On Privacy:
I’ve wanted a blog since reading Ender’s game, which surprisingly enough was
not that long ago. I’ve restrained though – I’ve been terrified to put my
thoughts out there so publically. It gives me nightmares. I had that nightmare
again last night – perhaps someday I will write it up properly into a short
story, but for now I’ll settle for a quick summary:
It is the year 2040, I’m 28 years old, and I’ve just made what I thought was
the best decision of my life: moving away from my home town in Wyoming to the
East Coast. At first leaving my family and friends didn’t seem so bad; I’m
Facebook friends and everything – we Skype each other rather often. It isn’t
until a few months later that I come to the realization I don’t believe in God
anymore.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal, so I make a post about it on Facebook. I get
a few disappointed comments about it – nothing rude, nothing angry, just some
distance. I feel a little guilty letting my friends down, but nothing prepared
me for the next few months; Foursquare was suggesting different churches I
could try out; Google Shopping only suggested religious holiday cards; even
though I hadn’t specified religion on the dating site, it apparently knew my
hihistory, because all earmony would match me with was Catholic men. When I
tried talking to my colleagues about it, they were astounded I had been
religious for so long – what millenium was I living in? I ended up repenting,
confessing to my old priest, in my old town. I even took up my old job. So
much for that new world I was looking forward to.
Not everyone reading this will understand how scary that future is to me –
missing out on an oppurtunity for progress because of expectations I can’t get
away from – but I hope everyone reading this understands why I am writing this
under a pseudonym. I don’t want some future employer to read that I am
sympathetic to Anarchists, or am having trouble finding a job, or enjoyed
childish activities five years ago. I don’t know the real damage the
data-mining buisness of the internet might do, but who it thinks I am, will
change how I internet with the virtual world – and if it is anything like how
socio-economic factor influences how I interact with the real one, I don’t want
it to tell it who I am.
On my Psuedonym Loki:
My legal name doesn’t mean anything – although I suppose it has some origin I
am yet unaware of. My nickname is similar, although I to some extent chose
it, because it was determined som much by my legal name, it says very little
about me.
For all that names don’t mean anything, we assign meaning to them. There are
very few “Benedict”s in the United States due to the actions of Benedict
Arnold. Similarly, Gweneviere is almost never seen since the epic of King
Arthur’s court. My psuedonym, Loki, contains a mountain of information
about my ideals and my approach to the world. It is the best introduction I
could come up with, though I can certainly elaborate on it:
My favorite childhood stories were Brer Rabbit and Sly Fox. Never before that
did I think words meant anything, but here words could turn the tables –
getting someone out of trouble, and another person into it.
My favorite Bible passage:
Matthaeus 5:39-41 (Biblia Sacra Vulgata (VULGATE))
39 ego autem dico vobis non resistere malo sed si quis te percusserit in
dextera maxilla tua praebe illi et alteram
i say to you do not resist evil, but if you ar hit on the right cheekbone
supply to him the other
40 et ei qui vult tecum iudicio contendere et tunicam tuam tollere remitte ei
et pallium
and to he who wishes to contend in the courts with you for your tunic, give
to him your cloak as well
41 et quicumque te angariaverit mille passus vade cum illo alia duo
and whomever commandeers you to walk a mile with him walk two
Here Jesus gives three practical, sneaky approaches to avoiding violence – the
“active pacifist”. The first sentence is a reference to the difference between
hitting a subordinate (using the back of the hand), and an equal picking a
fight (a punch). The second sentance is a reference to jewish law in which
someone can legally sue for the clothes off your back (outer garmet or tunic),
but it was illegal to look upon a naked man, so by turning over your
undergarmet, the court would need to arrest itself. The third verse is a
reference to a law that soldiers can only require you to walk with them (and
generally carry thier bags) for one mile, any more than that and they are in trouble.
Loki is the Norse trickster god, ‘He’ can take any form (of any gender, or
animal shape). He challenges authority at every turn, making no end of trouble
for everyone, but without his probing many a positive change would never have
happened.
Loki is almost my ideal journalist, taking every form to express himself, and
poking holes in everything until the things too rickety to patch
burst. Perhaps the modern analogy would be Julian Assange, making unending
trouble for authorities; his actions allowed ireland to fix its banking
system, pathed the way for the Iranian democratic revolution, and much more.
Why This Course?:
Since following media coverage of The Occupy Movement, I’ve become
increasingly convinced that conventional news sources are controlled and run
by those comfortable with their position in the world. They have a larger
stake in keeping things as they are, something that will inevitably influence
their view point. But progress doesn’t happen without change.
That didn’t stop me hearing about Occupy. I started taking Civic Media
seriously then because it had something for me traditional coverage did
not. Before that, I thought that anyone with news to tell would partner up
with traditional sources – like WikiLeaks did with the NY Times. There are so
many things I still wouldn’t know if I took that perspective.
Our first class covered a few broad definitions of what Civic Media is, but
to me Civic Media is what fills in the gap between what you see and hear
directly from friends, and conventional news sources. It comes in many
different forms, from blog posts, to flyers, call-in-hotlines, and traditional
papers.
I think we had a lot of trouble catching any of that in our definitions in
class, focusing so specifically on what we wanted from a field almost as broad
as communication. Instead we captured our hopes and dreams for this new
flourish – perhaps very similar to our hopes and dreams for a social group:
an equal, accessible, particapatory, developing, people centric community.
My concept of principles is perhaps a bit more descriptive, but I hope by the
end of the course it will be so optimistic:
– Civic Media is as natural as conversation if you let it be. 152 million
people have blogs. 600 million people have facebooks. Every time you talk
about something larger than yourself, you are a part of it.
– Information is power. Useless to hoard, but dangerous to wield. Spread it
with caution and intent. You never know who is looking.
– Anonymity and Transparency are in constant conflict almost as much as they
are in constant partnership. Both have yielded great returns. Transparency
needs to scale with power.
Some examples:
“Privacy is Dead – Get Over it” is a talk by a personal investigator at
HOPE about how much information companies are collecting about you –
because of its value in marketing. http://hattorrents.com/
Over the past decade, WikiLeaks has become a major source of national, and
international news, perhaps an elegant combination of the anonymity of
contributers creating transparency of their governments:
http://wikileaks.org/
Of course similar organizations have opted for optimal transparency in at
least their operations: http://cryptome.org