War in 2007: From 2-D to 3-D

A few years ago I was waiting to see a movie at the tech-savvy popular Metreon in downtown San Francisco. What I found at the Metreon was an advanced insult to the notoriously politically correct city where this machine had planted its high tech brainwashing squirrelly self.

I saw children holding plastic machine guns and heard the words ‘shoot the terrorist’ echoing from the multi-media center. The screen was set to a desert backdrop and the enemies darting across it were wearing headscarves.  Needless to say I freaked out.  No, don’t do it, I told my 20-year old brother as he strode purposefully over to this soul- stealing machine. “But it has really cool high-tech laser beams,” he responded casually. I stood helplessly by and pondered the invisible arm turned machine that is/was Donald Rumsfeld.

In her post ‘Gaming as a Recruiting and Tracking Tool for the Army,’ Cullen writes “Using these tactics in recruiting people to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives when it might be hard to divorce the virtual world from reality is less than reputable.”

As 2007 turns to 2008 games become more high-tech and draw more audiences than can fit into a game room. Online, the army seduces a young, screen fixed audience to train for a war they are not made to see as real. This is done by making their virtual war game seem so real, that the real thing, (after being recruited according to game skill and sent to Iraq), seems like just another game over.

What’s His is Mine: A Case Study in Creative Commons Theory

“All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.” It was this witty anecdote that led to the following discussion between Carlo and I, which led to this subsequent blog entry, which led to — what I believe — is a perfect microcosm example of how the Creative Commons theory should work.

This conversation was born as Carlo and I sat in the library over the weekend, working on our respective blog entries — me writing my Wikiscanner entry and him drafting his semi-late copyright page.

I had chosen to write about the controversial case of former Russian KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko. As the blog session dwindled on, Carlo mentioned a visit by a former co-worker to Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, as part of a side procrastination conversation we were having over the Iranian nuclear situation.

Getting back to my Litvinenko article, I began crafting up what I felt was a clever analogy relating Wikipedia flagging and the intrusion warning system at the Lawrence Livermore testing site Carlo had mentioned during our conversation.

As I opened the Litvinenko post, writing . . . “Just as the alarm bells in Lawrence Livermore National Labs warn of intrusion”, I paused and asked Carlo how I might fold in the nuclear lab anecdote about the warning system at Lawrence Livermore into the Wikiscanner article.

After a few back and forths, and some minor stylistic tweaks, I wrapped up my Litvinenko leade with the line . . . “flags send the determined Wikipediast scurrying towards revision.”

While still oblivious that Carlo was drafting his own blog post in response to the Creative Commons – intellectual property question, I asked him just how much credit did he believe he would be entitled to, if our collaboration on my Wikiscanner blog leade had been between two journalists working on a story.

Initially, he was adamant that he should not only be credited for informing me about that little tidbit regarding the alarm at Lawrence Livermore, but also for his contribution to my work — in the way that news stories often carry either a double-byline or a “contributed to” line.

Then it clicked. What had started as a conversation over a colorful anecdote for my Wiki scanner blog post had developed into a perfect microcosm of the intellectual property debate

A little background . . .

The furor over intellecutal property, as with many of the arguements surrounding digital communications, came about after technologial advances — particularly peer-to-peer file sharing techology — surpassed people’s comprhension of such leaps in technology.

Beginning with the landmark case between the P2P filsesharing service Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the question over who owns what once it hits the world wide web remains one that is not easily answered.

Back to the conversation . . .

As we talked, Carlo made the point that I would not have had the sentence I wanted for my Wiki scanner post if it had not been for his nuclear facility factoid.

That said, I reverted back to the Creative Commons standpoint that ideas and information should not be seen as proprietary, but as a shared available resource. Carlo on the other hand, argued that such proprietary rights can and should at least be acknowledged.

We concluded that if knowledge was never shared than there would be no such thing as a Beatles remix , for example, since the remix would never have been possible with out the original.

As that remixed iteration of an original Beatles song cannot claim to be a purely original song, Carlo could not pretend that my analogy between the warning system at Lawrence Livermore and the Wikiscanner flag system was a purely original idea without contribution from an outside source.

After some debate, we agreed to recognize each of our contributions to my Wikiscanner post, acknowledging it as a collaborative effort that we would each post up on our respective blogs.

So there you have it, a collaborative blog entry. Do you agree with the approach — information use with acknowledgement? As I said before, “All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.”

Post script: We also agreed on the collaborative use of the word Wikipediaest. The extent of that discussion was whether it should be spelled with an e or an a. Jimmy Wales beware. Better check those boxes.

There will always be unknowns but Dylan Avery is not satisfied with that

You tube hit extraordinaire, Loose Change is a documentary based on Dylan Avery’s alternative account of 9/11. Loose Change derives it’s power to persuade a post 9/11frazzled audience by doing what a lot of conspiracies do, which is to take already acknowledged facts/half truths and use them to justify a theoretical interpretation of events. After being taught how to identify what I already know is a black box, I am meant to presume that Dylan Avery will keep on furthering my education as the film drags on.

The question I want answers to the most is not whether or not secret voice mimicking technology was used to stage phone calls from passengers on flight 93. The question I wanted to get to the bottom of while watching Loose Change is why people love conspiracy theories.

The word conspiracy alone denotes an instinctual grin and a shrug. I cannot pinpoint why I am so quick to dismiss the countless theories in opposition to the official government account of 9/11. Maybe because it is more time efficient for me to shrug my shoulders than it is to Google every little tidbit put forth on You tube as to what might have actually happened.

I have come to the conclusion that what keeps conspiracies alive is the fact that people simply like to be in on something. There is some kinda joy in rewriting history and turning fact into fiction that just might have an element of remaining fact. While both Avery’s and the U.S. government’s accounts of 9/11 should come under equal fire- its just fun to be starting the small ones.

Yet in the end, when it comes to blowing up major infrastructure and killing thousands of citizens, that many people just can’t keep a secret.

Wanna be a dissident?

You wanna be a dissident? O.k. Start saving. Find transportation to one of the few Internet cafes that are available in the capital city of Ashgabat. Now give the government-tasked guards at the door your identification before logging online. Alright its time to voice your thoughts and express yourself to the world.

Go ahead, speak your mind. Think about where you gained the knowledge, thoughts and ideas to speak of your dissatisfactions. Your local school? News that seems to have holes in it? The information available from which to rebel is what is made available. There is no independent media.

Turkmenistan is not a place to Google anything. Turkmenistan is a country where the few who are fortunate enough to have access to the internet must proceed with caution and use it carefully. For the usual reasons of- politics, power, security concerns and social norms, Internet usage is restricted to approved organizations, accredited foreign journalists and embassies.

Visitors to Turkmenistan must register with government administrators in order to log online, but even then they can only pull up websites with favorable views of the Turkmenistan government. Less than 1% of Turkmen citizens are surfing the web and those who are do so under the watchful eye of government. There is no home connection. Some argue that Turkmenistan cannot make the claim of being a country with access to the internet if the majority of the population cannot afford it.

In light of the strict monitoring of online activity, major news organizations such as The New York Times, BBC and CNN have managed to remain available in a country where access to the Internet is a scarce resource and the struggle for a true world wide web remains to be seen.

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