Marvel Keeps Their Narrative Threads Up To Date

My schedule has been busy lately, so I have only recently begun to catch up on the last few weeks of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes. However, it did not take me long to appreciate how Marvel had managed to work Ultron into this show's narrative. I have noticed that the storytellers within this enterprise seem to like to talk about "the Marvel universe." However, what makes the approach to storytelling particularly fascinating is that this construct is more like a vast social network than a universe, which connotes little more than a vast space of objects. With the latest round of "civil war" plans, that social network is likely to get far more interesting, particularly if one tries to represent it with connectors that are not as simplistic as acquaintance links. Perhaps Marvel fans will eventually recognize that there is much more to a social network than "friending!"

Neelie Kroes: The New Spokesperson for European Cluelessness

According to a report that appeared this morning on the BBC News Web site, Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, gave a speech at Cebit in Hannover at which she declared that billions of people around the world do not trust the Internet. There is something chilling and disconcerting about the fact that there are people in high positions of power who take this to be a significant insight. It is a sure sign that those who see themselves as world leaders are just as clueless about history as those who mindlessly evangelize Internet technology.

To the extent that computer networks were originally designed with little thought of oversight and regulation at the network level, the Internet is fundamentally anarchic. When access was limited to institutions with funding connections to the Advance Research Projects Agency at the Department of Defense, there was a top level of oversight to the extent that those who attempted to abuse the network risked being disconnected from it. (On the other hand some of them were hired for their expertise in finding cracks in the walls of security and became pioneers with a technology that, by all rights, should now be much further developed than it actually is.) However, as those who used to haunt Usenet recall full well, with the first opening of a more public access to what is now the Internet came (almost instantaneously) the first effort to use the network as a medium for advertising. This, in turn, led to the development of a major technology that is less concerned with broadcasting the same message over the entire Internet through spam techniques and more interested in harvesting and analyzing data about individual users for the sake of more "targeted" advertising.

From that point of view, while I sympathize with Angela Merkel's indignation at having been hacked by the National Security Agency (NSA), I wish that she had been more aware that NSA was not doing anything to her that Google was not already capable of doing (and probably was doing as part of their advertising business).

The bottom line is that there was never anything built into the Internet that warranted trust, nor has anything particularly effective been retrofitted. In the early days of this site, I liked to compare the Internet to the frontier town of Deadwood, which, at the time, was the focus of a fascinating series on HBO. The Internet is still Deadwood. All that has changed is that the city limits encompass an even larger area.

Will the Internet of Things be the New Frontier for Malware?

ZDNet reporter Colin Baker has an article about the Internet of Things this morning. It is based on a Garter report that is predicting that the technology will be a $300B industry by 2020. I used to read Gartner reports as part of my job. They tended to provide useful input for PowerPoint presentation, but I never read one that I felt could be trusted at face value. Eventually, I realized that all reports should be judged on what is missing, rather than what is presented. In this case the "unanswered" question should be obvious, particularly to those who read about the latest crypto ransomware attack this morning:

How long will it take how many devices in the Internet of Things to be compromised by malware, and how destructive can that malware be?

Inquiring minds want to know!

No, Brooke, My MacBook is NOT Obsolete

Brooke Crothers certainly has the gift of leading sentences with punch in his latest article about Chromebook technology for CNET News:

Thank you, Google. For obsoleting my MacBook. 

Question: What two killer hardware features are missing on MacBooks? My answer: a touch screen and 4G. 

What a coincidence. Just what Google is offering on the Chromebook Pixel. And in a package that comes close to matching the MacBook's aesthetics. (I'm focusing strictly on the hardware for the moment.) 

Google is saying, at least in the case of touch, hey Apple, you don't get it.

Well, Brooke, I think you have been drinking so much cloud Kool-Aid that you are the one who does not get it. If your work depends on a powerful suite of software tools, you are unlikely to be happy with Google's my-way-or-the-highway (or should we say "the cloud way or the highway") approach. If you need to use software that is not available as a cloud-based service, then it does not matter how much network bandwidth you have. If you cannot load and run the software you need, you are just plain SOL. Assuming that choosing and loading the software you need is obsolete amounts to painting yourself into a corner.

Beyond the Vantage Point of Western Civilization

The essay is entitled "Economically Fueled Upheaval." The author is Michael T. Klare, defense correspondent for The Nation and Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College. The basic thesis may actually be best captured in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 12 given by Admiral Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, whom Klare quoted as follows:

The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. … Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period.

Klare has provided a graphic illustration of Blair's conclusion:

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade," the result could be a global landscape filled with economically fueled upheavals.

Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations--none as yet in the United States--your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you're a gambling man or woman, it's a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins.

For the most part, such upheavals, even when violent, are likely to remain localized in nature, and disorganized enough that government forces will be able to bring them under control within days or weeks, even if--as with Athens for six days last December--urban paralysis sets in due to rioting, tear gas and police cordons. That, at least, has been the case so far. It is entirely possible, however, that, as the economic crisis worsens, some of these incidents will metastasize into far more intense and long-lasting events: armed rebellions, military takeovers, civil conflicts, even economically fueled wars between states.

I do not dispute either the data Klare has summoned or the approach he has taken in presenting it. However, I am struck by the absence of any part of the Muslim world in that presentation. It seems to me that the biggest flaw in the reasoning (if we can call it that) of George W. Bush regarding our "progress" in dealing with organizations like al-Qaeda and the Taliban was his refusal to acknowledge the international nature of Muslim culture and the geopolitical implications of that nature. The Taliban has thrived on supporting those who have been neglected (if not abused) by Western-supported governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and it has refined a strategy that couples supporting bodies with food, clothing, and shelter with supporting souls through their particular brand of fundamentalism. At the same time we have observed al-Qaeda extend this kind of influence (primarily from a secular stance) from a local to a global scale that Klare has chosen to ignore in examining examples that "are likely to remain localized in nature."

This is not to deny either Blair's thesis or where Klare has chosen to take that thesis. Rather, it is to remind us that both Blair and Klare still live in an ethnocentric world that views social progress in terms of the advance of "Western civilization." Until we recognize that there are other "civilizations" with a "global reach" and recognize those civilizations as equals, rather than as "developing," we shall be as vulnerable as we were on September 10, 2001, back in those dark ages when we thought we were economically secure.

The Hollow (and Vain) Voice of Indignation

I have grown weary of Bill Moyers. I suppose I became first aware of this when I encountered his fumbling attempt to play with irony in a forum that was supposed to be making the complexities of the Net Neutrality issue more palatable. Then there was the interview he gave to Rolling Stone that became the basis for the usual kind of rhetoric-without-logic attack from Bill O'Reilly. However, while every foolish word from O'Reilly's mouth seemed to make Moyers look better and better, the real hero from that episode was Marvin Kalb, who tried to hold his own position for serious examination of text in O'Reilly's presence until O'Reilly cut him off, probably for making too much sense. Moyers was in absentia for that episode, present only through his words in Rolling Stone, while Kalb had to confront O'Reilly in the flesh.

Still, Moyers may have learned a lesson from O'Reilly about the value of rhetoric. If people watch O'Reilly because his rhetoric of hatred is so flamboyantly spectacular, then it may be that Moyer's greatest appeal is his rhetoric of cool and disciplined reason rather than the underlying logic itself. Moyers, after all, has a preacher's background and knows full well that the power of the pulpit does not derive from the text of Scripture but from the rhetoric through which the preacher delivers that text to the congregation. This is not to attack the value of rhetoric; but, back before the Reagan administration gutted its budget, Public Television could satisfy the appetite for ideas to a degree that viewers would be eager to talk about what they had "consumed." Now, as the old joke goes, you come away hungry five minutes after the meal is finished.

I found myself thinking about all this because Truthdig decided to post the video clip of the tail end of the last Bill Moyers' Journal, which amounts to a barrage over the bow aimed at Rupert Murdoch lasting a little under four minutes. Perhaps this was just Moyers doing to Murdoch in absentia what Murdoch's employee had done to Moyers in absentia, this time motivated not by Rolling Stone but by Murdoch's intentions towards The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine Murdoch paying much attention to Moyers with any response other than the immortal words of Boss Tweed (“What’re ya’ gonna do about it?”). The ultimate truth resided not in Moyers' rhetoric but in an observation volunteered by Truthdig reader "THOMAS BILLIS" in a comment on the Truthdig page:

The ultimate responsibility for Murdoch is the public that buys his crap newspapers and watch his crappier news programs.If people would watch Shakespeare on television it would be on 5 nites a week.Television is an exact mirror of the populace because those whores will show whatever will make a dollar.

This comment then invoked the memory of Ed Murrow, who for so many years was the voice of a commercial radio and television network, to support this demand-side analysis.

This left me wondering if Moyers was doing little more than preening his own vanity, along with, perhaps, the vanity of those who watch him. My thoughts were already in this channel as a result of an open letter that appeared in The New York Review in protest of the detention of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari by the Iranian government. The partial list of signatures is filled with names that will resonate with any New York Review letter: Ian Buruma, Noam Chomsky, Mark Danner, Natalie Zemon Davis, Ronald Dworkin, Jürgen Habermas, Stanley Hoffman, Tony Judt … you get the idea. Are any of these names likely to have an impact on the Iranian government? Does this gesture do anything more than encourage some of us who are less "elevated" to add our names to the petition? Will more names add to the impact? Have all the names on petitions for the release of Alan Johnston had an impact? For that matter, were O'Reilly apply his style of rhetoric against either the Iranian government or the Army of Islam, would he have any more effect than these more high-minded efforts?

I have become tired of the silver-tongued rhetoric of cool reason. It is just as hollow as any other stock-in-trade rhetoric these days and does little more than cultivate another sense of vanity. As I have argued before, if we really wish to see actions taken against egregious offenses, we need to sharpen our weapons of ridicule and use them more effectively!

Another Way for Fox to Get Political

Since today seems to be a day for writing about television, it seems appropriate that David Bauder, Television Writer for Associated Press, just released a story on the new Fox season. Given that Fox is associated almost entirely with their approach to news (which may or may not include The Simpsons, depending on your personal perspective), it is interesting to see the way they have decided to "mine" a story that is still newsworthy, even if it is now pretty much neglected by most of the media (including Fox news coverage):

The drama "K-Ville," set for Mondays, focuses on a cop angry that his partner deserted him after Hurricane Katrina and willing to bend rules to catch bad guys. His new partner is an Afghanistan war veteran and more of a stickler for rules.

It will be filmed on location in New Orleans, said Peter Liguori, Fox entertainment president.

"I think the city itself has many, many stories to tell," he said.

Yes, Peter, Spike Lee did not tell all the stories about New Orleans, particularly since those stories keep unfolding long after When the Levees Broke was ready for screening; so it will certainly be interesting to see what you feel are stories worth telling.

I have to wonder about the epithet embodied in the title of the new series, however. I assume the reference is to Katrina. Do folks in New Orleans actually use this epithet; or are they going to react to it the way we residents of San Francisco react when we hear "Frisco" (which I have always taken to be fried version of Fresno)? On a lark I decided to do a Google search on "K-Ville." I got "about 399,000" hits, the first of which was for the online community, Kawaii Ville. Second was a far more interesting Wikipedia entry:

Krzyzewskiville, or K-ville for short, is a singular phenomenon that occurs before major men's basketball games at Duke University. In simplest terms, it is the line for students (frequently referred to as Cameron Crazies) wishing to gain access to the designated tenting games. It is often mistakingly referred to as a ticket line. However, there are no student tickets; students are admitted from the line 1.5 hours before each game.

Krzyzewskiville is named for Mike Krzyzewski, often called "Coach K", the long serving and much loved coach who has helped make Duke's Basketball program one of the best in the nation. He has been known to buy pizza for the K-ville residents from time to time and has held open forum "team meetings" with the Cameron Crazies before games against arch-rival North Carolina.

The sounds more like the sort of subject matter for a Fox series, where it not for the fact that they have already been scooped by ESPN. The third entry is an ESPN report, based on the above entry, entitled "A day in the life of K-Ville!" This will probably tell you more about the K-ville ritual than you will ever want to know. As a matter of fact, among the top ten hits, four are about this particular K-ville!

The first association of K-Ville with New Orleans is a Web site for the Fox program, and it is sixth on the list. Two other entries also apply to the new show, one of which is for IMDB. So Duke outpaces Fox by a nose in this particular race; but, more to the point, none of the entries have anything to do with New Orleans independently of how Fox plans to treat it. Hasn't New Orleans suffered enough? Do they really now have to put up with a new name that they do not particularly want?

I have to keep reminding myself that it's only television. The show isn't even on the air yet. Is it really worth the fuss? When I start seeing K-Ville headlines in The Wall Street Journal that have nothing to do with the entertainment industry, then I can start worrying!

The Capacity of Evil to Blunder

Yesterday I finally had a chance to watch the VTR recording I made of Lawrence Wright on Book TV, talking about his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. One of the points that came out very clearly in the interview reinforced an observation from Publishers Weekly (quoted on the Amzon.com page) that "planning terror is a sloppy business." Put another way, the "road to 9/11" was not the steady and methodical advance through the steps of the plan of an evil genius. All of the "players" in al-Qaeda were as all-too-human as were the "players" in the FBI, CIA, and NSA; and each side was as capable of blundering as was the other.

I feel this is important to bear in mind in examining the Al Jazeera English report of the latest video to be posted on the Internet by Ayman al-Zawahri, generally regarded as the number two man in al-Qaeda (even if al-Qaeda's greatest strategic strength lies in its loosely distributed organization). In the video of Osama bin Laden that came to light immediately after 9/11, what may have been most striking was that he seemed almost bemused that things turned out as catastrophic as they did. He was sort of like the engineer who was silently thankful that, for once, he had escaped the clutches of Murphy's Law. The al-Zawahri video, in contrast, positively reeks of the sort of pride that, in a dramatic setting, would presage a fall from a great height; and, indeed, his deliberate efforts to taunt Bush may very well blow up in his own face, literally as well as metaphorically.

Consider the following excerpt from the Al Jazeera account of this video in which he talks about the congressional bill that tied funding for the US effort in Iraq to a timetable for troops to withdraw:

"This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," al-Zawahri said, adding the bill was evidence of American "failure and frustration".

He did not mention the vetoing of the bill last Thursday by Bush.

Perhaps al-Zawahri made this tape before Bush had imposed his veto. Perhaps he had received news of the veto but did not appreciate its significance. Perhaps he did not realize that this kind of taunting would probably only strengthen Bush's resolve to keep "surging" (probably with increased forces), just as past resistance forces have drawn strength from Bush's arrogant taunts. At the very least those remarks are liable to sway the American public to be more sympathetic to Bush's persistence, which may well sandbag any hopes for substantive dialog between the Congress and the White House.

It seems to me that all paths towards reading this particular text lead to a strategic blunder. Whether or not it will turn out to be an Aristotelian "tragic flaw" for al-Qaeda in Iraq (if not for al-Qaeda's overall reputation) remains to be seen. From a dramatistic point of view, however, the fact that General David Petraeus seems to be figuring out how to do things right at the same time that al-Zawahri has made this media blunder may make for an interesting plot twist! Fortunately, things tend to move slowly in the Congress; so their natural pace should afford them the luxury to cool it long enough to see how Bush will respond to being taunted both here and in Iraq.