Back to analog: The end of the Internet = typewriter redux

A couple of years ago I published the following article:

“Killing the Thing You Love: Predator Drones, Wilful Neglect and the End of the Internet,” International Journal of Knowledge, Technology and Society, Vol 8, Issue 1: 153-166.

Killing the Thing You Love

At that time, armed drones were new and marked a deeply disturbing trend in the use of Internet technologies. The drones were using the telecommunication infrastructure that had been created by the US Government and then privatized. With the US military in charge, the drones were annihilating opponents of the US and innocent civilians. To me this amounted to abuse of the infrastructure, as well as an abuse of legal systems. The law in most places does not allow for summary executions without a judicial procedure. Drones killed with the movement of a joystick and the push of a button by unnamed military personnel safe on US soil. 

To me, drones marked the end of the Internet - at least as it had been imagined. 

My ruminations were accurate, prophetic perhaps. My analysis we have witnessed the end of the Internet has now achieved confirmation status with the news that the German Government and apparently the Russian Government are using typewriters for communicating securely. Why? Because the National Security Administration sees and hacks everything, as do other nations' security agencies. (This is at the planning stage in Germany). Typewriter redux marks the material end point of the Internet, if the report from The Guardian is to be believed.  end of the internet v 2

The forcefulness of securitization by national powers large and small has led to this. The full scale global circulation of information is at an end. With the Internet, it was hoped that knowledge would be freer and more spirited in the way it offered resources for human betterment. By that I do not mean that human beings would realise their potential with more consumption. Unfortunately, consumption seems to be the handmaiden of securitization: buy more stuff while experiencing more security.

Or to put it another way: the end result is Internet pleasure generating more consumption which offers more granulated information to security agencies: both commercial and public. 

Typewriters are back. All those ones sitting on bookshelves behind writers being interviewed on television will need to be dusted off, carbon ribbons found, machine oil purchased and off we go - clak-clak-claketty-clak. 

With drones and securitization, is there any hope for the Internet?          

Rolf Harris, Rupert Murdoch face regulation plus culture shift

Critical analysis is important because it explains how established social and economic practices can be overthrown.

In my experience at least, academics and intellectuals do not spend enough time thinking about how to change the rules in order to shift the boundaries that separate legally tolerated behaviour  from unlawful thuggery. If they do engage in research on this topic, we tend to see precious little progress on moving against illegality. There may be some changes afoot in identifying and acting against previously tolerated activities.

The last couple of years have seen subtle changes playing out in relation to two Australians living abroad that could throw some light on the way shifts in the application of law within legal structures are changing and thus change the game.

The two people in question are Rolf Harris and Rupert Murdoch. As pillars of establishment media they have been thrown into the spotlight. In Harris's case he was found to be engaged in criminal sexual activity against children. In Murdoch's case, Andy Coulson, former editor of the no longer operating tabloid newspaper News of the World was  engaged in criminal phone hacking. He was employed by Mr Murdoch's company, as were a number of others who have admitted to similar wrong doing or are still awaiting trial.

There are a couple of lines of inquiry to tease out here.

• One has to do with the fact that both of the people in question are Australian expatriates.
• Another has to do with their behaviour. 
• A third has to do with the confluence of actions by the UK government and its regulators to suddenly bring them to public scrutiny and charge them or people in their organizations with crimes. 
• The fourth line of inquiry has to do with what Australian men (in this case) believe is acceptable behaviour.
• A fifth line of inquiry is whether these cases signal a much needed shift in tolerance for illegal behaviour generally.

First the Australians (I am also one). Consider the following questions:
Are Australians in the media inclined to practice criminal behaviour?
Are Australians likely to dismiss regulation in favour self-interest?

It is possible to draw the conclusion that the Harris and Murdoch guilty verdicts are merely a matter of timing.

Another conclusion could be that Australians achieve recognition and global success by refusing to accept limits on behaviour placed by regulations in their new "home" countries. By breaking the rules, or just going about their business to gain international success, Australians break or break through, drawing on their Crocodile Dundee libertarian cultural default along the way.

Recall the 1986 film of the same name and the favored scene of "That's not a knife. That's a knife!" Croc This scene is instructive for the way the knife wielding Dundee wins the girl for his bravado, his macho charisma and his rough charm. These ear characteristics for which the unregulated individual is well regarded, and like Harris and Murdoch, these free spirits are two Australian risk takers, who win over the Americans and the English with their unpolished behaviour, their brazen charm and their accents.

Or consider the US advertisement for Outback Steakhouse: "No Rules. Just Right."

A more interesting philosophical question is this: is there wilful ignorance at work?

(I would not eat at a restaurant that was not regulated, if that meant the food was poorly prepared. The connotation for me in this restaurant's pitch is that regulation of the entire operation, including hygiene, is something they reject. It's the end of the libertarian line. GO AND WASH YOUR HANDS!)

Some critics will add that this ignorance is further mobilized as Australia is swamped with celebrity worship, uncritical consumerism and obsessive interest in all things American that appears to be solely about the economic good life and anti-regulation.

Australian media organizations feed this beast. They share with many others around the world the need for lists to fill up that otherwise white space on the magazine page. The list of Trusted People included Rolf Harris on the Readers Digest list of 100 Most Trusted People, which means name recognition for celebrity. Trusted People - Australia

Is the culture changing? Have rugged individuals like Harris and Murdoch or their organizations been brought to justice outside Australia? If so what does this say about public and private attitudes to particular types of previously tolerated behavior? Or behaviour that has been made public.

Under the headline "Rolf Harris's pantomime act should never have fooled us," Suzanne Moore
 writing in The Guardian suggested that there was one individual who mobilized action against Harris, the UK director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer.  Moore comments

"It was against a backdrop of a different Crown Prosecution Service, not some nebulous atmospheric change in the ..." writes Moore. The second part of that sentence is not in line with this blog post, while the first part suggests that there are too many officials working in regulatory organizations who do too little to defend the public interest by bringing charges.

Sometimes good things happen:

This week, after 10 years of pretending their was nothing wrong with their cars, General Motors in the US accepted Ken Feinberg's arrangements for multi-billion dollar settlements to families whose members were killed as a result of GM's behavior. Payment result from Feinberg

Similarly, BNP Paribas bank has agreed to pay an $8.9 billion fine to the US Department of Justice.  PNB Paribas No criminal charges were brought in this or other cases against banks making transactions for banned governments, such as Iran.

Harris and Murdoch are receiving penalties. Banks and auto manufacturers are being caught and brought to justice in not nearly enough numbers, but in numbers that suggest regulators are making some small headway.

Not an atmospheric change? Let's hope Suzanne Moore is wrong. Criticism please!

Rupert Murdoch under scrutiny

As the UK phone hacking case draws to a close in the Old Bailey courtrooms, the story takes another direction that suggests more grist for the media studies mill.

In this twist, the news on 25 June 2014, that Scotland Yard had postponed interviewing Mr Murdoch but would follow up soon with an interview, suggests a change in the power landscape. Police to Interview Murdoch

The English establishment has generally tolerated News Corporation and its offshoots because he could be considered as sometimes helpful to their interests and often good for business. He supported most if not all British war excursions - most prominently the violent Malvinas / Falkland Islands interaction with Argentina - and was the maker of Prime Ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair, and as always, his enterprises made money.

The English establishment will put up with a lot of disturbance as long as their supremacy at the top of the local social order is not challenged. Phone hacking could even be tolerated as something akin to sport. As I have noted here previously, for media students (and the citizenry) the story was about the emergence of new media and the absence of regulations that were written to reflect the networked society.

While libertarians may defend the freedom of the Internet, resisting regulation as "government intrusion," their anti-statist approach rings hollow and would ring loud and clear if they were the ones to be surveilled, have their privacy invaded and selves mangled through the press.

When the UK police caught up with the phone hacking behaviour of journalists and editors at News of the World and Sun, Murdoch and his son James apologized in public at the Levenson Inquiry. "The most humble day of my life," said Murdoch senior.

The news that Murdoch may be interviewed by British police suggests that a new avenue of scrutiny has opened up, that is interviewing the owners and managers of media organizations. If this continues, the UK regulatory system may finally be maturing into a regulator of substance. Perhaps no longer will the English political establishment give the appearance of being either willing supplicants to News International or to being bullied by the Australian-American.  

If Murdoch senior is interviewed - an event whose content is unlikely to yield anything of substance - it will at least enliven debate about media and the abuse by owners of their power over public opinion.


  
    

Slavoj Zizek on Ukraine: musings on culture and the Internet

Slovinian academic, Slavoj Zizek published a typically brilliant piece of work in the London Review of Books about the crisis in Ukraine. "Barbarism with a Human Face," 8 May, 2014. LRB

Everyone can read it and rejoice in the historical knowledge Zizek brings to the discussion: especially the history of Lenin versus Stalin. More importantly, the analysis offers a picture of the drivers of the current situation, where the expansion of Russia into Ukraine is, according to Zizek, following a crypto-Stalinist model of  a unified Russia ("Socialism in one country revisited," perhaps?).

Zizek offers a mountain of evidence about the Leninist program of cultural independence for the regions that Stalin undid. Unfortunately, Zizek forgets the messy domain of culture.

Sure it may be preferable for Ukraine to be connected with progressive, liberal (that is "tolerant") Europe, rather than conservative, illiberal Slavic life. Every emancipated person still enjoying the benefits of the Enlightenment movement celebrates the wonders of human dignity against the eastern methods of culture, says this line of argument. (And one with which I agree). That hardly resolves the culture question, which is about a counter hegemonic move by many people in the Ukraine to align themselves with Russia because that is the culture with which they feel comfortable. Surely, a Leninist like Zizek should support such a claim?    

Add to the cloudy cultural mix the way the Internet generates "ideological grooming," and it is no surprise that political positions in conflicts like Ukraine and many others around the world harden in seconds, like lead poured out of a furnace. The theory is that the singularity of voices on the Internet consolidates opinion, especially when only one opinion is read or watched over and over. Thus culture becomes ideology by any other name - values are elaborated, reinforced, Balkanised in anti-liberal ways.      

Consequently, the news that the Russian Government has launched an Internet register for users, suggests that the uprisings in Ukraine have an Internet component.Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web with Bloggers Law

The report by the New York Times May 7, was about censorship of the web.

"The idea that the Internet was at best controlled anarchy and beyond any one nation’s control is fading globally amid determined attempts by more and more governments to tame the web. If innovations like Twitter were hailed as recently as the Arab uprisings as the new public square, governments like those in China, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and now Russia are making it clear that they can deploy their tanks on virtual squares, too."

There is strong American bias in this report - that is, the implicit claim that free speech in America can be applied universally. There is nothing wrong with this Enlightenment approach, except that it is given a preferential treatment in the discussion, as if everyone knows and supports free speech, as an abstract objective, regardless of how it collides with political realities. This default position, is part of the cultural calculation as well.

As it turns out, the New York Times article is about censorship, which in the countries mentioned, is not about what Americans imagine to be free speech, but the more challenging matter, anti-government activity organized through the Internet. This is the case in China, which has a remarkably liberal policy to on-line media and communication, just as long as it is not political.

Consider a counter US example: Americans organizing anti-American activities which are considered terrorist acts-in-planning, have been blown to smithereens by drones. Those people have been blown up because other people working in institutions of the US Government read their emails and listen to their speeches verbally attacking the US. This surveillance leads to maximum use of deadly force by the US Government, without judicial due process - "extrajudicial killing." It has even been discussed in relation to the use of drones on American soil against Americans! Rand Paul debatesThis link between surveillance of digital communication and killing has been a controversial matter now for several years and presents an approach that is not in accordance with the popular US belief that everyone has speech rights. Congressional debate

Russia has a tradition - contrary to many Western approaches - that government can be authoritarian in its practices. From the Tsars to Stalin to President Putin. This is Russian culture. It is not Enlightenment culture, as preached or practised in the west, but something quite different. (This is why Zizek quotes Lenin on the vast amount of "spadework" needed to bring Russia into Western Europe.)

Would it be possible to say that US Government surveillance of citizens is Puritan culture revisited, an approach that predates Enlightenment?

The relationship between Zizek's Leninist history, the Russian Internet register and US approaches to free speech are to be found in the messy stuff of culture, to which there are few clear answers except the need for tolerance of many cultures. But that hardly helps anything.

Internet Dimensions - Alcatel-Lucent projections + Bell Labs return

The Alcatel-Lucent Joint Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting scheduled for Paris on May 8, 2014, makes instructive reading for many reasons: the company continues to be slow to innovate and barely keeps up with its competitors; there are massive debts, profit seems unlikely to be a strong point of this year; the European economy has not allowed the firm to leap onto new initiatives and unfortunately it must look to the US for sales. The 8.1 percent increase in wireless access division activity was good news for 2013.

Many people were part of the companies Alcatel and Lucent in the late 1980s into 2002, as the US and global telecommunication markets were liberalised. Those people enjoyed the spoils of the telecoms boom followed by the bursting Internet bubble. The latter had little to recommend it!

The company includes some of its own analysis into the projected size of the digital technology population. Two data sets make eye-boggling repeating:

• by 2017 3.9 billion people are expected to be on line. This is a 720% increase from 2012.
• Between 2012 and 2017 there will be a 440% increase in data centre traffic.

Finally, to reinforce the importance of the change in the dimensions of the Internet, Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it is significantly increasing its research capability. The page 18 paragraph begins with the following phrase: "refocus and unlock innovation." It is going to be a "new engagement model for Bell Labs Research," to move it "closer to the portfolio life cycle." Yes that's right, Bell Labs is back!

The outcome may be to offer more granularity to the firm's understanding of the growth of the Internet, particularly knowledge about the subsets of users and the fragmentation of applications.

For  media analysts, the report suggests a continuing huge move to digital stuff and not just big data. It means more innovation theory is required.  

 

New Corporation, The Guardian, Public Media: trends

Importantly for public policy analysts,news about News Corporation is comprehensively reported in The Guardian. This liberal-left newspaper, now with electronic sites in the UK, the US and Australia and online readership of up to 10 million daily, has an interest in circulating information about public media, even while it is a private company.
It's holdings are complicated. The Guardian was based on a model initiated as the Scott Trust, which until 2008 provided security to the firm. In line with commercial pressures and privatization generally, the 2008 move away from the Trust was market centric. Wikipedia Short version The shift to a Limited arrangement for The Guardian financial structure put the paper more directly into the market space, thereby privileging competition and reducing its philosophical role as a public good. Little or no profit concerns gave way to a lot of profit / performance concerns.  
History determines two trajectories that are part of The Guardian's orientation: 1. As a quality liberal newspaper The Guardian comprehensively reports on the media; 2. The Guardian is in a survivalist competition with News Corporation, which is personalised around the Murdoch Family, mostly the grand per Rupert Murdoch.
Reports on News Corporation's behavior in Australia have been consistently strong, as noted on occasion in this blog.   February 2014, December 2012
A report on April 1, was not an April Fool's joke. It offered a detailed exploration of the conflict that has emerged in Australia between public interest / liberal media and News Corporation. The opportunity to unpack that collision is the kind of reportage that has become a key component of The Guardian's recent traction in Australia and earlier, in its coverage of the News of the World hacking scandal - a News Corporation story par excellence.
The news report, "Mark Scott: News Corp Papers Never More Aggressive Than Now,"  took as its ammunition a presentation by Mark Scott the Managing Director of the Australia Broadcasting Corporation at The Centrer for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne. Scott report
There are excellent critiques of News and their domination of the Australian market. The real story is about monopoly practices and how some media outlets in Australian capital cities are open to control by News newspapers: especially Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart. For access to the advertising pipeline, being the only newspaper in town offers excellent sources of revenue to the newspaper. Monopoly in this sense is great - if you are the monopolist!
Monopoly practices are complicated when the media layer is thrown into the mix. As News has argued in the past, there is not really a monopoly because of the Internet.
Perhaps Kim Williams should now be seen as the "poor boy" who was sent to do his bosses bidding, arguing this line.
He was CEO of News Corporation in Australia until just before the last Australian Federal election, and did himself no good when he shilled this line of argument: "The internet makes all sorts of news available ergo there is no monopoly, there are other news sources everywhere." Running this line in response to the Australian Independent Media Inquiry recommendation for a News Media Council (a kind of Review Board for balanced content and coverage) was irritating at best for those critics who saw monopoly practices at work, and absolutely inexcusable for democrats who wanted traditionalist non-ideological news.
(Some people still believe in objectivity in news coverage...As a student of journalism at The University of Queensland in the late 1970s, we were already talking about the problem with that approach.)
What should media analysts make of Mark Scott's comments?
A. As a conservative, his comments indicate concern about News Corporation's business practices from inside the business community.
B. The report indicates that a line has been crossed, where criticism of liberal and public media in Australia is now part of the News Corporation approach.
C. Models of media management are rapidly changing under the combined weight of News Corp's aggressive  push to maximise its market reach. (See Scott's comments on Fox in the US and market segmentation, as a business case).
D. Ideological forces and self interest are becoming more conspicuous thanks to Murdoch.
E. The Internet continues to remake news media.
F. Looking at News Corporation's news coverage, it magnifies its audience interests to the detriment of other opinions, by directing the audience from Fox TV to News Corporation newspapers to its own Internet sites. In Uprising I referred to this as "ideological grooming."
G. Australia offers special conditions in its political economy. The News Corp. Wall Street Journal is a different newspaper to Murdoch-owned media outfits in Australia and the UK...
Conclusion
The Guardian is an important source of information and analysis about News Corporation. It's view is helpful for researchers seeking to understand the new media ecosystem.
Media studies gets more exciting with the Internet.

      

Stopping social media - Is this evidence of its impact?

Speaking at Dublin City University in February 2014, my presentation was titled: "Uprising: What happens next?"

I addressed the political chaos in Egypt where reports of the influence of Social Media and the impact of the Internet have been strong. In my view Social Media has been generating hyper-fragmentation among interest groups in society, giving rise to "ideological grooming" which continues apace.

Researchers are notoriously brave or reckless in theorizing technological determinism in the quest for democracy. Count me in that lot.

Now there is evidence of real impacts as opposed to marketing claims from techo-boosters parading as researchers - I know the terrain is complex, but the point is worth making less researchers become corporate shills. (definition of shill: a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty).

Turkey Prime Minister quote:

"We are determined on this subject. We will not leave this nation at the mercy of YouTube and Facebook," Erdoğan said in an interview late on Thursday with the Turkish broadcaster ATV. "We will take the necessary steps in the strongest way."

Read the report here. Stopping social media in Turkey

Then this from SXSW -

"Eric Schmidt to dictators: 'You don’t turn off the internet: you infiltrate it'."

Excellent coverage of comments by Google guys