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Who Owns The Future?

Chat with Jaron Lanier about his new book. Hosted by John Nichols.

The Dazzling New Masterwork from the Prophet of Silicon Valley

Jaron Lanier is the bestselling author of You Are Not a Gadget, the father of virtual reality, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time. For decades, Lanier has drawn on his expertise and experience as a computer scientist, musician, and digital media pioneer to predict the revolutionary ways in which technology is transforming our culture.

Who Owns the Future? is a visionary reckoning with the effects network technologies have had on our economy. Lanier asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class. Now, as technology flattens more and more industries—from media to medicine to manufacturing—we are facing even greater challenges to employment and personal wealth.

But there is an alternative to allowing technology to own our future. In this ambitious and deeply humane book, Lanier charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow. It is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the web.

Insightful, original, and provocative, Who Owns the Future? is necessary reading for everyone who lives a part of their lives online.

Jaron Lanier is a scientist and musician best known for his work in Virtual Reality research, a term he coined and popularized. He lives in Berkeley, California. (Simon and Schuster)

Towel Day

Today is Towel Day. That little known fact may show more than any other, that Douglas Adams was an influential author. An author does not need to be the second coming of Will Shakespeare to be influential. Adams gained his influence through his humor.

I spent most of one year specifying that I was the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” then got a bit perturbed when people did not immediately recognize and understand that I was 42. Geek humor with a side of absurdity.

Both “Towel Day” and “42″ are side notes from Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ,

… which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams’s contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame.[1]

I stumbled on the Hitchhiker’s Guide television show first but didn’t get far. Then I found the book and the entire increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy offered some fun and brain candy.

The original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Mostly Harmless

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (movie)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (television)

So grab your towel today – but DON’T PANIC! (even if you do get stuck having to listen to Vogon poetry)

And because I can:

Photo from Giorgi Logua licensed under Creative Commons

Written by Sarah Posner for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Thursday on a bill that would impose an unconstitutional nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Four witnesses sat at the table during that hearing, but there was really only one person who mattered for the Republican lawmakers—whose aim, ultimately, is to outlaw all abortions. That person was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania physician now serving a life sentence for murder and manslaughter.

US Capitol Building

According to Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, under whose jurisdiction the hearing was called, Gosnell is “not an anomaly in this gruesome Fortune 500 enterprise of killing unborn children.” The rogue doctor, who was roundly denounced by pro-choice activists as soon as the horrific conditions of his clinic came to light, is, for Franks, “the true face of abortion on demand in America.”

Using Gosnell as justification, Franks has retooled his proposed “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”—previously introduced as a measure specific to Washington, D.C.—to apply to all 50 states. A D.C. 20-week ban has also been introduced in the Senate, although it is highly unlikely to come up for a vote.

If all abortion providers were like Gosnell, of course, they could be prosecuted under existing criminal laws, as Gosnell was. But they’re not—and that’s why House Republicans want to create a way to prosecute them. The Pain-Capable Act would subject doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks to criminal prosecution, jail time, and monetary penalties. It would provide a cause of action for a woman who has an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy—or her husband, boyfriend, or one-night stand, as well as her family—to sue the doctor, including for punitive damages.

By pegging the gestational time-limit to disproven claims about fetal pain (which medical experts agree is not possible before the third trimester), the bill would lay the basis for limiting abortions even earlier in pregnancy, based on even more questionable science, as demonstrated at Franks’ hearing.

Maureen Condic, a University of Utah scientist who also opposes embryonic stem-cell research, testified that it is “uncontested that a fetus experiences pain as early as eight weeks.” By continually arguing that fetal pain is experienced far earlier than the established medical evidence, Condic did provide proof of something else: that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion far earlier than 20 weeks.

The bill proposed by Franks contains no exceptions for the health of a woman who needs an abortion after 20 weeks, raising the specter of a woman (or the parents of a minor) suing a doctor who, in an emergency, saved her from horrific health consequences. It also provides no exceptions for rape or incest. The woman, the man by whom she is pregnant, or the woman’s family members could even seek a court order barring the doctor from performing abortions in the future.

Another of the Republicans’ three witnesses, anti-choice activist Jill Stanek, claimed that the Gosnell case is “evidence that the lines between illegal infanticide and legal feticide, both via abortion, have become blurred.”

By equating Gosnell’s criminal activity with all abortion, Franks and his supporters attempt to elide the fact that their bill is patently unconstitutional, as Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), noted. Just this week the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a similar law out of Franks’ home state of Arizona.

Franks’ obvious aim is to test that conclusion, by forcing yet another legal challenge to Roe v. Wade. But he also seeks to enhance his position—at least in the court of public opinion—by attempting to persuade the public that if Gosnell, who performed illegal abortions and killed infants born alive, was found guilty of murder, all providers of abortion services must be similarly guilty.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the subcommittee’s ranking member, strongly voiced his opposition to Franks’ claims. “[W]hat Dr. Gosnell did had nothing to do with abortion; it was murder,” Nadler said.

Calling the hearings a “farce,” Nadler noted that the Democrats, as the minority in the House, were not permitted by Franks to call more than one witness, while the three witnesses called by Republicans presented what Nadler called “false and misleading” medical evidence.

The one witness Democrats were permitted was Christy Zink, who recounted the heart-rending story of how she and her husband were informed during her 21st week of pregnancy that the fetus she was carrying had a lethal abnormality, agenesis of the corpus callosum. Zink said that if brought to term, her baby would have been born missing a part of its brain.

Maoi from Easter Island

Small Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean contains figures grouped through the whole land that have been a source of fascination to visitors for many ages.  Solemn and monumental, they hover over the land with their mystery and majesty intact.

As the island became overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult. Beverly Haun wrote, “The concept of mana (power) invested in hereditary leaders was recast into the person of the birdman, apparently beginning circa 1540, and coinciding with the final vestiges of the moai period.”^[32] This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues, but human beings chosen through a competition. The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routledge, who systematically collected the island’s traditions in her 1919 expedition,^[33] showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapanui: tangata manu) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived in 1864. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are exactly the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers; only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.

European accounts from 1722 and 1770 mention standing statues, but Cook’s 1774 expedition noted that several moai were lying face down, having been toppled in war.

(snip)

The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world-famous, were carved from 1100–1680 CE (rectified radio-carbon dates).^[14] A total of 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections so far.^[61] Although often identified as “Easter Island heads”, the statues have torsos, most of them ending at the top of the thighs, although a small number of them are complete, with the figures kneeling on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs.^[62][63] Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

Almost all (95%) moai were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked solidified volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site inside the extinct volcano Rano Raraku. The native islanders who carved them used only stone hand chisels, mainly basalt toki, which lie in place all over the quarry. The stone chisels were sharpened by chipping off a new edge when dulled. The volcanic stone was first wetted to soften it before sculpting began, then again periodically during the process. While many teams worked on different statues at the same time, a single moai took a team of five or six men approximately one year to complete. Each statue represented the deceased head of a lineage.

Only a quarter of the statues were installed, while nearly half remained in the quarry at Rano Raraku and the rest sat elsewhere, probably on their way to final locations. The largest moai ever raised on a platform is known as “Paro”. It weighs 82 tons and is 9.8 m (32.15 ft) long.^[64] Several other statues of similar weight were transported to several ahu on the North and South coasts. It is not yet known how they transported the statues. Possibilities include employing amiro manga erua, a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled with ropes made from the tough bark of the hau-hautree,^[65] and tied around the statue’s neck. Anywhere from 180 to 250 men were required for pulling, depending on the size of the moai. Some 50 of the statues were re-erected in modern times. One of the first was on Ahu Ature Huke inAnakena beach in 1958. It was raised using traditional methods during a Heyerdahl expedition.

In 2011, a large moai statue was excavated from the ground, suggesting that the statues are much older and larger than previously thought.^[66]

These powerful figures represent ceremonial ancestors that protected their people, research has shown.

(Picture below courtesy of ndecam at flickr.com.)

Line of carved figures, Easter Island

(U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr / Creative Commons)

Originally posted at In These Times.

A time-honored tactic of conservative lawmakers is to “starve the beast”by defunding government programs. In the case of food stamps—the quintessential whipping boy for budget hawks—they’re going a step further by trying to starve actual people.

The House of Representatives and Senate have proposed the United States “tighten our belts” by slashing billions of dollars from poor people’s food budgets. The main mechanism for shrinking the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding is the removal of “categorical eligibility.” Basically, most states have used this policy to streamline enrollment: Families are made eligible for food stamps based on their receipt of other benefits, such as housing or childcare subsidies. That often means broadening eligibility for working-poor families or those with overall household income or savings that exceeds regular, stricter thresholds for qualifying for food stamps.

Now the House and Senate farm bill proposals, particularly the House plan, seek to “save” billions more by cutting categorical eligibility. Under the House farm bill budget, which cuts $20.5 billion in SNAP over 10 years, benefits would be eliminated for “nearly 2 million low-income people, mostly working families with children and senior citizens,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). (The Senate bill also cuts SNAP but only by about $4 billion over 10 years). In addition, the cuts would devastate poor students, because SNAP eligibility has enabled 210,000 low-income children to qualify for free school meals. That means more hunger pangs for kids in the cafeteria, and an emptier refrigerator waiting for them at home. Meanwhile, their working-poor parents may find themselves buying cheaper, less nutritious food to stretch budgets, or turning to the local food pantry, or facing cruel trade-offs like delaying rent payments to pay for groceries or leaving a health problem untreated.

Justin Roiland, creator of the House of Cosbys, y'see. Rudy!

It’s Cartoon Friday, again!

This week’s selection is House of Cosbys, a short cartoon series created for the Channel101 media collective by writer and voice actor Justin Roiland. Channel101 is an “Internet television channel” whose programming is voted on by the audience at a weekly, open screening. A show is canceled when it falls out of favor with that random audience.

Except House of Cosbys wasn’t canceled by the audience, but by a Cease & Desist letter from Bill Cosby’s attorney, despite the fact that its content may very well be covered by parody. From Wikipedia:

House of Cosbys was cancelled when series creator Justin Roiland and Channel 101′s site administrator Dan Harmon received a cease and desist letter from Bill Cosby‘s attorney^[1] in June 2005:

Dear sirs, we are lawyers for Mr. William H Cosby, Jr. We have just learned that you offer a deeply offensive animated film that you created, entitled “House of Cosbys”. [...] As you are certainly aware, none of you are licensed or in any way authorized to use Mr. Cosby’s voice, name, or likeness. [...] Therefore, we demand that you immediately cease and desist from any use of our client’s name, voice, and likeness, including the development and distribution of the “House of Cosbys” series.

Very truly yours,
John P. Schmitt ^[2]

One of the issues under contention is whether House of Cosbys is covered under the fair use, as parody. Supporters point out that many TV shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons have used Cosby’s likeness, and have not been sued. However, there also is the factor that House of Cosbys used risqué subject matter not in keeping with Cosby’s character and comedy.

In any case, you can still enjoy the cartoon thanks to the magic of the Internet.

And, since I’m not actually here to chat about this cartoon (I’m at a campout today and Richard Taylor is hosting), I’ll leave you a special bonus — you can watch all four episodes, the complete series. A fifth episode was created by a fan, but consists of almost entirely cuss words directed at Bill Cosby and his lawyer — I’ll let you look it up yourselves if you just have to see it (you don’t).

What are your favorite cartoons? I might use one for a future installment.

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What’s on your mind tonight? It’s an open conversation in the comments.

[This is the third post in the series Why Everything You Know about Your "Self" Is Wrong. The series explores how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics.]

As suggested in the two preceding posts in this series, selfhood was on the ropes even before postmodernism delivered the knockout blow.

Postmodernism’s Coup de Grace to the Self

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

self portrait

In recent decades, deconstructing selfhood has become a cottage industry (with headquarters in Paris). The “fall” that postmodernism has inflicted on our commonsense notion of selfhood is as irreversible as Humpty Dumpty’s. Three examples follow:

While acknowledging that the philosopher David Hume scooped him by centuries, the novelist John Barth points out that the person who did things under his name decades ago seems like a Martian to him now:

How glibly I deploy even a fishy fiction as the pronoun I, as if—although more than half of the cells of my physical body replace themselves in the time it takes me to write one book, and I’ve forgotten much more than I remember about my childhood, and the fellow who did things under my name forty years ago seems as alien to me now in many ways as an extraterrestrial — as if despite those considerations there really is an apprehensible antecedent to the first person singular. It is a far-fetched fiction indeed, as David Hume pointed out 250 years ago.
– John Barth

The novelist Milan Kundera exposes the common fallacy that the self can be detached from its unique history. Read Kundera’s comment and you’ll never again hear yourself saying, “If I were you…” without realizing that the premise can never be met so the only proper recipient of your advice is yourself.

Who has not sometimes wondered: suppose I had been born somewhere else, in another country, in another time, what would my life have been? The question contains within it one of mankind’s most widespread illusions, the illusion that brings us to consider our life situation a mere stage set, a contingent, interchangeable circumstance through which moves our autonomous, continuing “self.” Ah, how fine it is to imagine our other lives, a dozen possible other lives! But enough daydreaming! We are all hopelessly riveted to the date and place of our birth. Our “self” is inconceivable outside the particular, unique situation of our life; it is only comprehensible in and through that situation.
– Milan Kundera

Theater critic John Lahr observes that selfhood is a confabulation dependent on the agreement of others.

The ‘I’ that we confidently broadcast to the world is a fiction—a jerry-built container for the volatile unconscious elements that divide and confound us. In this sense, personal history and public history share the same dynamic principle: both are fables agreed upon.
– John Lahr

The glue that holds the “jerry-built” identity together is recognition; the cement that fortifies it against disintegration is agreement. I’ll return shortly to the indispensible part played by other selves in the creation and maintenance of our own.

“Self” Is a Misnomer

The very name—”self”—is a misnomer, and it’s a whopper. How so?

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Charles Cooley observed that “We live in the minds of others without knowing it.” If we live in others’ minds, surely others live in ours.

The word “self” carries strong connotations of autonomy, individuality, and self-sufficiency. It’s as if it were chosen to mask our interdependence. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that in buying into this notion of selfhood, humankind got off on the wrong foot.

The self does not stand alone; it is not a thing, let alone a thing in itself. Rather, we experience selfhood as a renewable capacity to construct and field identities. Like evanescent particles in a cloud chamber, the existence of the self is inferred from its byproducts.

The “self” may appear to act alone but it depends on input from other selves to manifest agency. There’s more to selfhood than our genome and our menome. We’ve overlooked a crucial element of selfhood—inputs from other selves—without which the menome, starved for recognition, is stillborn.

As our genome needs nutrition to build our body, so our menome depends on recognition from others to create and husband a viable identity. The autonomous self and individual agency are both illusory. Contrary to the name we call it by, the self is anything but self-sufficient.

The Co-Creation of Identity

To exist is to coexist.
– Gabriel Marcel

As Cooley and others have pointed out, we may first recognize our own nascent identity as what someone else—a parent, teacher, or friend—sees taking shape within us. One of the primary responsibilities of parents is the incubation of identity in the next generation. No wonder we love our parents and teachers: it is they who have coaxed our starter self onto the world stage and indicated a niche where it might thrive.

As collaborators in the formation of others’ identities, we repay the debt we owe those who, by reflecting an incipient identity back to us, served as midwife to our own.

Perhaps because they sense the creeping disintegration of their story, the elderly often feel the need to rehearse it. Listening to them recount their anecdotes is an act of compassion. Those who lend us their ears are involved not only in the creation of the identity that serves as our face to the world, but also in its maintenance. Personas, like magnetic poles, are not created, nor do they endure, in isolation.

The discovery of the profound interdependence of selves obviously has a bearing on our relationships. In the following posts, I’ll explore the implications of the co-creation of each others’ selves.

Robert W. Fuller is an author and independent scholar from Berkeley, CA. His most recent book is The Rowan Tree: A Novel.

Photo from Simply CVR licensed under Creative Commons