Tag Archives: 2012

Regulating Bloggers?

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Disclaimer: I certify that I have received no financial renumeration, goods, or services for the content of this post.

I know you’re all shocked that the superPacs have yet to contact me, but under a proposal before the California Fair Political Practices Commission, bloggers expressing political opinions might have to insert such a disclaimer.  Last Thursday, FPPC chairwoman, Ann Ravel, announced plans to make such disclosure “suggested” for this November’s elections, and mandatory thereafter.  http://tinyurl.com/773olq2

This stirs up many questions, the first and foremost being, why?  Why focus on bloggers when we all know victory in this election will cost hundreds of millions of SuperPac dollars?  For attack adds on TV, not a few hundred blog posts.

The current FCC push to force TV stations to post the sponsors of political adds is news.  A district court decision to allow superPacs to solicit political add time on PBS stations is news.  The fact that bloggers post their opinions is not.

I believe some politicians cannot abide a medium that is beyond their control, and political blogging is a macguffin as defined in Neal Gabler’s marvelous book, Life, the Movie (look under Book Reviews here for more info). Gabler writes:

“It was with Kennedy in mind that Norman Mailer in 1960 prophesied that ‘America’s politics would now be also America’s favorite movie’…Candidates were the putative stars, the primaries open costing calls, the campaign was an audition, and the election itself the selection of the lead, while the handlers served as drama coaches, scriptwriters, and directors.  As for substantive issues, though they couldn’t be purged entirely, they largely became what film director Alfred Hitchcock…once called macguffins-that is, they were the excuse for setting the whole process in motion though they have virtually no intrinsic value.”

That helps me understand why Ms Ravel would float such a silly proposal.  How would the California FPPC try to regulate bloggers living out of state?  How much money would I have to rake in to be required to disclose?  Five dollars?  Fifty?  Five-hundred (I wish)?  Will twitter or Facebook users have to disclose as well?  What about book reviews?  Will I have to disclose which publishers are buying my pearls of wisdom?  What about lucrative Hollywood kickbacks for my movie reviews?

I think this proposal is a bluff intended to float the notion that bloggers need to be regulated, a move toward the slippery slope of controlling what we can and cannot say.  This being America, the pols still have to tie such actions to some concept of “fairness,” although here it’s pretty thin.  To go after bloggers who might somehow make a buck when Citizens United rules the day is like meeting a Martian invasion with mosquito spray.

But now it’s time for a quick commercial break:

Come on, SuperPacs, make me an offer!  Show me the money!  This space for sale!  Get it while you can!  Bargain prices!  Show me the money!  Will write for loot.  Everyone has their price.  Show me the money!  Did I say that already?  Try me out!

Call me….

Google Glasses, Anyone?

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A video released by Google earlier this month serves as an introduction to their Project Glass, which aims at putting smartphone apps on a pair of voice controlled glasses.  You can watch the clip now or at the end of this post.  I suggest you invest the 2 1/2 minutes  upfront, since the clip is kind of wild and provides the context for the rest of the article.

I discovered Project Glass in a New York Times op ed piece, “The Man With the Google Glasses,” by Ross Douthat, published April 14. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-man-with-the-google-glasses.html?_r=4

Douthat says that regardless of whether the project comes to fruition, this video speaks volumes about our collective condition – a mix of unbelievable technical expertise and ever-deeper alienation.  As a writer, I couldn’t construct a better illustration of this than the final scene in the youTube clip.  Our protagonist can video chat and share a gorgeous sunset with his girlfriend, and he has to – she’s nowhere near the apartment where he lives.  In a digital world, “sharing a sunset” has more than one meaning!

Douthat quotes an NYU sociologist who says that more Americans now live alone than in nuclear families.  Similar stats tell us similar things that we already know or sense.  Douthat presents both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the impact of online media on our social connections or lack thereof.

He also adds a note of caution about the political ramifications of the trend.  He quotes sociologist, Robert Nisbet who believed that “in eras of intense individualism and weak communal ties, the human need for belonging tends to empower central governments as never before.”  Douthat suggests that old time totalitarianism is not a likely prospect, but says that “what the blogger James Poulos has dubbed “the pink police state” which is officially tolerant while scrutinizing your every move — remains a live possibility.”  

This reminded me of a piece in February on MSNBC concerning Samsung’s new generation HDTV’s, with internally wired cameras, microphones, and options for 3d party apps, which could allow someone to peer into your living room.  “Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets…Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.” http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/in-america-television-watches-you/

In truth, I’m not too paranoid on that score, since the average evening at our house is so quiet the spies would go to sleep.

What stays with me from the video is the sense that the Google glasses turn the entire world into a version of my computer screen, where the world “out there” is wallpaper for the applications I’m running.  The phrase these days is “virtualization,” though in one sense, it’s nothing new.

Various artists, philosophers, and spiritual masters have told us “reality” is more like a dream than we know.  Physicists teach nothing is really solid.  Biologists explains that we don’t see rocks or trees “out there.”  What we see are photons striking the rods and cones in our retinas.  Behavioral psychologists have established that at a certain level, our brains do not know the difference between  “real” and imagined events.  As James Hillman put it, “Every experience has to begin as a psychic event in order to happen at all.”  In this sense, the human mind and senses perform the fundamental act of virtualization and have done so for millennia.

Does this mean I’m going to sign up for a pair of smart glasses when they hit the market?  Nope.  They’re a bit far along the nerd scale, even for me, and actually, the prototype is more than a little creepy.  It’s not hard to imagine surreal scenes on the street with smart-glassed pedestrians trying to navigate around each other, and even worse, smart-glassed drivers reading and responding to their emails.

All kidding aside, once this idea hits the streets in some refined, future incarnation, it will likely be one more seductive technological tool/toy to learn to use in a way that serves us and not the other way around.

Mark Coker on the Justice Dept. vs. publishers

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Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, is probably the best known advocate of ebooks as an alternative to traditional publishing, yet he doesn’t want those publishers to disappear.  He made this clear in an article on cnn.com on Sunday entitled, “A dark day for the future of books.” http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/

Mark Coker

The Justice Department launched an anti-trust suit against Apple and five large publishing companies for adopting “agency pricing” and allegedly forcing Amazon to comply.  At the time, Amazon was pricing many books below cost, a move the other publishers feared would harm their print book sales. Three of the publishers have settled, while the remaining two, plus Apple, are going to court.

Coker seldom sides with big publishers, but in this case his reasons are clear:  he fears the Justice Department’s intention to protect consumers could actually harm them by harming the publishing industry by “forcing them to comply with onerous conditions…including restrictions on collaboration with fellow publishers and increased federal auditing and reporting requirements — [which] will increase publisher expenses and slow their business decisions at the very time when publishers need to become faster, nimbler competitors.”

Coker says that although agency pricing raises ebook prices, it “prevents deep-pocketed retailers or device makers from engaging in predatory price wars to harm competitors or discourage formation of new competitors. It would enable the marketplace to support more retailers, which would mean more bookstores promoting the joys of reading to more readers. And it would force retailers to compete on customer experience rather than price. Customers are best served when we have a vibrant e-book retailing ecosystem.”

As I understand Coker’s argument, if ebook prices drop too low, print publishing, the staple of brick and mortar stores as well as libraries, will become a money losing proposition.  I think we all know a certain “deep-pocketed retailer or device maker” who isn’t above “predatory price wars.”  Much as I love my kindle, I don’t want Amazon to become the only game in town.

I suggest everyone with an interest in writing, publishing, and ebooks read Coker’s article, the latest installment in a very convoluted drama.

What is Social Darwinism?

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No, I am not playing Jeopardy, I’m considering the phrase Barack Obama used to characterize the recent House budget proposal.  I thought I had a good idea of what he meant:  survival of the fittest, applied to human endeavors.

I learned a lot more from an article in a New York Times opinionater blog post written by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia.  In his article, “The Taint of ‘Social Darwinism,'” Kitcher credits the birth of the concept to 19th century philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who first talked of “survival of the fittest.”  The phrase was never used to describe evolution but survival in the human jungle.  Kitcher characterizes the Social Darwinist view:

“Provided that policymakers do not take foolish steps to protect the weak, those people and those human achievements that are fittest — most beautiful, noble, wise, creative, virtuous, and so forth — will succeed in a fierce competition, so that, over time, humanity and its accomplishments will continually improve. Late 19th-century dynastic capitalists, especially the American “robber barons,” found this vision profoundly congenial. Their contemporary successors like it for much the same reasons.”  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/the-taint-of-social-darwinism/?src=me&ref=genera

I can’t help thinking of Charles Dickens’ London, where “the fittest” is the pre-repentant Ebenezer Scrooge.

One not so grand irony is that many of our latter day Social Darwinists were born into wealth and opportunity, while truly self-made men and women, like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, understand the value and necessity of supportive social structures.  In Kitcher’s words, “Horatio Alger needs lots of help, and a large thrust of contemporary Republican policy is dedicated to making sure he doesn’t get it.”

I urge everyone who has a stake in this debate – meaning all of us – to give Philip Kitcher’s article a read.

Give It Away to Keep It

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The title of this post comes from Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who tried repeatedly to get sober and only succeeded when he helped another problem drinker.  “In order to keep it, you have to give it away,” became an AA motto.

The title could have just as well come from Lama Thubten Yeshe who said, “According to Buddhist psychology, unless you dedicate yourself to others, you will never be happy.”

I could have quoted Jesus:  “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Lk 17:33).

In my previous post, I tried to name something distressing I sense as part of the vibe of our time:  “a miasma of anger and greed, driven by fear and disillusionment.”  When I wrote it, I was recalling a couple of drivers I’d seen playing chicken for parking places earlier that day.  Gotta get mine – there might not be enough to go around.

In psychology, anger is understood as a “secondary emotion.”  The question becomes, what is hidden beneath the anger?  In a lot of cases, I think it is fear, which also drives greed:  it’s a jungle out there; a dog-eat-dog world;  a zero sum game.

Back in the eighties, before the Berlin wall came down, a retired military officer told me that if the Russians prevailed, they would soon “arrive on your doorstep and take all your private property.”  We still operate from that mindset; fill in the blank with the name of your favorite villain(s).

The problem is, fear and scarcity-consciousness often lead to bad decisions, individually and collectively.  During the 30’s, Paramahansa Yogananda taught that generosity creates a “prosperity consciousness” that is one of the keys to surviving difficult times.  He believed we attract what we hold in our minds, and he told a story that illustrates where grasping can lead:

In villages near the jungles in India, farmers used a simple trap to capture monkeys, a favorite source of meat. They would drill a hole in a gourd, just big enough for the monkey’s hand to pass through, then fill the gourd with rice and attach it to a stake.  When a monkey happened along, it would reach in and grab a fist full of rice and find it couldn’t withdraw its fist. The villagers would have it.  The monkey would die because it couldn’t let go of a handful of rice.

With that story in mind, and because everyone I want to emulate comes down on the side of generosity and letting go, perhaps I can trust the universe to provide me a parking place.  And take it from there and see where it leads…

An Era-less Era?

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A critique group friend gives me back issues of The New York Times Book Review.  In the stack she gave me this week, I found a provocative article in the March 11, edition called “Convergences,” by Douglas Coupland.

Coupland noticed something unexpected during TV coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11:  nothing appeared very different than it had a decade ago.  The clothes, the cars, the hair, seemed pretty much the same.  This led him to speculate that:  “…we appear to have entered an aura-free universe in which all eras coexist at once – a state of possibly permanent atemporality given to us courtesy of the Internet.  No particular era now dominates.  We live in a post-era era without forms of it’s own powerful enough to brand the times.”

He then says, “The zeitgeist of 2012 is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist.” (To Coupland’s credit, he does a mea culpa for this sentence).  He goes on to say there is something “psychically sparse” about the present, and writers and artists are creating new strategies to track it.  He then reviews Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru, and calls it an example of “translit,” a new genre that fractures time and space while telling a single story.  In other words, it isn’t time-travel, or intercut parallel tales, like Pulp Fiction, but a singular narrative that unfolds all over the map.

Yet if Translit is a new genre, Once Upon A Time, a popular TV program, got there before Gods Without Men.   Though it doesn’t have as many sub-stories, structurally it’s the same.  Maybe part of our zeitgeist is a world where highbrow and lowbrow forms are equally likely sources of innovation.  (That sentence, containing the word, “zeitgeist,” was payback).

Once Upon A Time

Besides, who says this decade lacks “forms of its own powerful enough to brand the times?”

OK, when I was in grade school, my nightmares were not of winding up naked in public, but in my pajamas [this is true], so this particular fashion crime draws my attention.  But my reason for this post isn’t cultural artifacts – it’s something I’ve wondered about for a long time, that Coupland’s article brought to mind:  how and when the distinctive feel of a decade is formed?

Sometimes there’s a distinctive moment.  What we know as “the sixties” started the day John F. Kennedy was shot.  The last decade began on September 11.

Some decades don’t start with a single event; at a certain point, everyone simply knows the times have changed.  The eighties began when the good times started to roll.  In our current decade, something is rolling, but not good times.  We sense it, though it doesn’t yet have a name.  Read the paper or turn on the news, and you find a miasma of anger and greed, driven by fear and disillusionment.

This morning, with my coffee, I read details of how the New Orleans Saints bounties for injured opponents especially targeted head shots, even as overwhelming evidence points to concussive injuries as the source of higher than average rates of dementia in retired NFL players.  A little while ago I read of women arguing over a Facebook profile outside a waffle house.  Police arrived after shots were fired.  No external foe can destroy us, but we are doing pretty well on our own.

Lately politicians have been touting “American Exceptionalism.”  I first came across the term in Andrew Bacevich’s book, The Limits of Power:  The End of American Exceptionalism, 2008.  Both the politicians and Bacevich mean economic, political, and military superiority, things no country ever retains indefinitely, though they all believe they will when they have it.

President Obama got in trouble for speaking the truth when he said every nation thinks it’s exceptional.  Every nation has the potential to be, if you think in terms of character.  In those terms, our story might fall in the Translit genre – a narrative told across long reaches of time and place.  This decade would be a chapter set deep in the second act, when things are cascading downhill from bad to worse.  The darkness is pretty thick.  Who knows how the story is going to end?

Impending Doom?

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A bright spring morning after days of clouds and rain. A good night’s sleep. So why did I wake with a sense of impending doom?  There are no foreboding events on the horizon.  I haven’t violated any obvious rules of mental hygiene, i.e., I don’t stay up late watching slasher movies.  A few times in the past, such uneasiness has preceded nasty events, but not very often.

I did some yoga and meditation, which helped but didn’t dispel the mood.  What I really wanted to do was get outdoors, so I took a walk at a local park.  Afterwards, I felt like a cup of coffee and went to Starbucks.

As I sat down, a man who looked vaguely familiar said, “Morgan?”

I couldn’t quite place him and had to ask his name.  Turns out he and I were friends almost 25 years ago.  He went to work for the state, and I started taking night classes after work, and we lost touch.  I thought he had moved away, but he still lives where he did back then, little over a mile away as the crow flies.

We talked for a while and traded phone numbers.  He said he built a boat and mentioned fishing.  I thought of baseball once the season starts.  The sense of impending doom was gone.  And yet, if it hadn’t been there when I got up…

I wouldn’t have gone to the park…
and would have made coffee at home…
so I wouldn’t have been at Starbucks to cross paths with an old friend.

When I really pay attention, I find I do not understand how anything works.

My 301st Post

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Confession time.  I slipped in post number 300 without saying anything. Double-digit posts, like end-of-decade birthdays, make me a little nervous.  Such events seem to require wisdom, but I don’t do wise-on-demand especially well.  So here are some blogging thoughts, commemorating post 301, which I think we can all agree is a more humble and friendly number than 300.

Blogging as a means of discovery.  I’ve experienced this in other modes of writing, notably fiction.   At times I’ve also kept a journal, not to record my thoughts, but to discover what they are.  Because of its public nature, I wasn’t sure for some time that blogging had that capacity.  I discovered once and for all that it does while working on some recent two-part posts.  Every time I ended with, “I’ll share my conclusions next time,” I wondered what those conclusions were going to be.  Typically all I had was a hunch – nothing as solid as a conclusion.  I found in every case that the act of writing itself generated conclusions.  

It’s immensely satisfying to know that blogging can help me discover where I am in the present moment.  Everything changes, and it’s important not to be bound to outworn habits of thinking, feeling, and acting.  If the public nature of blogging sometimes causes self-consciousness, it also demands a rigor that (hopefully) keeps me from entertaining or posting my silliest notions.

Just Blog.  If you visit writing blogs, read writing magazines, or go to a writer’s conference, you’re likely to hear about using social media to “build your platform.”  I don’t want to put this idea down, just look at it critically.  I’ve met several successful ebook authors who work very hard to promote their fiction and think up inventive ways to do it.  But the reason for their success is compelling fiction.  Promotion works because they have something worth promoting.

I started this blog because I’d been told I should get a platform.  That idea lasted only a week or two.  Curiosity about blogging as a unique medium took over.  There are lots of Zen stories advising us to do what we’re doing with single minded focus.  Just run.  Just cook.  That kind of thing.  My effort here is, “just blog.”  If the day comes when I need a platform, I’ll do what I have to do.  Like I said in a recent post, I’m skeptical of “whisperers.”

What to write about my social and political concerns?  I don’t like blogs that harp, yet I find it hard not to write about these issues.  I’ve never had so much concern about the future of our democracy, or feared that the very word, “democracy,” is an artifact of nostalgia, like a Norman Rockwell painting.  Consider the following definition from Webster’s College Dictionary:  oligarchy:  a form of government in which the ruling power belongs to a few persons.

Back in the ’90’s, my employer, like many others, provided free training in Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Success.  One of the concepts that stayed with me is “circle of influence vs. circle of concern.”  Covey taught that outcomes I can affect lie within my circle of influence.   My circle of concern, however, includes things I cannot change.  If I spend my time worrying over these, I miss the chance to do what is in my power.

It’s like the serenity prayer:  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Covey goes a step further.  He says that changing the things I can will grow my circle of influence.  For example, complaining about the government is a useless hobby, but it is within my power to write to elected representatives.  All of them say direct communication carries weight because so few bother.  If I do so, my circle of influence grows a little bit.

Growing one's circle of influence by acting within it

What about blogging? Does this activity alter outcomes?  I believe it can, by carrying information if nothing else.  Have you heard about the “99% Spring,” initiatives starting on April 9?  Here’s a link: http://billmoyers.com.  Elsewhere on the website, Bill Moyers offers these words of hope:

Many of you have asked what you can do to fight back. Here are some thoughts. First, take yourself seriously as an agent of change. The Office of Citizen remains the most important in the country.

Second, remember, there’s strength in numbers. Find others like you in your neighborhood, apartment building, community – and act together. The old African proverb is still true, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk together.”

Amen to that!  There is strength in numbers and strength in sharing hope.  As bloggers, that lies within our circle of influence.

Writings.  I appreciate all of your comments; they are one of the main things that keeps me going.  I’ve been especially happy with the response to recent articles on mythology and folklore.  This is like returning to something I lived and breathed 20 years ago.  In one way, it seems like a new emphasis for thefirstgates, but in another, it clarifies what I’ve been reaching for all along.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, for it has really become my mission statement:  To discover the reality in our fantasies, and the fantasy in our realities.

Thanks to you all and stay tuned!  Here’s to the next 101 posts.