Tag Archives: media

Adam Curtis: All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

I realize that I am desperately late to this particular party. Everyone has probably already watched the documentary, read the inevitable backlash, and digested the response to the backlash. Nevertheless, here are my notes on the first episode.

Part 1: Love and Power

Barbara Branden’s comments about Ayn Rand being disappointed by the reception of “Atlas Shrugged” are hilarious, yet sad. She reports that Rand was desperately upset when the people in her inner circle who had how much they liked the book, failed to stand up and say what genius it was when it was being excoriated in the press. Well, Ayn, of course they didn’t. They were behaving in their own selfish rational self-interest, exactly the way you yourself had told them they should. That should have been a learning experience for you right there, but somehow it wasn’t, and you ended up alone in a crummy apartment living off Social Security.

I remember when Alan Greenspan buckled under and took back his prediction that the economy was “irrationally exuberant”. I thought at the time that it was patently obvious that there were a lot of incredibly overvalued companies, and that we were likely in a bubble of speculation on Internet stocks. For one project I worked on, Enron was one of the bidders. I did some reading, concluded that they were dodgy, and said so. They were rejected. A few months later, their whole business imploded. Their glossy brochures had been really impressive though.

The idea of treating marriage and relationships rationally, or as business arrangements, is a very bizarre American one. There are lots of articles on the net which put the view across. “What can the corporate world teach us about personal relationships?” — I sincerely hope that the answer is “nothing”, but I’ve read of couples who schedule weekly meetings with each other to deliver “status updates”. There have even been Powerpoint proposals. The latest person to end up miserable because of treating marriage as a business? Kim Kardashian, allegedly.

The whole issue around commodifying our thoughts for exploitation by others is one of the reasons why I post anything of length on a site that I own, rather than letting Facebook or Google own them. Of course, Google Plus and Facebook are good ways to get an audience—but you don’t want to let them own you.

One of the sad facts about the New Economy idea of unregulated markets and computer networks leading to stability, is that I think any decent mathematician or computer scientist would have told you that it was almost certainly not going to work. Unregulated systems with feedback often have chaotic behavior, and the more complicated the system, the more likely it is to be chaotic. Even trivial systems of a few equations with feedback can result in chaotic complexity—that’s what makes fractals so interesting. Unfortunately a lot of people in Internet businesses and banks in the 90s either didn’t have the mathematical background to know about chaotic systems, or didn’t want to believe that they were building them. I remember reading articles about the issue at the time, but nobody really took it seriously. There is at least now some discussion of issues like the effect of trading speed on market stability, even as the financial services companies continue to reduce already small latencies to allow for even faster trading cycles.

Around Austin, Greenspan and the Federal Reserve are widely seen as villains. It’s pretty common to see “End The Fed” on bumper stickers and T-shirts. Unfortunately, a lot of the criticism comes from Ron Paul followers, and Paul is one of those people who still believes that unregulated market systems will be naturally stable. The fact that history seems to show the opposite, he and his followers dismiss, arguing that there was still some government regulation somewhere, and if only we had absolutely no regulation anywhere, then it would all work just fine. That is, the cure that killed the economy didn’t work because we didn’t try it hard enough.

It has been obvious to many people for years that China has been systematically buying control of the USA. As I would tell people during the boom, when they got angry for action against China over human rights abuse: China could shut down the US economy overnight any time they liked. They wouldn’t need bombs to do so, they would just shut down a few factories or ban exports. The USA wouldn’t be able to restart manufacturing, and its economy would collapse. There are a few companies that understand this; mostly foreign ones, like Toyota. They keep manufacturing plants across the globe, hedging their bets.

Finally: It’s pretty ballsy of Curtis to effectively make the case that Al Qaeda were right to bomb the WTC. Fortunately for him, I think he stated it subtly enough that the people who might otherwise have lynched him, failed to notice the point being made.

True urban legends

This American Life recently had a show about urban legends that might be true. The second segment, about things foreigners believe about America, was particularly poignant. It talked about the things that foreigners are told happen in America, that they can’t actually believe are true.

Partly the problem is the media. My experience is that many people in Europe believe that America is the way they see it in movies and TV shows–at least as far as crime and violence are concerned.

Violent crime does happen, of course. In Cambridge MA, there was a shooting at a store not too far from our house one night. We were leaving a restaurant. We didn’t hear or see the crime, but immediately afterwards there was a police presence like a scene from The Blues Brothers: half a dozen squad cars, cops on mountain bikes combing the park, and even a police helicopter with a searchlight.

However, it’s also the case that when my family first visited us there, the neighborhood kids were playing on the street, running in and out of houses whose doors were unlocked. That’s the other side of the story, the white picket fences and little Jimmy playing baseball in the park, and people seem less willing to believe that part.

There were some things I believed were myths. One was cheerleaders. I’d seen the depictions of cheerleaders in everything from “Heathers” to TV sitcoms, and I’d assumed that it was a ridiculous caricature like something out of “Little Britain”. Then on my emigration flight, I found myself sat in the middle of a group of cheerleaders who were returning from a trip to Europe. They were very excited to be going home, noisy throughout the flight, and cheered the plane down to a landing.

Another thing I assumed was artistic exaggeration was steam coming out of manholes in the middle of the street. You’ve seen it in any number of movies: it’s a hot day in the city, people are wiping the sweat off their brows, and the camera cuts to a steaming manhole cover. Well, that happens too–in places like Cambridge, there are old power stations which pump their “waste” steam to nearby businesses to use for heating. When it’s hot and the steam isn’t used, valves blow off the excess through vent holes.

At last you can buy a newspaper in America

It finally happened. The Guardian began offering the complete newspaper in a digital edition. You can go to their web site to find out more and see an example. It has the complete content of The Guardian and The Observer, browsable with any normal web browser.

The interface is really slick—there’s a thumbnail of the page, and you can click on parts which catch your eye to see the appropriate story. If you want to clip and file a story for reference, a single click downloads a PDF version with all the images and formatting, or you can click for a document to load into a word processor for whatever academic purposes.

The killer feature, however, is that the quality of the newspaper beats the hell out of the New York Times, let alone lesser US papers.

There’s a discount offer if you sign up in the next day or two.

Warnography

I saw Time and Newsweek on the newsstand in Harvard Square.

Let’s face it, we all knew what this week’s cover picture was going to be. But just for once, I’d have liked to have been surprised. I’d have liked them to do something tasteful, something which treats the subject with dignity and sorrow, rather than exploiting it.

But no, we got big lurid photographs of planes flying into buildings and exploding in a searing fireball of aviation fuel.

They could have printed a plain black cover with the word “After”. They could have printed the names of victims. They could have picked out photos of some of the heroes who gave their lives trying to save others. They did none of those things; they went for sensationalism, exploitation and overkill; they forced America yet again to look at an image already seared into the collective consciousness. Maybe I’m misreading the national consciousness, but I just don’t think anybody needs or wants to see that fucking image again.

CNN is worse. They now have a seemingly permanent graphic “America at war” with the latest scare headline below it, and round the clock coverage as we play the “Where’s Osama?” game. Loving profiles of war hardware are interspersed with interviews with military insiders about how much butt we’re going to kick, where we’re going to kick it, when we’re going to kick it, and so on.

Of course, CNN would love a war. Especially a really big, messy one. Their ratings always go up in a war. You may think I’m being exceptionally cynical to ascribe such base motives to them, but just go watch the coverage for a few minutes and look for the subtext.

Yes, we’re at war. They haven’t told us who we’re at war with, but as soon as they decide, we’ll sure be at war with them, so keep watching. We’re going to kick some ass. We’re not sure where we’re going to kick it, or who’s ass it’s gonna be, but ass will be kicked, and you’ll see it here. Look at the shiny ships, look at the big planes. And now, a word from our sponsor, the US Army. Enroll now and bomb a raghead! So, when can we expect to start enjoying a real war? Let’s ask an expert in disinformation from the Pentagon, who helps us write our stories…

I don’t know anyone who wants a war. Like with the whole Clinton fiasco, there seems to be a total disconnect between the media and the population. Then again, the People’s Republic isn’t exactly typical of America as a whole, and there are plenty of people on the net who are willing to stomp along with the drumbeat.