Gloria Swanson, on What’s My Line?, in 1950, the year of Norma Desmond.
Swanson with Dick Cavett and Janis Joplin, August 1970, two months before Joplin’s death:
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Tags: Gloria Swanson
What if war were painless, at least for one side? And what if the American President could fight overseas without getting approval from Congress because what’s being waged isn’t precisely war as we know it, but something beyond the traditional definition? In the brave new world of drones and robots, that’s exactly where the United States is. From Peter W. Singer’s excellent New York Times Opinion piece, “Do Drones Undermine Democracy?“
“Just 10 years ago, the idea of using armed robots in war was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Today, the United States military has more than 7,000 unmanned aerial systems, popularly called drones. There are 12,000 more on the ground. Last year, they carried out hundreds of strikes — both covert and overt — in six countries, transforming the way our democracy deliberates and engages in what we used to think of as war.
We don’t have a draft anymore; less than 0.5 percent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore; the last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 — against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During World War II, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion; in the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest 5 percent of Americans a tax break.
And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter — and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media — they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.”
• • • • • • • • • •
BigDog, by the good people at Boston Dynamics:
Tags: Peter W. Singer
A clip from Walter Cronkite’s sit-down with Anwar Sadat in the shadows of the pyramids, in 1977, four years before the Egyptian president was murdered. Sadat denies slave labor was used to build the incredible tombs.
Karl Pilkington visits the pyramids (at 5:05):
"He slashed his left wrist and throat with a razor this morning in a room where he was hiding in a little two-story brick boarding house."
Last week, I posted old print articles about Harry K. Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit, in the years after the murder of the third member of their twisted love triangle, architect Stanford White. In the story about Thaw, he was sought for horsewhipping a very unwilling participant in his sadomasochistic fantasies. Thaw was eventually returned to a mental asylum where he would remain until 1922–after a failed attempt at paying off his victim’s family. But first he had to be apprehended. The story of Thaw’s arrest courtesy of a couple of passages from a story in the January 12, 1917 New York Times:
“Philadelphia–Harry K. Thaw, slayer of Stanford White, added attempted suicide to his escapades today. Hunted down by detectives with a New York warrant that charged him with whipping Fred Gump Jr., the nineteen-year-old schoolboy, and depressed by the effects of heavy drinking, he slashed his left wrist and throat with a razor this morning in a room where he was hiding in a little two-story brick boarding house run by Mrs. Elizabeth Tacot at 5,200 Walnut Street, West Philadelphia.
Thaw’s wounds, while severe enough to make it probable that he actually attempted to end his life and was not simply courting sympathy because of the new ordeal he faced, will not cause death unless unexpected complications arise. He was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in the Kensington section, seven miles from the house. There several bichloride of mercury tablets were found in one of his pockets, but there was nothing in his condition shortly before midnight to indicate that he had swallowed any of them. He was very weak from loss of blood and he was unable to make a statement. He is under arrest in the hospital, not on a charge of attempted suicide, but on the New York whipping charges.
Landlady Discovers Thaw’s Plight
Mrs. Tacot, who said she knew Thaw only as ‘Mr. West,’ and did not realize his identity, was the first to learn what Thaw had done. At about 10:15 o’clock this morning she knocked on the door of the parlor which she had fitted up as Thaw’s bedroom and got no response. She pushed open the door a few inches and saw Thaw fully dressed, lying on the bed. He had pulled his overcoat up above his throat. He was moaning and blood was running from his left hand, which was extended over the side of the bed. The landlady phoned to the local branch of the O’Farrell Detective Agency to Maloney, a former policeman, Harbor Master and Republican boss of the Fifth Ward, who is in charge of the branch. Dr. E.A. Bateman, who lives near the house, was notified, and he summoned in turn Dr. A.F. Shiezle.
"Several bichloride of mercury tablets were found in one of his pockets."
While this was going on at the Tacot house Maloney was telling Chief Tate that he was prepared to surrender Thaw. The chief sent Lieutenant Theodore Wood and two detectives to the house in a taxicab, with instructions to call Dr. John Wanamaker 3d, the police surgeon. Magistrate George A. Persch also went into the house. Thaw seemed to be in a daze.
‘Have you anything you want to say?’ the Magistrate asked him. ‘Do you know that you may die? Will you make a statement of any kind?’ Thaw’s body shook but he made no response.
At the hospital Thaw was placed in comfortable quarters. He was arrested on the charges made in New York and not for the attempt upon his own life. As soon as his condition permits, the police plan to return him to New York.”
Tags: Chief Tate, Dr. A.F. Shiezle, Dr. E.A. Bateman, Dr. John Wanamaker 3d, Elizabeth Tacot, Fred Gump Jr., Harry K. Thaw, Lieutenant Theodore Wood, Magistrate George A. Persch
Not yet quite as sad a repository of obsolescence as the public library, the U.S. Postal Service nonetheless struggles at its sunset.
1903: Streetcar mail delivery, Washington D.C.
1997: Kramer calls attention to the charade.
Despite an incredibly austere budget for 2012, the struggling state of Kentucky will move forward with allocating public funds toward the building of a creationist theme park, which features Noah and his Ark. Cripes. Some details about the project from Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times:
“Since Gov. Steven L. Beshear announced the plan on Wednesday, some constitutional experts have raised alarms over whether government backing for an enterprise that promotes religion violates the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state. But Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, said the arrangement posed no constitutional problem, and brushed off questions about his stand on creationism.
‘The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,’ he said at a news conference. ‘They elected me governor to create jobs.’
The theme park was conceived by the same Christian ministry that built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., where dioramas designed to debunk evolution show humans and dinosaurs coexisting peacefully on an earth created by God in six days. The ministry, Answers in Genesis, believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old — a controversial assertion even among many Bible-believing Christians.
Although the Creation Museum has been a target of ridicule by some, it has drawn 1.2 million visitors in its first three years — proving that there is a sizable paying audience for entertainment rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible.”
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“Something big is happening”:
How beautiful. The poetry of machines, via 1930’s “Mechanical Principles,” by brilliant pioneering documentarian Ralph Steiner.
Tags: Ralph Steiner
The best article I’ve read this very young new year is “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” an excellent New York Times piece by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher. It follows up on the question that President Obama famously asked Steve Jobs early last year during a pow-wow with Silicon Valley industry leaders: What can we do to have Apple products manufactured in America again? With his typical bluntness, Jobs told Obama it wasn’t going to happen. One reason is that contemporary America lacks a critical mass of mid-level engineers. But even if we reversed that situation, a larger problem looms: China, with its Foxconn complex, will sacrifice the health and well-being of its workers, treat them like so many indentured servants, in order to fulfill the every whim of tech titans. At any rate, it gives lie to the election-year assertion that all we have to do is loosen regulations and jobs will flood our shores. An excerpt:
“Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.'”
Tags: Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher
"Get the fuck out." (Image by Angela George.)
NEW YORK SPORTS CLUB – LOCKER ROOM (Greenwich Village)
Just a passing thought to those bitches downtown.
1) Enter the locker room.
2) Open your locker.
3) Change your stinky clothes.
4) Take a quick piss before entering the shower if you take one.
5) Finally, get the fuck out.
P.S.: SORRY.. TWATS… The next time you’re so interested in our conversation, I’m going to surprise you.
“Thriller,” as performed by Aldebaran bots.
In a new blog post, cultural critic Adam Curtis likens the contemporary West to the 1980s Soviet Union, an idea nearing the closing credits of entropy. An excerpt:
“There are of course vast differences between our present society and the Soviet Union of thirty years ago – for one thing they had practically no consumer goods whereas we are surrounded by them, and for another western capitalism was waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum. But there are also echoes of our present mood – a grand economic system that had once promised heaven on earth had become absurd and corrupted.
Everyone in Russia in the early 1980s knew that the managers and technocrats in charge of the economy were using that absurdity to loot the system and enrich themselves. The politicians were unable to do anything because they were in the thrall of the economic theory, and thus of the corrupt technocrats. And above all no-one in the political class could imagine any alternative future.
In the face of this most Soviet people turned away from politics and any form of engagement with society and lived day by day in a world that they knew was absurd, trapped by the lack of a vision of any other way.” (Thanks Browser.)
••••••••••
Curtis’ analysis of the Computer Age:
Tags: Adam Curtis
Genius film comedian Buster Keaton had a sad life, from his vaudevillian parents tossing him around on stage like a rag doll when he was a tyke to the financial problems in his later years. His appearance on What’s My Line?, 1957.
Real house, no trick photography, no stunt man, no special effects:
Tags: Buster Keaton
Here are some things that are restricted or illegal (or at one time were illegal) in America, but are never going away: alcohol, drugs, prostitution, abortion and guns. You can forbid them, but all it does is create a far more dangerous black market. It’s tantamount to choosing worse instead of bad. The upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London will have the strictest drug testing ever and a 24-hour lab that will be constantly humming. Some of the athletes using drugs will be caught, many will not. From a Daily Mail article about the lab:
“Drug cheats have been warned they will be caught at next summer’s Olympics and Paralympics as London 2012 unveiled ‘the most high-tech’ laboratory in the history of the Games.
Up to 6,250 samples will be tested by 150 scientists working at the 24-hour anti-doping facility in Harlow, Essex.
All Olympic medallists will have to submit a urine sample and there will be around 1,000 blood tests.
With 10,500 athletes expected at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, organisers are confident up to half of competitors will be tested; some more than once.”
In 1963, the year before his death, original Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was interviewed by Playboy. An excerpt:
“Playboy: In a speech given in 1947, on the eve of Indian independence, you said, ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now comes the time when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.’ How substantial has the redemption of this pledge been? What is the spiritual and material condition of India today, after 16 years of independence?
Nehru: India today presents a very mixed picture of hope and anguish, of remarkable advances and at the same time of inertia, of a new spirit and also of the dead hand of privilege, of an over-all and growing unity and of many disruptive tendencies. There is a great vitality and a ferment in people’s minds and activities. Perhaps we who live in the middle of this ever-changing scene do not always realize the full significance of all that is happening. Often outsiders can make a better appraisal of the situation. It is remarkable that a country and a people rooted in the remote past, who have shown so much resistance to change, should now be marching forward rapidly. We are making history in India even though we might not be conscious of it.
Jawaharlal Nehru, lying in state, 1964.
Playboy: In that same 1947 speech you specifically called for ‘the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity’ in India. Are you still optimistic about the eventual elimination of these conditions?
Nehru: What tomorrow’s India will be like, I cannot say. I can only express my hopes and wishes. Naturally, I want India to advance on the material plane, to fulfill her plans, to raise the standard of living of her vast population. I want the narrow conflicts of today in the name of religion or caste, language or province, to cease, and a classless and casteless society to be built up where every individual has full opportunity to grow according to his worth and ability. In particular, I hope that the curse of caste will be ended, for with it there cannot be either democracy or socialism. Tomorrow’s India will be what we make it by today’s labors. I have no doubt but that India will progress industrially and otherwise; that she will advance in science and technology; that our people’s standards will rise; that education will spread; that health conditions will be better; and that art and culture will enrich people’s lives. We have started on this pilgrimage with strong purpose and good heart, and we shall reach the end of the journey, however long that might be. But what I am concerned with is not merely our material progress, but the quality and depth of our people. Gaining power through industrial processes, will they lose themselves in the quest of individual wealth and soft living? That would be a tragedy for it would be a negation of what India has stood for in the past and, I think, in the present time also as exemplified by Gandhi. Power is necessary, but wisdom is essential. It is only power with wisdom that is good.”
••••••••••
A thumbnail of Nehru’s life, including his 1949 NYC ticker-tape parade:
Tags: Jawaharlal Nehru
From “The Secrets Apple Keeps,” Adam Lashinsky’s new Fortune article about the cultish internal nature of the tech giant:
“Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added and new security protocols put into place. Windows that once were transparent are now frosted. Other rooms have no windows at all. They are called lockdown rooms: No information goes in or out without a reason.
The hubbub is disconcerting for employees. Quite likely you have no idea what is going on, and it’s not like you’re going to ask. If it hasn’t been disclosed to you, then it’s literally none of your business. What’s more, your badge, which got you into particular areas before the new construction, no longer works in those places. All you can surmise is that a new, highly secretive project is under way, and you are not in the know. End of story.
Secrecy takes two basic forms at Apple — external and internal. There is the obvious kind, the secrecy that Apple uses as a way of keeping its products and practices hidden from competitors and the rest of the outside world. This cloaking device is the easier of the two types for the rank and file to understand because many companies try to keep their innovations under wraps. Internal secrecy, as evidenced by those mysterious walls and off-limits areas, is tougher to stomach. Yet the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple (AAPL) challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue.
All companies have secrets, of course. The difference is that at Apple everything is a secret.” (Thanks Browser.)
••••••••••
A Rolling Thunder performance of “One Too Many Mornings,” Steve Jobs’ favorite Bob Dylan song. Not even close to Dylan’s best, but to each his own.
“One Too Many Mornings”
Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind
From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind
It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind
Tags: Adam Lashinsky, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs
"Will allow you to cut it."
Selling my hair – $250 (NYC)
Looking for buyer for my hair.
About me: Aprrox. 18-20in, straight, untreated, light brown hair. 32yo healthy, athletic male, good diet, good natural oils.
Will allow you to cut it or be present for cutting.
"The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West." (Image by Espen Moe.)
From Michael Hastings’ new interview in Rolling Stone with Wikileak’s head leaker, Julian Assange, on what inspired him to begin disseminating classified information:
“Then, two years later, the U.S. invaded Iraq.
The creation of WikiLeaks was, in part, a response to Iraq. There were a number of whistle-blowers who came out in relation to Iraq, and it was clear to me that what the world was missing in the days of Iraq propaganda was a way for inside sources who knew what was really going on to communicate that information to the public. Quite a few who did ended up in very dire circumstances, including David Kelly, the British scientist who either committed suicide or was murdered over his revelations about weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West. It was also the clearest case, in my living memory, of media manipulation and the creation of a war through ignorance.“
Tags: David Kelly, Julian Assange
Twelve-year-old Michael Jackson and older brother Jackie interviewed on local Los Angeles news, 1971.
Tags: Michael Jackson
"Sony...introduced its Betamax video tape recorder to the U.S. consumer market in early 1976." (Image by Franny Wentzel.)
For more than three decades, Hollywood has been fighting a losing battle with technology, trying to pause time in an era when there was less competition, when making boatloads of cash required little ingenuity. From the movie establishment’s landmark case in futility, in which it fought to make home video recorders illegal:
“Universal City Studios, Inc. et al. v. Sony Corporation of America Inc. et al., commonly known as the Betamax case, was the first concerted legal response of the American film industry to the home video revolution. After nearly a decade of announcements and false starts by one American company or another, Sony, the Japanese electronics manufacturing giant, introduced its Betamax video tape recorder to the U.S. consumer market in early 1976 at an affordable price. In its marketing strategy Sony promoted the machine’s ability to ‘time shift’ programming–that is, to record a television program off the air even while watching another show on a different channel.
The plaintiffs, Universal and Walt Disney Productions on behalf of the Hollywood majors, charged that the ability of the Betamax to copy programming off air was an infringement of copyright and sought to halt the sale of the machines. The studios were ostensibly trying to protect film and television producers from the economic consequences of unauthorized mass duplication and distribution. However, Universal might have also wanted to prevent Betamax from capturing a significant segment of the fledgling home video market before its parent company, MCA, could introduce its DiscoVision laserdisc system, which was to scheduled for test marketing in the fall of 1977.”
••••••••••
Time shifting with Sony Betamax, 1977:
Everyone is familiar with the crime. On a June day in 1906, Harry K. Thaw fired three bullets at close range at architect Stanford White, on the roof of Madison Square Garden, wounding him fatally atop a building the victim had designed. The gunfire was apparently provoked by jealousy Thaw felt over his wife, the comely chorus girl, Evelyn Nesbit, who had previously been White’s mistress. After a couple of trials, Thaw spent some time in a mental asylum, but not long after a failed escape to Canada, he was declared sane and set free. But neither Thaw nor Nesbit were ever free of themselves, liberated from their destructive impulses. Excerpts from two New York Times articles about their lives after the most shocking murder.
••••••••••
"The terrified lad saw Thaw, armed with a short, stocky whip rushing for him."
“Whipping of Boy Starts Hunt for Harry K. Thaw” (January 10, 1917): “The police of every city last night sought Harry Thaw. Accused in the Stanford White trial of having used a silver-capped dog whip on girls, Thaw was indicted here yesterday charged with having whipped a nineteen-year-old boy.
In a room high up in the Hotel McAlpin Thaw on Christmas Eve is alleged to have lashed Frederick Gump, Jr., a Kansas City schoolboy, almost to unconsciousness, after having enticed the lad to this city on pretenses of educating him.
‘Thaw’s acquaintance with young Gump goes back to December, 1915,’ said Mr. Walsh at the Holland House yesterday. ‘The elder Mr. Gump is one of the leading citizens of Kansas City, and I have known his only child, Fred, since infancy. The boy’s father became ill about two years ago, and when Fred was graduated from the Kansas City High School the family moved to Long Beach, Cal. Fred enrolled in the Berkeley Polytechnic Institute, but spent the week-ends with his parents in Long Beach, and it was on one of these occasions that Thaw met the lad in an ice cream pavillion.
‘Fred, a fine-looking chap, appeared to interest Thaw, who told the boy he would like to have him go back to Pittsburgh with him, where a fine job could be had. Gump declined the offer and they parted. This was early in December, and the next Gump heard of Thaw was when a postal came wishing the young student a merry Christmas. Letter after letter came to Mrs. Gump addressed to her son, and in nearly all of them Thaw repeated his offer. Finally on December 20 last he wrote, offering Gump $50 a month and expenses either to take a job in his plant or to enroll for a course in the Carnegie Institute. Thaw inclosed a certified check for $50, and urged Gump to accept the offer.
After thinking the matter over, Mr. Gump advised his son to take the chance at the Carnegie School and Thaw was advised of the decision. In a wire, he directed Gump to come to New York and put up at the McAlpin, where further instructions would be wired to him.
‘At the hotel Thaw had reserved a big suite on the eighteenth floor and had even rented two adjoining rooms which, I think, he did to prevent strangers from hearing the cries which later came from his apartments. It was Gump’s first trip away from home. The splendor of his bedroom rather bewildered him, and it was some time before he retired.
‘Soon Gump heard his door opened cautiously. Almost immediately the lights were switched on and the terrified lad saw Thaw, armed with a short, stocky whip rushing for him.
‘The boy leaped to his feet, and dodging Thaw, tried to get out of the door, and even to jump out of a window. All were locked. From that time until Gump was almost insensible his captor drove the young lad around the room, raising great welts upon the boys’s unprotected back. When he had beaten the lad so that his back and legs were covered with blood, Thaw quit the room as suddenly as he had entered it. Young Gump lay on the floor all night, and in the morning Thaw again came in, this time accompanied by his body guard. Thaw instructed the guard to keep the boy a prisoner, and then left.'”
••••••••••
"An examination of her throat revealed that there is hope of saving her voice."
“Thaw to Visit Chicago Reconciliation Rumor” (Jan 8, 1926): “Chicago–Harry K. Thaw, whose former wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, attempted to kill herself Tuesday morning during a fit of despondency, will arrive in Chicago early next week to confer with his attorney, Charles S. Wharton, it was learned today.
The appearance of her former husband at this time, coupled with the interest he has shown in her behalf over a long period of years and which was climaxed by a personal inquiry sent to the hospital the other day, has caused rumors that a reconciliation might be effected between the two.
Thaw has been paying $10 every day to her through a Pittsburgh attorney for a number of years. He did this, it was said, as a ‘token of pleasant memories of the past when we were happy.’
It is also known that William C. Dannenberg, private detective, with headquarters in Chicago, has been receiving large fees annually from Thaw for ‘keeping tabs’ on Evelyn during her frequent stays in Chicago. It was through Dannenberg that Thaw made inquiry as to her condition a few hours after Evelyn was taken to the hospital.
Thaw telephoned to Dannenberg on Thursday, asking him to go to the hospital and deliver a message to Evelyn only in the event she were dying. The detective denied this later by saying he had been sent over to get a personal report on her condition, but had no message to deliver.
At the hospital it was announced that Miss Nesbit had rallied from the sinking spell which made her physician apprehensive during the crisis of her illness, and she was pronounced out of danger. An examination of her throat revealed that there is hope of saving her voice. The burns from the disinfectant she swallowed were at first believed to have damaged her throat so seriously she might never sing again.”
Tags: Evelyn Nesbit, Fred Gump, Harry K. Thaw, Stanford White
There are all sorts of entertainment for all sorts of occasions, but I’ll always like best the kind that upsets conventions and makes the audience want to tear down the stage. Do not please the people–the people are already far too pleased. Playwright Alfred Jarry angered ticket buyers in just such a fashion in 1896. An excerpt about the tumult from Karl Whitney at 3:AM Magazine:
“Arguably Jarry’s greatest literary creation, and certainly his best known, was the character of Père Ubu, the corpulent and vulgar ‘King of Poland’ who emerged, swearing forcefully, in Ubu Roi (performed onstage in 1896, but printed versions predate the theatrical performances). The first performances of the play caused a stir. Partly, this was because of the shock of the new – as Brotchie points out: ‘it was as though a modernist play from the middle of the next century had been dropped on the stage without all the intervening theatrical developments that might have acclimatized the audience to its conventions.’ On the other hand, many of Jarry’s friends in the avant-garde weren’t leaving anything to chance: they turned up with mischief in mind, and caused – or at least contributed to – an uproar in the theatre. At one point the poet Fernand Gregh shouted out his opinion: ‘It’s as beautiful as Shakespeare,; to which his own brother shot back from the balcony: ‘You’ve never even read Shakespeare, you imbecile!'”
•••••••••
“Bon jour, Père Ubu”:
Tags: Alfred Jarry
Beck interviewed by a robot voice as Mutations is released, 1998.
Tags: Beck
I find so many great things online by accident that I’ve never been quite as concerned about Internet filters as some have. In “The End of the Echo Chamber,” Farhad Manjoo of Slate writes about new research–albeit research conducted by the very interested party Facebook–that suggests that the Web is inherently serendipitous (or perhaps we are) no matter how much personalization, targeting or narrowcasting is forced upon us. The opening:
“Today, Facebook is publishing a study that disproves some hoary conventional wisdom about the Web. According to this new research, the online echo chamber doesn’t exist.
This is of particular interest to me. In 2008, I wrote True Enough, a book that argued that digital technology is splitting society into discrete, ideologically like-minded tribes that read, watch, or listen only to news that confirms their own beliefs. I’m not the only one who’s worried about this. Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, argued in his recent book The Filter Bubble that Web personalization algorithms like Facebook’s News Feed force us to consume a dangerously narrow range of news. The echo chamber was also central to Cass Sunstein’s thesis, in his book Republic.com, that the Web may be incompatible with democracy itself. If we’re all just echoing our friends’ ideas about the world, is society doomed to become ever more polarized and solipsistic?
It turns out we’re not doomed. The new Facebook study is one of the largest and most rigorous investigations into how people receive and react to news. It was led by Eytan Bakshy, who began the work in 2010 when he was finishing his Ph.D. in information studies at the University of Michigan. He is now a researcher on Facebook’s data team, which conducts academic-type studies into how users behave on the teeming network.”
Tags: Eytan Bakshy
Looking back to an odd incident from 1981, as “The Greatest” turns 70.
Tags: Muhammad Ali, Walter Cronite
The Most Underrated Thing In This Life (Inwood / Wash Hts)
is a good shit, followed closely by a big glass of ice water. Guess I am getting old.
