Collecting the whodata.

Yay for social media.

In my last post on this blog, I mentioned several newsworthy topics making the rounds of Facebook, Twitter and such that, as yet, had not been considered newsworthy by more traditional (and still more widely attended) news organizations.  One of these was the NFL’s attempt to establish WHO DAT as a New Orleans Saints trademark.

That was a week ago.  Since then, local and national media have caught up.  Most recently, the “Who owns WHO DAT?” story made it to USA Today.  And, even more recently, to the Wall Street Journal.

So, once again, yay for social media.  That’s where the story began, and that’s where it continues to simmer and sizzle while simultaneously being distributed farther and wider by the likes of the Associated Press.

But, I have to note, not too many of these farther and wider distributions contain much information beyond what the social media mavens first revealed.

The Associated Press/USA Today story, for instance, has a couple of direct quotes from the parties involved, but is otherwise a straightforward retelling of what has already been told.  And, conspicuously missing from both the AP and WSJ articles are some important basics — like exactly what was in the original cease-and-desist letter that NFL lawyers sent Lauren Thom (aka, the new New Orleans cause célèbre, Fleurty Girl). You can read that letter where first I saw and linked it earlier:  here.

Local and prolific tweeters — count @kbeninato and @YatPundit among these — are quick to point to their blogging as ground zero of the WHO DAT story.  And these tweets and blogs remain the best source of the WAT DAT about the WHO DAT.  If you’re really interested in the here and now, for instance, why settle for stale Fleurty Girl sound bites?  Why not subscribe to her live Twitter feed?

And then, if you’re ready, you can think about this:

In parallel with how large corporations like the NFL have obscured the origin and ownership of WHO DAT, national news media — intentionally or not — can obscure the origin and ownership of INFORMATION.  That information — its meaning and value — can’t be owned and trademarked by existing news organizations any more than WHO DAT can be owned and trademarked by the NFL.  If it’s our culture, then it’s also our information:  WE DAT.

Just as the NFL is anxious to sustain profits, news organizations have proven equally anxious to sustain their status and reputations.  Nevertheless, it may well be that the Google-like role of news aggregator — a role demonized by the owner of the Wall Street Journal — is the only real role left mainstream media.

***

For further and related reading, see…

• The recent Peabody award-winning investigation by New Orlean’s WDSU, which originated within the blog of Karen Gadbois, who is now writing for The Lens.
• The second-class citizenship of dot.com reporters covering the New Orleans Saints.
• And, of course, one of the more prominent examples of a commodified cultural icon: the Harley-Davidson corporate tat.

Rahrah, blahblah, dada.

We discussed agenda-setting in CMMNA100 this week.

Agenda-setting is one of several contemporary media effects theories that understand the influence of mass media as subtle, indirect, and, over the long term, quite powerful. The catch-phrase for agenda-setting theory: The media don’t tell us what to think; they tell us what to think about. This happens as a result of media sources, particularly news organizations, presenting basically the same topics of interest — an “agenda” — in which a more diverse (and accurate) view of the world is distorted and transformed.

With agenda-setting in mind, I am as often curious about the stories the news media don’t cover as the stories they do — particularly during large-scale media events such as the recent NFC championship football game in New Orleans. Here, for instance, are three Saints-related stories that might well have deserved more coverage than they received.

1. NFL playoff team revenues.

Yes, there is some coverage and commentary on this, but you have to do a little searching to find it. For instance, look here.

Apparently, the revenue stream for NFL teams during the playoffs is very different from that revenue stream during the regular season. In fact, there may actually be economic incentives for some NFL teams NOT to make the playoffs. How all this is pertinent to the Saints payroll and Tom Benson’s financial future remains unclear, however, because I just couldn’t find anything about it.

2. Who owns WhoDat?

On the Friday before the NFC championship game, the NFL issued a cease-and-desist order to a local business regarding the use and ownership of the “WhoDat” phrase. Lauren Thom (Twitter’s @FleurtyGirl) produces and sells a series of Louisiana-themed t-shirts in her uptown store. Among these t-shirts is a “WhoDat” issue bearing the phrase in question and delicately embellished with a small gold fleur-de-lis. NFL lawyers sent a letter claiming ownership of “WhoDat” and the fleur-de-lis image. According to a local blogger, Ms. Thom caved to the requests in this letter and agreed to 1) quit using the offending WhoDat/fleur-de-lis design, and 2) pay the NFL a 10% cut of the sales of the remaining stock in question.

An interesting story, I thought. But, despite all the rampant rah-rah about the WhoDat Nation, I saw little to nothing about the WhoDat Corporation.

3. Late-night calls from Sean.

Mike Freeman of CBSsports.com published a column on Friday before the NFC Championship game in which he described Sean Payton’s (and the Saints’) relationship with the press as bordering on dictatorial. You can read it here. This story, in particular, piqued my interest, since (if at least some of Freeman’s claims were true) there might be pressure on the local media NOT to give this particular story any attention. But, surely, I thought, the column’s inflammatory potential alone would propel it to the top of the local talk shows’ list of ratings-positive and commonly inflammatory topics. But no, I heard nothing.

***

Are these three topics interesting? I think so.

Are they newsworthy? Well, in fact, I don’t make that decision, and, as long as there are substantial entry costs to gathering and distributing the news, neither do you.

When will those entry costs decrease? When will the “news” be as easily gathered and distributed by cell phones and social media as by the current cultural institutions of traditional news networks and brands?

Is it now?

Five things I’m looking forward to in 2010.

1.  Currently, if you’re on the Loyola campus and wish to use the university wireless network, you need to login.  Here’s the login screen.

Then, whenever you lose the Loyola wireless signal, or need to reboot, or plug-in another laptop to connect to an overhead display, or go off campus and come back again, you need to login again.  This means, during the course of the day, you need to deal with lots of login screens.

If you are on a mobile phone and trying to access the university wireless network, you usually just give up and use your (slower) cellular connection.  So, here’s something I’m looking forward to:  Auto-login for the Loyola wireless network.

2.  Currently, LSU is one of three USA universities enrolled in the eduroam initiative.  More common in Europe, eduroam allows students and faculty at participating universities to share a common password and login procedure at each university. I’m looking forward to that.

3.  Currently, lots of educational institutions and organizations have open access policies promoting a more egalitarian means of producing and distributing scholarly information.  I’m looking forward to having something like that at Loyola.

4.  Currently, some people and places offer free public wireless.  Cities do it, buses and trains do it, even educational institutions do it.  So that’s another thing I’m looking forward to: Loyola doing it.

5. Currently, Loyola promotes two ways to access your Loyola email.  Read all about those two here.  SquirrelMail is the more innovative of the two; it was developed in 1999.  In 2004, Google Mail went public.  Now, lots of people use GMail.  In case you missed that news, here’s a story from 2007. Universities use GMail.  Cities use GMail.  I use GMail.

One more thing I am looking forward to in 2010: A 2010 Loyola email service.

Is beauty necessarily fleeting?

Good summary here:

…from Boselie & Leeuwenberg (1985)

Now, take a look at this:  New Theory of Time

Therein, there is the notion that our time flows in a certain direction and as a consequence of our universe moving from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy.

“Entropy” can then be interpreted as one of the two polar opposites cited above:  i. e., high entropy is parallel to notions of “complexity, multiplicity, or diversity,” and low entropy is parallel to notions of “order, lawfulness, or unity.”

This means that, as our universe moves from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy, the function (or ratio) of these two gradually shifts in value.  If “the nature of beauty is formulated in the principle of “unity in variety” (which we here conceive as the principle of “[low entropy] in [high entropy]“), then there must be a single moment in the evolution of the universe at which that universe is most beautiful.  In addition, according to Carroll’s theory, there must be a single speed and direction of time that is likewise most beautiful.

Note that this would then also be true of any system that moves from a state of low entropy to a state of high entropy.  At some point definitive point during that transition, the low entropy/high entropy ratio will attain a value at which that system is most beautiful.

Beyond that point, however, everything proceeds increasingly downhill to ugly.

However, suppose this sort of formal definition of beauty can be applied to games and game systems, which (more so than our universe) might conceivably be stabilized at this single definitive point at which unity and variety, order and chaos, are related most beautifully, and time is likewise perceived to flow most beautifully.

If this stabilization can be achieved within that system — e. g., a game system — then would that system not be the culminate achievement of art in its indefinite suspension of the experience of beauty?

Trying to write on the iphone.

Some brief notes on using the iphone to write important stuff:  Basically, you can’t really do it (at least not on the cheap), but you can come close.

1.  Input.

There are several applications that attempt to transcribe finger-writing on the iphone touchscreen, but none of them work very well.

There are also dictation apps that attempt to transcribe your voice.  This is probably the best option for serious writing at the moment, BUT the free dictation apps transcribe less well than the finger-writing apps, and the pay apps (used, for instance, to transcribe medical records and notes) are not yet fully automated and, therefore, cost an arm and a leg.

You can, of course, simply write using the iphone touchpad keyboard.  Not impossible, but way too slow to be practical.  Microsoft-Word-like apps make the process even slower and are really only useful for (minor) remote editing rather than (major) remote writing.

2.  Output.

This is a little better.  Beyond all the various book and manuscript readers, which are plentiful, there are also a growing number of apps that allow you to access files you have created on keyboards elsewhere.

Two of the better and more versatile of these are ezShare and Print & Share.  Both can connect to shared files on your local (e.g., home) networks as well as access an increasing number of online/cloud-based storage services using the webdav protocol.  Of the two, I prefer Print & Share because it is (so far) more reliable in both accessing and printing files than its competitors.  Caveat:  Unlike some of its competitors, you have to install a small (and free) client on the networked computers accessed by Print & Share.

***

The obvious remains, however:  I didn’t write this on my iphone.

Should nola.com allow anonymous comments?

Anonymity can be a good thing.

For instance, I’m a big fan (more so than some of my colleagues) of WikiLeaks, an organization that operates largely on the assumption than certain types of information –- information of public value — will not be revealed unless it is revealed anonymously. Similar assumptions justify the use of shield laws protecting anonymous sources used by journalists. Watergate and the travesties of the Nixon administration, for instance, may never have been revealed without the anonymity of “Deep Throat.”

In 1987, I published a study called, in part, “Anonymity is part of the magic.” In that study, I concluded that online anonymity allowed online actors to more fully explore behavior and activities that were oppressed and suppressed offline. That remains true — and, in general, it remains a good thing. But, sometimes, the oppression and suppression of offline behavior and activities have good cause. And the usefulness of anonymity – particularly online anonymity – has some important limits.

Significantly, online anonymity is really only a sort of pseudo-anonymity. Internet protocols require both message senders and message receivers to have a unique address — an IP address – much more easily made public than kept hidden. When courts (and others) have acted to remove the anonymity of bloggers, for instance, this is easily and quickly accomplished. Website administrators seem more than willing (and able) to remove user anonymity when it benefits them to do so – yet equally willing to preserve an aura of pseudo-anonymity that attracts users when it benefits them to do that.

Also, let’s be clear about distinctions between anonymity and privacy.

Privacy governs the release of information made unintentionally public; anonymity is about controlling information made intentionally public. While online privacy preserves individuality and innovation, online anonymity often simply serves as a means of avoiding public responsibility.

As a strong proponent of open access, open source, and free information, I am somewhat disheartened to see a growing number of online information sites implement strict user registration and comment moderation policies.  Yet, I must reluctantly admit that it is probably in their readers’ best interests that they do so. Freedom of speech and information certainly includes the freedom to be loud, graphic, and irrelevant – but not always at the expense of those who wish to be otherwise.

Nude the information.

Some people think journalism is about truth.  I think it’s mostly about information.  Once people have information, the truth can take care of itself.  And, though you can certainly have information without truth, it’s very hard to determine what’s true and what’s not true without the proper information to do so.

For instance:  Are the illusions of magicians “true”?

Magicians, of course, would like us to think so.  And, in order to keep us from thinking otherwise, magicians are reluctant to reveal their information – their “secrets.”

Some magicians, however, are less reluctant than others.

When secrets are revealed, the truth becomes less mysterious, but not any less magical.

Currently, there are many circumstances in which we consider information bound by a sort of magician’s creed:  rightfully private and best kept secret.

For instance, how much you make – your salary — is sometimes considered best kept secret.  If you make too much, after all, you might become the target of your fellow workers’ envy.  If you make too little, you might become embarrassed.

But, whoever is paying your salary has your salary information – as well as the salary information of your co-workers.  And, with that information, your employer’s ability to negotiate salaries is vastly superior to your own.  In cases like this one, who benefits most from information kept secret?

Like the salary example, there are many other circumstances in which we seem prefer to keep information secret because we fear we might be embarrassed or targeted.  But, in almost all those circumstances, revealing information is more likely to make things better than worse.  The real problem, it seems, is not the information.  The real problem is in those systems – of government, of laws, of businesses, and of societies – that, for their own self-serving reasons, penalize the revelation of information.

Are those penalties justified?  Or is the information we continue to protect protected merely for the sake of a dwindling number of magicians who are otherwise unable make us believe that something false is actually something true?

Here’s what’s happening now:  The Google Book Search project is being questioned over “privacy” concerns – not always by the public whose privacy is supposedly threatened, but by a relatively small cadre of lawyers who assume they know best.  Copyright – and patent — laws are likewise being used to protect the public through forced restrictions on information distribution and use that have resulted, in one case, in a 1.9 million dollar fine levied against a Minnesotan housewife who illegally downloaded music files.  And, while our new President talks about a “free and open” internet, he also is inclined, like presidents before him, to use claims of “national security” to keep secrets.

Are these concerns and restrictions and claims justified?

Well, I can’t really answer that question unless I have the information necessary to do so.

Still another Firefox add-on.

Getting Started With ScribeFire – Scribefire: Fire up your blogging

On the deification of social norms.

In this note, I focus on Coleman’s treatment of social norms. I believe his treatment is deeply unsatisfactory. It is a piece of crypto-functionalism, in spite of his official rejection of that method (pp. 259-260) and his professed methodological individualism (p. 5). It is also somewhat panglossian, in its emphasis on the beneficial effects of norms. Although Coleman is fully aware of norms that benefit only a subset of the relevant community, at the expense of others, he completely ignores norms that make everybody worse off (examples are offered later). In my opinion, social norms cause vast amounts of pointless suffering.  (Elster, 2003)

Information query.

After an initial look at the newest version of the Google Book Search Project settlement (others have reviewed it in much more detail than I), my impression is that this project is going to be much less than it could have been.

The class of books included in the newest version of the settlement, for instance, seems much narrower than that in the original project goal: to search the world’s books.  And the negotiations regarding access to “orphan” works remain muddled through the necessity of dealing with an arbitrary group of rightsholders created out of nothingness by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers.  Much more broadly, however, I am disappointed that current copyright and antitrust laws intended to create and promote social value seem to have become, in practice, impediments to achieving that value.

Much of the controversy surrounding and delaying the resolution of the Google Book Search Project concerns revenues:  either who will receive what portions of revenues from digital books right now, or who will receive what portions of those revenues in the future.  While such concerns are not unimportant, they are also, given current circumstances, indeterminable.  The future of the information marketplace is clearly a target that is moving too rapidly for lawyers and their briefcases to hit.   Yet, even with the consequences of their aim uncertain, the slings and arrows of legalities continue to fly.

Here’s basically what I want to know:  If new technology allows me to search the world’s books, why can’t I?

Could someone at the Department of Justice explain that to me?