To #Spill once may be regarded as a misfortune, to #spill twice looks like carelessness*...

Here we go again.

The Australian Labor melodrama has gone from speculation through tension and drama, depositing us all on the other side with the status quo. It's the volvo with bad suspension of all roller-coaster rides!

It seems to me that in the ADHD, 24-hour news cycle of Australian politics leadership speculation has become the treat you enjoy between meals without losing your appetite. When all the talk of elections, budgets, even policies gets a little boring there's bound to be a new poll out asking whether someone else could do the job better. And we love it!

For the punters all this speculation is like a cross between backseat driving and shouting at the television. We know we're unhappy (with something, anything?) and so we take a few moments to dream of a different world. But it doesn't achieve anything.

Our democratic system has taught us that the power is in our hands! I'm not talking about political elections; reality TV and mobile phones let us make the decisions. Live! People seem to view the Labor caucus as something like the 'Survivor' island or 'The Biggest Loser' at weigh in. Worse the members of that caucus obviously feel the same way.

There is a different way for people to engage with politics. Getting involved through online activism, protesting wrongs where you see them or writing letters to your local member give everyone a chance to enter the political debate. Me I write this blog, as well as email, tweet or facebook anyone I think will listen.

Polls are only meant to gauge our opinion on a given day, yet we treat them like de-facto elections. Writing a letter or getting involved in a campaign might not give you the same instant gratification but it will ensure you're playing a part in something real. Not just the latest headline beat-up...

_____________

* Most sincere apologies to Oscar Wilde!

Can we be friends?

Yesterday a comment popped up on my Facebook feed, about a photo I'd shared. The photo was an image from the guys at Letters for Ranjini about the recent reports of children self-harming in Australian detention centers. Now if you're a regular here you'll notice that I've written about Ranjini before, maybe even a few times. Suffice to say I feel strongly on the issue of children in immigration detention.

Now the comment I received on the photo was of the typical 'go back to where you came from' mantra. It came from a so-called 'Facebook friend'; you know the type, you click accept even though you haven't seen them in ten years. This guy had obviously not looked into the story and was reacting purely on pre-conceived ideas. 

What the hell can you do or say when faced with ignorance like that? 

I wrote a reply (I felt I was being quite restrained) suggesting my 'friend' look into the issue before making judgements and reminding him we are talking about vulnerable children. In my gut though I just wanted to hit 'delete friend' and be done with him.

In the end I decided to wait a couple of hours just in case he replied to my comment. I wanted the chance to engage with this guys ideas, maybe offer a more compassionate perspective to his hardline stance. That's when I started thinking...

My reaction to his comment was in it's own way just as narrow and pointless as his dismissal of the photo. Here I was ready to censor this guy out of my life just because I found his views abhorrent. Effectively I wanted to deny him his right to free speech (at least in dialogue with me) and send him packing.

The whole point of getting online and sharing views is that we are engaging in a community of ideas. Not all these ideas will be pleasant or well thought out, and guaranteed you won't agree with them all. My reaction is one I think we all feel occasionally; to ignore unpleasant comments, ideas & opinions in favour of those we agree with. We have to fight this impulse...

Engaging only with simpatico peers doesn't foster action, or advance progressive ideas. We can end up participating in a little club of self congratulation, forgetting any opposition exists. Free speech means freedom for all speakers and as uncomfortable as it may be, challenging negative views is the only way to contribute to change.

I plan to remember this and hopefully it will change my relationships both online and out in the world...

Chomsky vs. Twitter

Last time I wrote I threw in a quote by Noam Chomsky regarding the de-facto mental slavery we are subject to when powerful interests are allowed to dictate the narratives, the advertising, the media we consume. If you haven't come across Chomsky before I'm going to let you Google him, but suffice to say that I've heard him described as the most influential intellectual of the last fifty years (more than once). Chomsky writes passionately about the individual in the face of larger corporate, political and media influences. He is an advocate of individual action and thought free from coercion. 

I'm a fan of Noam, but in my reading for the last post I also came across some comments he made about social media and Twitter. It seemed he was not a fan of the brevity or relative flippancy of tweets and their limited character. He has also described in interviews a view that communication via devices tends towards the "superficial, shallow, evanescent" while Twitter perhaps "draw(s) people away from real serious communication". 

Let's face it, he has a point and in Noam's defense these comments were made around the same time Charlie Sheen was lighting up Twitter with a very dim bulb. At it's worst social media is people you've never met telling you they're hungry and then posting a picture of what they're eating (before anyone says anything I do realise that the worst is more like racism, sexism, trolls and attitudes best left in the middle ages). Beyond the shallow though Twitter et al. is also a democratizing force as it allows the audience to decide which voices are heard through comments, critiques and simply by ignoring the undesirable.

If we accept the premise that Twitter is often heavy with trivia and ephemera, this does not exclude the possibility for meaning within 140 characters. Brevity seems to be a particular bugbear for Chomsky as he feels it negates or sidelines controversial, non-mainstream discussion. But 140 characters is merely a window to another world that people may choose to explore at the cost of a mere click. Personally I am drawn back to tweeters who lead to me to more interesting information through links.

As a gateway social media has as many doors to Narnia as it does to last seasons Kardashian closet. The mere presence of crap does not negate it's power to distribute voices however. Just as the printing press gave us newspapers it also helped fill them with comics and personals. We have the opportunity to control the content as it evolves and part of that evolution is engaging, discussing and aggregating voices towards social causes. Daily people create their own content and distribute it via the interweb and social media is a resource they utilise to get word out.

Is there anything to say though?

Embedded in the technology is the mechanism that (hopefully) will see us guide this evolution towards a positive channeling of public voices; Twitter and other microblogging sites are equipped with functions to retweet, comment or simply stop following. While publishing may be free and easy, editing happens at the hands of the public at large. This means that the network of users vote with their 140 characters on whether an opinion expressed is viable. I wrote recently of my first experience with a truly abhorrent Twitter post and how at the hands of the 'Twitterverse' the poster was duly chastened. 

In one of the interviews mentioned above Chomsky describes a 'good public citizen' as one "who participates in the management of public affairs". Amongst the idle thoughts and tummy rumblings social media offers a platform for participation that is open and uncensored as yet. Entry criteria for participation is the possession of an online device, and this can be a steep price in some markets, as I've discussed in a previous post. This is changing though and with access comes a proliferation of new voices. For those that can afford it, this is cheap compared to running for office in a developed western democracy.

These technologies offer both shallow, narcissistic interactions and the potential to engage in the public sphere like never before. It requires a little creativity to straddle the line and becomes a daily commitment if you really intend to engage, but I've found it worth the effort. In a future where this technology will become second nature I wonder if our questioning it's validity at length (longer than the aforementioned 140) will seem quaint. Till then I choose to embrace the voice it affords me.

1000 words...

Not everyone reads blogs, newspapers, or even that little ticker tape at the bottom of the TV. Hell given the option of 140 characters some people throw their hands up in the air and tweet a picture instead!

Messages and the medium in which they are communicated have become wide and varied in the years since Marshall McLuahn assured us the two are related. But with so many competing messages and all the bright flashing lights, what's a person have to do to get noticed?!

...

This morning, feeling more than a little ironic, I decided to visit a musee exposition on street art. It was a no-brainer with all that talent blown inside by the winter winds, I could take the time to contemplate deeply stenciled truths out of the winter cold. I love walking down any random street and suddenly being confronted with something thought provoking, original, not merely plain brick...

Banksy was in there, as was Shepard Fairy (the 'Obama Hope' guy), Space Invader, as well as a bunch I didn't know so well but had seen around. Their images confronted and challenged consumerism, political indifference, privacy and state observation, even as they braved the fate of all ephemera. Issues both personal and global were theirs, just as their canvas was both private and public.

Around the same time I read of the Australian Greens releasing pictures drawn by young children in detention on Manus island. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young wanted the Australian government to see how it's immigration policies were robbing children of their childhood but some commentators on Twitter felt that the pictures were a form of propaganda or emotional blackmail. What is the truth when images cut so deep?

In Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2012 a song called 'Same Love' by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis came in at #15. It's a cool song, even if you're not the biggest fan of hip-hop. Basically it confronts the prejudices people unconsciously reinforce about gay people, to a beat. Now the Hottest 100's a big deal. More than a million people vote every year for these songs and they voted in a protest against the marriage discrimination against gay people.

We know this stuff! We stream the tunes and view the Youtube clips; we decry the graf on our fence but wear the pithy t-shirt. Every time it pisses someone off it means they are taking notice and questioning what's going on. It's definitely better than a Maccas opening on your block and their billboards blocking the skyline.

"Formal slavery has long been abolished, but a de facto mental slavery has replaced it" so says Noam Chomsky in his recent book Power Systems. When we ignore a challenging image but accept an advertisement; this is our enslavement. When we tune out to pop, but turn off a protest song; this is our enslavement.

Outside the gallery someone had reworked some discarded furniture...

As Australia goes to an election in 2013 we must think about these messages, but we must also make our own. With so many mediums through which we might be heard we have to go out and occupy that mental space. I don't know what your message might be but it's important that you get it our there for other people to hear it. While you're there take a moment and listen to what other people are saying...

We have infinite opportunities to engage each other, with as many distractions telling us to spend, consume and ignore. I say listen when it resonates with you but don't stop there. Tweet, like, spray, blog, post, comment or do whatever gets you heard and engage. "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery..."

Tweeting the Zeitgeist

I've been a little slow on my social media uptake so it was with great surprise last night when I found myself engaging in a tweetfest that actually affected something in the real world.

It was about three in the morning and I was loving another bout of insomnia. Luckily being in Avignon in the south of France I was perfectly in time for Sydney news and media and just general wakefulness. As I scrolled down my news feed I scanned the headlines (I think of tweets as headlines and prefer the ones that open into a world larger than 140 characters) looking for something interesting...

@GetUp - 'We should expect more from our political candidates & community leaders 

than homophobia, hate speech. #TessCorbett @BernardGaynor'

No idea what this was about but respecting @GetUp's take on issues I decided to dig around. Turns out @BernardGaynor is a senate candidate for a new political entity in Australia known as Katter's Australia Party (Katter's Aus Party). Gaynor had taken to Twitter to back up another party nominee, Tess Corbett and her comments made comparing homosexuality to bestiality...

@BernardGaynor -  'I wouldn't let a gay person teach my children 

and I'm not afraid to say it #auspol'

Uhmmm... ok! I was suitably aghast, I mean I'd heard that people tweet all sorts of crazy bullshit but had never actually had the opportunity to read it. This was completely different to retweeting inspirational articles about issues I believe in; here was someone making pejorative comments about people that included friends, coworkers, cool strangers that I haven't meant yet. I was kinda pissed but also felt strangely powerless to do anything against this hate speech.

I read through the post again and some of the follow up this goon had made attempting to justify his position. Some people had made some equally crazy comments wishing violence and death on the guy. I wanted to write something but didn't want to join the club of people venting their spleen. Basically I wanted to be clever, witty and concise (the last not being a huge problem on Twitter)...

@rightzblock - '@GetUp now you know people just don't vote for

 @BernardGaynor and take his voice away!'

I felt proud, I felt engaged, I reread it and realized my punctuation made the message a little ambiguous but I had said something against this guy. The way Twitter works though @BernardGaynor might never know that I thoroughly abhorred his narrow minded perspective...

@rightzblock - '@BernardGaynor Australia is a secular state, 

don't bring your misguided religious beliefs to the political debate!'

Now I felt better. I had spoken my beliefs in 140 characters or less and let some bigot know he had no place spreading his views. I could sleep easy, and despite the insomnia, several hours later I did.

In the morning I woke up and after covering coffee and the obligatory ablutions I got a little curious about what I'd been reading last night. I found this: The Australian - Twitter Gay Slur Story

I was stoked, energised and generally pretty damn happy... Of course this story has ignored thousands of others who also got online and expressed their unhappiness at this guys bigotry and insensitivity. Collectively they made the difference and were there representing the Australian public over the wicked minority. For me though it felt good that I had spoken when I felt moved to speak and stood up for my convictions.

When I sit down to write this blog I always hope that someone will read it and take away something of my message. It's hard to know when you write alone and receive little feedback; mostly your own opinions. The blog's pretty new though and I accept that few people even know it exists. But I do believe strongly in the power of our voices when we speak out on the things we believe (Rightzblock - The right to free speech?), it was great to see how it can come to fruition...

The Product?

If you're not paying for it then you're the product.

I keep hearing people talking about social media and the online world in these terms. Usually not very far into the conversation issues of privacy and access are also being mentioned and the argument can start to sound part civil rights issue and part conspiracy theory; that somehow the online illuminati are staging mass identity theft/profiling of us all.

I'm still not sure what to make of it all and so I dutifully ensure my privacy settings are set high and perhaps more importantly I self censor rigorously (which for some people might just mean not going near a computer whilst drunk!). Still though, I find it quite strange after searching on a whim for a flight somewhere that I soon find advertisements for holidays on my FB and other pages.

Am I savvy because I know this or a retard for not yet adequately getting around it and protecting my online life? I have no idea what the answer to that question is or even if it's the sort of question that can be answered at the moment. Whenever we use an app, whether to shop, search, poke, check in or any of the functions they offer, there is potential for data to be mined from us and sent back to the developer. What it might be used for is likely still being explored but I pause when I think someone could know what I'm thinking (from status updates and tweets), what I'm reading (from purchases) and where I go and when (check ins and the like). Thank goodness I don't live in a repressive state where that sort of information can get you in trouble.

In my last post I was wondering out loud about the potential for mobile applications and social media to change our thinking about parts and peoples we don't know or understand that well. Consider the African continent where smartphone penetration is closing in on 20% or one in five people. It's higher in Northern and Southern Africa and pretty low in Central Africa. This compares with almost 40% in Australia.

(here's a nice site for some stats http://www.mikekujawski.ca/2012/05/30/finally-some-2012-statistics-for-the-african-mobile-phone-market/)

This can have amazing impacts as was shown throughout the Arab Spring uprisings but it also brings up questions about the rights of people acquiring smartphones and the information they share. An external company may have incentives to develop and offer free software and applications for people in this developing market, which they can then transition into a data mining, money spinning operation (Facebook I'm looking at you). On the other hand there are great initiatives like Apps4Africa (http://apps4africa.org/) that encourage local developers to target problems and needs at a local level.

I did a quick Google search using the terms 'ethics of app development' and I got very little. All the top hits were for people wanting to write an ethics application for a research project or associated endeavor.  Curious, I did another search, this time with the search terms 'ethics of software development'. This time I got a lot more success which was comforting, at least people are thinking in the general area. The thing was that of the top hits I saw the most recent was from 2009, a little early for the current app revolution. Now this was an admittedly tiny search, using only narrow terms but I was really hoping for a little more thinking out there about the potential benefits and harms of our mobile, online life and how to address them.

The way I see it is the information economy is growing at a huge rate and this is largely driven by mobile internet usage. This usage is in turn driven by the development and use of apps on people's mobile phones. As this development occurs our thinking in turn must keep pace with the changing nature of content development and sharing. This is predominately going to require innovative thinking about the way to deal with all the incidental content development that happens when we're not thinking about it (location services and the like). Information shared by people online is intimately connected to their identity, their livelihood and sometimes their safety. The key to addressing the issue is probably as always education, but of what nature and how? 

...

I proofread this before I posted and got a little worried that I sounded a bit doom and gloom about spreading technology, which I'm really not. My thoughts tend towards wondering about future scenarios and I often play the devil's advocate. Anyway, here's another article I read while researching this that discusses the amazing potential and achievements mobile access can have in a development information economy... http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/13/world/africa/mobile-phones-change-africa/index.html

The right to free speech?

What are you reading this on?

There are more than a billion people on Facebook. I read that on my tablet the other day. I was flicking through some blogs and posts on Flipboard and there it was in the middle of an article about online trends.

Psy’s hit a billion too on Youtube I gather, while Obama won his first presidential election on social media and the Arab Spring owes some of it’s success to Twitter. The fact that everything from Facebook to Twitter allows you to check-in now makes me think that most of these people are watching, talking and organising from mobile devices. Huge numbers of people doing amazing things from their pockets and backpacks.

I tend to write this blog on my laptop but I don’t mind drafting on my phone; so far I lack the patience to type long paragraphs on such a small keyboard. I worry though that people are tuning out after the first 140 characters. Which brings me back to my original question of what are you reading this on, or perhaps more important to think about is whether would you be reading, writing and responding to any of this new media if it weren’t for your device. I don’t think it’s an impossible scenario that in the future the western world will consider access to an online device as a basic right; denial being akin to denying someone their right to speak freely.

We like to think of the online world and social media as being an egalitarian playground where participation has more to do with your cachet in wit and wisdom than your bankroll or influence. This forgets however one very important, very expensive initial entry criteria… our devices.

When I think about the potential for social media to connect, rally and influence I cannot help but wonder what we are missing out on from those who just don’t have access. How would Instagramming our amazing meal photos be understood if people starving in refugee camps could reply with images of their meagre repast? If social media tools like FB and Twitter could play such a powerful role in the Middle East and America, what role might they play in other regions of political or social unrest less able to get online and organise.

Free speech is an ideal much touted but even in places where people can express themselves freely they are not always guaranteed an audience. The mobile-online world allows live content development and publishing as well as access to a huge audience always on the lookout for new things. Think about a cause or charity you believe, maybe donate to. Their webpage probably has a ‘like’ symbol as well as a little blue/white bird and an orange RSS logo all ready for you to click on. They are networked and ready to harness the huge numbers available online to their cause; making a difference through people. If you cannot afford to get on social media though you are essentially stuck in the nineteenth century, waiting for some benevolent colonial to notice and take pity on your plight.

Mobile connectivity has provided so much to the world, shallow as it may seem at times. It is important to remember though that this opportunity is not completely democratic, not free for all. Consider this next time you peruse the voices on Twitter and the channels on Youtube; listen critically to who is talking but question also whose voices are missing. Remember this also when you tweet your own voice what an amazing privilege it is just to have the chance to be heard.