If Countries Were Computers

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Reboot Britain campaign is its use of figurative language to represent a nation as a computational device. One could also "scan Britain's system," "defrag Britain's memory," and "consolidate Britain's files." I wouldn't want anyone to "limit Britain's users," however.

Trying to Send Them to the Spore House

The blog Game Politics has been covering user revolts related to the game Spore among buyers unhappy with stealth DRM software that places restrictions on the number of machines that can play the game, and often creates problems even when only one machine is running the software at one time. Customers have also been giving the game negative reviews on Amazon in a user-generated attempt at consumer consciousness-raising. Now lawyers have launched a class action lawsuit against the company based on the fact that the company didn't even disclose specifics on its click-through EULA.

You can read the fine print of the lawsuit here. The rhetoric that the plaintiffs deploy in this document often uses the company's own promotional language against it to show how the game's "personal universe" is actually a God game of a different kind. They concede that "consumers are told that the game uses access control and copyright technology," but point out that "consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program."

(For those who are mystified by the acronyms in this posting, Wikipedia has relatively good definitions of DRM and EULA.)

Talking Trash

Salon magazine has a detailed close reading of two right-wing mass e-mails in "Debunking anti-Obama e-mails."

Two such messages, circulating by e-mail and popping up in comments on blogs for months, are reproduced below -- and annotated and debunked, point by point -- to illustrate the tactics Obama's been up against for most of the campaign. The first e-mail attacks the candidate's wife, attempting to paint Michelle Obama –- and by extension, Barack Obama -- as an America-hating black separatist radical. Democratic pollsters say many voters don't know much about Michelle Obama. This e-mail, which began circulating during the Democratic primaries, seems to be a deliberate attempt to fill in a mostly blank mental canvas with negative associations before the Obama campaign can tell her story itself.

A second, more recent e-mail, received just a few days ago, shows that the spurious but very durable belief that Obama is a Muslim continues to ricochet around the Internet.

Mike Madden then proceeds to "deconstruct" the e-mails with point-by-point rebuttals and fact-checking. However, based on its longer legacy in the popular culture about Obama, I might argue that the "second" e-mail may well have evolved earlier. Politico.com published the Princeton undergraduate thesis at issue in the "first" e-mail here.

Although Republican sources often send me copies of such mass e-mails, these are two that I haven't seen. (Examples of my own readings of such e-mails are here, here, and here.)

The Washington Post has also been covering this story in "An Attack That Came Out of the Ether," which featured an interview with democracy researcher Danielle Allen about the Obama-as-Muslim e-mail and her attempts to trace the missive back to the source. Allen argues that the producers of the e-mail must defend their case publicly, although she failed to locate the original sender. She also argues that the Internet is facilitating the spread of "nativist discourse" and "whisper campaigns" of the kinds with long negative histories in American politics.

Twitty Comeback

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm no fan of Twitter, the manic microblogging application that has become popular among the digerati, which I think ranks up there with live blogging as a rhetorically bad cyber-habit that is symptomatic of what Ian Bogost has called "the membership economy." I'll admit to being a pretty regular updater of my Facebook status and have even used my cell phone in the line for the ladies room for that purpose. (One of my favorite status lines was "Elizabeth would rather read newspapers and feel bad about the world than read magazines and feel bad about herself.") But the whole Twitter thing about following and being followed I just don't get.

However, that doesn't mean that I'm immune to the idiocy in the stream of mainstream media clichés in a recent article about Twitter in the San Jose Mercury News, "We're connecting -- and wasting time -- on Twitter." It's remarkable to see so many Web 2.0 stereotypes trotted out in such a formulaic fashion. So, in response, I've created the following Madlib-style template to help other reporters generate stories. Excerpts from the article are below, so that prospective technology writers can see a model of how to apply the boilerplate.

[Anything but the first-person or third person singular] are crazy about [technology x]

In recent years, there has been a lot of "you" and "we" and "us" on magazine covers about Web 2.0. The reporter's "we" title makes us feel like we're all in the know.

[Technology x] is [word meaning "banal"].

Some have called Twitter "the 'Seinfeld' of the Internet - a Web site about nothing." And at first glance, this micro-blogging tool that connects users around the world through short bursts of real-time text messages can seem mindlessly superficial.

"just ate a great burrito," types one Twitterer.

"time for a nap," says another.

[Technology x] is [word meaning "addictive"]

Critics say Twitter, which can be accessed by computer, instant messaging, PDAs and cell phones, is prone to system crashes, has yet to show how it will turn a profit, and seduces its addicted users into unproductive dead zones - "a time-suck" says one critic, "for those not able to stay away."

But don't tell that to the users - 1.2 million unique visitors in May, by one account - who have embraced the 2-year-old tool and use it to trade sports scores, organize protests and even hire new employees. Many who try Twitter are smitten.

'I was hooked'

"Once I figured out how to filter through all the content, I was hooked," said Christine Perkett, a mother of two using Twitter to trade parenting tips on everything from Montessori schools to the most absorbent diapers. "As your Twitter network expands, you really start to learn from these other parents."

[Technogy x] is transforming the way we communicate

"It's nowhere near mainstream," says Rodney Rumford, whose "Definitive Guide to Twitter" is about to be published. "But it represents a fundamental shift in the way people communicate. Just like blogging changed the way people share information, Twitter does that, too."

[Technogy x] is [words to express in the vaguest possible terms that something is potentially economically promising]

Founder Dorsey won't say how many users Twitter has or how it plans to make money. Revenue could come from ads, which Twitter is now testing on its popular Japanese site. While assessments differ widely, Nielsen/NetRatings estimated there were more than a million unique visitors to Twitter.com in May. And while that's a drop in the bucket compared with the 26 million visitors to Facebook in the same month, Twitter's traffic has more than doubled since March.

[and yet capable of destroying the social fabric with narcissism]

Yet the same qualities that draw some people to become obsessive Twitterers can drive others crazy. Scott Karp, a well-known media-tech blogger, describes Twitter as a "massive waste of time" and "the temptation to Tweet for the sake of Tweeting is way too high."

Others point out that the tool, along with lesser-known competitors like Pownce and Jaiku, can be easily abused by self-promoters, aggressive marketers and online ego-trippers trying to build a bigger network than the next guy.

"Some users are actually competing for followers," says Rod Bauer, 53, a marketing consultant who works out of his sailboat in Sausalito. "They're either celebrities or they're promoting their own businesses. It can get a bit tiresome, but it's part of the culture.

[Technogy x] was started by two (or three) young guys in their garage

That culture was born in early 2006 at podcasting service Odeo, where Dorsey worked with blogging pioneer Biz Stone, now 34 and Twitter's co-founder and creative director. Brainstorming new ideas, Stone said he and Dorsey, "let our minds drift a bit. What if we could reduce some of the functions of the social-network sites, like journaling, but make it less verbose and more lightweight?"

Simplify, they thought. Write code that would allow users to post "status messages" online or with their phones "and you could access them anytime and anywhere and find out what your friends were up to," Stone says. They ran the idea by Nebraska native Evan Williams, now Twitter's chief product officer, who had worked with Stone at Google before starting up Odeo. Williams gave the green light, says Stone, so "we built a prototype in two weeks and let our friends try it. Everyone liked it. The immediacy of it really clicked with people."

In early 2007, they formed Twitter with the help of venture-capital and other investors.

(Thanks to Jenny Cool for the link and the observation about its by-the-numbers composition.)

View Changes

As an example of sustained close reading that would make any rhetorical scholar proud, check out Steven Poole's "Virtually on parity," which methodically tracks changes made to a corporate PR document that was intended to dispel myths and make comprehensible "Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista." Given the joking equivalence of "bug" and "feature" in geek culture, as this cartoon shows, even the present title may still be unfortunate.

Conscientious Rejector

People in the rest of the country might not be following the big intellectual property story here, but if you are in Los Angeles, it's hard to disengage yourself. Even those with non-commercial public rhetoric specialties, such as running public health campaigns, are acutely conscious both of the potential change in prime-time programming and the impact on the regional economy. As for me, I won't be crossing any WGA picket lines this month . . . not that it would seem to matter much, since I haven't been on a studio lot in years and didn't even have a working TV until just a few months ago.

But I do think that digital rights advocates -- especially those who live in Southern California -- should at least consider supporting the writers for film and television during the strike, even if it has been described as a conflict "between millionaires and billionaires" that ignores the rise of user-generated content and the role that principles of free culture play in all aspects of collective story-telling.

On talk radio I've even heard some appealing-sounding anti-residuals arguments that make analogies between the enterprise of creative writing and making industrial products. The logic goes that cranking out prose is like cranking out widgets, and you should only get to profit from the first sale. Certainly, that seems like a reasonable position at first glance, in a world where even fabric manufacturers are crazily pushing intellectual property claims to the point of absurdity by trying to take away their customers' rights to refashion and re-sell their products. But those making the anti-residuals argument are often those who also want to tie copyright privileges to companies rather than persons and proponents of systems in which copyright never expires. Writers need material; they often struggle with the same difficulties that academics do in using works that should be considered orphaned or in the public domain. Scribblers and digital rights advocates are sometimes on the same page.

Admittedly, it's annoying that writers are ignoring my good advice and largely sticking with a media model that's got to change, but I'm heartened to at least see them using digital media for labor activism in some relatively smart ways. First, there's the WGA YouTube channel, where you can see videos of WGA members testifying before Congress about product integration and media conglomeration, along with black-and-white footage that hearkens back to the visual aesthetic of the dark days of blacklisting and McCarthyism. From friends' conversations at dinner parties, I also know that strike captains are using e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of distributed communication networks to alert guild members to their assigned picket line locations. (My favorite part of the WGA page has to be its section on "free information to writers," which includes story guidelines from government agencies.)

It's also true that WGA bigwigs Patric Verrone and John Bowman have been personal friends for over two decades, but I would still argue that letting the Writer's Guild lose by doing what the broadcasters want viewers to do would ultimately be a victory for the MPAA and the RIAA rather than the consumer, since union leadership seems to be genuinely interested in developing viable alternative delivery systems -- such as micropayments -- and in pushing for greater transparency about how online ad revenue, "lifestyle marketing," and the sale of customer personal information to marketers really works. Now, maybe Bowman and Verrone are talking to me the way that I talk to my relatives who are A) Southern, B) Republicans, C) political lobbyists, or D) all of the above in order to avoid conflict with a digital rights advocate in polite company, but perhaps the same mainstream media sources that are slamming these two because of their leadership roles in the walk-out might have a vested interest, given the rise of the conglomerated multinational infotainment business that the WGA is also resisting.

For example, here are some tidbits from an official FAQ sent to me by friend and local strike captain John Aboud of Colton and Aboud, a man who certainly knows his Roman rhetoricians. (An FAQ is, of course, a common web genre, so the appeal to the digital masses may not be surprising.)

The Writers Guild has for many years attempted to engage the companies who employ writers in a serious conversation regarding fair compensation for use of our work in the new media (which refers to all digital delivery systems: internet, cell-phones, etc.). During those years, Internet streaming became commonplace, the words webisode and mobisode appeared in dictionaries, and Tivo-like delivery systems started to explore their full potential with the ultimate goal of one day replacing DVD’s.
. . .

Working writers envision another, brighter future. They know that the disappearance of the DVD market is inevitable, but they’re excited by the tremendous opportunities for fairly compensated employment in the new media, where series and movies may soon be created solely for the Internet.

In this collection of "talking points," they also point out that studios are being fundamentally hypocritical in how they use language about piracy or make demands for payment for Internet-based consumers.

On digital downloads: Internet downloads are the future of the industry. Studios demand compensation for shows made available to the Internet. But they refuse to share the profits with the writers, actors or directors who created them. That’s not fair.

On “free” promotional use: When a fifteen-year-old posts a movie or television show on You Tube, the studios accuse him of piracy. When they take our work, use it to attract sponsors, and then post it on the Internet to make a profit, they call it promotional use.

However, as you can see below, there are some union statements that simply parrot the party line on intellectual property.

On tradition: Payment to artists for re-use of their music, plays, short stories, novels, etc. is a centuries old, equitable system that has served Western culture and civilization well. Without it, who knows what great works of art and literature we’d have missed? Producers can try to do away with this venerable tradition, but they do so at the peril of one and all.

Yipes! Where is this hokey language about "centuries old," "Western culture and civilization," and "venerable tradition" suddenly coming from if the mediascape is also radically changing? Would scholars of the history of print media even say that it is accurate? What about the free culture tradition that emphasizes community or family entertainment? What about the limited scope for the ownership of intellectual property in the Framers' original Constitutional vision?

Even Cicero believed in adapting to changing times. I won't be crossing any picket lines, and I will be critical of the mainstream media slant on this labor dispute, but here I would demand a re-write.

(See the United Hollywood blog for updates on all the collective bargaining action. And thanks to the Oakleys for not suing me for stealing their intellectual property in the form of the fabulous family photograph above.)

Update: According to this morning's Los Angeles Times, "Countdown to a walkout," claims that a "fateful e-mail" from the East Coast cut off 9th hour negotiations in LA with a 12:01 strike announcement, since synchronous computer-media communications give precedence to the earlier time zone.

Going to the Dogs

Readers of this blog know that I am fascinated by the genre of institutional e-mail and the way it violates some of the norms that are associated with more personalized electronic communication. For example, today we received this rhetorical gem in our campus in-boxes.

ANIMALS ON CAMPUS POLICY

In order to ensure the safety of students, faculty, staff, and visitors, we would like to remind you of UCI's policy regarding animals on campus, summarized below.

1. In general, animals are prohibited in campus buildings, athletic fields, and parks. Exceptions are service animals, therapy animals, search and rescue animals, fish aquariums not used in research or teaching, and animals bred specifically for use in approved teaching, research, and clinical activities.

2. All animals on University grounds meeting the exceptions above must be restrained and under control of a person at all times.

4. All persons bringing animals onto University property will be responsible for the recovery and disposal of waste.

5. Any animal found on campus in violation of campus policy will be impounded and the owner will be held responsible for impound and/or license fees.

I immediately found myself with several questions about this missive. First -- and perhaps foremost -- where is number three on this list? Was one of the original rules deleted before this message was sent to the campus community? Or was this such an urgently needed update that it went out without proper numeric proofreading?

Second, why were they sending out something that was supposed to be just a list of the standard rules? Had there been a pet-related incident on campus that demanded some rhetorical correction, perhaps in response to a potential lawsuit? (Dog bite? Avian flu? Shark attack?) Or had someone who always hated animals on campus finally come into ascendancy in the campus administration? Had the Chancellor stepped in dog doo on the way to an important meeting? Because of the format, it's hard to tell why we are being "reminded."

With a proper letter or e-mail, the reader usually gets some context. But when office memos are simply translated into digital communication, it's hard to tell why you're being told what you're being told.

At least this one doesn't put children on the list of prohibited campus visitors. As a parent, I was annoyed at the old paper copies of widely ignored rules that equated faculty canines and felines with faculty offspring as potential sources of distraction and liability. We run a child-friendly office and wouldn't dream of saying that a teaching colleague couldn't stop by to drop off grades or pick up textbooks with an occupied stroller in tow.

A Spoonful of Sugar

This morning I received the following message in my e-mail inbox.

Hello,

I am miss Becky Ginger, 20 years old from ivory coast. daughter of mrs Sandra Ginger the Secretary Wife and Personal Assistant to former ivory coast president. I have 8.5 million USD which was made by my mother before she died in oct 2004 which is left in a suspence account in a bank here in my country. And i have promise God to make donation of 2 million USD to orphanage, and other money will go to investment. I seek your permision to remmit this amount into your account so that i could come to your country for investment and to further my studies. I have accepted to offer you 20% of the total sum for your desire to assist me. Please, i humbly seek for your assistance.
Best Regards. Miss Becky Ginger.

I've been interested in the narrative conventions of African spam letters for a while. It's intriguing to see how this one plays upon several credulous audiences simultaneously and mixes the standard get-rich-quick 419 scam with a tale of a helpless ingénue worthy of Cherry Blossoms and a philanthropic pitch like that of groups that include the Christian Children's Fund. Unlike another stock character in these letters, the widow of an African strongman seeking a financial partner, this character appeals to patriarchal sentimentality with a tale of orphans and orphanages straight out of Charles Dickens.

The Great Thing about the Internet Is That You Can Still Type with Your Foot in Your Mouth

Regular readers of this blog know that I am fascinated with official apologies on the websites of lawmakers, government agencies, or universities. Of course, sometimes the web page of an office-holder just disappears when a scandal breaks, but often a certain amount of rhetorically interesting digital ephemera is generated by an crisis of confidence.

In most cases the mea culpa is a terse statement. For example, Senator David Vitter recently had to apologize to his constituents on his official website for having his telephone records connected to those of a prominent D.C. Madam. In the case of Congressman Mark Foley, he pulled all his congressional web content soon after the public revelation that he had made incriminating sexual advances to minors on the Internet.

Strangely, Senator Larry Craig seems unable to keep it short in apologizing, after pleading guilty to lewd behavior in an airport men's rest room. His "protesting too much" includes an explanation that he may have touched the undercover officer's foot in the next stall because of a "wide stance" involved in his bodily excretions. Talk about TMI! The information overload encompasses the police report that features the undercover officer noting how the senator's proximity allowed him to gaze into his "blue eyes. There's also a YouTube video that shows Craig's compulsion to make overdetermined causal claims and seemingly extraneous denials in an earlier sex scandal involving federal legislators. (Listen for the copyright reference at the end.)

Although his official press statement kept it short and sweet, the home page on his senatorial site contained a positively garrulous series of denials. For example, the shorter statement does not deny being gay while the longer statement is an emphatic denial and a description of prior persecution by a press obsessed with outing him. I have reproduced Craig's message in its entirety below. Just try to keep track of all the things that Craig is apologizing for, none of which is the actual incident, of course.

"First, please let me apologize to my family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans for the cloud placed over Idaho. I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport. I regret my decision to plead guilty and the sadness that decision has brought to my wife, family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans. For that I apologize.

"In June, I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it. Because of that, I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed.

"For a moment, I want to put my state of mind into context on June 11. For 8 months leading up to June, my family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been.

"Still, without a shred of truth or evidence to the contrary, the Statesman has engaged in this witch hunt. In pleading guilty, I overreacted in Minneapolis, because of the stress of the Idaho Statesman’s investigation and the rumors it has fueled around Idaho. Again, that overreaction was a mistake, and I apologize for my misjudgment. Furthermore, I should not have kept this arrest to myself, and should have told my family and friends about it. I wasn’t eager to share this failure, but I should have done so anyway.

"I love my wife, family, friends, staff, and Idaho. I love serving Idaho in Congress. Over the years, I have accomplished a lot for Idaho, and I hope Idahoans will allow me to continue to do that. There are still goals I would like to accomplish, and I believe I can still be an effective leader for Idaho. Next month, I will announce, as planned, whether or not I will seek reelection.

"As an elected official, I fully realize that my life is open for public criticism and scrutiny, and I take full responsibility for the mistake in judgment I made in attempting to handle this matter myself.

"It is clear, though, that through my actions I have brought a cloud over Idaho. For that, I ask the people of Idaho for their forgiveness.

"As I mentioned earlier, I have now retained counsel to examine this matter and I will make no further comment."

Along with apologizing for pleading guilty and not telling anyone, including legal counsel, it seems that Craig is also apologizing for the following intangibles: sadness, cloud-bringing, and overreaction due to stress and rumors. At least he's not apologizing for his "wide stance."

Thanks to Paul Simms, for pointing out the most unsavory details associated with this story.

Automatic Writing

For a person who spends as much time thinking about digital communication as I do, it is odd to go on my annual pilgrimage to the Clark Kerr campus at U.C. Berkeley to serve as a table leader at the system-wide Analytical Writing Placement Examination. (Those who know me outside of this capacity may know that Clark Kerr is a not-so distant relative, as I believe my second cousin twice-removed. Here I am with a bust of my bureaucrat ancestor.)

To date, evaluating critical thinking in college-level writing is a task that can't be done efficiently by anything other than human beings, and unlike other "mechanical Turk" operations, it is considerably more complicated than simply identifying generally agreed-upon traits, expressed by statements such as "this is a pink shoe." Furthermore, I know enough about software that can create computer-generated writing and the temptations of cut and paste plagiarism to be wary of the eventual advent of automated evaluation without live minders. It would be nice, of course, if the essays weren't hand-written in paper booklets, sometimes with scrawl less legible than gang graffiti or an x-height ant-high.

Music to Our Ears

Speaking of Apple, I've been meaning to do some rhetorical analysis of the big news today that EMI will be offering DRM-free music to its listeners, which would not be crippled by code that limits it to certain music players and a set number of copies. However, the official Apple announcement emphasized that the main pay-off to consumers would be higher sound quality and thus set the premium on reification of the artifact not the social practices surrounding it. In contrast, the EMI announcement addressed concerns about prior interinoperability directly. In many ways, the visual rhetoric of the photograph is more interesting, and the way that the digital media norms of oratory (seated, podium-less, hands-at-crotch, casual Fridays fashion, etc.) telegraphs the message about ownership and authorship.

Hatchet Job

Because it references both archives and the blogosphere -- two areas that I write about as exemplary subjects for what Siva Vaidhyanathan has called "Critical Information Studies" -- I feel that I should probably say something about today's story in The Los Angeles Times, "A Philosophical View of Sex," which alleges that famed deconstructionist Jacques Derrida "had tried to use his coveted archives as leverage to derail a sexual harassment case against a professor at UC Irvine."

The basic causal analysis of the piece is, of course, overly simplistic. It claims that a single cause, "a vampire expert" allegedly seducing "a tipsy UC Irvine student," "inadvertently set off a chain of events" that led to a what had threatened to be a bitter legal battle between the University of California and Derrida's widow, although Le Monde recently reported that the conflict was now being mediated amicably. As a writing teacher, who teaches causal analysis, I want my students to view the causes of conflict in a more sophisticated way: it is rarely like watching a chain of dominoes fall. Anybody who has studied archival politics knows that the ownership of information always involves a lot of stake-holders and agendas, so to reduce the whole story to a single tidbit of academic gossip is to do readers a disservice.

Digital access advocates may say that the solution is to declare a pox on both their houses and put the entire archive online. But that may be a naive view that doesn't represent the realities of what you find if you spend any time actually sorting though boxes of paper ephemera or scrolling through microfilm from the estate of a contemporary author. For example, I did a lot of work with the materials from George Oppen in the Archive for New Poetry. At the time, I called it a "museum of hurt feelings," full of personal correspondence from living poets who were often angry at Oppen for missing scheduled speaking engagements or important publishing deadlines or for his unkind words when his mind was degenerating from Alzheimer's. These writers couldn't have known what we know now about Oppen's medical condition, and they certainly wouldn't want these highly personal exchanges a Google search away on the Internet. The end of a writer's life is often documented in certain intimacies. Even if it isn't, and the record in the archive is already public, that record can often only be interpreted through the editorial apparatus of scholarly publishing and careful indexing by librarians. Besides, manuscript originals still have economic value for their singularity, even in a post-Benjaminian age of mechanical production, which can't be easily divvied up.

Finally, it's worth noting that the writer ends the article with the claim that "Internet observers have begun satirizing the archive dispute," but he doesn't cite the source of the final quotation, which actually comes from an arch-conservative anti-academic blog from the National Review that describes itself as "THE RIGHT TAKE ON HIGHER ED" (and implicitly differentiates itself from the more neutral point of view of blogs like Inside Higher Ed). In fact, the writer himself, Roy Rivenburg, clearly is not the most objective reporter, based on the work of his own blog, Off Kilter, which links to a number of sites on his blog roll with anti-intellectual cultural agendas.

Free (and Stolen)

I've been meaning to get around to some rhetorical analysis of the recent "Thoughts on Music" by Steve Jobs. Despite its ostensible subject, it's not actually a philosophical reflection about the aesthetics of melody and harmony, and it should more rightly be titled "Thoughts on DRM."

In Jobs' statement on DRM or "digital rights management," he argues that music publishers should give up on the invariably failing project of crippling digital content with proprietary tags designed to disable supposedly illegal play. Unfortunately for consumers, DRM creates all kinds of problems with interoperability and ties customers to a particular brand in ways totally unprecedented in the analog world. Open source critics have answered Jobs pointedly by saying that Apple should make the code of its own player software more transparent, if the company is really serious about principles of freer culture.

As a close reader, I noticed his clever use of parenthetical phrases in which he attempts to position himself on both sides of the fence in the IP culture wars. Check out this sentence:

No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Or this one:

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music.

By placing words like "stolen" or "illegal" in parentheses, he is both inserting and ironizing the discourse of the recording industry.

In my second example, Jobs also implicitly praises the traditional figure of the hacker-as-hero in cyber culture by identifying them as "smart people," while also suggesting that their labor is both needlessly time-intensive and an option only for a particular kind of leisure class in that they have "a lot of time on their hands."

Although this statement has been read as an open critique of the recording industry, I thought the agents of media consolidation got off pretty easy. Jobs' technique seems to be to treat them with quotation marks, using scare quotes to make his sometimes not so subtle point, as he does here:

Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.

He also uses punctuational sarcasm earlier:

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC.

In fact, the word "open" is set off as a mediated adjective in Jobs' essay from the very first sentence:

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system

Of course, the whole concept of "openness" and "secrecy" gets an ironic spin in his piece, as another scare quote around the word "hide" demonstrates.

In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player.

Jobs' meta-commentary also extends to the position of his competitors, for whom "open" and "closed" have become equally meaningless signifiers.

Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

For advocates of a digital public sphere, this excessive cuteness about meaning might be counterproductive. Some of us believe that there are real ways that politics, participation, and dialogue can be more open and certain forms of obstruction that are genuinely injurious.

Furthermore, as a writing program administrator, I'm not sure what to make of Jobs' compositional strategy, particularly when sticklers for style in the classroom justifiably try to get their students away from such gimmicky punctuation. While Jobs is a culture hero to many undergraduates, I don't want them imitating this prose, particularly when Jobs is indulging in a certain amount of (post)modern European style parenthesizing while also deploying traditional "American" scare tactics with quotation marks.

It's interesting to compare Jobs' comments on DRM with the previous remarks of Microsoft's Bill Gates, who proposed merely buying and "ripping" CDs as the easiest solution to the DRM dilemma. I don't think he made any quotation marks in the air while talking to technology reporters and bloggers about the subject.

Update:

I think my UCI colleague Peter Krapp also picked up on some of the deconstructionist irony of Jobs' work, since he described it as an "(anti-) DRM memo" on his blog distraction economy.

At least Jobs didn't use the traditional blogging cross-out ironically in his open letter, as popular mega-blogs like BoingBoing often do. This recent snippet shows the technique: "Voting machine scammers vendors say that their machines are totally secure, but also say that they can't tell anyone how they work."

There's also some good rhetorical analysis of Jobs' statement at Freedom to Tinker.

The Joke's On Us

We're only two weeks in to 2007, and already there is the first nomination for this year's Foleys for bad government web design. Only last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education castigated the execrable grants.gov for its terrible user interface in "Wading Through Grants.gov."

Of course, there's more to be said for unintentional humor, with the recent NPR story on intellectual property disputes involved in "Suing for a Punchline: Leno, NBC Target Joke Books."

I looked up "joke" in Whitehouse search engine and found the following images among the top results. It turned out that actually many of the "joke" titles involve photographs of the current Vice President. The rhetoric of these search results is interesting, both in providing a form of White House "photo essay," a genre which I have written about before here, and in illuminating the relatively crude mark-up practices represented by photo captioning and the kind of data that the metadata "joke" marks.







Among the prose offerings for "joke" on the White House website there was this gem from Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, which is ironic given recent legal challenges to humorous competitors on the grounds of intellectual property:

I like to think that I have a pretty good sense of humor and enjoy a good story or joke. And I also think that humor is a very effective way of communicating serious messages. So when political cartoonists, singing groups or comedians talk about duct tape, it is a humorous reminder for all Americans to take a look at our web site (www.ready.gov) to review our emergency preparedness recommendations and kit suggestions. When they talk about the color coded warning system, they remind us that the 21st century includes a different kind of enemy, international terrorism, that has America as its primary target and that we need to understand that we must be constantly vigilant and on the alert.

False Advertising

I received these two voter guides in the mail, which purport to be from the Democratic Party. They recommend against voting for Proposition 87 in the relatively small print, alongside a list of official-sounding and otherwise plausible endorsements. Of course, the California Democratic Party has encouraged a "yes" vote on Proposition 87, the alternative energy research initiative to be funded by a tax on oil, not the "no" these mailers advise.

The mailers are very vague about their sponsors; they were mailed by "Democratic Voters Choice" in Burbank and "Voter Information Guide" in Sherman Oaks. However, it is being widely reported in the blogosphere that they could only be the handiwork of the oil interests in the state.

As a rhetorician, it is interesting to see all the appeals to patriotism, pride in history, and human identification with the smiling faces of familiar state and local candidates. Had it not been for a MoveOn.org e-mail this morning, I would have assumed that they were legitimate.

Where is the "Research" in Reading, Riting, and Rithmatic?

With the start of classes, there's a lot happening on campuses this Fall, from teach-ins on the war to litigation on behalf of the fair use rights of students and teachers. As a university writing program administrator, who has helped designed curricula for thousands of students, I'd like to add a few choice words about the execrable "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education," otherwise known as the "Spellings Commission Report," which applies the Bush administration's doctrine of standardized testing from the No Child Left Behind Act to college learning environments and praises "for profit" institutions and distance learning.

It's an obviously punitive document, intended to scold the supposed bastions of liberalism in the academy for allegedly sloppy standards in educating young people. The American Association of Colleges and Universities has already posted an eloquent rebuttal that targets the report's emphasis on quantity not quality, "disdain for faculty," and incoherent "cafeteria plan" for curricular reform. As a rhetorician, I have to say how much I hate the way that the word "leadership," which is featured in the report's title, now functions as a code word for private sector hierarchies of arbitrary authority. I also thought the opening sentence in praise of my undergraduate alma mater, as a place founded "to train Puritan ministers" might say a lot about how vocational education and conservative values are emphasized in the rest of the document as well.

Even more important, given Siva Vaidhyanathan's manifesto on Critical Information Studies, is the total absence of "information literacy" in the Spellings Report, either in word or deed, as an objective for effective college curricula. Although the word "research" appears fifty-one times, it never has anything to do with the intellectual activities of undergraduates. "Research" is only something to be done on students; it is never anything that students themselves might actually do, according to the commission. "Technology" is a big buzzword in the document, but it only appears as a tool -- like a blackboard -- never more fully represented in its wide range of materials, beliefs, and practices about which there might be policy debates, interpretive disagreements, or competing histories.

For better ideas for reform in higher education than the Spellings plan for corporate downsizing, check out the still relevant Boyer Commission Report on "Reinventing Undergraduate Education" for a call to make "research-based learning" the standard or the upcoming Modern Language Association volume on first-year courses, which will feature a bomb-throwing essay that I wrote with UC Irvine Associate Executive Vice Chancellor Professor Michael Clark about how even college freshmen can capitalize on the current information and communication revolution.

Play Nice

Today's story in Water Cooler Games about congressional intelligence hearings on terrorists' use of the Internet questioned why this expert testimony presented such one-sided definitions of "propaganda" video games, ones that explicitly don't include U.S. military recruitment tools like America's Army, which glorify militarism and forms of allegiance predicated on the use of force.

WCG's Gonzalo Frasca took particular issue with Reuters coverage of these games ("Islamists using US video games in youth appeal") and the words of Daniel Devlin, a witness on public diplomacy. Mr. Devlin apparently works for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict and is an expert on "strategic influence."

I put the SOLIC banner at the top of this posting; perhaps someone could enlighten me about how a "low intensity conflict" relates to the more ambitious "Global War on Terrorism" that is running concurrently.

Unfortunately, I can't yet see for myself if the Internet experts are selectively chosen for their ideology because the transcript for the House Intelligence Committee's Open Hearing on Terrorist Use of the Internet for Strategic Communications is not yet available. From the Reuters coverage, we do know that military contractor SAIC testified as well.

Of course, such scandalous "mods" that use popular commercial game engines have been around of a long time. In fact, many government-funded game-based software projects use such mods. In my own research, I've looked at Ambush!, Tactical Iraqi, and Virtual Iraq. Ironically, some of the mass market games being cannibalized by the armed forces use art assets and programming elements initially developed by the U.S. military for training.

In February, I heard Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group talking on Public Radio International about the websites of the insurgency, the consolidating messages that they emphasize, their sensitivity to negative user feedback, and what the government can learn from what they might be tempted to otherwise dismiss as propaganda. Although he included discussion of sensationalistic theaters of cruelty, Malley also provided a considerably more nuanced view of the jihadists' use of the Internet. He discussed how insurgents disseminate glossy PDF magazines via e-mail, create counter-press releases that respond with rapidly translated documents from the U.S. government or media, and present varied news-style broadcasts -- sometimes complete with anchor desks -- in their webcasting. And yet, it's not all top-down communication. For example, according to Malley, fewer graphic beheadings are being broadcast because their small screen audience indicated revulsion with the imagery.

When compared to this week's finger-wagging about violent interactivity and youth marketing, the ICG's report, "In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency" offers a considerably more sober assessment of the influence of Internet-based media on all segments of a resistant population. If you don't have the time to read through the ICG report, check out this ABC news video of Malley talking about jihadists use of the Internet and encourage your elected representatives to invite people like Malley to testify!

News Flash! Water Cooler games now says that Reuters might not have gotten its facts right and may be citing Sonic Jihad, which was created by someone in the Planet Battlefield forum not a dastardly terrorist propagandist. On the web, standard Battlefield 2 gameplay from the opponent position might seem to show subversive behavior. Yet it is precisely these practices of risk-taking with convention that have been praised by video game learning theorists, such as James Paul Gee. What is particularly amazing is that the video opens with material narrated by Trey Parker's voice presenting parody from Team America, which no one eager to legislate against it seemed to realize. Talk about intelligence failures! (See previous entries in this blog for more on how institutional authority figures often fall for parodies and false fronts.) I've put in two calls to Washington D.C. to try to get transcripts from the hearings, so hopefully I can get to the bottom of "mod-gate" soon.

Do you know that the word "gullible" isn't in the Internet?

Like many in the UC faculty, I received my alarm e-mail notifying me that arch-conservative UCLA Profs.com was offering to pay students up to $100 to tape lectures from the "radical professors" among my blue-and-gold colleagues at UCLA. As of yesterday, the pay-for-replay offer has been withdrawn, apparently in the face of threatened litigation over intellectual property infringement, but the story has continued to garner an amazing amount of media attention, including an urgent bulletin on NPR during my morning commute.

I heartily agree with Siva Vaidhyanathan of Sivacracy.net that teaching is a public act and support the extended application of this principle into programs like the Open Courseware Initiative at MIT. Fellow sivacracy blogger Ann Bartow has also rightfully pointed out that using the intellectual property argument against the efforts of conservative alumni and mercenary students is a long-range tactical mistake, since what she considers to be corrupt means (privatizing part of the scholarly body of knowledge) contaminates potentially laudable ends (political resistance and the advocacy of unpopular opinions). But, as sage as I think the sivacracy bloggers tend to be, I still think they might be overlooking a major aspect of the case.

In my mind, this is not a story about a vast political conspiracy threatening academia (or even just Lernfreiheit vs. Lehrerfreiheit) as much as a story about media literacy and one in which U.C. faculty members don't come off particularly well. This narrative contains two major elements:

1) UNDERSTATING THE CONVENTIONAL CHARACTER OF A GENRE'S STOCK FEATURES

New genres and mixed genres on the web sow confusion. The UCLA Profs web page is now being treated as a serious alumni site, but it actually belongs to a popular class of websites that primarily serves undergraduates, with the most successful example being ratemyprofessors.com. The design sensibility of the 1-5 "power fist" designation of UCLA Profs differs from the visual branding of other ratings sites, which use graphic icons, but the layout, the length of each entry, and the general tone of the reviews is comparable. Based on my own frequent surveys, I can assert that many similar professor-rating sites also share the same basic flaw of disinhibiting users who submit a disproportionate number of unfair criticisms of faculty who are feminist, lesbian, or people of color.

Of course, when it comes to evaluations, there has to be a better way. My undergraduate alma mater always made its official evaluations available to students, which I think considerably lessens the attractions of anecdotal online reviews. I'll even acknowledge that some studies show that official evaluations can be skewed, but I would still say that making a teaching record accessible fosters better pedagogy and more inclusive discourse in academic communities.

I, personally, am morbidly fascinated with the viciousness of the virtual crowd at ratemyprofessors.com. I will even confess to once visiting the page by students rating Stanley Fish, after reading a particularly improbable New York Times editorial, "Devoid of Content," in which Fish advocates having students make up a language in their college composition classes rather than actually develop some mastery of the language they are currently assigned.

And, speaking of improbable claims, this brings me to my second criticism of the general faculty response to the UCLA case . . .

2) OVERSTATING THE AUTHORITY OF A QUESTIONABLE SOURCE

Why is it that teachers spend so much time talking about students' lack of Internet skepticism and spend so little time examining their own? It's true that in my experience an entire college classroom once believed that a stealth marketing website promoting the movie X-men was a credible source for researching human cloning. But it's also true that my fellow instructors have fallen for self-righteous campaigns against Bonsai Kitten and diatribes against the Unreal Tournament Bible Based Maps and other parodic bandwagons for the credulous.

Despite the organization's official sounding name, the Bruin Alumni Association, I can't find evidence that anyone other than twenty-four-year-old Bruin Alumni Association President Andrew Jones is associated with this august body (at least until he received all this media attention). As of yesterday, there didn't even seem to be a Vice President to be found. I couldn't locate content generated by the grown-up members of the "advisory board," some of whom had resigned in protest according to NPR. If anyone thinks this site was engineered by political insiders or powerful robber barons, a few clicks to Andrew's earnest face or his terribly written blog would disabuse them of this notion. To see what I mean by the kind of smog check that Jones could never pass, see librarian Susan Beck's now classic "Evaluation Criteria for 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.'"

I'm still amazed that this epistolary volley discharged like the newest computer virus hysteria and ricocheted through hundreds of academic departments, and no one paused before pumping the forward button. Reuters and CNN fastened upon the website thanks to multiple e-mails stacked up in faculty inboxes and not to the efforts of Mr. Jones himself. I might even guess that the site would never have been found by the public at large if it weren't for one of the named professors googling him or herself one night.

Ignored, the story would have gone nowhere. Validated, it may become an issue for a larger and more critical constituency: the taxpayers who support the U.C. system. Particularly at a time when digital rhetoric and the distributed discourses of the public sphere are being co-opted by vested interests in Public Diplomacy, Social Marketing, and Risk Communication, it is important to avoid crying wolf.

(To read an opposing viewpoint, see the impassioned missive posted on Inside Higher Ed that directly addresses Andrew Jones and the Bruin "group" and takes serious issue with their claims. This open letter by fellow Core Course instructor Brian Thill, "An Idea Too Dangerous to Ignore," is full of excellent arguments and reflections, even if I might argue that it is better suited to a Governor or a Chancellor than to a recently graduated Internet crank.)

Word Search

The current White House policy that creates a legal significance for "signing statements" that were once just ceremonial documents is troubling to those concerned about the traditional balance of powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the Federal government. Rather than commemorate the successful end of the legislative process, recent signing statements are legalistic amendments designed to nullify key parts of legislation with the obvious intention of exercising a covert form of line-item veto that can never be overridden.

The recent signing statement on the Congressional prohibition on torture (in which the phrase "unitary executive" appears four times) is particularly troubling case in point. However, according to Phillip Cooper, author of By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action, the current president has used signing statements over a hundred times in his first term, raising over five hundred separate Constitutional objections.

As a rhetorician who reads my Aristotle, I find the repurposing of epideictic rhetoric to legislative or juridical ends disquieting as well. Why rebrand a political veto with a guise of ceremony? Why mask the deliberative character of contentious political discourse under pomp and circumstance?

To make matters worse, this strategy is being buried by impenetrable information design. Since this is such an important policy stance that affects so many stakeholders, it seems to me that all legislation from which the Executive branch considers itself exempted should be together on some easily navigable Federal .gov site for public view and comment. Unfortunately this isn't the case. When I went to the White House website and tried their search engine, I couldn't find these signing statements without knowing specific bill numbers. When I tried "signing statement," many of the results were from bills with which the President agreed, and "H. R." (for the legislation number) produced an even more inflated number of hits.

Undeterred, I read about a dozen signing statements to get a sense of the legalistic rhetoric they contained. Soon, I couldn't miss the repeated use of the odd phrase "construe" as in "the Executive shall construe . . ." When I tried "construe" in the search engine, I was finally pleased with the results. Now I wonder if we're all being construed over.

It also turned out that the phrase "unitary executive" was a pretty good finding aid, but "construe" was considerably better. Those seeking more reading on the subject should check out the recent New York Times article "For President, Final Say on a Bill Sometimes Comes after Signing" and a key memo from Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, which has been released by the National Archives, that defends the legality and legitimacy of such statements.