Well, it’s the end of an academic year, and I’m thinking about these “links.” Should I continue them? Should I keep on with certain categories of them? I’m not sure. I think I’m going to take a break from them for the summer, and have a think about what’s really important to digital culture. I’m not sure that “security” really is, nor “copyright / patent” either. I’ll have a think about it – and see whether I can resist flagging those particular categories of link as important. Meanwhile, if there’s anything which is important that you think I’m missing, please do let me know.
Category: Scholarly Things
Things for D’s research.
Links
Another slug of links for you. I must say that I’m disappointed that more people haven’t spoken out against CISPA, and that it’s drawn much less attention than SOPA and PIPA did. I wonder: has the public just become apathetic? It’s the same bill, pretty much, only worse in some ways than SOPA / PIPA, in that this is outsourcing the censorship.
Links
Not much commentary this week – just a bunch of links. Enjoy them.
Links
You know, it occurs to me that I’ve never really said what these “Links” are for, nor how I gather them. I’ll leave the “what they’re for” for a moment, and tell you the “how” of putting these lists together.
Basically, these links represent about a week of me reading an assortment of content from about 150 different RSS feeds to which I’ve subscribed using Google Reader (yes, I know, now Google knows what I read, but it’s the tool for which I’ve optimized this process). While in Reader (using FireFox, with GreaseMonkey installed, running Google Reader Absolutely Customizable), I can quickly navigate through posts, reading either a blurb or the full article, depending upon what the feed author has decided to publish. As I read, I can mark items as “starred,” to come back to later and examine more closely to determine whether they belong on the Links post.
Once I’m satisfied with the list of starred items, I have a .php script which consumes the RSS feed generated by my starred items, putting them into a standard format (basically, the HTML code for what’s below, yet without categories). I take that generated HTML, dump it into Excel where it falls into a series of columns with the title of the piece all by itself (thanks, .php script for making this part so much easier). I then sort by title & go through categorizing each link into what I think is its dominant category, sometimes pulling a link & copying it into two categories. I then sort by category and reverse date order, write a few Excel formulae to put on each section’s header, copy the code out into Notepad++ where I run a series of formatting replacements so that things lay out in a way which is easier to navigate than HTML all run together.
It’s at this point that I’m ready to add some commentary. All told, each Links post probably represents about 20 hours of reading and culling, probably about an hour of massaging content into their categories (which requires some re-reading to figure out why I thought the item was significant) and into an easily-editable format, and another hour or so adding commentary (if I’m not feeling lazy by this point).
Now, back to the “why” of doing this, as it’s certainly not something which is without effort, nor is it a trivial exercise. I do these posts because I believe the issues examined or linked to are significant to our lives, both digital and physical. I examine these issues because they are significant, and tend to be overlooked by most media, or are only touched upon lightly when they are examined at all.
As Bill pointed out to me last week, there is quite a lot of tension between some of these issues – for example, the tension between censorship on the one hand, and cyber-bullying on the other. There is tension between the right to privacy and the public’s right to know, or between freedom of expression and security. These tensions and how they are resolved are, to me, important issues, in particular because we interact so thoroughly through the medium of networked communications.
So, yet another batch of links for you all. Enjoy! And do feel free to check out the archives, particularly if you’re receiving these via email, as all of these are archived at http://hobbitsabroad.com/?cat=36
Links
I realize I’ve been considering censorship from the wrong end: I’ve been thinking of censorship as the act of either a government or a large corporation to suppress speech of individuals. Censorship, however, operates on a much smaller level than that as well – it operates at the organizational level, where “the boss” silences expression which is not in line with the norms of the group. This was within an email exchange, wherein they told me they were “shocked” that I’d post recordings of our choir performances when I’d been told that the musician’s union prohibited such recordings (they record the performances themselves – I’ve seen them do so – but apparently it’s against the rules for anyone else to do so). We’ll not go into how 1) there IS no content posted by me at this moment, nor 2) the fact that search engines cache all sorts of things – those are mere details, and aren’t really what’s made me consider this as censorship operating on a micro scale, as opposed to that imposed by governments or media companies.
We tend to think about censorship in very broad strokes, but it’s far more ubiquitous than we realize. It’s an issue of power, and control, and authority. It’s about silencing those who are not just the minority voices, but about silencing those who have less power within whatever perceived power structure that is in place. It’s about maintaining the status quo, really. It’s social control at its most crass and medieval.
There are intersections, in this case, with copyright … which I’m not going to examine right now. I’m still angry about the idea that I’m being subjected to censorship – that my voice can be threatened by someone. I do not give in to this type of thing as there is NO LEGAL BASIS FOR SUPPRESSING MY VOICE (or my recordings). But the social creature says to give in to the voice of authority, and that there is an implicit threat in being told to do something by someone who has set themself up as someone “in charge.” That threat – that exercise of control – is what censorship is about. It’s not just about the silencing of voices – that’s just the end result. It is exercising control over other beings whom one imagines to be somehow inferior, and that is why I resist it so furiously.
Links
A bunch of links for you again this week. I’ve just put the finishing touches on my corrections, so here’s fingers crossed that they’ll go through and that’s me, PhD after the name. 🙂
Links
If you read nothing else from this week’s “links” post, please do read Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill and Ancient Computers in Use Today.
Links
And now for the news. SOPA / PIPA / ACTA seem to have calmed down somewhat, but I suspect that they’ve just been driven underground a bit and that we’ll see some new form of them soon. We’re still heavy on copyright / patent this week, but I’m glad that most of the furor has died down. Privacy is always going to be a large section here, but this week it’s some new revelations about companies spying on smart-phone users, so at least have a peruse of the section. And, if you don’t read any of the rest, please do read How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did – I’ve spoken about the value of data mining before, but this article really explains what it’s all about and why it’s a bit creepy.
Links
Another batch of links for you – enjoy!
Links
This week’s links seem to be about copyright and censorship, and it’s started me wondering whether there’s much of a difference: one stops speech for political reasons, the other for profit … but they both seem to be accomplishing much the same thing, and both seem to violate people’s rights in much the same manner. As always: if you’ve a particular area related to any of those I’m already following, do let me know and I’ll see about including some links for your particular area of interest.