Monday, May 18, 2009

When new technology scares the crap out of you…there’s an app for that
















Based upon previous blogs you could be excused for thinking that I am something of a Luddite, railing against the march of technology. Which could not be further from the truth. I confess I have an ambivalent relationship with mobile (aka cell) phones and have always remained at least two generations behind everyone else with regards to the models and the different capabilities. But I am endlessly intrigued by the possibilities of the iphone and all of the wonderful “apps”. By all accounts you can write an app and if it is successful it can make you very, very rich. Given that my level of computer literacy has never really progressed beyond the equivalent of the John and Betty reader that is clearly not an avenue that will ever be remotely relevant to me. But I am drawn to a phone that can seem to do so much! I am not sure if the capabilities are as comprehensive in Oz, but here in the US I love the ads. I watch the Iphone ad that tells me that if I want to make sure that wall-shelving is straight…there’s an app for that, want to split the check five ways (including the tip), there’s an app for that and my favourite; you want to find a place to eat so you shake the iphone and it brings up some choices in your neighbourhood. There is a seemingly endless array of apps that are just so intriguing and sort of relevant; want to buy a textbook, there is an app that searches for prices, when you need to find an apartment there is an app for that. Most, if not all, of the apps are obviously designed for someone far more computer savvy than me, and there is any number of lists (back to the lists) of the coolest apps.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent/article.php/3733626

In reality I suppose it is little more than the shift of all of your computer’s functions across to a phone. It does leave me feeling that I want those apps so badly…irrespective of the fact that they are not really anything that I truly need. I can recall the same sort of pining when I used to read American comics and they had all manner of wonderful items for sale – which of course were unavailable in Australia. So the x-ray specs, or the sea-monkeys and even your own little Polaris submarine were projected as phantasmic objects of desire. I am glad that I never sought to send away for any of the items – in later years I could cope with the fact that sea monkeys were just brine shrimps that bore no resemblance to the beaming anthromorphic beings in the ads but it would have been crushing for a nine-year old.

So, I suspect, it is with the Iphones and the apps that by and large (if you go to the website) are personal finance management tools, news feeds or games that were previously to be found on playstation or your computer. Granted that the new iphone apps probably do deliver on the promise of the technology in a way that would have been impossible for the polaris nuclear sub (at a time before I even comprehended what a nuclear sub was and was content to dream how cool it would be to take it out to Lake Benanee and explore its murky depths).

While I feel drawn to the endless possibilities of useless iphone apps that have no relevance to my life (I remain convinced, for example, that I could find some use for the card counting app that is banned in Las Vegas) there is another new technology that leaves me totally cold. I am referring to the recently released models of electronic books – the Kindle from Amazon and the Sony version, its Reader. As with the iphone the allure of the technology is strong – the prospect of being able to download books via wireless, without even needing a computer. An average book can take about 60 seconds to download and the capacity of these e-readers is being improved so that they can also download newspapers. They don’t come cheap (around $350US) but the attraction for someone who is constantly shipping books from one place to another, or having to pay excess baggage for books I carry (and inevitably only use a few times). A kindle can hold up to 1500 books and there are reportedly over a quarter of a million books in the appropriate format for downloading. The Kindle and Sony Reader also have a “text to speech” capacity, which allows the gadget to read the text aloud. The technology is not without its glitches, however, with it being noted that the Kindle currently has a problem in the text recognition of two words – that inconveniently comprise the first and surname of the current US President. An item at blippitt.com noted:

The Kindle is a marvel of modern technology but apparently “voice” of the Amazon Kindle mispronounces two key words that appear frequently in the pages of many newspapers - “Barack” (the Amazon Kindle rhymes it with “black”) and “Obama” (the pronunciation sounds like “Alabama”).


In response to this revelation the wags at Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me noted that the Kindle gives you the option of entering an appropriate sounding of a word that it does not have programmed correctly. This led them to reflect that the Republicans could program their Kindles for reading of newspapers to speak “He Who Must Not be Named” whenever the Obama appeared in the text, while the Democrats could program it to simply have a chorus of angels singing.

The reality of e-books is such that there is already debate and dispute between readers and publishing houses as to the appropriate pricing for the downloadable version of “books”. The market seems to be settling at a price of around $9.95 US – which is not all that much cheaper than the conventional paperback version. There is already an animated cyber-space discussion on different blogs (surprise, surprise!) as to the appropriate pricing of ebooks

For example there is this one:
http://futureperfectpublishing.com/2008/08/26/does-anyone-know-how-to-price-an-e-book/

Such a debate clearly accepts as given the fact that ebooks are here to stay and that they will gradually displace the traditional form of books as the normal mode of publishing. It is in this presumption that I feel my hackles rise. To make books available as electronic files – no matter how true the screen display might be to the original printed format – is an abomination, pure and simple. There is so much more to buying and owning a book than just the computer download. An old book is a thing of beauty – its smell, the feeling of its dustjacket, even the lurid covers of the old paperbacks. How much of the joy of buying books is that browsing (particularly in second hand book stores) amongst the strangely musty smelling stacks for the old, out of print editions of obscure titles? Books open up conversations, tell you about the people who are reading them. They can be, admittedly, props or affectations. So you have the young student poring over a well-thumbed copy of Kerouac or Sartre or Camus and it sends out the clear message – I am young, rebellious and serious. Similarly the Kindle will make it harder to “read” people because their books will no longer be on display in bookshelves. Leaving aside the books that are best-sellers and that no-one ever reads (think A Brief History of Time) it is always an instinctive move when you go to someone’s house to check out what they are reading (or maybe it is just me). Leaving aside these flip observations, however, I think it an irrefutable truth that we will (as individuals and a society) be the poorer for the move towards the sterile, digitized versions of books.

If I can lend an even more sinister note to the move to move the written word to the electronic format there is also the news that Google is planning to digitize every book in the world. It has started with the so-called “orphan” books that are out of print and over which copyright no longer applies. On the one hand it would appear a praiseworthy venture. Rescuing books from obscurity and making all the books of the world available – the latter day Library of Alexandria if you like. There is also the economic reality that the cost of books and journals now means that they can only be made accessible to the general population if a more economic mode of distribution can be found. But there are grounds to be concerned. The plan to ultimately digitize all books troubles me not only for the inexorable shift towards digital format for books – but also for the prospect of Google one day owning the rights for all the books of the world. It seems far-fetched, but in its most dastardly form it conjures up the scenario of an Orwellian dystopia - where access to all information is controlled. Not for any ideological purpose I hasten to add, but access would be based around the monopoly enjoyed by Google. Books would then cease to be indispensable elements of culture and become, instead, the property of one global corporation. It leaves me wondering if this is a more insidious and devious way of implementing the society that Ray Bradbury warned against in Fahrenheit 451? A conspiracy theory of sorts…but then living in California does makes one more disposed to such flights of alternative reality.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Times they are a changin' (Part one)


Over the last few months I have been reading about the closure of a number of local newspapers around the USA. I had never read the Rocky Mountain News or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer but it gave me pause for thought. It was ironic that I had actually read the news about the closure of the papers on the internet. For me the weekends have always involved the pleasure of spreading out all the newspapers (three on Saturday and two on Sunday) and tossing the various sections to the four corners of the room. Part of the pleasure of the weekend papers when at home in Robinvale is the communal sense as we rummage to find the part that we find, hoping it is not too smeared by vegemite or coffee or porridge stains. There is something pleasingly finite about taking the paper sections that you want and reclining on a couch with a coffee. The attraction of the newspaper is certainly not a sensory experience like, for example, an old book. The newsprint stains your hand, smudges on clothes and furniture coverings and there is that chemical odour to the paper that is distinctly unappealing. Notwithstanding the drawbacks of reading the paper it was something I missed when I came to San Diego. With all due respect to the San Diego Tribune it wasn’t a paper that had any news I felt I wanted to read. Then we discovered that we could have the New York Times delivered on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I was in heaven! I’ll leave aside the weekly battle to find out why I can regularly have the paper delivered two out of the three days, but for some inexplicable reason they can’t get their act together for the Sunday delivery. The people in Sales in New York must dread my call each week complaining. But leaving my grouching about the delivery aside, it is nice to unfold the paper again, like I have done for so many years in Robinvale, Melbourne and Yandoit.
Lest it be thought that this blog is merely another Luddite rant against the new technologies (though I do so enjoy them) I have to confess that I am torn over the question of newspapers. My morning ritual has been changed forevermore with the advent of the internet, so much that I now find myself taking my coffee to the computer and spending the next half hour (well okay, hour or more) scanning the on-line editions of newspapers. First I click on the Melbourne papers, the Age and cross over to the Herald-Sun to see the football news. Then it is across to the UK where I check on the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC world news site, the Times and, if there is football in the news, I may even end up on the website of the Telegraph. To the US then and I look at the NY Times and then the “local” paper in the LA Times. Which is all confirmation of the fact that many of you knew – academics have far too much time on their hands. If there is a breaking political story I will then trip across to the Huffington Post for the myriad of blogs and who knows where that might take me. It is like going on a Magical Mystery Tour – I might start out reading about the British politicians who have been rorting the system by claiming from the British public the cost of upkeep for the moats around their country residence but, rest assured, I will deviate and detour down any number of newspaper by-ways and side-ways. It is suddenly essential to know (courtesy of the New York Times) about the resurgence of absinthe or (from the Independent) why Fred Perry was a working class boy who was never accepted by the upper class toffs at Wimbledon or, well I could go on, but you get my drift. It is like wandering down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole and never knowing where you will turn up. I can spend literally hours trawling the internet for work-related articles and news and, to work the metaphor further, like a North Sea trawler you will inevitably catch in your net decidedly un-academic items that are just too juicy to pass up. So I confess to loitering in the entertainment pages of the Huffington Post or even …yahoo news! After all we do have a right, nay a need, to know about Madonna marrying her 22 year old boy-toy or Kiefer Sutherland’s latest public melt-down and arrest.
Having access to such a comprehensive and omnipresent source of information would, you would think, lead me to overcome any nostalgic attachment to the old print format newspapers. But recent events have got me to thinking whether it is a good thing. You can argue that it will save trees I suppose, but then there is the question of the thousands of jobs that will be lost. The US government has already made it clear that a bail-out of newspapers does not rank with the banks or even the car makers so it would appear that there is a bleak future for newspapers. It will come as no surprise to learn that even as Rupert Murdoch intimates that newspapers will fold, he is also flagging the inevitability of pay-for-view online newspapers. So I feel a tad miffed that my free newspaper grazing days might come to an end – it is a bit like the way they seduced us to the joys of FM radio with commercial free EON FM back in the day (circa 1980 from memory- with the very cool Jo Jo Zep station identifier) before lurching into the corporate behemoth that it is today.
But it is not just the demise of the national papers that I am thinking about – it is more about the impact of the closure of the middling and little papers (like the Rocky Mountain Herald). There is research that indicates that the papers like the RMH has a pronounced impact upon the level of community engagement within local politics, with less people standing for office and voting. It is also argued that some of the local news that is covered would not be covered in the broadcast media because they do not have as large a reporting staff. Paradoxically it seems that the closure of newspapers in the very small towns has not had such a profound impact upon what they might term “civic engagement”. It is also argued that the small town papers might actually survive because they don’t provide news that is available on the internet and that they have not been dependent upon classified ads in the same way that the major dailies have. The survival of local papers has also be attributed to the different demographic of the small towns (often rural) where the median age is higher than the metropolitan centre and the absence of internet service listings in rural areas (the infamous craigslist in the US for example).
The imminent (or not) demise of newspapers did set me thinking about what it would mean if the Robinvale Sentinel were to close in my old home town. Or for that matter the Riv Herald in Echuca, or the Warrnambool Standard, the Wangaratta Chronicle, the Sunraysia Daily, the LaTrobe Valley Express or the Ballarat Courier. I can’t speak for all these papers from towns which friends have hailed from (or still reside) but I have to say in respect of the Robinvale Sentinel, in the nicest possible way, that is not that much that passes for real reportage. The Sentinel’s photos are usually grainy and badly shot and it all too often prints verbatim the reports made available by local public authorities. With a circulation of 1,200 it is not a paper that has the resources to undertake indepth investigative reporting. There is not that much news of the 6 o’clock broadcast media type that happens. But this is not to say that these papers don’t serve a very useful purpose. They are the once weekly (or more) service that binds together a rural community and advises on meeting times. It is also that which can bring the family together around the table and disrupt the solitary rumination over the daily newspaper The items in the newspaper; be it the reporting of an “incident” in town, or the announcement of a birth, wedding or death or even the local sports news, all serve as a departure point to talking about the real story. There will be an account of a brawl, which the police attended, and then we will hear from my niece or nephews the other side of the story. We will hear other narratives (all hearsay of course) from people who were there. The real reason(s) for the brawl and the aftermath will all be laid out on the table like a deck of cards being dealt for a hand of poker. That is why it saddens me to think of the future demise of the newspaper. Admittedly we will connect more expansively, directly and, arguably, comprehensively through the internet and Facebook and twitter. But there will be something missing and I suspect we will be all the poorer for it.


P.S. Just after I posted this I noticed a news item that Saturday was the last edition of the Tucson Citizen after 138 years. Inside today's New York Times there is also an advertisement for the face of the paper's online version in pdf under the heading of "Welcome to the Future" at nytimes.com/timesreader. It's only a matter of time I fear before the hardcopy newspaper is a thing of the past.

Friday, May 15, 2009

The new Arizona State University theme song?

I think I have chanced upon Arizona State University’s theme song. With apologies to Edwin Starr it goes something like this:

O-ba-ma…huh…what is he good for? Absolutely nothing…sing it again..

You get my drift, which is to say that I was gob-smacked (increasingly my default expression here in the US) at the decision of the Arizona State to invite Obama to give the commencement address to the students. Let me explain further, it is not the invitation that which left me gaping in askance. Rather it was the decision not to honour Obama at the commencement speech by granting him an honorary degree. It is fairly common practice to give out honorary doctorates to the luminaries who grace such occasions. I certainly have no issue with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney or Muhammad Ali receiving honorary degrees from various institutions (the Universities of St Andrews, Yale and Princeton respectively) and I have even raised a smile at the revelation that Stephen Colbert (satirist extraordinaire from the Colbert Report) received a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College (yes, I know, where?) Some of the awardees I did find a tad dubious though. I mean Steven Tyler? (Berklee College of Music, Boston) But leaving that aside, we are confronted by the decision of the ASU trustees not to award an honorary doctorate to Obama. The rationale, according to the mindless University bureaucrats who scrambled into damage control once the fire-storm (quite rightly) descended on their heads, is that according to a spokesperson:
”honorary degrees are given “for an achievement of eminence” and that Obama was not considered for an honorary degree because his body of achievements, at this time, does not fit within that criteria”


Well I suppose his c.v. is a tad light; first African-American editor of the Harvard law review while a student, constitutional law professor at Harvard, Chicago Senator and the first African-American president (but only, you might hastily add, for just over 130 days!)

The disingenuous response from ASU is revealed in all its tawdry glory by the knowledge that there have been awards given to Barry Goldwater in 1961 (three years before he even ran unsuccessfully for President), Sandra Day O’Connor (after three years into her term on the bench of the Supreme Court) and the former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who received her award in 2005 although she was only in the office for 140 something days in 1993 before being voted out (what a difference those ten days make!!). Leaving aside these awards which would appear to contradict the ASU dictum that they are waiting to “judge his body of work”, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post has ascertained that Obama could fast-track his path towards that coveted ASU honorary degree if he were only to donate a piddling $50 million to the University, as has been the case with William P Carey, whose firm has global holdings of global and commercial properties.
(For the Sam Stein article go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/10/who-unlike-obama-actually_n_185546.html)

And of course he may well feel compelled to dip into his pockets and shell out the fifty million to be able to claim that association with such a venerable institution as Arizona State. It offers a range of um…globally recognized courses in…sports management. I have to concede that UCSD can hardly adopt the intellectual high ground on this point, however, given that the University proudly proclaims on its website that it was once again voted the best campus for surfing in the US!
(see it here: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/03-09SurfingCampus.asp)

But, returning to the increasingly dubious claims of ASU to intellectual credibility, it should not be forgotten that the campus was after all, listed as the number 1 party-school by Playboy magazine in 2005. A less desirable spin on this aspect of ASU came to light when it also was dubbed “The Harvard of Date Rape” by a reporter on the Daily Show, which was no doubt a reference to a 2004 settlement made by to a student by ASU after she was raped in her own dorm. In another inglorious footnote it was also ASU that, twenty years ago, refused to acknowledge the Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative holiday.

At this point I confess I am asking myself why in heaven’s name would Obama lower himself to be associated with a brand name that is so profoundly damaged (think along the lines of the academic version of AIG).

To prove that he is truly a glutton for punishment, however, the President is backing up the dubious honour of addressing ASU by giving the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. No problem with him receiving an honorary degree there. Tick. And it is also fairly noteworthy academic institution. Again, tick. But this address is probably even more controversial – with no less than 70 odd (and I use the term advisedly) Catholic bishops petitioning for the invitation to be revoked because of Obama’s stance on abortion and stem-cell research, which they view as contrary to church teachings. In addition there is now a web-site, titled “Notre Dame scandal”, which has attracted in excess of 350 000 signatures opposing Obama’s presence on campus. It is an interesting stand-off, given that Obama enjoys something like 53% support amongst American Catholics.

It is all a little sad, the manner in which an address to students can become so mired in partisan politics and intrigue. For me it reiterated the essential emptiness of the promise of freedom of speech and the role of academia that emerged at UCSD earlier this year when the Ethnic Studies department sought to convene a debate on the violence in the Gaza Strip. As with all things Obama has handled the minefield of religious and (I would argue) racial propagandizing with grace and aplomb. In response to the question as to whether he has done enough to warrant acknowledgment he responded, reportedly with a smile, that: "First of all, (first lady) Michelle (Obama) concurs with that assessment. She has a long list of things that I have not yet done waiting for me when I get home." If I were Obama I would forgo suffering the interminable slings and arrows and spend the weekend mowing the lawn, clearing the gutters on the White House and maybe shooting some hoops. I think it would be a lot more fulfilling.


PS For the Jon Stewart Daily Show “investigative journalism” piece on ASU have a look here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/13/daily-show-goes-to-asu-to_n_202839.html

PPS Only hours after I posted this blog I saw a news item the confirmed that the University of Southern California had awarded Arnold Schwarzenegger an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his "inspirational realization of the American dream." Significant that it comes from a private institution that is uber-rich, so much so that the USC is alternatively interpreted as the "University for Spoilt Children". At a time when the Californian public educational sector is taking massive budget cuts it seems some how perverse that the architect of this academic vandalism is lauded for its contribution to the "American dream". Which begs the questions, of course, of what/whose dream?