Category: Politics

The Opaqueness of Transparency

It isn’t just perception.  Partisan politics in the U.S. really is worse than ever, if we’re to take the word of those who’ve been on the inside for the last 40 or so years. I was listening to an audio version of Tom Brokaw’s book The Time of Our Lives recently, and hearing him describe today’s dysfunctional intransigence in Washington, I began to wonder why, in the age of so much transparency and mass communications, do matters appear to be getting worse? More to the point, is it possible that we’ve created an illusion of transparency while ignoring the fact that the way we tend to use digital media produces the opposite of rational and cordial discourse among both the electors and the elected?

Brokaw writes, “…modern means of communication are now so pervasive and penetrating, they might as well be part of the air we breathe and, therefore, they require tempered remarks from all sides.  Otherwise that air just becomes more and more toxic until is is suffocating.”  Sounds a lot like the blogosphere to me.

Those who vehemently pursue transparency through technology — everyone from hacktivists to open-government scholars– offer the premise that transparency through Web technology is not only good, but a near panacea to our political ills.  And while we certainly don’t want to see our elected officials get away with crimes and misdemeanors, I’m not convinced that the theater of rapid-response outrage we’ve created does much to thwart real mischief so much as it incubates some of the more toxic viruses in day-to-day governance — namely blind partisanship and associative reasoning.

The promise of transparency is meant to be an independent voter’s ideal — that with digital access to real data, one can make unbiased decisions based on the particulars of a given situation. In theory, information trumps partisanship. Through on-demand access to raw information and fact-checks, the argument goes, we can more accurately judge our elected officials as individuals rather than broadly associating them with the views of a particular party.  So why does our national dialogue sound more and more like a cacophony of lunatics?

One problem with the case for this kind of transparency is that it assumes data are neutral, which is a very techie point of view because to a computer, of course, data are neutral and interpreted by a fairly rigid code. In human affairs, and politics in particular, data are subjective and interpreted by a code called emotion that is both subjective and dynamic. Computers like data, humans like stories. That’s why an editorial about a proposed bill in congress beats reading the bill itself and a catchy, 140-character headline beats both.

While access does exist to unbiased, raw data, this access seems to have very little to do with how Web 2.0 is affecting our political evolution. To the contrary, social media is highly emotional and is referred to as a “hive mind” for good reason. Hence, the instinct to react, not only as individuals, but as mobs has been given an outlet through these technologies.  What we often end up with is our worst political instincts on speed pretending to be a more enlightened process.  If anything, the way we use social media and blogs seems to foster more associative reasoning, which allows (or forces) all issues to be painted with very broad brushes. This is the opposite habit that transparency is meant to produce.

Look at the way the tech blogs lit up last week over Rep. Lamar Smith’s appointment to the chairmanship of the House Science Committee.  It’s one thing if Representative Smith has a dodgy record on actual science, but TechCruch and others ran headlines decrying the appointment because Smith was the lead author of SOPA.  Even if you hated that bill for what it was, calling it anti-science or anti-technology makes as much sense as calling speed limits anti-Lamborghini. It’s a straight-up cheap shot with a clear political agenda. After all, Smith is a Texas republican and the author of SOPA. So, attacking him is good for scoring points among progressives, who will never bother to make the distinction that SOPA had nothing to do with science; and neither will they bother to look up Smith’s record on science issues, even though they could with a couple of mouse clicks.  In this case, the tech blogs are behaving much like FOX News, looking at all stories through a single filter.

I bring up this example because it’s recent, but also because some of those bloggers are the same folks who proclaim the unmitigated value of transparency while using the technology to promulgate more of the opaque, associative political nonsense that makes our politics so dysfunctional.  As a side note, Smith’s record on science is relatively unclear at this point, other than past remarks doubting the veracity of some climatologists; but let’s not confuse that with bills designed to stop an international criminal enterprise, shall we?

What we think of as transparency is often a lot of reactionary noise that can literally be a barrier to a better functioning representative government. Sure there are a lot of folks in congress with some pretty wacky ideas, but why does it seem that even moderate representatives can’t sit down to rationally discuss issues that shouldn’t even be partisan in the first place? Might the digital, global microscope be a cause for divisiveness itself?  We have to imagine governing — and heaven forbid compromising! — in an environment where every syllable, every meeting, every gesture inspires instantaneous, and often erroneous, condemnation that goes viral.

Mass media, especially the blogosphere, demands conflict because humans like stories.  But representative government can only function through compromise and cooperation, which fails to satisfy multiple constituencies at any given moment — and now, they’re all on Twitter. Hence, it seems only one of two things can result from all this so-called transparency:  1) that governance stalls; or 2) that functional governance can only happen in even greater secrecy than we had before the digital age.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time technology has produced exactly the opposite conditions it promised.

It’s true that with a lot of time and effort, we can use the Internet to look objectively through a clear glass at our politics; but I suspect that most of the time, the window is truly opaque and that we’re always seeing at least a half reflection of ourselves.  If the people’s representatives are dysfunctional, then it’s possible that the people are as well.  The question remains as to how the design of these technologies might be playing a role in that dysfunction.

The Illusion of More Money

Photo by BLaker

On the subject of more not always being all it’s cracked up to be, I think it took about thirty seconds after President Obama won the election for the first pundits to remark, “Six billion dollars, and we’re right back where we started.” I can’t say I’m even a little surprised. By now, the case of Citizens United v. FEC is among the oft-repeated rallying cries against the unmitigated influence of money in politics. But, as I see it, the influence of money might actually be more mitigated than we think for the simple reason that when systems swell beyond a certain size, they have a tendency to collapse under their own weight.

The landmark Citizens United case opened up the valves on soft money, enabling 501c3 corporations in the form of PACs to spend unlimited sums on issues media entirely outside the regulations of the FEC. As long as the communication doesn’t say “vote for” or “vote against” it’s fair game. According to multiple sources, outside spending by PACs on issues messaging to oppose President Obama was roughly three times the amount spent on similar media to oppose Romney. So, why didn’t it work?

When the ruling on Citizens United was first announced, it was hard not to be offended by its implications — that money is speech, that corporations are people, that this would have a dire effect on our political process. I must have had a lot of time on my hands that month because I read the transcripts of the arguments by SCOTUS and have to say that two things came to mind that at least tempered, if not entirely assuaged, my instinctive negative response.

The first is that in fact the free speech aspect of this particular case is not cut and dry; and as a member of the film community, I don’t think I’d be comfortable if the ruling had gone the other way. At issue was a heavily biased documentary about Hilary Clinton that was clearly designed to torpedo her during the primaries leading up to the 2008 race. The FEC argued that it was political advertising and that both the production and proposed means of distribution via Pay Per View ran afoul of campaign finance restrictions. The majority opinion was that ruling against Citizens United would have a chilling effect on speech, and I have to say that it isn’t often I agree with Justice Scalia, but this one of those times. Looking at the particulars of this case, I found it very hard to imagine a documentary film project about a social issue or a political figure, no matter how dilligent the filmmakers might be in their research, that could not theoretically be squelched by the FEC had the precedent ruling gone the other way.

But my second thought on the matter brings us to the the practical question as to whether or not more really adds up to more. Of course money influences elections, but it does not stand to reason that unlimited money will have unlimited influence. And if this first post-Citizens United presidential race is any indication, there’s no denying the possibility that the electorate may be less susceptible to these messages exactly as Justice Scalia predicted they would be when he said about free speech, “The more the merrier. People are smart enough to figure it out.” While the ruling in Citizens United is unappealing in principal, I remain skeptical as to whether it will inexorably affect our politics as many have predicted — or at least that the money will be about campaigns.

One factor to consider is that actual corporate dollars, what I’ll call the sane money, is likely to be bound by a principal more significant than campaign finance regulation, and that’s ROI. When corporations don’t get return on their investments, they tend not to make them a second time; and we may well see the sane money stick to classic lobbying and other forms of influence rather than continue to roll million-dollar dice on campaigns. As I said in an older post, look how cost-effectively the Internet industry stopped a bill in its tracks with its anti-SOPA campaign. Those are the kinds of policy-based initiatives we should be watching, and possibly more closely than campaign finance.

Of course, Citizens United also unleashed a fair bit of crazy money, too by which I am referring to egomaniacal billionaires and niche groups who feel it’s their personal mission to see Americans be more Christian or eat more beets or make gayness illegal or whatever. And then there’s the crazy money of those who just like to wave their influence around Trumpishly, with no clear objective except it seems self-aggrandizement. While these side-show shenanigans are diverting, occasionally entertaining, and always fuel for walls and Tweetdecks, I suspect that if they move the needle at all, it is more often to galvanize their own opposition. It’s not that I think the crazy money has no influence, so much as I have to wonder who needs to spend millions on extreme views when guys like Todd Akin will use the term “legitimate rape” for free?

This article from yesterday’s Roll Call raises the point I’m making, that we need to look beyond the bullet points of the big numbers and the election outcome and focus on where the money goes more subtly when we’re not usually looking.

SOPA didn’t matter. What’s next?

That SOPA had little to no measurable effect on the election results in Congress is not surprsing. While the online protest against the bill was an unprecedented moment for the Internet industry and social media, I believe the reality is that the average voter actually didn’t give a damn about SOPA or even know what it was. Of course, I have already asserted on numerous occasions that the majority of Web users who clicked on the online petition against the bill didn’t know what they were protesting either, but I won’t retread that ground here.

Presumbably, Internet issues will gain footing among the electorate as the Millenials age into the process. They already outnumber the Boomers, many who are still figuring out how to use AOL; and they way outnumber us meager and motley GenXers, who are net-savvy but still lived half our lives without these technologies. I am eager to read Chris Ruen’s new book Freeloading, but my understanding is that Ruen asserts that we see these tools, social media in particular, as extensions of ourselves. I tend to agree with this premise, and it stands to reason that a generation born using these technologies is going to have an even stronger association in this regard. Hence any threat, real or perceived, to these tools and media is going to be taken personally; and as the manipulators of politics know, it is emotion not reason that tends to win the day.

Still, I don’t believe it is inevitable that the Internet industry will be able to replay the same charade indefinitely that it did so well with SOPA/PIPA. In particular, the veneer that all web-based companies are the guardians of free speech will likely begin to wear thin among progressives, traditionally the voters with whom such a message tends to be effective. In the months since the defeat of SOPA, we have seen the formation of a lobbying juggernaut called the Internet Association; we have the disturbing, anti-labor components of the Pandora-backed Internet Radio Fairness Act; and we have more than a few privacy concerns with regard to how Internet companies collect personal data and how that data is used.

Combine these manifestations with the generally libertarian (at times Ayn Rand-like) ideology of Silicon Valley, and progressive voters may start to make that critical distinction between the products and the the producers — between the tools we like, or even need, and the corporate practices of those who make the tools. It’s true that if one crticizes Google, Facebook, Pandora, et al, this will often result in some reactionary response involving accusations like “technology luddite,” but such fallacious reasoning brings a very simple example to mind. Several years ago, General Electric was locked in an ongoing battle with envrinomental groups and the EPA over its disposal of PCBs into the Hudson River. At the same time, the company’s national consumer-focused ad campaign was a neo-Rockwellian vision of the world with the slogan “We bring good things to life.” And yes, a refridgerator is a good thing, as are all the jet engines that ever carried us safely from point to point around the world. But that doesn’t mean we’re okay with the PCBs in the river, does it now?

It will certainly be interesting to see how these dynamics play out over the coming year, but as a progressive, I found it telling (and more than a little pitiful) that on election eve, Google co-founder Sergey Brinn went out of his way to state publicly he was “dreading the elections” because party politics will still dominate and that his plea to either victor is to “govern as an independent.” Call me a cynic, but when a billionaire executive, who practically rules the Web, makes an ambiguous political statement I can hear from any Joe on the street, my Spidey Sense tingles.  If progressives listen carefully, they will hear the familiar refrain an anti-institutional song coming from Northern California that is more reminiscent of the Tea Party hymnal than anything else.