Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder wunderkind, has done it again, a bold statement:
privacy is dead, he proclaims, social norms show this to be true. --Say, did he take a survey? He's just making a firm conclusion based on perceptions gleaned from mass media, all of it. But life for us almost seven billion humans is more complicated than Mr. Zuckerberg's shallow analysis allows.
I submit he is wrong, on several fronts. People CAN calibrate just how much privacy they
desire/require, even if extra effort must be expended to achieve their comfort level. In public,
there has never been any legal expectation of privacy, even for those who hope to blend anonymously into a crowd, so that aspect remains the same even with mounted cameras. But they can choose whether to email, join a social website, etc. Some, like me, choosing not to be subjugated to overly personal airport body searches, have given up flying in the post 911 era.
And anonymity does not exactly equal privacy, either. All of our most publicized celebrities
still have locked doors and covered windows at home! So Zuckerberg, silly lad that he is, his computer genius notwithstanding, made a whopping gaffe. He'd be a lot better off attending to the various lawsuits coming his way.
MZ may be referring to a subset of Americans, albeit somewhat large, who want to be "up to date in Kansas City", "Keep up with the Joneses", etc. These people, mostly the under-50 crowd, seemingly keenly feel peer pressure, even toil in industries which honor such pressure.
But there are also many intelligent folk who challenge such current notions of "social norms", have better things to do than Twitter or Facebook only about ordinary, inane activities.
A lot of these smarter people have read and heeded the prescient message in The Time Machine
by H.G. Wells; would anyone want to be part of either of the two future societies he describes?
I view such a prospect with the proper fear and loathing it deserves.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, December 27, 2009
To the Associated Press: My Pick for Editor of the Year
Dear Associated Press:
You've finally brought me to this, an imaginary conversation, with Dave Letterman, no less:
"Hello, Dave? Please bring back your old "Museum of the Hard to Believe" NOW, I found another really ridiculous item for you...The Associated Press has put TWO HORSES on their Top Female Athletes of the Year list! What, do these 30 or so editors want to return to a no women in sports era? Wow, are they out of touch, that ship sailed for the last time in the 1940's. --What about Atalanta, enshrined in eons-ago myth? --The hundreds of top echelon female (as in homo sapiens) athletes in many sports around the world?" --Olympic Gold winners?"
(Don't any of you editors have mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins and friends? Would you really wish to limit their choices because of your own insecurities? Strict cultural roles should have died for good when VERY masculine footballer Rosie Grier publicly took up needlepoint. Get up off your lazy (possibly flabby) fannies and get physical; stop spending so much time watching others pursue athletic excellence.)
"What's that, Dave? My pick for Editor of the Year? Mister Ed, natch."
Watch it, AP, I think I REALLY will call Dave.
You've finally brought me to this, an imaginary conversation, with Dave Letterman, no less:
"Hello, Dave? Please bring back your old "Museum of the Hard to Believe" NOW, I found another really ridiculous item for you...The Associated Press has put TWO HORSES on their Top Female Athletes of the Year list! What, do these 30 or so editors want to return to a no women in sports era? Wow, are they out of touch, that ship sailed for the last time in the 1940's. --What about Atalanta, enshrined in eons-ago myth? --The hundreds of top echelon female (as in homo sapiens) athletes in many sports around the world?" --Olympic Gold winners?"
(Don't any of you editors have mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins and friends? Would you really wish to limit their choices because of your own insecurities? Strict cultural roles should have died for good when VERY masculine footballer Rosie Grier publicly took up needlepoint. Get up off your lazy (possibly flabby) fannies and get physical; stop spending so much time watching others pursue athletic excellence.)
"What's that, Dave? My pick for Editor of the Year? Mister Ed, natch."
Watch it, AP, I think I REALLY will call Dave.
Monday, November 30, 2009
One for the old "Museum of the Hard to Believe"
Call Dave Letterman and ask him to bring back his very funny "Museum of the Hard to Believe",
because I have an amusing candidate item for it: "Our president was not born in the United States!" That's right, thousands of adult Americans apparently can't subtract 1959 (when Hawaii achieved statehood) from 1961 (when Barack Obama Jr. was born there). Last time I checked, "Birthers", our president was born TWO YEARS AFTER HAWAII BECAME A STATE.
Here is another sad example of "errors explored and revealed", but I'd like to call this
"Errors Explored and REVILED", because this false factoid should have died long ago, when Mr.
Obama became a Democratic Primary Presidential Candidate. But when have mere facts dissuaded prejudiced, ranting haters? Radio pundits like Rush Limbaugh stay on the air,
followers conveniently dismissing his many errors simply because they hate as he does.
Of course it is utterly American to criticize and object to various policies politicians propose
and/or pass, yet also time-wasting, distracting, upsetting and anti problem-solving to MANUFACTURE deleterious information designed to ruin a president's credibility.
So to the "birthers" and other fringe political groups: do the math. Literally, do the math.
Otherwise, Letterman gets a call.
because I have an amusing candidate item for it: "Our president was not born in the United States!" That's right, thousands of adult Americans apparently can't subtract 1959 (when Hawaii achieved statehood) from 1961 (when Barack Obama Jr. was born there). Last time I checked, "Birthers", our president was born TWO YEARS AFTER HAWAII BECAME A STATE.
Here is another sad example of "errors explored and revealed", but I'd like to call this
"Errors Explored and REVILED", because this false factoid should have died long ago, when Mr.
Obama became a Democratic Primary Presidential Candidate. But when have mere facts dissuaded prejudiced, ranting haters? Radio pundits like Rush Limbaugh stay on the air,
followers conveniently dismissing his many errors simply because they hate as he does.
Of course it is utterly American to criticize and object to various policies politicians propose
and/or pass, yet also time-wasting, distracting, upsetting and anti problem-solving to MANUFACTURE deleterious information designed to ruin a president's credibility.
So to the "birthers" and other fringe political groups: do the math. Literally, do the math.
Otherwise, Letterman gets a call.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Plouffe's Fluff, a New Book
I really recoiled while reading the four page excerpt of Obama Presidential Campaign manager
David Plouffe's new book, The Audacity of....(-well, he COULD have aimed at a bit more originality). Yes, he and other operatives had the traditional mechanics, strategy and logistics (....let's get a bunch of kids with Obama Tee shirts and clipboards onto some chartered buses NOW to knock on doors in Battleground Indiana...) of successful campaigning well in hand, but where is the substance? ("...Ax and I,...Ax and I" etc.) I must have missed the numerous instances when either David Axelrod or David Plouffe publicly betrayed any knowledge about any weighty subject such as science/health, world history/current affairs, anything else important to many of us, OTHER than politics.
David Plouffe as a writer is not new to me, or the many thousands of others who received campaign emails signed by him. All of the ones I read were distinguished by many generalizations employing hackneyed phrases, like the all-inclusive insulting "ordinary people just like you". Funny, those very few emissives signed by Mr. Obama himself were quite different, more erudite, more respectful.
Mr. President, please replace these campaign insiders and Chicagoland cronies soon.
You, and we, are not being very well served.
David Plouffe's new book, The Audacity of....(-well, he COULD have aimed at a bit more originality). Yes, he and other operatives had the traditional mechanics, strategy and logistics (....let's get a bunch of kids with Obama Tee shirts and clipboards onto some chartered buses NOW to knock on doors in Battleground Indiana...) of successful campaigning well in hand, but where is the substance? ("...Ax and I,...Ax and I" etc.) I must have missed the numerous instances when either David Axelrod or David Plouffe publicly betrayed any knowledge about any weighty subject such as science/health, world history/current affairs, anything else important to many of us, OTHER than politics.
David Plouffe as a writer is not new to me, or the many thousands of others who received campaign emails signed by him. All of the ones I read were distinguished by many generalizations employing hackneyed phrases, like the all-inclusive insulting "ordinary people just like you". Funny, those very few emissives signed by Mr. Obama himself were quite different, more erudite, more respectful.
Mr. President, please replace these campaign insiders and Chicagoland cronies soon.
You, and we, are not being very well served.
Bring Back Glass-Steagall, Investigate the SEC
(1) Simon Johnson
(2) Paul A.Volcker
(3) Joseph E. Stiglitz
(4) John Reed
(5) Michael Perino
These are some of the credentialed, experienced economists, worthy experts, who have recently publicly recommended Glass-Steagall (a 1930's very effective two-act set of banking regulations) be reenacted. The Clinton Administration and Gramm, Leach, et al, riding high on the recovery from the 1992 recession, allowed Glass-Steagall to lapse in 1999, heralding the hedge fund, derivatives-based, wild banking sprees which in large measure brought on the 2008-2009 Great Recession. "It's a new era, requiring more latitude, less regulations..we can all get rich!" (That was the argument promulgated by '90's bank-paid lobbyists, the same thinking of the '20's on-spec stock "margin-magic" morons.)
Why isn't The Obama White House heeding such sage advisers as
Simon Johnson of MIT and the IMF, or Paul Volcker,
the still-respected economist who preceded Alan Greenspan?
I have a notion, a most unattractive one: other, vested-interest
advisers surrounding the President. I'll mention two:
Emanuel and Giannoulias, both from Illinois, both of whom
have wealth derived from banks,
two men who can scarcely be objective about reining in the
banking community. Many others in the inner circle
are tightly bound by
too-recent ties to Wall Street and the "too-big-to fail"
banks as well; T. Geithner was/is an extremely poor choice for
Treasury Secretary.
Spectacular SEC failure to regulate and investigate Wall Street and the big banks requires more
investigations by Congressional Rep. Barney Frank and the House Finance Committee...again, the SEC has too-incestuous ties to the persons and institutions which caused our current crisis.
"Pure" economic theories can't work on Earth in 2009; I believe they never have. In America,
most economists say we have a "mixed" economy, with publicly-funded entities such as
police forces, schools and libraries, as well as private corporations. WE HAVE NEVER HAD pure Laissez-Faire in the United States, so the extreme, deregulation advocates need to find a different dream.
Humanity does have a dark side, a selfish side, a short-term standard side. Almost everyone is sometimes guilty of these behaviors, me included. But when the stakes are high, when millions can be unjustly, needlessly hurt by the thoughtless, powerful few, it would be a great blessing to know sane and sensible regulations exist to protect us all....
So, let's all stick a pin in Congress. Call your senators and house reps, ask them to be brave:
Bring back Glass-Steagall, investigate the SEC.
(2) Paul A.Volcker
(3) Joseph E. Stiglitz
(4) John Reed
(5) Michael Perino
These are some of the credentialed, experienced economists, worthy experts, who have recently publicly recommended Glass-Steagall (a 1930's very effective two-act set of banking regulations) be reenacted. The Clinton Administration and Gramm, Leach, et al, riding high on the recovery from the 1992 recession, allowed Glass-Steagall to lapse in 1999, heralding the hedge fund, derivatives-based, wild banking sprees which in large measure brought on the 2008-2009 Great Recession. "It's a new era, requiring more latitude, less regulations..we can all get rich!" (That was the argument promulgated by '90's bank-paid lobbyists, the same thinking of the '20's on-spec stock "margin-magic" morons.)
Why isn't The Obama White House heeding such sage advisers as
Simon Johnson of MIT and the IMF, or Paul Volcker,
the still-respected economist who preceded Alan Greenspan?
I have a notion, a most unattractive one: other, vested-interest
advisers surrounding the President. I'll mention two:
Emanuel and Giannoulias, both from Illinois, both of whom
have wealth derived from banks,
two men who can scarcely be objective about reining in the
banking community. Many others in the inner circle
are tightly bound by
too-recent ties to Wall Street and the "too-big-to fail"
banks as well; T. Geithner was/is an extremely poor choice for
Treasury Secretary.
Spectacular SEC failure to regulate and investigate Wall Street and the big banks requires more
investigations by Congressional Rep. Barney Frank and the House Finance Committee...again, the SEC has too-incestuous ties to the persons and institutions which caused our current crisis.
"Pure" economic theories can't work on Earth in 2009; I believe they never have. In America,
most economists say we have a "mixed" economy, with publicly-funded entities such as
police forces, schools and libraries, as well as private corporations. WE HAVE NEVER HAD pure Laissez-Faire in the United States, so the extreme, deregulation advocates need to find a different dream.
Humanity does have a dark side, a selfish side, a short-term standard side. Almost everyone is sometimes guilty of these behaviors, me included. But when the stakes are high, when millions can be unjustly, needlessly hurt by the thoughtless, powerful few, it would be a great blessing to know sane and sensible regulations exist to protect us all....
So, let's all stick a pin in Congress. Call your senators and house reps, ask them to be brave:
Bring back Glass-Steagall, investigate the SEC.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Facing, Even Embracing, Facebook Again
I haven't changed my opinion regarding Facebook's overly-proprietary "we own our customers"
attitude/policies; yet, after a loved one's coaxing, I let her open a new Facebook account for me. This one will be for and with her, she really wanted it; AND what has my righteous harrumphing on the earlier post gotten me? Little commiseration or understanding, to say the least.
The simplest, most rational expression probably should be: if a Facebook customer wants off of
"the cloud" (an account on the web), the company should facilitate that. Everyone else can
socialize to their hilarious content.
But the upcoming/ongoing lawsuits still bear watching.
attitude/policies; yet, after a loved one's coaxing, I let her open a new Facebook account for me. This one will be for and with her, she really wanted it; AND what has my righteous harrumphing on the earlier post gotten me? Little commiseration or understanding, to say the least.
The simplest, most rational expression probably should be: if a Facebook customer wants off of
"the cloud" (an account on the web), the company should facilitate that. Everyone else can
socialize to their hilarious content.
But the upcoming/ongoing lawsuits still bear watching.
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