Computers, Society, and Nature

Since the beginning of the World Wide Web, Internet companies have flourished, in part, because they could deliver information freely over telephone lines. Whatever else the costs from ISPs or subscription services, companies did not have to bear the costs of developing or maintaining the dissemination infrastructure.

Now telephone companies in the U.S. want to profit for providing the pipes. They’re lobbying the U.S. federal government to be allowed to speed up or impede certain websites. Their plan? To give the companies that pay the fast ride. Companies that don’t pay or pay less will be slowed down. Think of Yahoo paying AT&T to have the fastest speed. What might happen to Google? And what about Voice over IP, the major competition to phone service? Hmmmm. I foresee some degradation of service.

Some company heads are getting mad:

In a November Business Week story, AT&T Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. complained that Internet content providers were getting a free ride: “They don’t have any fiber out there. They don’t have any wires. . . . They use my lines for free — and that’s bull,” he said. “For a Google or a Yahoo or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!”

This is far from a pipedream:

an executive with BellSouth was quoted saying that the company would consider charging Apple five or 10 cents extra each time a customer downloaded a song using iTunes.

Besides being irritated that electronic commerce will cost more, I’m worried about the impact on online activism. The same technology allowing the telephone company to speed up preferred customers and impede others, can allow phone companies to reject politically objectionable websites. Want Greenpeace? For some reason, it won’t download.

Check this out for cyberactivism: a short film on the French riots.

I never thought of the Sierra Club as an organization that was interested in global scale issues. But their mission has broadened. Visit the Sierra Club’s new website on climate change.

The New York Public Library showcases how advertising is modified by the media on which it appears with its newest exhibit, Opt In to Advertising’s New Age.

To me, what is most interesting is the commentary the exhibit makes on the Internet, the newest medium for ads. According to the NYTimes, online ads share a lot in common, not with television or radio ads, but with print ads (of course, the NYTimes has a vested interest in making that connection). To them, visual impact is what’s important and remembered. However,

The best online ads are not only visual but also kinesthetic. One ad for Pilão coffee shows an endless stream of milk pouring into a cup of really strong coffee that refuses to turn any lighter. An ad for the World Wide Fund for Nature shows a toilet-paper roll unwinding from its roller, down, down, down, until there is a pile of it on the floor. If you hadn’t clicked on the ad, all that paper wouldn’t have been wasted.

To feel even guiltier, check out the online ad for Abrapia, an organization for the protection of children, showing a child playing on the floor with blocks. If you use the roller ball to glide over to the boy, he crawls into a corner and cowers. This message flashes on the screen: “Every hour, 70 million Brazilian children fall victim to domestic violence.” It is effective because you have been implicated in the boy’s terror. Thanks to interactivity, kinesthetic push becomes moral pull.

Instead of reinforcing the connection to print ads, this article makes a stronger argument that interactivity is what’s most important to online ads. But interactivity doesn’t necessarily propel you to buy the product or support the cause anymore than if you had seen the ad in print. If you stop the toilet paper from unwinding, you haven’t saved any trees. Plus, you can become innured as easily to online ads as you can to print, radio and television ads. Click or not click on the images but you may not feel sufficiently guilty about child abuse to do anything.

BTW, the exhibit website has a really nice interface.

Here’s an example of how hard it is to distinguish the different types of virtual activism and determine an impact of each:

Earth Action Center, an initiative of Natural Resources Defence Council sends out an (1) email blast, asking people to (2) watch a flash activism cartoon, which prompts viewers to (1) do their own email blast to a US congress person or (3) send them an e-card.

So which is the most effective? The postcard, the cartoon or the initial email? That’s why it’s important to look at the basket of techniques. Even so, an non-governmental organization still would like to know which egg in the basket is the best one to invest in.

Here’s a new flash activism site on climate change called the climate mash.

Ran across this site: GoPetition.com. Go Petition is petition hosting portal that allows users to create and visitors to sign electronic petitions. What’s fascinating is that the site is not embedded in a larger site that has an agenda. The site owners claim that they have no political affiliations. So anyone can use it. Petitions range from exhortations to the Chinese government to stop the cruel treatment of bears all the way to entreaties to the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants to continue the television series. And there are very local pages as well, like eliminating parole for specific prisoners. This site elevates the means – the petition writing – over the ends – the petition goal.

You would think that absent a connection to a major group (e.g., clicking through the Greenpeace site to their petition), no one would want to sign these petitions or even create them. But maybe that’s the point. The creators of petitions may want the immediacy of action; maybe they’ve been alienated from major organizations. Maybe the users of this site just represent the fragmentation and isolation of the modern world, that is, they eschew the face-to-face connection of organizations in favour of the more anonymous activism of the net. The same can be said for the signers: they want to DO SOMETHING but they just don’t know how or don’t want to physically interact with others to find out.

The site does showcase several success stories but one wonders whether or not these kinds of efforts can be effective. Perhaps what they really provide is a vent in a passive agressive society or in a society where people feel relatively powerless.

One of the themes of the blog this fall and winter will be the use of virtual activism to influence climate change policy. Here’s an example.

Stop Global Warming has just been launched by a high profile group of actors, journalists, politicians, musicians, and environmentalists. It is billed as the Live 8 for climate change. The site invites people to join a virtual march on Washington and to stir activity on college campuses. The site also blogs news on climate change, mostly from the US.

Mostly, the site serves as a platform to launch a benefit telecast, called Earth To America!, which TBS will broadcast on Sunday November, 20.

There’s even a bracelet, (made by ROOTS).