Culture | writing notes

Weapons of War don’t Protect & Serve

The police exist to ensure that society works – anyone who has been subjected to American films and television is aware that their motto is “to protect and serve”. In order to protect and serve in all kinds of situations the police require a great deal of equipment. Most of this equipment is, as you would expect, uniforms, cars, communications etc. But recently in the US some of this equipment has been growing increasingly militarized.

As American armies go to war they need to be supplied with equipment to meet their needs. This is the need of combat soldiers fighting an enemy in a hostile environment. This is really a no-brainer and should be easy to understand whether the wars are supported or not.

In order to supply the army their is an increase in weapons production and purchasing. The problems begin when the army has a surplus of equipment it needs to dispose of. In the US, one method of disposal seems to be supplying the police with this surplus or excess material. On paper this may seem like a good idea. However, there is a problem. The equipment is not designed for those who “protect and serve” and therefore there is a challenge when the technology of violence is brought home and supplied to those who protect and serve.

The ACLU published “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” in June. Its central point: “the United States today has become excessively militarized, mainly through federal programs that create incentives for state and local police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield.”

This technology, and the training it requires, goes against the goal to protect and serve the public and is replaced by an ethos of aggressiveness. The report states:

Our analysis shows that the militarization of American policing is evident in the training that police officers receive, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies…

Once the police forces have invested in the equipment and the training it is almost inevitable that these will deployed. Even in situations where it is not merited. This is not a case of the police being violent individuals but rather the case of them being drilled in the use of the wrong technology. They have been focused on the use of technologies of violence and death and any attempt to curb civil unrest with these mechanisms is naturally seen as repression.

When dealing with football (soccer) hooligans the European police have learned through experience that excessive shows of militarized police treating the fans as thugs would have the inevitable effect of turning the crowd towards aggressive reactions. What the police have learned is to talk to the crowd (not at the crowd), to build up links and liaison, to break down the us/them barriers. This has drastically reduced the level of violence.

By showing up in military gear the police are inherently threatening. They are treating citizens as enemies and pointing weapons of war at them. This does not calm the crowd. In the best case scenario this will repress the crowd, but it will not reflect the way in which a democratic discourse should occur and it will also brand the police as symbol of violent repression.

Images Of Ferguson Police In Riot Gear Confronting An Unarmed Man Go Viral Scott Olson / Getty Images

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Mathias Klang

Homage vs. plagiarism: which one is it?

There is a dramatic scene in the movie The Untouchables (Brian de Palma, 1987) where a baby stroller is filmed in slow motion, rolling out of control down the magnificent stairs of Union Station, in the middle of a shoot out.

The film is set in prohibition-era Chicago and it’s about how law enforcement took down Al Capone’s illegal operations. The Union Station scene is a crucial point in the story as it involves the capture of the mob accountant who would provide evidence that puts Capone in jail.

Any film buff watching the scene will recognize the incredible similarities between the Union Station steps and the famous Odessa Steps sequence in the classic silent movie Battleship Potyomkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925).

Obviously this is not a direct copy: Eisenstein’s steps are outdoors and feature a mass of civilians fleeing armed troops. There is no question of any copyright infringement. Eisenstein may have rights to his exact interpretation of a baby stroller on steps but he does not control all versions of strollers on steps.

But there is a clear copy of an underlying idea. The taking of an idea is not necessarily copyright violation…but it could be plagiarism.

In academia, plagiarism is seen as a form of fraud. If a student hands in a piece of work without correctly attributing all ideas and quotes to the original thinker, she will probably end up being charged with plagiarism. In some cases, the student could even be expelled.

So what happens when Brian de Palma borrows this concept and interprets it into his own movie? This is where it gets complicated; his interpretation of the scene is interpreted as an act of homage to the late, great Eisenstein.

Homage “is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic. The term is often used in the arts for where one author or artist shows respect to another by allusion or imitation…” (Wikipedia)

So what we have are:
1. Copyright violation
2. Plagiarism
3. Homage

This sounds messy enough without including another problem: who gets to decide what is what? Seeing The Untouchables as homage is not difficult so others should be able to do the same thing. But it’s not that easy…

When a disaffected fan took the movie Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999) and painstakingly edited the movie (most notably removing most of the appearances of the character Jar Jar Binks), it was first seen by director George Lucas as an interesting interpretation. But when this new version, dubbed The Phantom Edit, gained in popularity, it was threatened with copyright infringement. There was no possibility for the claim of homage.

Copyright law pretends to be fair and predictable, but the ability to enforce it depends more on social status and power than the actual law!

For more about this topic see an article I wrote together with Jan Nolin, pubished in ScriptEd: Tolerance is law: Remixing Homage, Parodying Plagiarism

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Mathias Klang

Smashing windows and explaining metadata

This post was originally published on the Commons Machinery blog:

Wikipedia is correct but maybe a tad boring: Metadata is “data about data”. The term is ambiguous, as it is used for two fundamentally different concepts. Structural metadata is about the design and specification of data structures and is more properly called “data about the containers of data”; descriptive metadata, on the other hand, is about individual instances of application data, the data content.

Did I lose you yet? Let me try to explain it in a more interesting way…

The town of Hove (England) seems to be constantly struggling to make sure it isn’t mixed up with its larger and more famous neighbour Brighton. The town is unremarkable. Nothing special. Lots of Victorian and Regency houses line the streets, the residential areas are filled with parked cars and occasional trees… you know, nice.

Palmeira Avenue in Hove is a typical such street. I’m sure it’s pleasant to live there but nothing special to see. But walk past nr 14 and you see the sign. A round plaque in three colors bearing the text: Victoria Lidiard (1889-1992) suffragette and campaigner.

The sign is a perfect example of metadata. It is information about the information we can see in the street. It indicates that there may be something more interesting happening on the suburban street that what is on the surface. It’s a breath of history while walking in the present.

With the help of metadata, I can discover more about the information I already have. In other words: boring residential streets in a nice English town – but THE Victoria Lidiard lived here! Who the hell was Victoria anyway?

Thanks to the initial metadata I can continue my search – unfortunately not automated – I go to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, and I find: nothing! This is not a sign that Victoria was a non-entity, but probably further proof of the gender bias on that great site. (read more: Reagle & Rhue Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica)

After finding an online obituary, I discover the following:

“THE LAST living suffragette, Victoria Lidiard, has died at the age of 102. She had been a vegetarian since 1899; was one of the first women opticians, in 1927; a campaigner for animal welfare and charities; and for the last 10 years worked for the ordination of women priests.”

In 1912 she protested the government’s failure to give women the vote by smashing windows at the War Office. She was sentenced to 2 months in prison and was among the 200 suffragettes jailed for this protest. This did not stop her; in her home town, “she chalked pavements; sold Votes For Women (and was spat on by a local clergyman for so doing); addressed meetings at Bristol Docks from the back of a lorry; and was told by a docker to get back to the kitchen and the bedroom where she belonged.” At the age of 99 she published her first book and a second one when she was 100.

This unremarkable street was the home of a very remarkable human. The street gains so much from us knowing that Victoria lived there and hopefully this illustration helps to understand the importance and usefulness of metadata. (More info on Victoria is here)

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Mathias Klang

The Boredom of Mona Lisa

This post appeared first at Commons Machinery as Mona Lisa Smile

Do you recognize this picture?

Of course you do! It’s the Mona Lisa! Probably one of the most iconic works of art in the western world. It has been reproduced on countless posters, postcards, and brochures. It’s also been reproduced (or parodied) less reverentially in a thousand ways. My favorite art prankster and founder of ready made art, Marcel Duchamp, drew a thin mustache and beard on a Mona Lisa postcard in 1919. Since then, recreating the lady has become an industry.

She has appeared in Lego, graffitied by Banksy, and several times on The Simpsons. She has been recreated in food, computer chips and Rubix cubes…on sheets, shower curtains and toilet paper. She is ubiquitous.

But what do most people know about her? She is instantly recognizable but what is in the background of the image? Who was the artist? Has she always been famous? Have you noticed that she has no eyebrows?

Today the image is the most famous, the most visited, written about, sung about and parodied work of art in the world (The Independent). It was painted and owned by Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century and acquired by King Francis I of France, and has been on permanent display at The Louvre museum in Paris since 1797. The lack of eyebrows may have been a 16th-century Florentine fashion or a bumbled restoration – we really don’t know.

All this is well and good but the interesting thing about the art was that, for most of its existence, it wasn’t really that important. It wasn’t raved about or famous, it was one of many interesting pieces mostly famous because it was one of the works of da Vinci. The painting technique is highly admired but hardly something that most of us notice.

Things really got interesting when, in 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian working in the Louvre, hid the small painting under his smock and walked out with her. The scandal was immediate. Authorities suspected foreigners and avant-garde artists. Picasso was interrogated, Apollinaire was held in custody. Most surprisingly, more people came to the Louvre to see the empty space on the wall than would show up to see the actual painting.

Peruggia eventually took the painting to Florence and was caught when he contacted an art dealer. He claimed that his motives were patriotic and that the painting belonged in Italy. His reasons aside, the theft made her a superstar well on the way to international celebrity status. She went on international tours in Europe, the United States, and the USSR.

That’s where we are now. An instantly recognizable iconic superstar of a picture, but few will know why she is famous or much about her. Of course we could argue that it is enough to recognize her, in the same way as we recognize other cultural references. But to really understand why this rather ordinary looking Italian woman with shaved eyebrows is important, we need to know more about her background and context. Also, the more we are able to know about an icon the more we can appreciate or reject it on different levels.

The importance of the images around us does not lie in the image itself. I admit that I find the Italian woman boring. Her famous smile is not interesting to me. Seeing the crowds gather around her original in the museum baffles me. But the stories of what makes her great are fascinating.

Mona Lisa is an easy image, because she is so well known. But what about the thousands of gorgeous and thoughtful images that flicker past our screens when we idly browse. How do we know what they are all about? We need to be able to find out what they are, where they are from, who made them, and how they became famous. We need the ability to find the stories behind the image in order for them to become more relevant and valuable to us.

For more about the Mona Lisa check out: Donald Sassoon, Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, Harper Collins paperback.

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Mathias Klang

The Value of a Good Toilet Story

This text was originally written and was published at Commons Machinery

Everybody loves a good story. The stories we tell each other not only entertain us, but also create value and importance. For example, the value of a piece of artwork is greatly enhanced by having a good story. In collector’s circles, this is known as the work’s provenance.

A quick look at Wikipedia explains that provenance “is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object.” Provenance can create a value much greater than the object itself. How can I demonstrate this? By using some uncommon toilets.

The first toilet was a rather ornate (in my opinion) piece of white porcelain with blue vine patterns. The toilet was expected to fetch the incredible price of 1000 GBP. Quite a lot for a used, old, human waste receptacle, however, the final auction price was almost 10 times that amount. The reason for this mad interest was the fact that for three years the toilet had shared a house in Berkshire – with John Lennon.

Another of my favorite toilet stories is about Marcel Duchamp’s incredible work of art, The Fountain. Technically this is not about a toilet since the piece is a urinal…but I still think it fits the toilet story theme.

Marcel Duchamp scandalized the art world when he submitted a urinal signed “R Mutt” to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. The committee, despite the rules stating that all works would be displayed, rejected the work, entitled “Fountain”. Duchamp had his fun. But the work gained in popularity and became an important piece. Despite losing the original urinal, Duchamp commissioned several (signed and unsigned) replicas that are now proudly displayed in museums around the world.

Think about it. A factory-made urinal is displayed with a fictitious signature. It is eventually lost but replicas are made which are revered as great art. There are signed replicas that are valuable; there are unsigned replicas (just a urinal) that are valuable. Then there are the exact same urinals hanging in old pubs that drunken people pee in.

The value of a thing is not only in the thing itself. The value of the thing is in the story we tell. Sometimes the story becomes more important than the thing. The importance of attribution is the ability to ensure that the thing and the story remain connected. The goal of Commons Machinery is to ensure that cultural artifacts on the net do not lose their connections and their values.

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Mathias Klang

Mute teenagers, technophobes & art of conversation

Ever since the first cell phones began appearing there has been a grumbling of annoyance. You would think it would subside but nope. In a BBC article yesterday Sherry Turkle is referenced:

People such as psychologist and professor Sherry Turkle warn that we’re in danger of losing the power of speech as we once understood it.

Apparently our smartphones have struck us dumb or mute or something. Turkle brings the classical cry of: Won’t someone think of the children! She argues that they are suffering from Psychological lockjaw.

Seriously this romanticizing of the past through the lenses of technophobia has to stop! Turkle who was once the leading proponent of: everything will be alright once we are online has now become a parent and thinks that her children don’t communicate enough. That their phones are all they stare at – therefore we must be witnessing the death of conversation.

The non-communicative teen is a staple of western culture and definitely predates any mobile technology. Looking around and seeing people happily communicating with devices scare people who are not communicating with devices. It’s not the teens that are losing conversation (they are hugely social and can both talk and text) it’s the lonely who would prefer that everyone was like them that wax lyrical about the past when everyone was joyful without technology.

The composer John Sousa was so annoyed by recorded music that in a submission to a congressional hearing in 1906, he argued:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

Our technology has changed the way in which we do things but it does not create change in the way that the technophobes argue. Teens (who are actually normal people, not some weird subclass) have long and heated conversations without devices – but only when it suits them. Just like adults.

Don’t romanticize the past…

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Mathias Klang

The Unmanly Reader

There is something compelling about lists. That’s why they are often used as clickbait and some of them are amusing. But there is something about book lists. The 10, 50, 100 books you should read always makes me wonder why the list is there. Is it to make those who have read them feel better? Or is it designed to make those who haven’t read feel inferior? Or maybe they are designed to rank our cultural capital? If you read 80 out of 100 on the list you have a solid B. Its good but you must try harder. Oh, dear only a C- well then…

This usually doesn’t bother me but then I came across the list of 80 Books Every Man Should Read with the tag line: ” An unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published. How many have you read?”

What does it mean? How many must I have read to be considered a man?

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Mathias Klang

I love slutty used books

It’s wrong, but I can’t help it, I found this line really funny:

“Used books are the sluts of the literary world, passed around from person to person spreading their pages for anyone. Getting cheaper and cheaper until they eventually end up in prison”

The quote comes from Stephen Colbert having a justifiable rant against Amazon over their behavior in the Hachette book negotiations.

Actually I love used books. Aside from the amazing concept of being able to get quality work at almost no cost they also present us with several emotions.

The 80 year old book of inferior poetry I picked up in a sale always fills me with sadness because of the hopes and aspirations of the author. The several books with the same ad libris always makes me wonder if I only could have met the owner of this library and spent an evening talking about our shared interests. The lovely little novel I bought in a small town in Sweden makes me think I rescued it like a stray cat.

Most of all I like the small cryptic notes other people write in books. Everything from exclamation marks, angry question marks to words and sentences agreeing or arguing with the author and now being passed along to me.

Here is the entire clip

Another example of slutiness in literature is this

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Mathias Klang

Stephen Fry, Poetry & Accepting Language Development

We are all, more or less, grammar Nazis. There is always going to be something that grates our souls when we hear it or read it. At the same time it is important to keep remembering that language is – and should be – evolving. The most attractive argument for this is put forward in a typographic animation by Matthew Rogers with Stephen Fry reading sections from his essay Don’t Mind Your Language…

The whole essay is really worth a read. The animation is poetic beauty and my favorite section is his retort against those who thing new uses of language are ugly:

It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly and before them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire. Pedants will also claim, with what I am sure is eye-popping insincerity and shameless disingenuousness, that their fight is only for ‘clarity’. This is all very well, but there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the speaker, whether ‘disinterested’ is used in the ‘proper’ sense of non-partisan, or in the ‘improper’ sense of uninterested. No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever holds water.

It’s about using the right words for the right occasion. Not an easy task. It’s also about enjoying the sounds languages make and having fun with them. This is where we have to let other people do what they do.

Addition: More on the same theme WritingorTyping recommended Chillax If it works like a word, just use it by Erin McKean.

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Mathias Klang