Society

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 by Mathias Klang

The Boredom of Mona Lisa

This post appeared first at Commons Machinery as Mona Lisa Smile
Do you recognize this picture?

Photo by Gregory Bastien from Flickr via Photopin

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 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…

newspapers iphones

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Join the #AttributionRevolution

Proper attribution is important and also usually difficult, or at least time consuming. That’s why anything that can help with this will become an important and useful tool. The awesome crew at Commons Machinery are now looking for beta testers for the Elog.io so if you are a photographer, graphic designer, multimedia artist or just a visual creator please sign up to test this new tool.

Here is the description from the home page:

Elog.io is a new set of tools to make attribution and remixing easy and quick for you. Are you a multimedia artist? Do you design presentations for work or school? Do you find crediting various sources difficult because you have to spend hours on getting the attribution right? Fear not, Elog.io is here!

Elog.io’s tools and services ensure that there is a persistent link between a creation and its context. Be it for a presentation, school assignment, music video or article, you will always have the information you need to know to give the credit people deserve.

We believe that proper attribution is the currency of the information age. Giving due credit encourages people to produce more and share more! Except now, you don’t have to remember: Elog.io will remember for you!

You can sign up to become beta testers for Elog.io here. You can also tweet to us at @elog_io. Join the #attributionrevolution…and you could get special goodies too! If you have questions about our services or specific attribution problems that need solving, write to us at hello@commonsmachinery.se and we’ll make you our top priority!

Join the Attribution Revolution

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Social Silence: Lurking as a form of society

While listening to The Digital Human episode Whispers the presenter Alex Krotoski (aleksk) pointed to a very central way of understanding social media:

In many ways the online world is like a video game. Everything you put out comes with its own scoring system. Tweets are counted by re-tweets and favorites, stories are scored by page views and Facebook likes. Writers reach and influence is visible in its number of followers and the number of influencers who subscribe to his or her feed.

it becomes a competition to see who can get this positive feedback from the community. and people do this by trawling the web for evidence and being the first to publish. To be silent is to lose points, to be re-tweeted is to regain them. The system encourages you to keep feeding the machine…

Naturally, this is a way to understand the online world. In particular it has become a trope of social media that we are talking in order to be constantly re-affirmed by others who are constantly talking. Noise begets noise.

The problem with this view of social media is that it is the view from the top. In reality it does not take into consideration the ways in which most users actually use social media.

Most users on twitter do not have thousands of followers, many do not even tweet. Like most of us, at most parties, they tend to listen to others more than speaking themselves. But in the collective babble of noise it is taken for granted that all we want to do is to make ourselves heard and to make others admire the noise we make.

The same is true on Facebook. There are users with friends numbering in the thousands, who cannot pass by a meal without documenting it. But most are silent users who like often and post occasionally.

The social part of social media does not have to mean that those who are silent are losing. We are social even when we are silent.

For more on this topic I recommend Susan Cain’s book on introverts. An elegant puff for the book is her TED talk: Susan Cain: The power of introverts

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Fat shaming and discrimination in academia

This is important, Christina Fisanick’s article Fat Professors feel compelled to overperform should be read by everyone in academia. Mostly because academia is supposed to be this place without this kind of discrimination.
In our culture, obesity equals moral and intellectual laziness. Fat professors feel compelled to overperform. I’ve felt the need to make the fat invisible and be even more excellent at my teaching duties. I’ve wanted people to look at my mind and not at my body. But I realize that my body is important in the classroom—I can use it as a tool—so I no longer try to flatten myself.
…
I believe there is fat discrimination in academia, but there’s no hard evidence. The numbers of obese faculty are low. The problem is that society believes the university is above all that. Many people think that muscles and beauty don’t matter here, but we are a mirror of our culture at large. People bring their attitudes about obesity to the classroom. They think that if you’re fat you’re lazy, that you’re not going to want to participate in the committee work. These stereotypes play on people’s thinking when they’re making hiring decisions.
It’s not that I didn’t know that there was many forms of discrimination in academia – despite its lofty ideals – it’s just the shallowness of discrimination offends me. The last time fat-shaming in academia reared its idiotic head was in the incredibly shallow, simple-minded, and shallow tweet of NYU professor Geoffrey Miller:
obese-PhD-croppedFor fucks sake! Really Geoff? How dumb are you really. Firstly the fact that fat people have will power does not need to be proved. Just look around you. Second of all, you should know that this view is discriminatory, fat-shaming, rude and borderline illegal. He later “apologized” with the enigmatic words that his own tween did not reflect his “views, values, or standards”
article-2335177-1A20BCA5000005DC-700_634x286Really Geoff? This is the strangest disclaimer (after the fact) I have ever read. I dislike the whole “Tweets are my own” “RT does not mean endorsement” culture but to actually state that your tweets do not reflect your own ideas seems just nuts. So yes, I know that he probably reacted to save his arrogant ass but as apologies go this is pretty insincere.
If we are supposed to be intelligent humans working to advance science this whole fat-shaming must stop. Now.
Posted on by Mathias Klang

some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system

Vulpes Libris wrote a review of George Orwell’s gritty Road to Wigan Pier. Which made me go find that half remembered quote.

The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system.

Damn. Awesome. Now I need to re-read the book.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Twitter: Am I doing it all wrong?

Despite all my concerns about oversharing, risking careers, ruining reputations, getting you arrested, and being generally annoying. I disagree with Gopnik and think Twitter is brilliant. And yes, I may overuse the technology and annoy people with it. But there is one feature that I never really understood about Twitter and that is the favorite button.

So I asked on Twitter: Why do you favorite a tweet? Is it saving? Giving a Thumbs Up? Or maybe poking someone? Or have I missed the point? Naturally the wise crowd online replied quickly.

@tombarfield @dislexas @hannagadd All wrote that it was saving.

From a private account I got “all of those, +fun, derision, amusement, support or a combo of several #favoriting”

tweetSo most (of this miniscule dataset) are using favorites to save some also use it to make positive comments and even to politely end a conversation. My use is more in line with the latter uses. I tried the saving tactic but realized that I never went back and looked at anything saved. Which somehow defeats the purpose of saving?

The other thing I am unsure about is thanking for re-tweets. Especially when its a thanks for a link to an article. I know its supposed to be polite and I am usually a polite boy but it does seem strange to thank someone for re-tweeting a link to an article that I found interesting. Or am I just being a grumpy old bastard?

Posted on by Mathias Klang

An impressive politician

The politician Tony Benn has passed away. I didn’t know much about him but two things online today make me wish I had known more about the man. First is his appearance on Ali G where he really dealt with Ali’s antics with a beautiful no nonsense style. Look at the way he uses his hands and the conviction of his ideas! It’s not about soundbites, witty banter and snappy comebacks.

Then I read Tony Benn’s five questions – and surveillance where Paul Bernal writes about Benn’s questions of legitimacy and power.

  1. What power have you got?
  2. Where did you get it from?
  3. In whose interests do you exercise it?
  4. To whom are you accountable?
  5. How do we get rid of you?

Brilliant questions – Fascinating man. Unfortunately we don’t see many politicians with this kind of mindset.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

What I listen to – the best podcasts around

There are people who don’t listen to podcasts – often these are the same ones who surprise me by buying and downloading public domain books. It’s like we live in different realities. Parallel universes. So the sad truth is that most of my listening is not to music but I much prefer lectures and podcasts. I cannot listen to music while I run or go to the gym, so I am the one grunting to some obscure point being made by a speaker. And since I was asked what I listen to, I thought that I would make a list. Feel free to recommend stuff to me.

For a shorter podcast try A Point of View it’s just what it says in the title. My recent favorite was Adam Gopnik explaining his indifference to Twitter. But no matter the topic, it’s always worth the 15 minutes. BBC Analysis is an in-depth discussion on a current affairs. An Australian version of this is  RN Big Ideas.

The Naked Scientist produced by the University of Cambridge its a light look at whats on in the science world. Big Picture Science is similar light hearted nerdy fun. For more science fun I highly recommend The Infinite Monkey Cage.

Little Atoms is about ideas, Crossing Continents is world affairs with a human touch, From Our Own Correspondent is a personal observation by a foreign correspondent somewhere in the world. The latter is a favorite even if it does overlap crossing continents at times. File on Four is analytical and deeper, really good with the right topic but less so when the subject matter doesn’t connect. The Forum is all about ideas and thinkers and is really worth listening to.

Radio Dude by Wrote CC BY NC

My fiction list includes Drama of the Week which is a classic type of radio theater, Radio 4 Comedy of the Week, Friday Night Comedy (both make lifting heavy weights difficult) and the Swedish witty show Spanarna. While not fiction but the storytelling of This American Life and The Moth seem to fit into this category.

For history I listen to Great Lives where a guest and expert discuss the impact of a historical person, History Extra usually interviews the author of a recent historical work of non-fiction, The History Hour plays interviews of survivors of historical events (both great and obscure), In Our Time is a panel of distinguished academics dissecting an event or concept, and   Revolutions has gone through the English Civil War and has now begun on the American War of Independence.

For long distance running, light humor, heavy banter, occasional rants and film reviews Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Review is a must have. More or Less looks at statistics gone wrong in the media (more interesting than it sounds), Philosophy Bites is a 15 minute bit of depth, The World Book Club is a long interview with a well established author (always want to go and buy books after this).

The Why Factor looks at the meaning behind everyday objects and, saving the best for last, my absolute favorite podcast is Thinking Allowed sociological discussions of current thoughts and ideas. Brilliant.

 

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang