Tag: politics

Creators, Don’t Get Fooled Again

Photo by alexskopje Pond5.
Photo by alexskopje Pond5.

In the current political climate, I imagine many artists, authors, and journalists will continue to speak up about a wide range of civil rights.  While they’re at it, they should not forget their own rights.

For five years now, I’ve written in defense of copyright as a civil liberty—as a property right, a labor right, and a force for strengthening the First Amendment despite the skeptics who insist the opposite is true. Because without in any way imagining what American creative output would become, the Framers did an interesting thing when they gave Congress the constitutional authority to write intellectual property laws.

As students of the Enlightenment, the Founders knew that the United States, with its population of three-million mostly agrarian citizens, was never going to be a mature country without investing in art and science.  They also knew that the young war-weary nation could not afford a national endowment for such luxuries; and at the same time, they were naturally wary of European models in which both the sciences and the arts were funded and directed either by the state or the nobility (See Article 1, Section 9 on the no nobility thing).

The intellectual property clause of the Constitution was an expression of both practicality and principle.  Creating an incentive for the author or inventor to make his own investment in his work reflected—in my view—the best intentions of the Framers to ennoble the individual, hoping that doing so would enrich the nation overall.  By the mid 20th century, the theory proved itself with the U.S. leading the world in the output of creative works. But intertwined with the commerce came the diverse range of expression that became the quintessentially American voice—and that voice was unavoidably political. A half century before women could vote, the suffragette and abolitionist Louisa May Alcott was one of the first truly American authors whose writing saved her family from economic ruin because one right she did have was the ability to register a copyright.

Fast forward to current events and the general reaction to the president-elect’s “demand” for an apology from the cast of Hamilton.  Sure, that was probably a bit of tactical diversion, which spawned mostly satirical responses wanting to remind the  Trump team what the First Amendment says, but the important piece of the story is Hamilton itself.  Because copyright gave Lin-Manuel Miranda an incentive to invest his sweat equity in creating the show, that became the basis for the risky investments which produced the hit which provided a platform for a company of artists to speak to an elected official about matter of concern.

In part, what’s being communicated is that the financial success of the artists reflects political power (i.e. that there is a large population which supports both message and messenger).  And artists should not lose sight of the underlying rights that give them that economic, and therefore political, voice. Or to take a different macro view, the platform Twitter, which enabled Trump’s provocation and much of the response, could still fail as a business, while theater has a pretty good track record.

Regardless of one’s policy views or party affiliations, it seems clear that the magnetic poles are shifting with regard to both tone and agenda in American politics. And because many artists are moved to respond to social conditions, we are likely to see quite a few speak out in defense of civil liberties they fear may be threatened in the current environment.  This will surely include threats—perceived or real—to the sanctity of the internet as the bulwark against encroachments on the First Amendment.  This is not a new theme, and it is one that has been exploited to great effect by the internet industry as an excuse to attack legislative measures to enforce copyrights online and/or voluntary measures to achieve that goal.

The sound of the rhetoric may change somewhat in the coming months.  If one was inclined to believe that copyright enforcement would harm free speech before, one may be twice as likely to believe that message in an increasingly anxious climate.  But it still won’t be true. If there are indeed new First Amendment infringements to come, they won’t be grounded in copyright policy.  To the contrary, no matter who occupies the Oval Office, or how cybersecurity practices evolve, the fact remains that a failure to effectively protect and respect creators’ rights online only disenfranchises the professionals whose voices have always been essential to democratic principles.

In his Friday’s Endnotes for his blog Copyhype, Terry Hart cites an appropriate quote by Lyndon Johnson from the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on December 2, 1964:

Our civilization, too, will largely survive in the works of our creation. There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man and nation from nation, and century from century. That quality confirms the faith that our common hopes may be more enduring than our conflicting hostilities.

Are We Ruining Facebook with Politics?

Photo by Pond5
Photo by Pond5

Last week, Karol Markowicz, writing for The New York Post, said that we’re “ruining Facebook (and friendships) with political rants.”  Taking the position that Facebook is meant to be an environment for connecting with friends and family in traditionally gregarious ways—sharing kids’ photos and personal news, etc.—Markowicz makes a case that chronic political grandstanding is harming the social atmosphere of the platform, even citing a 2014 Pew study showing that roughly a quarter of users have blocked “Friends” because of political disagreements.

Markowicz’s observations prod consideration of a few different subjects, including the fact that even in an era of divisive politics, we’ve never had a candidate with the polarizing capacity of a Donald Trump before. And while it seems that our political climate has become more radical—and apparently less well-informed—over the last 20 years, is it more accurate to say that politics is ruining Facebook or that Facebook is ruining politics?   The latter notion has certainly been my bias since starting this blog—that the information revolution is generally a flop owing to the multitude of ways in which the electorate can now reinforce ignorance, racism, sexism, or xenophobia by fostering online communities predicated on exactly these sensibilities.  The so-called information age is one reason I believe fringe lunacy has gone mainstream.

With regard to Markowicz’s thesis, though, that political grandstanding is “ruining Facebook”, this presupposes that Facebook was somehow earmarked for a different destiny, which is a hard premise to accept a face value. For better or worse, social media is still an experiment—a catalyst only recently added to human interactions and which cannot fail to yield unpredictable results.  How can anyone say that Facebook is being ruined rather than come to the more reasonable conclusion that Facebook, for which there is no real precedent, was destined to become exactly what it is?  A social media platform itself is not society, which we do have a collective responsibility to maintain despite our differences.  Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s ant farm comprising a half-billion ant users, and it remains to be seen whether the farm thrives or dies, or if the ants just get bored.  Either way, how much does it really matter?

Society is outside my front door.  I don’t know who my neighbor is voting for, but I know he’s a hell of a nice guy, a great dad, and the kind of person who will do anything for you.  If he posted a Trump sign on his lawn tomorrow, yes, I’d think he has a serious disconnect, but am I going to walk over to his house and set him straight? Or will I suddenly be rude to him once he declares his intentions? Of course not. And to Markowicz’s point, if most of us would respect such boundaries in the real world, why do we feel it’s okay to cross these lines in cyberspace?

The answers are going to be found in the medium itself, in the nature and design of the platform.  The platform wants you to say something. That is its purpose.  And the environment fuses public and private behavior in ways that are relatively new in human experience, especially for the two generations who became adults before Facebook’s inventor was even born. Add to this the fact that most people don’t express themselves very carefully with the written word and that all other communication—facial expression, tone, body language—is obliterated, and of course friends and relatives are going to insult one another.

When I was a kid, most adults repeated the rule that one does not talk about religion or politics in polite company, and again to Markowicz’s point, social media often exemplifies why this was a pretty good rule.  It has been widely discussed—and it is empirically obvious—that people will say things on a social media platform that they would never say to someone, let alone a friend or family member, in person.  This phenomenon has provided grist for many a psychologist’s mill, but the actual effects on relationships within the confines of the platform itself are merely data in the ant-farm experiment. And it should be obvious that the farmers want Facebook to be as lively as possible—for the articles, memes, and comments we share to be substantive, political, and even self-righteous and bitchy because these interactions produce richer data.  If we shared nothing but baby pictures and snapshots of what we’re having for lunch, that would surely ruin Facebook from its owners’ perspective.

At the same time, while I could give a damn whether Facebook thrives or crashes, there’s no question the experiment is interesting.  If relatives or friends who would ordinarily get along by keeping their views generally hidden discover animosity for one another through a medium that fosters expressing those views, is there any value in this?  Maybe. Does the platform make relationships more honest, or does it just produce unnecessary conflict?  Presumably, it’s a bit of both.  Regardless, whether we’re talking about political ideology, tackling tough social issues, or cultivating interpersonal relationships, the question should not be what we are doing to the ant farm called social media, but what it’s doing to us.

Are Candidates Even Talking About the 21st Century Economy?

Photo by duallogic.
Photo by duallogic.

It’s very common to encounter broad complaints saying things like, “Copyright law should not stop me from fixing or altering my technology.”  Often, this generalization is made by people who don’t necessarily know they’re referring to Title I of the DMCA but who have read somewhere that copyright law prevents reverse engineering, maintenance, jail-breaking, and overall tinkering with products ranging from personal small electronics to cars, trucks, and tractors.

But as I first discussed in this post, the whole concept of ownership of many of our core products may be waning faster than these apparent conflicts with intellectual property law might ever be addressed. This transformation is highlighted by what seems to be an inexorable march toward an autonomous vehicle transportation system—a change that comes with consequences far more relevant than the matter of a “right” to fiddle with the gadgets we purchase.

With the announcement last week that the federal government officially endorses the development of driverless vehicles, it is noteworthy that no candidate running for any office seems likely to address the radical social and economic implications of this seismic shift in the transportation sector. Although I cannot bring myself to compare and contrast Donald Trump with any other prospective candidate for office, for the purposes of this post, suffice to say that between Trump’s version of trickle-down economics and Hillary Clinton’s version of focusing on the middle-class, it seems to me that neither candidate is talking about the same 21st century economy in which Wall Street is investing.

Candidates across the political spectrum keep referring to fair trade deals as a common scapegoat as a prelude to their myriad promises to “bring jobs back” to America. This is already a fallacy, pretending that we can reverse globalization through tax policy alone, or without a specific plan for investments—either public or private—that might actually grow domestic jobs.  Meanwhile, VCs, Wall Street, and the tech firms are placing big bets on a more generally automated future; and nobody seems to want to talk about the jobs we are, therefore, poised to eliminate over the next decade or two.  Not outsource through trade. Just eliminate right here at home.

For instance, a truly driverless future would probably wipe out a minimum of 10 million jobs, beginning with an estimated 8.5 million who work as drivers and at least a few million who work in some capacity related to the current ground transportation industry.  Granted there would be jobs created in order to build and maintain a new, driverless infrastructure, but only a fraction of the number that would be lost.  And equally if not more challenging is the question of whose investment would build this new infrastructure?

Let’s face it. The United States is bipolar when it comes to great building projects, which I think explains why our infrastructure is antiquated in contrast to other developed—and even developing—nations.  As if to emphasize our duality in this context, it’s notable that the two eras when most American infrastructure was built happen to have been based on antithetical models.  The first era was a period of unfettered capitalism, which built the foundations of the country’s industrial capacity from the mid-19th to the early 20th; and the second era was a brief period of outright socialism—the New Deal—which built highways, buildings, dams, etc. most of which is still in use today, even if it’s looking a little rusty.

Now that the Obama administration has given a federal fist-bump to the driverless vehicle—and if this does mark a tipping point when we can say this transition is inevitable—then we’re going to have to address the question of ownership (i.e. whose investment it’s going to be).  Would Americans allow Google, Uber, Ford, Lyft, and Tesla (GULFT) to own the entire transportation infrastructure for the nation?  Or would we build the infrastructure as a public work?  Because historically, allowing private industry to make that kind of stranded investment in exchange for monopoly control has not been particularly good for consumers or innovation.

Photo by jzehnder.
Photo by jzehnder.

When the nation was first being electrified, there was debate over whether we should build a distributed versus a centralized system.  A distributed system of smaller, co-generating plants would have been safer, more energy efficient, and less monopolistic. So, naturally  we built a centralized system.  This meant massive, stranded investments by the utility companies for which they could only be compensated through monopoly control of the market until those monopolies were finally busted up in the 1990s.  Meanwhile, consumers (a.k.a. “rate payers”) had no competitive choices, and the utility owners had zero motivation to innovate. As a result of this legacy, the United States remains a follower rather than a leader in advancing new, non-carbon-based, energy solutions.

So, now we fast-forward a decade or two in the world of ground transportation. We no longer own cars. We hail a driverless vehicle to take us to the grocery store where the goods on the shelves have all been delivered by a driverless cargo vehicle from a distribution center serviced by hundreds of other driverless cargo vehicles. Accidents are very rare, the air is cleaner, and (in theory) consumer costs come down. We no longer have car payments or auto insurance, and the lower cost of transportation could lower the cost of goods.

But those benefits may easily be diminished if we haven’t considered how to address the massive shift of 10-plus million people formerly employed in ground transportation-related jobs.  Plus, we now have a more thorough consolidation of transportation service than the railroad monopolies controlled at the turn of the 20th century.  Every vehicle trip is now part of a vast, networked system that relies very little on human labor. So who owns that system?  We have to assume that the capitalists currently investing in the model expect they will own it.  That’s a lot of control to give to GULFT.

Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and now the Obama administration are all projecting a future in which the transportation sector simultaneously sheds millions of jobs and centralizes control of the lifeline of the entire nation—and not one candidate from any party thinks this is significant enough to talk about.  Instead, they’re campaigning on traditional, and at times absurd, promises that they know best how to bring 20th century jobs “back.” In this one regard, maybe the future is already here because it doesn’t seem to me like anybody’s driving the bus.