facebook flap.  This spring, we discussed how Facebook derailed an NDP candidate to provincial office in British Columbia, when the BC-Liberal opposition got wind of “racy” photos posted.  In this incident, there’s differing opinions which are arguably representations of fragmentation in the Republican Party.  According to the DailyBeast, it started with Audra Shay, vice chairman of the Young Republicans hosting a discussion on Wal*Mart endorsing Barack Obama’s health care plan.  Things unravelled when an “Eric S. Piker” made racially charged comments using the word “coon,” another ThickCulture topic from the spring {See above}.  Audra agreed with the statements, adding a LOL.

Subsequently, there were others criticizing these remarks, Cassie Wallender {a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation} and Sean Connor {chairman of the D.C. Young Republicans}.  While these critics were “de-friended” by Audra, “Piker,” for the time being, remained a “friend.”  On Thursday, a black Republican activist, Lenny McAllister condemned these remarks and prior statements by Shay::

McAllister references a culture war going on in the Republican Party and regarding the racially charged remarks going around, he stated “You can cover cyanide with chocolate, but you still can’t call it candy.”

Her own recounting of the events, possible unaware of the screencap, paint a different picture of the events.  In her statement on 3 July, Shay went on to denounce the remarks and attributed the dustup to her political enemies capitalizing on an opportunity.  Irreparable damage may have already been done, as her upcoming bid to be Young Republican chairman may have been derailed.  

I’m not going to engage in any admonishing finger-waving on the dangers of social media, a bete-noire of mine.  I think this is beyond a matter of “political correctness” or freedom of speech issues and do reflect a growing divide between moderates and a more divisive fringe.  Indicative of this is how moderates are often criticized as being RINOs, Republicans-in-name-only, who are not sufficiently conservative. The RINO label was thrown at Wallender by Shay supporters after her criticism of the racial remarks.  In order for Republicans to move forward, they will have to deal with these issues head-on.  Will they use social media to do this?

Twitterversion:: #YoungRepublican schism over racially-charged #Facebook flap. Indicative of a larger #CultureWar within the party?  @Prof_K

Song:: Space Oddity (1990 Digital Remaster) – David Bowie

  

Over on OpenSalon, Mary Elizabeth Williams did a post on author’s social media e-sponses to negative reviews .  At first, I was amused by the spirited rejoinders.  Williams cites Ayelet Waldman’s response to Jill Lepore’s review of Bad Mother in the New Yorker, was allegedly a succinct “The book is a feminist polemic, you ignorant twat.” My favorite was Alain de Botton’s response to Caleb Crain’s review in the New York Times on the latter’s blog::

“Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.” [Emphasis added]

I chose to show the full comment, not just the last sentences in bold that many are quoting, since I wanted to provide context and show that it wasn’t just a two-line virulent jab.  Some might call this churlish, but I saw it as a writer showing he has the chops as a writer to defend his book against criticism.

I do understand why Williams offers her advice of being careful about ranting at critics.  Such angry behaviour can make can one seem shrill and immature, although I do enjoy the sheer drama of it all.  Publishing, as it stands today, is hypercompetitive and there are influential gatekeepers like critics.  I wonder if these interactions in social media are showing how the “authority” of the critic is being decentered.  Social media allow for dialogues and will expectations shift, in that critics will have to justify their reviews to authors and audiences alike.  Interestingly, Caleb Crain chose not to respond to Alain de Botton’s comment, only offering an unsatisfying::

“Folks: Thanks for all your comments. A broad range of opinions have been expressed, and I’m going to close comments on this post now. all best wishes, Caleb”

That said, I wonder what the future of publishing and criticism are, given Web 2.0 and beyond.  The critic serves a winnowing function, granting {or taking away} legitimacy and status.  Will this function be replaced by an increasingly intelligent Web 3.0 with “crowdsourced” reviews?  What are the implications for acadème and peer-review journals?  Will the “wisdom of the crowd” topple the institutional fiefdoms controlling knowledge?

I know critiquing work can be tough.  While not that in-depth, the act of reviewing Soderburgh’s The Girlfriend Experience was illuminating for me, particularly after seeing how many reviewers were taking the easy road.  I’ve done peer-review for over 15 years now and have been through the double-blind review process, as well.  I’ve always tried to be constructive with my reviews, even with what I see is a flawed manuscript, offering citations and {hopefully} theoretical or methodological insights.  I’ve read that Will Ferrell is very constructive as a colleague, often taking the time to help others work through something not working with their comedy, and I’m trying to pattern myself after this.  My take is that if you can’t be constructive and if you tear something down without backing it up, you better be prepared to fight it out and social media is the perfect venue for this.

Song:: There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics (Cd) – Of Montreal

Video:: Office Space “The Going Away Present”

Twitterversion:: Authors using #socialmedia to lash out at negative reviews. #Fail or #Web2.0 decentering of critics as #gatekeepers in publishing? @Prof_K

A few months ago, I blogged on how no-frills universities were catching on and have been reading on how higher education may be in a state of impending crisis.  Plus, I saw how one university was offering commencement in the online virtual realm of Second Life.  All of this had made me think about the future of the university::

• Will the traditional “university” setting give way to the “business park” mode?
• Will online degrees become increasingly prevalent?
• How will the functions {research, teaching, community engagement, etc.} of the university change in society over time?
• Should the university be treated like any other business and at what price?

I’ve always seen universities as communities, rare places where one interacts with others about ideas and knowledge. In the mid-1990s, I had the chance to be a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and remember it being a place open to inderdisciplinary perspectives, where interesting research was being done and intelligent conversations could be had.  I read somewhere that a few decades ago, the Stanford University Faculty Club was once a vibrant place where professors from the various schools and departments would kick around ideas.  I was talking to a recently retired computer science professor who was at my alma-mater, UC Irvine, in the 1970s, recalling conversations and debates with post-Marxist historians and scholars in the humanities.  From my perspective, it’s the community that a university creates that matters and I feel that uses of technology should be working not only on online instruction but on helping to foster a virtual intellectual community.  In terms of non-traditional settings and online instruction, I think there are challenges of legitimacy.  Online and “business park” universities taught primarily by adjuncts need to address the quality issue and ensure that the pedagogy is not just having students jump through hoops.  Students also need to adjust to learning in these environments.  I used synchronous chat in a recent class.  I heard from students I never heard from in the face-to-face discussions and it became clear who prepared and who didn’t.  Some students were quite candid in confessing this in front of everyone, virtually.

The “crisis” that universities face in my book is not just a financial one, but also one of relevance.  Relevance to individuals and to society.  While there is a business aspect to running a university, treating it too much like a business by focusing on efficiency metrics and revenue opportunities, rather than how it fits into a community structure, is a sure-fire way to balkanize faculty.  I think it will be challenging for universities to keep an infrastructure in place and deliver value that students want.  I do expect a shakeout, especially in a globalized world connected to the Internet, unless universities adapt to being more competitive and rethink pricing.

Finally, I think universities can learn from the writer Ray Bradbury, who thinks libraries are more important than universities and a staunch library advocate::

“Libraries raised me…I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

It makes me wonder how ideas like Chris Anderson’s “free-conomics” could be applied to universities, an idea I’m mulling over and would love my colleagues to chime in on.  Can a university business model be created that offers up free education, but brings in revenues through non-tuition means, begging the question, what business is the university really in?  Is a degree the “product” or is “lifelong learning,” as in the building cultural capital?  I leave with this Anderson quote, with my mind on how free knowledge, rather than free electricity, could transform society and improve democracy::

“What if electricity had in fact become virtually free? The answer is that everything electricity touched — which is to say just about everything — would have been transformed. Rather than balance electricity against other energy sources, we’d use electricity for as many things as we could — we’d waste it, in fact, because it would be too cheap to worry about.”

Twitterversion:: What’s the future of higher ed? Can it be #Free: #ChrisAnderson #freeconomy ideas? Peddling degrees or lifelong learning? http://url.ie/1xzu @Prof_K

Song:: The Headmaster Ritual – The Smiths

Notes from North of 49ºN

I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of nation, of late.  In summers past, the 4th. of July, Independence Day in the United States, meant being in northern California and perhaps heading to Point Reyes and seeing the tug-of-war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach.  The past three years, I have observed Canada Day, celebrating when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario became a federation, a dominion with ties to the UK.  Two adjacent countries, which appear to have similarities, but have key differences.  Population is one differentiator. At confederation in 1867, the US population was around over 10 times that of Canada, 38,558,371 to 3,625,000 {1870}.  The twentieth century would see the rise of American dominance, not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of media and culture.

American culture is readily evident in Canada.  On television and in major cities like Toronto, with the prevalence of brands like Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, and Subway.  A quick scan of the TV listings shows how popular US television content is in anglophone Canada.  Canada is aware of this and requires broadcasters to show Canadian content {Can con}.  The CBC, the Canadian national public broadcaster, is a flagship network of the nation, where, through its mandate, the network’s goal is to be a cultural touchstone for the nation.  I’ve blogged about the future of the CBC television on this post:: Will Globalization Kill or Make the CBC Relevant Again?, which touches on how the CBC is struggling to remain viable and relevant in the shadow of big media players in the United States and fending off challengers within Canada.  Unlike the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster, which is funded through household television licences, the CBC gets funding from the government, but also is subject to market forces through selling ad time, both sources being historically uneven.

The question I have is whether the role of a national broadcaster is even important.  I don’t see the United States as having the equivalent of the CBC, let alone the BBC.  PBS and NPR are, in my opinion, a loose confederation of programming, as opposed to a network with a strong identity, let alone an entity fostering a conceptualization of the United States as a culture or a nation.

The ideas of Arjun Appadurai and Benedict Anderson come to mind.  Appadurai speaks of globalization in terms of flows.  Flows of finance, ideologies, technologies, people and media, each with the suffix scapes.  Mediascapes have two components::

1. The flows of capacity to produce and disseminate electronic information
2. The images of the world created by these media

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities discusses nation as an abstract entity, where meaning is shared within and the mass media address its citizens as a public.

Borders are often permeable under globalization and Canada has seen flows of media flood across its southern border, but what has this done to Canadians’ notion of nation?  Can Canadian content policy and the CBC help to reinforce the imagined community of Canada?  Does nation even matter?  Is Canada to Canadians “our home and disparate land,” as stated in today’s Vancouver Sun?  What about shared Canadian experiences such as Hinterland’s Who’s Who::

I think we need to remember that the context here is capitalism.  Media is flowing, media full of American meanings and ideals, as entertainment content to generate revenues.  In light of this onslaught, I think it is important for Canada to preserve its identity by creating content that increases Canadian cultural knowledge and awareness.  Why?  Without a national identity, i.e., an imagined community of Canada, meaning becomes increasingly derived from imagined communities of brands.  If our Diderot unities reduce to the constellation of brands we surround ourselves with, can we be citizens or are we just consumers?

I think nation does and should matter.  In Benedict Anderson’s words, nation::

“…is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the inequality of that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep. horizontal kinship.”–p.7

Song:: Dreamer – Jenn Grant {Halifax, NS}

Video Extra:: jPod clips of “Cowboy” aired on CBC, Winter 2008.

Twitterversion:: #Canada, national identity, & #Media. Globalization blurs borders, but does #nation matter? #Appadurai #BenedictAnderson http://url.ie/1xu6 @Prof_K

Crosspost:: A shorter version is available on Rhizomicomm.

When I was a senior in college, I must admit thought quite highly of economics and its rationality.  It was the early 1990s and I was contemplating law school and doctoral programs in environmental economics, with interests in law and economics and public choice.  I was given The Gift Economy by David Cheal to read, altering my worldview forever.  A close second was Jean Baudrillard’s Selected Writings, but that’s another post.

Cheal’s book focuses on the tensions between market relationships {political economy} and social ones {moral economy}, as a distinctive characteristic of the social milieu in capitalist societies.  While gifts may be given for instrumentalist means, they often are not, hence being representative of a wide array of behaviors firmly in the realm of the symbolic and the relational.  Cheal talks about the interplay between the market and social realms, which could easily be superimposed on a Pierre Bourdieu framework of fields, habitus, doxa, and forms of capital.  In the past, gift-giving was often marginalized and thought to be subsumed in a capitalist exchange model.  Recent thinking considers gifts to be a social process, one that has a significant economic impact.

So, how is this interplay affected by social media?  In my current work, I’ve been thinking of the use of Facebook by organizations, particularly in the realm of philanthropy.  Organizations have been embracing the idea of creating relationships with constituents, rather than focusing on transactions.  Health non-profits often provide information and advocate on behalf of their constituents.  By doing so, this creates a person-organization relationship and ideally leads to greater levels of philanthropy {economic resources for the non-profit}.  The key is that the relationship must have salient meanings for the constituents, i.e., the brand meaning system.  Depending on the context, this is often tied to outcomes, e.g., cures for diseases, social change, identity, etc.

Social media and social networking sites like Facebook not only foster person-organizational relationships via information disemmination and services, but also peer-to-peer relationships.  These relationships are social, but are within a capitalist market context.  Hence, we return to the gift.  We manage relationships through gift-giving and other behaviours, through the management of symbols::

Social media has the ability to move constituents from this model::

Organizational Activities -> Org.-Person Relationship -> Outcomes

more towards this one::

Organizational Activities  -> Communities of practice -> Outcomes

The latter being facilitated by the Internet and with the possibility of a richer set of outcomes stemming from an engaged community.  We want gifts to be expressive of our relational ties, hence full of meanings, within a given social context, e.g., a community of practice.

Facebook is a global player, but still needs a solid revenue model.  Apple’s success with “apps” show the power of a platform to deliver value, often at a low price-point.  The Facebook platform should be developed in line with how people, how a large number of people, actually engage in symbolic relationship management, tied to other strategies, such as::

• Bling gifts that are expressive of sentiments {various media}
• Donations and sponsorships
• Online events to engage community members
• Free/Low-cost personalized apps that add value, e.g., health monitoring, reminders, alerts, etc.

Organizations are still figuring out how to use social media and Facebook is still figuring out how to deliver value.  All I can say its future isn’t online ads and organizations just paying lip service to their constituencies with social media is as transparent as this::

Twitterversion::  #newblogpost #Facebook & #socialmedia in reconfig of econmics. Interplay {political&moral economies}.Implic.for orgs&FBk. http://url.ie/1x6e  @Prof_K

Crossposed on Rhizomicomm

McLuhan Way is just down the street from me, so perhaps it’s my inspiration.  I remember reading Marshall McLuhan‘s Understanding Media over 14 years ago in a seminar on the Internet.  The hot/cool media continuum perplexed many of us and some say technology has rendered the concept obsolete.  In terms of hot/cool, where does the Internet stand?

• Hot media are high-definition.  Media that fully-engages one sense of the audience member:: print {visual}, radio {sound}, film {visual}, & the photograph {visual}.
• Cool media are low-definition.  Media that require more active participation from the audience member to interpret::  Television {visual with limitations in the 1960s},  telephone {sound of a relatively poor quality in the 1960s}, and comic strips {cheaply reproduced mass-entertainment}.  The video game as a hyperreal construct, where the audience/player must fill in gaps of this representation of the real.

Reading is engaging in hot media and is a solitary experience.  Reading, contrasted with speech, forces an isolating consciousness, perhaps one overly-immersed in the individual.

How does Web 2.0 fit into all of this?  Well, new technologies trend towards the hot.  The iPod engages us, bathes us in a bubble of sound of our choosing.  What about this paradox?  New technologies are higher-definition, engaging us more and more, but also allowing us to be interactive with others {social media}.  Moreover, there is convergence of the technologies.  The smartphone {MP3 player, telephony, Internet web surfing} is a stunning example of multisensory engagement that also allows us to communicate and share with others.

What happened?  Is the singularity of media, where all media is converging, making it all lukewarm?  The continuum is shrinking to a singular point, as in the multimedia experiences of the smartphone.  Has technology sped up our communications, so that there is the appearance that time has folded upon itself.  We read text or see a video and now we can immediately respond to others.  We read a tweet from Twitter and immediately respond to it.

So, bear with me as I think out loud here.  Let’s assume that media are approaching singularity.  As you go up the cone, technologies converge and the user is collapsing hot/cold, engaging both simultaneously.

Let’s assume that at the circular base of the cone, along the diameter is the continuum from hot to cold.  Perpendicular to that diameter is another continuum, the institutional semistructures, rigid {controlling} versus chaotic {open}.  The base would have 4 quadrants, each with prototypical examples::

1. Hot & Rigid- Old “big media” {print, radio, film, etc.)
2. Hot & Chaotic- Engaging content in unstructured/uncontrolled  databases
3. Cool & Rigid- Newsgroups
4. Cool & Chaotic- Synchronous unmoderated chat

The origin will be “lukewarm” and semi-structured.  The origin is somewhat of a normative assumption.  Individual user experiences may vary and may not even be contiguous.  I know I need to refine these ideas and construct a better diagram.  Nevertheless, I think this concept might be valuable in thinking about how people’s use of technologies is likely to evolve.  Where would you put the following::

• Facebook {social networking site}
• Twitter {microblogging}
• YouTube {video filesharing}
• Hulu {long-form professional videos}
• Google {all things data}

Where are they moving towards -or- how could they better provide value?  Of course, despite McLuhan being gone for quite a while, I half-expect this to happen to me::

Twitterversion:: Can #MarshallMcLuhan ‘s hot/cold continuum inform #socialmedia? #sociology #web2.0 http://url.ie/1wys @Prof_K

Song:: “Suspect Device” Ted Leo & the Pharmacists-lyrics

The conservative French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has expressed concern that the burqa is subjugating women in France.  Addressing both parliamentary houses in the Palace of Versailles::

“The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience…It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.”

The BBC clarified the different types of Islamic headscarves {below}.  Sarkozy emphasized that this isn’t about disrespecting Islam and a group of cross-party French legislators are interested in examining whether women wearing the burqa is undermining French secularism and also whether womem wearing the veil are doing so voluntarily.

The French government banned the Islamic headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols in 2004 although within the government, there is no consensus on the issue.  In the US, somehow I think that no matter how hard the polygamy and abuse angles are pushed, there won’t be any bans on FLDS garb.

Last year, the Urban Affairs minister, Fadela Amara, born in France to Algerian parents, has been a harsh critic of the burqa.  A feminist who has fought racism for decades, Amara grew up in one of the rough banlieues of Paris, knowing the often ugly intersections of race, culture, and gender.  After a 2008 court case case denying a Moroccan woman citizenship was upheld, Amara said she supported the ruling, in the hopes that it would  dissuade fanatical Islamic followers from imposing the burka on their wives.  In an interview with Le Parisien, she said::

“The burka is a prison, it’s a straitjacket”

“It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy.”

This brings up an interesting issue, since banning clothing has been associated with anti-immigration politics throughout Europe.  The fact of the matter is that if France decides to move towards a banning of the burqa, some argue this is likely to limit radical Islamic women’s freedom even more, as men may not allow them out at all.

Barring the possibility of some celebrity starting a burqa trend, i.e., secularizing it, such a ruling would be in conflict with the French concept of laïcité , a variant of the concept of the separation of church and state.  More subtle is an idea that banning the burqa does symbolic violence to the “other.”  Pierre Bourdieu notes in Distinction how subjugation and control are manifested in the everyday::

“…the social relations objectified in familiar objects, in their luxury or poverty, their ‘distinction’ or ‘vulgarity’, their ‘beauty’ or ‘ugliness’, impress themselves through bodily experiences which may be as profoundly unconscious as the quiet caress of beige carpets or the thin clamminess of tattered, garish linoleum.”

The Islamic veil has been isolated and socially categorized.  The attention given it has stigmatized it.  Ironically, within extreme Islam, it has its own symbolic baggage, particularly as it crosses national borders.  While scrutiny of the Islamic veil can foster a political agenda by conservatives and a feminist agenda, is doing so through such symbolic violence the best way to institute social change?

Twitterversion:: #Burka under fire in #France. #Sarkozy and #feminists meeting in anti-extreme Islam common ground? #feminism #Bourdieu http://url.ie/1wt4 #feminism @Prof_K

Song:: La Danse Des Negresse Vertes – Les Negresses Vertes

Notes from North of 49ºN

It’s not often I agree with Tom Friedman, but last fall when I was preoccupied with the US general election, teaching, and associate directing a center, he was advocating not just a bailout, but a green buildup.  He quoted Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy::

“It’s time to stop borrowing and start building. America’s No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. … You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

Friedman was in favour of attaching green strings to bailouts, an idea I think warranted further study, at the very least.  Fast forward 9 months and focus on the province of Ontario, where at the federal level, the Conservatives {Stephen Harper}, and at the provincial level, the Liberals {Dalton McGuinty}, jumped on the US bailout bandwagon to a tune of $9.5B or $10.9B Canadian.  This is in addition to the Obama administration’s $49.8B.  The combined US and Canadian bailouts are worth 130 times the present value of GM.  Here’s what both Harper and McGuinty had to say about this::

“We had to save it all or have zero forever,”

–Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

“The alternative would have been a devastating blow to Ontario families and communities.”

–Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Premiere

The troubles in the industry are not new news and CBC has a chronology of layoffs.  I’ve alluded to this bailout before and the scant jobs it will save, but here are the specifics in terms of the Canadian GM assembly line::

“At present GM Canada has 12,000 hourly and salaried employees, but that number is expected to shrink to about 5,500 over the next couple of years. About 1,100 of the new total is expected to be salaried jobs, which are unrelated to assembly operations. That means Ottawa and the Ontario government are together spending an unprecedented $2.1 million for each assembly job at GM Canada they hope to save.”–Time, 1 June 2009

It’s likely that GM suppliers will also be affected, a $7.2B industry employing 45,000 workers, but it is unlikely that all these jobs are at risk.  While Canada accounts for about 19.4% of North American production, Canadian cost advantages have been eroded by a stronger Canadian dollar, a weakened US union in the UAW, and strong and strategic bargaining by the Canadian Auto Workers union.

While the situation looks gloomy for manufacturing in Ontario, quite a few are banking on green jobs.  So much so that St. Clair College has a 2-year green jobs programme and the province has a commitment to clean energy.  Currently, the province gets 25% of its electricity from coal, but wants to shut down all of its coal plants by 2014.  The province is hoping to convert some of the plants to carbon-neutral biomass, although the yields will be lower.  The slack will need to be picked up by alternatives, with greener options being wind and solar.  Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan calls for greenhouse gas emission reduction to 6% under 1990 levels and the new Green Energy Act is meant to protect the environment, regulate, and spur investment in green technologies.

Policy & Innovation:: The California Example

The PPIC has a report on the effects of California’s Zero-Emissions Vehicle {ZEV} mandate, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s.  During this time, the California government, through the Air Resources Board {CARB} initially set in 1990 requirements that by 1998 that 2% and by 2003 that 10% vehicles sold in California would be ZEV.  Suffice it to say, concessions were made over time, but the original mandate set the wheels in motion for innovation.  The effects of the program were::

• The policy spurred patents in near-term technologies
• CARB arguably responded to technological changes when revising the program
• Technological spillovers resulted in a greater number of indirect  innovations
• Increased market development for emerging technologies
• Broadened design parameters
• Lower emissions in California

The program, albeit complex and not without politics and controversy, shows how policy can help to shape market-based activity in ways that would not occur otherwise.

Ontario:: Good Money After Bad

While not surprising, Canada and Ontario should have considered asserting themselves more, rather than caving to bailout pressure.  Why not move forward to develop policies that help transition away from declining industries and in-line with over provincial objectives?, e.g., environmental and energy.  How I see it is that the US and Canada are bailing out a company the capital markets have little faith in and now face the daunting task of rebuilding with a new CEO, “Big Ed,” who has a reputation for being an empire-builder.  I question having an empire-builder in charge of a company needing to be leaner, a company needing to reinvent itself overnight.  Let’s hope he indeed  “learns something about cars,” and doesn’t make mistakes like this one, the old CEO Rick Wagoner copped to:: “axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids. It didn’t affect profitability, but it did affect image.”

While there have been debates on whether or not the US needs an auto industry {NY Times} and criticisms abound, such as this one on how GM betrayed our trust, Canada is nevertheless a 12% equity shareholder.  This creation of a capitalist-state joint venture opens up a huge can of worms, as which interests will prevail and how to balance autonomous management and control versus paternalism?  I think the answers are in economic sociology, a topic for a future post.

Song:: “Canada” – Low

Video::

Twitterversion:: #Canada #bailout of #GMfail =more #fail ? Can #Ontario still dvel #greeneconomy & innov.w/enviro&energy policy objctves? http://url.ie/1wdt  @Prof_K