rant

It’s job interviewing season, but don’t let this happen to you. But am I talking to interviewees or hiring companies? A Twitter user, theconnor {now set to private} offered up the following tweet:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” 

Then, Tim Levad, a Cisco “channel partner advocate” chimed in:

“Who is the hiring manager[?] I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” 

Ugggghhh. Cringe. Almost immediately, there was a frenzied deluge of critical posts and Internet sleuthing. A website was even created based on a new meme, Cisco Fatty, and Helen A. S. Popkin wrote a MSNBC article blathering on-and-on about theconnor’s faux pas and how this is a cautionary tale. Really? Maybe MSNBC and Popkin should try to tweet news stories under 140 characters & get to the point more. Speaking of which…

/rant

The new season of South Park started up full steam taking aim at Disney and the Jonas Brothers (available after 4.11.09) and this week the “dark” superhero genre and…Obama?  Cartman’s voiceover narration as a raccoon-costumed crimefighter:

“…Then a black man was elected President.  He was supposed to change things.  He didn’t.”

The episode reminded of a post last fall, Post Racial?  Quoting the sagacious José:

“Post-racism indulges in racist stereotypes while at the same time not engaging the moral dimensions of racism. In practice, you can engage in all the racism you want as long as you are being ironic about it.”

The Coon (Full Episode is available here) focuses its humor mostly on the superhero genre, but people are picking up on the use of the loaded term, as evident in comments on EW.  Controversy is bound to increase Internet hits (and viewing of Electronic Arts and Capcom Resident Evil 5 ads) and Stone & Parker are no strangers to using race as fodder for comedy squarely in a “post-racial” manner, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

I’m not interested in debating whether this was racist or not, but rather the idea of whether  this type of satire allows us to have a “collective national laugh at the absurdity of race.”   Does the outrageous Cartman as a raccoon and the use of the term follow that trope?  In the blogosphere and in discussion fora, I see back-and-forth on the subject of race.  Typically, along the lines of “__ is racist” countered with “you should get over it” or other arguments based on irony, satire, or free speech.  

What are the implications, if any, of racial satire if everyone doesn’t “get” (interpret broadly) the joke?

This will be one of two posts on urbanism by me.  The other will involve urban renewal & Obama.  I just found out that The Parkway theatre in Oakland is closing.  It was divey, but you could get food and wine/beer and lounge on second-hand couches seeing films at the very tail end of their theatrical release.  I can recall many a rainy wintry night seeing a film as a diversion during the week.  I received this e-mail from the CEO and the President tonight:

“After more than twelve years of serving the great cultural crossroad of Oakland, the Parkway Speakeasy Theater will be closing at the end of business day this Sunday, March 22, 2009. From African Diaspora to Thrillville to lesbian fashion shows and educational porn, the Parkway has offered an eclectic array of movies and events.  It was the first theater in California to offer food, beer and wine service in a lounge style movie theater.  With a nudge or a push from the community, there was little programming the Parkway theater would not try in order to better be a community center and a safe haven for diverse ideas.  The Parkway brought Baby Brigade for the shuttered and abandoned parents of newborns, the first international black gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender film festival and Sunday Salon, a free event for cultural and community enhancement.  We, at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater, are deeply proud of the Parkway and will profoundly miss serving its community.  Thank you for your patronage.”–Kyle & Catherine Fischer

(Sidenote:  I missed the screenings of educational porn.)   The Parkway is in a boundary zone in the San Antonio district of Oakland, east of Lake Merritt.  It’s a diverse area, where Eastlake (with Southeast Asian immigrants) and the middle class Ivy Hill and Cleveland Heights neighborhoods converge.  It’s quite far from the notorious San Antonio neighborhood known as the Twomps.  I found The Parkway to be a reason to head to that corner of Oakland and this made me think of the impact on the neighborhood this closure will have.

Closer to my Eastbay digs is The Elmwood, which owes its existence to a business improvement district (BID) model.  According to a case study:

“Theaters-especially those of historical significance (Elmwood is a landmark)-play a unique role in commercial districts, and their multiplier benefits are widely recognized. It was not surprising that merchants were willing to finance the purchase of the theater, given the research that has been done on the importance of theaters in commercial districts, plus their own experiences.  The National Association of Theater Operators had shown that about half of evening moviegoers can be expected to have dinner at a restaurant located within blocks of the theater.  Studies also showed that a high proportion of patrons also visit coffee houses and dessert establishments.  Further, the volume of ATM transactions at a bank in the neighborhood surrounding the Elmwood declined by more than 1000 per month after the closing of the theater. It was evident to area businesses that it was in their self-interest to revive the theater as a main attraction in the neighborhood.  Their investment is paying off.”

From my experiences, the more upscale Elmwood district with more shops and restaurants really benefits from the presence of the theater, despite parking being at a premium.  My PO box is at the Elmwood station on College, I pay my Visa bill at the Wells Fargo, and I’ve frequented many restaurants in the area.  Unfortunately, draconian zoning regs. caused an indie hardware store to close (a fave of mine), which was also a draw to the neighborhood.

The neighborhood surrounding The Parkway didn’t have a strong sense of community around it, as it was at the interstices of several neighborhoods.  It was at the crossroads where the Merritt Café, the WAMU, the Albertsons, the Vietnamese pho place, the Church’s Fried Chicken, and the auto parts chain all resided, but the fact of the matter is it isn’t an inviting place to walk around and hang out.  I’m interested in the interface between commerce and community, but I’m wary of too much top-down planning.

I wonder what are the requirements for community stabilization and what should be researched in this area?

I may have to see Revolutionary Road tomorrow at 7 for nostalgia’s sake.

José’s last post made me think of visualizing processes.  Of late, I’ve been thinking about how Jim Cramer had his head handed to him by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show (link to 3/12 Cramer episode).  Stewart mentioned how markets are two-tiered, one for the insiders and one for the rest of us.  The warnings were out there that the system is broken.  One Frontline from a few years ago, Dot Con (2002),  talks about how during the dot com boom, initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock were rigged by the powers that be.  Another, The Wall Street Fix (2003), discusses the circumstances that led to the World Com bubble that led to a meltdown and eventually a $1.4B settlement between regulators and 10 Wall Street firms.

Sociologists often view markets as social constructions.  I tend to view markets as like sausage.  You really don’t want to know too much about the details of production.  An example of this is Google IPO in 2004, a novel approach which became riddled with turf wars involving the status quo.  Google sought to price its initial offering of stock in a more fair and equitable manner, eschewing the “insider” bias typical of IPOs.  A 2005 American Sociology Association presentation by Martin Barron noted Google’s intentions:

“Google’s IPO eschewed the traditional method for pricing and allocating shares for an unconventional auction format. This was an attempt to minimize the underpricing of its shares and allow a broader class of investor access to IPO shares. By pursuing this more equitable approach, however, Google threatened the enormous profits that IPOs had previously generated for entrenched Wall Street interests.” —The Google IPO

This NYTimes graphic tries to explain what Google intentions with a modified version of what is called a Dutch auction.

Personally, all you viz kids out there, I think the above is a horrible graphic.  I reworked it, as I do for when I teach data visualizations and highlight my (ahem) mad Photoshop skillz:

In my graphic, I have price on the Y-axis & number of shares on the X-axis.  Generally speaking, investors bid a given number of shares at a given price.  Starting at the highest price, the number of shares bid for is tallied until all the outstanding shares are allocated.  The price at which the last bid that allocates all shares becomes the offer price.  So, even if you’re the highest bidder, you buy shares at the offer price .

I like the idea of markets actually moving towards satisfying the underlying assumptions that economists make.  I feel the Dutch auction moves towards that by reducing the transaction costs that often go to the investment banks and increases fairness by not allowing insiders to buy at a deflated price, only to flip (dump) the stock just after it’s offered and reap huge profits.

Of course, there are consequences for countering Wall Street, as Barron notes:

“… far from passively accepting this challenge to the status quo, these interests actively worked to ensure that Google’s IPO—and hence the auction format—would be seen as a failure.”  —The Google IPO

Lo and behold, look at how the business press framed the IPO, despite it being a “success” in Slate:  “Four Ways Google Failed: How the IPO didn’t change Wall Street.”  So, we arrive full circle to Jon Stewart who quipped that maybe the business press should be more than cheerleaders for the status quo.  Perhaps business schools should consider this, as well.

I’ve been thinking about José’s blog on Luther’s Freedom (2/19), which reminded of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (PESC).

I find many of these ideas to be interesting.  The idea of Luther’s Reformation as a catalyst for change in terms of social relations in markets is pretty heady stuff.  I see the Reformation as the obvious move away from the [ideas/ideals] of the Catholic church (and its take on absolution and salvation, which was often criticized from within), which also marked a shift (in my opinion) a new era of spirituality, going from a more commutarian approach to an individualistic one, particularly under Calvinism.

After the Reformation, salvation was divorced (no pun intended) from leading a Christian life.  Pascal’s wager was irrelevant, as man could not influence God.  Nevertheless, through work could man serve God.  One’s profession was one’s calling.  It was later developments in Protestantism, i.e., John Calvin, where one couldn’t know for sure if they were saved, BUT success might be an indicator of it.  Hence, the Protestant work ethic was born.  It gave people meaning, as opposed to wallowing in nihilism due to not knowing one’s eternal fate.  Actions became centralized around the individual.  Community wasn’t dead, but status and legitimacy were now focused more than ever towards personal success.

Slouching towards late capitalism (or postmodernity), spiritual life was usurped by the profane.  The final fall of mediaeval asceticism?  The ascendance of a bourgeois ideology?  Materialism filled in the gaps of meaning.  (S)he who dies with the most toys, wins?  Brands become the symbols/totems that hold meanings.  Nike = transcendence.  Coca-Cola = global community.  Apple = cool rebellion.

While I find Weber’s PESC to be interesting, I think that the main idea is that the cultural context matters when it comes to determining the roots of the various flavors of capitalism, which is being fleshed out with recent research.  One could write a paper on the Shintoist ethic and the divine spirit of capitalism to explain the rise and fall of Japan, layering how feudal structures were thrust into capitalism under Meiji and how, decades later, overembedded networks of people and organizations were both a boon (70s-80s) and an albatross (90s-00s) to economic growth.  Cultural context.

• Is the trajectory of Protestantism responsible, at least in part, for our current era of materialism?
• Was the trajectory inevitable?
• If so, what does this say about Luther’s freedom?

image:  “Difference between the Protestant and Catholic church service” Cranach the Younger

I spend holidays in Ontario, Canada and listen to CBC every so often.  I heard this episode of Spark with an interview with Clay Shirky (NYU).  They discuss concepts from his book, Here Comes Everybody, including “cognitive surplus,” where the Internet is taking advantage of people’s unstructured thinking time.  Where is this time coming from?  Aren’t our lives overbooked with no spare time.  Barry Wellman and other found that the rise of the Internet was hand in glove with less TV viewing.  

One of the issues about TV is that’s it’s passive.  It’s a passive consumption experience, while the Internet in Web 2.0 can have the potential to be participatory, involving producing content, sharing content, and viewing content.

They also discuss how Web 2.0 is adding value in ways that would not be undertaken by market forces.  No firm or organization would undertake creating a tagged image repository such as Flickr with its 1B images, but enabling the crowd to do so is a big idea.  The question is how the limits of the freemium model in commercial possibilities.

• Will the crowd help firms/organizations see the path to cash?  (Revenues)

I think there’s also an interesting discussion on intellectual property sharing.  Will mass amateurization become commonplace?  Yes.  New opportunities will transform our relationship with innovations and intellectual property, as open source will open doors and close others.  

While not discussed on Spark, independent researchers can even engage in medical research, as evidenced by a physician hacking into his daughter’s DNA.   Many nations have an eye on the biotech prize, as this has huge implications for the cost of health care and on pharmaceutical innovations, how will open source affect biotech?

• Will the scale and scope of China (given their take on open source) blast apart our current notions of property rights and capitalizing on intellectual property rights?

Much of these discussions go back to the idea of data.  23andme is allowing users to get a DNA report.  You need not identify yourself, but they will be able to use and sell the aggregate data.  

I think we’re in new territory here with innovations, open source, and globalization.  I think it’s unclear what the “rules” are and we need to be aware for signs that the market is not working.  After all, value was created by Flickr, but it was the “wisdom” of the crowd that played a huge role in enabling it.

Finally, I thought there were good points on the notion of ethics and Web 2.0.  I’m not a technological utopian and I feel that technology transforms culture and often amplifies what is going on already.  Did MySpace spontaneously “create” pedophiles?  (Or did a brainchild for a NBC ratings grab create the illusion of an epidemic?)  Did MySpace create  real dangers for the youth?  The research points to ‘no’ on both counts, but the question remains:

• How will culture manifest itself online with norms, sanctions, and rules of conduct?

I liked Shirky’s quote that ethicists are like ambulance chasers.  Not to slam ethicists, but I think it’s extremely difficult to create prescriptions or a normative mode for an evolving social context.

So, I just got wise to the basic cable brawl between Jon Stewart and CNBC. I was able to catch up thanks to the convergence of TV & the Internet. My Web 2.0 viewing was sponsored by Bertolli and another view had a Tide commercial before the segment played.  (I also got to see promos for South Park and other Comedy Central shows).  The following is a decent overview of the skirmish.  “Don’t mess with the peacock,” for sure.  

Many of us post to Facebook, perhaps unaware of what can happen to that content and who has rights to it.  All of this came to a head a few days ago, as Facebook’s new terms of service (TOS) came to light and were met with a range of reactions from dismay to outrage.  

I’ve been reading Convergence Culture and being in Jane Jacob’s adopted home, I couldn’t help but think of how the social space of Facebook relates to how social interactions are shaped by governance and polity in online realms, as well as the idea of a commons that is a privatized space, as opposed to a public one.

While I’m resigned to the fact that there is no privacy online and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear that Facebook is being used by collections departments to locate unstealthy credit defaulters (true story), I do bristle at the idea of content being appropriated by companies hosting these web commons.

Why?  I’m using the private space of Facebook, why should I feel that what I post is still my intellectual property?  Am I being unreasonable?  After all, I push the boundaries of fair use quite a bit.

Can social network sites really be sites of democratic action, when they can ultimately be censored, not as a matter of public policy, but rather corporate TOS?  On the other side of the Web 2.0 fence, how much freedom should an organization grant users?

I feel that what any site engaging in Web 2.0 should do if they want to use content posted by users is…to simply ask them for permission.  It’s simple good manners and building of social capital.  I do think privatized social spaces or commons can be used for civic engagement, but I find emerging technologies being developed up here in Canada that allow content to be fed from multiple sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) into one location to be rather interesting.  More on this in a future post.  I feel the overlap of Web 2.0 with open source will make us all rethink ownership and privacy and force organizations to ponder what intellectual property really means, what the risks are in terms of what the courts are stating, and how to implement processes.  Or not.  That devil inertia.

So, I never blogged a follow up to the Canadian election in October.  The Tories (Conservatives) won with Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.  The Liberals were licking their wounds and their leader, Stephane Dion (no relation to Celine), looked like he was on the way out.

Canadian politics is usually fairly bland (although, what do I know, eh?), ever since Pierre Trudeau left office.  Part of the political lore up there is Trudeau’s “fuddle duddle” incident, where he mouthed obscenities to the shock and horror of those on the business end of such conduct: 

Well, things are heating up and it all started with Stephen Harper riling the other parties by threatening to cut Federal public campaign funding, framed as a cost-cutting manœuvre.  Apparently, he didn’t learn from an earlier gaffe when his office went on record as supporting arts funding cuts in early autumn.  So, the perception has been building that Harper’s approach to solving financial woes is to cut funding to constituencies that don’t support him anyway.

When I was in Toronto last week, there was a huge buzz about the Liberals, NDP, and the Bloc Quebécois forming a coalition with the intent of ousting Harper.  He backed down on the campaign financing cuts, but it was too late.  Worries about the economy, which ironically helped the Conservatives win in October, fueled the opposition’s lack of confidence in Harper’s budget and economic plan in Parliament.

In just seven short weeks, Harper went from leading a minority government (plurality of seats, but not a majority), to being on the verge of getting ousted through a “no confidence vote,” which would effectively unseat him as Prime Minister.  What to do, oh what to do?  Would Harper be accused of crying to “mama and to television,” as Trudeau accused the Tories of in the early 70s?  What to do, indeed!

Lock the doors!

In a strange twist, he convinced the Governor General, Michaelle Jean, a role that is usually just ceremonial (tip of the hat to the UK monarchy), to suspend Parliament until the end of January, giving Harper time to stall a “no confidence” vote and to create an economic stimulus package.  This quote from an AP article notes:

“A governor general has never been asked to suspend Parliament to delay an ouster vote when it was clear the government didn’t have the confidence of a majority of legislators.

‘There is no precedent whatsoever in Canada and probably in the Commonwealth,’ Constitutional scholar and Queen’s University political scientist Ned Franks said. ‘We are in uncharted territory.'”

With Parliament suspended, the coalition cannot form and how Harper and the Conservative MPs (ministers members of Parliament) are scrambling on a massive PR blitz to gain support of the people.  Some might argue that the suspension is anti-democratic, while others are saying that it was unlikely that a stable coalition government could be formed by the Liberals (centre left), New Democrats (socialist), and Bloc Quebécois (Quebéc nationalists).

Of course, as someone from the US, I find all of this Governor General (GG) stuff odd.  My thoughts for a while have been to wean off the monarchy thing, particularly in light of Quebéc separatism sentiments.

It’s one thing to have QEII, but does Canada really want Charles’ mug on the legal tender?  Although unlikely, what if it came to this character as UK head of state?

I’m rather curious about how this turns out…

Earlier, I referenced this Wired article from last year on WikipediaScanner.  The site tracks edits of Wikipedia entries to known IP addresses within firms and organizations.  Wired has compiled a list of notable “salacious” edits from the past.  Here’s a news story discussing the PR and search engine optimization (SEO) implications of WikipediaScanner.

Vandalism And Wikipedia – 

While most edits are innocuous, some raise eyebrows.  

I’m interested in this because I feel that transparency will be increasingly important as Web 2.0 develops and we shift to 3.0, 4.0, etc.  Some of the things I’m working on is the implications of anonymity in social media and how it relates to business/organizational practice.  Some issues that aren’t well defined are:

• Policies regarding transparency versus secrecy (open source versus Apple)
• Managing public perceptions and organizational attitudes towards risk
• What are the proper features/applets (materialities of communication) that foster “collaboration and community” across different contexts?  Should these be staged?
• What are the preconditions for online communities be self-regulating?
• Nuances of online community culture self-reproduction

While anonymity and fluid identity was prevalent in Web 1.0, back when nobody knew you were a dog:

in Web 2.0, users are seeking the experiences of the 4Cs: conversation, community, commons, and collaboration.  I think in many instances that transparency facilitates the 4Cs through building social capital and trust.  Additionally, communitas and shared meaning systems, as well as the materialities of communications (applets, features, etc.), also foster/enable the experiences/practices in the 4Cs, but I don’t think all of these are invariant preconditions in all contexts.  

What are your thoughts on transparency?