Torn and frayed in Manila

YouTube—mirror of the narcissistic noughties

"Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star
And everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter who you are"

"Celluloid Heroes", The Kinks

When our world disappears in a puff of methane gas in a few years time, I hope the YouTube server remains, like Shelley’s “vast and trunkless legs of stone”, a monument to this decade’s vanity and self absorption.

It was a good way to make a quick buck though.

• YouTube is 11 months old.
• It receives more visitors than e-Bay, Wikipedia, or Amazon.
• It was bought by Google last month for $1.65 billion.

Some videos are very endearing, including the now famous 79-year-old geriatric1927:

“I got addicted to YouTube. It’s a fascinating place to go to see all the wonderful videos that you young people have produced, so I thought I’d have a go at doing one myself.” (About half of all registered YouTube users are said to be under twenty.) He was wearing a beige V-neck sweater and glasses, and sat in front of nineteen-seventies-era wallpaper and a small painting of a motorcycle. “Oh, yes, and, incidentally, I really am as old as I look,” he said. “What I hope I’ll be able to do is just bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who’s been there and done that.”

And there are some cute kittens, as readers of this blog will know.

Still when all’s said and done, overall YouTube is not a cultural artefact to be particularly proud of. The martian who stumbles on that server in the desert will find a testament to a generation unwilling or unable to compose anything that requires more thought than a simple point and shoot, a tribute to immediacy rather than reflection, and a shrine to self-importance and egotism.

Still, it’s early days and I guess the YouTube wave will bring with it more original and insightful work in due course. The question is, how will we ever find it in the video tsunami of babies, teenagers running through MacDonalds, and “sexy girls”?

Curmudgeonly yours

almostgeriatric1956

Sources: This post was prompted by an excellent article in the New Yorker, from which the quote from geriatric1927 was taken. The Wikipedia entry is a good source of information on YouTube. Perhaps the biggest sting in the tail for Google will be the enormous copyright implications of YouTube (since many of the videos it hosts were ripped off from other sites)—these questions are dealt with in an intriguing analysis posted by Blog Maverick.

Finally, the “mediatization of the personal” was covered in a thought-provoking review of the documentary Tarnation by Carla Montemayor in Newsbreak a few months back. I couldn’t find it in cyberspace though – perhaps she will supply a link if it exists.

Darwin online

Majikthise reminded me of a great project that was reported on the BBC website a few days ago:

"The complete works of one of history's greatest scientists, Charles Darwin, are being published online.
The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable."

The political power of blogs

A recent article in the Boston Review argues that “netroots”, and particularly blogs, may help to reshape American politics. Howard Dean’s primary campaign for most recent Democratic nomination is the most famous example of cyber activism, and this excitable account from Wired magazine in January 2004 brings back those heady days.

The biggest news of the political season has been the tale of this small-state governor who, with the help of Meetup.com and hundreds of bloggers, has elbowed his way into serious contention for his party's presidential nomination. As every alert citizen knows, Dean has used the Net to raise more money than any other Democratic candidate. He's also used it to organize thousands of volunteers who go door-to-door, write personal letters to likely voters, host meetings, and distribute flyers.

As you and I now know, the Dean machine ended in tears (or rather in a scream) in Iowa as the Democrats decided they preferred the charms of a more traditional candidate to the wild and untested activism of the Deaniacs.

Since then, although blogs from the right (Drudge Report) and left (Daily Kos) have grown in political stature and the number of blogs has continued to rise exponentially, the idea that blogs could actually have an impact on electoral returns has slunk away into a cave to await its moment.

Will that be the US presidential election in 2008? The Boston review thinks blogs will have an important role to play.

How do blogs work, and why might they open up political argument to new voices? Perhaps the best starting point is Yochai Benkler’s brilliant recent book, The Wealth of Networks, which describes how new technologies are making it easier for individuals to communicate, cooperate, and produce cultural and political goods on a decentralized basis. Benkler shows how the Internet fosters decentralized modes of cultural production, which enable individuals to take control of the means of communication for themselves and create content that is immediately available to millions. Nor do they do this in isolation. Tools such as e-mail, discussion boards, and social-networking software allow them to engage in argument with each other, to cooperate on massive collective projects (such as the production of open-source software), and, in Benkler’s phrase, to create a “networked public sphere.” Benkler suggests that blogs are one of the most important components of this public sphere.

There may be something in this when it comes to the more wired countries, like the USA or South Korea, but I think it will be a long time before blogs manage to muscle their way into the trapo-dominated world of Philippine politics (or British politics for that matter). The leading Philippine political blogs like mlq or the Sassy Lawyer reach a tiny part of an English-speaking elite (itself a minute fraction of the electorate) and I doubt whether they can even claim to have much of an impact on the political agenda. The many excellent Philippine blogs have made a huge and ever increasing contribution to Philippine intellectual life, but I can’t see blogging winning a Philippine election any time soon.

Unless … Like most people here, I often wonder how the current political log jam can be broken. One way may be the rise of a political-evangelistic movement (remember Brother Eddie Villanueva surprisingly strong showing in the 2004 election?). In that case, it will have to be built up from the grassroots and that is where (even in a country with low internet penetration like the Philippines) activist blogging can be a major tool for galvanizing campaigners. Super religious Deaniacs – there is something very Filipino about that prospect.

Postscript Among the many remixes of Dean's notorious screaming speech I found some spoof pictures, even as a cat lover I found this one funny. Here it is, Howard Dean screams at a kitten

Unfortunate website names

From a circulating e-mail (thanks Nige!):

Each of the following websites belongs to a legitimate company dealing
in regular products and services, but they just didn't think their web
domain names through before registering them.

1. A site called 'Who Represents' where you can find the name of the
agent who represents a celebrity. Their domain name is
www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange
advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then of course, there's the Italian Power Generator company -
www.powergenitalia.com

Room cleaning wars in cyberspace

From the Guardian:

An exasperated father has discovered to his cost that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter's messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring's lair in an attempt to shame her into action.

But the public humiliation proved a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying up her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father's friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays photos of him in a variety of compromising situations.

All my friends feel sorry for Claire so they're ganging up on me," said Mr Williams, of Whitehaven, Cumbria. "They've managed to dig out photos of me drunk and dancing round with a handbag at a party, and also put pictures of my garage on to show it's not just Claire who's untidy.

"The boot's on the other foot now, but I suppose I deserve it."

At last

Phew! My occasional absences from this soap box are nearly always because of laziness or travel, but for the last 10 days it’s been because I changed the billing address for my Visa card, which meant my standing order got screwed up and my account suspended. Many, many posts to Typepad and phone calls to my bank finally fixed it, so–on with the show!

And you thought @ meant “at”

Whenever people talk about comebacks I always think of that little @ key. There he was sitting up there, being tapped once in a blue moon when — BOOM. Suddenly he was the most famous and hippest key on the whole keyboard. If you feel forgotten and unloved, just remember “@’ -- you never know, the next key might be you!

Here is a fun article from the Washington Post on what the world makes of @:

Try this: Look at the @. What does it remind you of? Apparently it reminds a lot of people around the world of a monkey with a long and curling tail; thus, their e-mail addresses might include variations of the word for monkey. That's majmunsko in Bulgarian, m alpa in Polish , majmun in Serbian and shenja e majmunit ("the monkey sign") in Albanian. Or they might call it an "ape's tail": aapstert in Afrikaans, apsvans in Swedish , apestaart in Dutch, Aff enschwanz among German-speaking Swiss. (Many Germans apparently used to say Klammeraffe , meaning "clinging monkey," or Schweinekringel , a pig's tail -- though these days it's usually just "at.") In Croatian, they call the sign "monkey," but they say the word in English. Go figure.

Does the sign make you think of a snail? That's what you might get in Korean ( dalphaengi) or Italian ( chiocciola) or sometimes Hebrew ( shablul, when they're not saying strudel). The French apparently flirted briefly with escargot. "Yes, it looks like a snail," noted one amused Korean. "But isn't it funny and ironic, since 'snail mail' is opposed to e-mail in English?"

Do you see the @ as a curled up cat? That's why it's sometimes kotek or "kitten" in Poland and miuku mauku in Finland, where cats say "miau. "

In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it can be zavinac , or rolled-up pickled herring. In Sweden, when it's not a monkey's tail, it's a kanelbulle, or cinnamon bun. In Hungary, it's kukac, for worm or maggot.
Danes call it snabel, or elephant's trunk. In the tiny parts of France, Spain and Italy where a disappearing language called Occitan is still spoken, users call it alabast , which means "little hook." In Mandarin Chinese, it's xiao lao shu -- "little mouse" -- which must get confusing given the gizmo of the same name.

And what do I think @ looks like? Why, al doing yoga of course.

Modern Aphorisms (@phorisms?)

I don't usually post e-mail forwards but some of these are very witty.

1. Home is where you hang your @
2. The E-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail..
3. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click..
4. You can't teach a new mouse old clicks..
5. Great groups from little icons grow..
6. Speak softly and carry a cellular phone..
7. C:\ is the root of all directories..
8. Don't put all your hypes in one home page..
9. Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish..
10. The modem is the message..
11. Too many clicks spoil the browse..
12. The geek shall inherit the earth..
13. A chat has nine lives..
14. Don't byte off more than you can view..
15. Fax is stranger than fiction..
16. What boots up must come down..
17. Windows will never cease..
18. Virtual reality is its own reward..
19. Modulation in all things..
20. A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
21. There's no place like http://www.home.com
22. Know what to expect before you connect..
23. Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice...
24. Speed thrills..
25. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Web and he won't bother you for weeks..

Vectoralist or hacker — make your choice

Vectoralist, moi?
Some weeks ago I was alerted to the “Hacker’s Manifesto” by caffeine sparks, one of my favourite blogs. Ever since, I’ve been mulling it over. Information, we are always being told, is now the world’s most important commodity, but what does that mean for political philosophies based on capital, labour, class, and property? The “Hacker’s Manifesto” has the answer.

From now on this blog will dedicate itself to a ceaseless struggle against the vectoralist class.

The class struggle, in its endless setbacks, reversals and compromises returns again and again to the unanswered question - property - and the contending classes return again and again with new answers. …

Information, like land or capital, becomes a form of property monopolised by a class of vectoralists, so named because they control the vectors along which information is abstracted, just as capitalists control the material means with which goods are produced, and pastoralists the land with which food is produced. Information circulated within working class culture as a social property belonging to all. But when information in turn becomes a form of private property, workers are dispossessed of it, and must buy their own culture back from its owners, the vectoralist class. The whole of time, time itself, becomes a commodified experience.

Vectoralists try to break capital's monopoly on the production process, and subordinate the production of goods to the circulation of information. The leading corporations divest themselves of their productive capacity, as this is no longer a source of power. Their power lies in monopolising intellectual property - patents and brands - and the means of reproducing their value - the vectors of communication. The privatisation of information becomes the dominant, rather than a subsidiary, aspect of commodified life. As private property advances from land to capital to information, property itself becomes more abstract. As capital frees land from its spatial fixity, information as property frees capital from its fixity in a particular object.

The hacker class, producer of new abstractions, becomes more important to each successive ruling class, as each depends more and more on information as a resource. The hacker class arises out of the transformation of information into property, in the form of intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, copyright and the moral right of authors. The hacker class is the class with the capacity to create not only new kinds of object and subject in the world, not only new kinds of property form in which they may be represented, but new kinds of relation beyond the property form. The formation of the hacker class as a class comes at just this moment when freedom from necessity and from class domination appears on the horizon as a possibility.

The bloomin’ government

Every once in a while an invention comes along that makes you wonder how we ever survived without it. Such is the “dialectizer” which converts web pages into redneck, jive, Swedish chef and a number of other “dialects”. Here is a story on the BBC website converted into Cockney:

The bloomin' government's top doctor 'as criticised the man at the chuffin' centre of the MMR controversy, init?

"If the paper 'ad never been published, ffen we wouldn't 'ave 'ad the controversy, we wouldn't 'ave 'ad the seed of doubts sewn in parents minds wich 'as caused a completely false loss of confidence in a vaccine that 'as Chas'n'Daved millions of children's lives 'round the chuffin' world," said Sir Liam.