Computers, Society, and Nature

Music has always provided a fertile medium for expressing protest. One thinks of the American folk singers of the 1960s, like Bob Dylan and his song, “Blowin’ in the Wind”. But it goes back much farther:

In the 18th century, songwriters responded to current events by writing new lyrics to existing melodies. “Benjamin Franklin used to write broadside ballads every time a disaster struck,” said Elijah Wald, a music historian, and sell the printed lyrics in the street that afternoon.

This quote comes from a NYTimes article on music and protest in an Internet age. The Internet allows many issues, from the plight of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico to the actions of the International Whaling Commission, to reach a world-wide audience. This can also be done to music, the most recent events in New Orleans being a case in point. Kayne West, an American rapper, made a comment on a nation-wide telethon to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. West said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” The idea for an online music video was born.

Mr. Randle and his partner, Micah Nickerson, wrote a rap based on the stories of the people they were helping. On Sept. 6, Mr. Nickerson sent Mr. Randle an instant message containing a music file and one verse, recorded on his home computer. Mr. Randle recorded an additional verse and sent it back, and 15 minutes later it was up on their Web site: www.k-otix.com.

“Within the first 24 hours, it was downloaded 10,000 times,” Mr. Randle said. “It crashed our server.” Since then at least five sites have posted the song, with downloads of 100,000 each, he said.

In New Brunswick, N.J., Marquise Lee, a freelance video producer, heard the song and thought it called for a video. He downloaded scenes of African-Americans in New Orleans, intercutting them with images of President Bush and unrelated scenes from a Kanye West video. “It was a first-person account of the struggle – ‘Come down and help me,’ ” said Mr. Lee, 25.

The video remix is here. A cool side note is that the video samples another “only on the Internet” flash movie, which protested the Iraq War.

Thanks to Garry Peterson for the tip.

While conducting some background research on virtual and physical activism this weekend, I found a very creative form of activism which I have already met (you probably did too), but which I did not know by name until now. It is called culture jamming and I find (after a short research) that activists, on the net and off, have been using it very effectively.

Culture jamming aims at turning company logos into a social and/or environmental critique against the corporations they represent by transforming them slightly, giving them some new meaning.

During their 2000 campaign against Coca-Cola, aiming to make a point against the company’s practice of using refrigerating units containing HFCs, Greenpeace turned the Coca-Cola logo and slogan into a climate change message.

In its effort to spread the message (the image), Greenpeace used various tactics to alert activists worldwide. They released a report that exposed the company’s practices, which they sent out by mail and in electronic version distributed by email. In collaboration with Adbusters Media Foundation, they put up a website (www.cokespotlight.org) which featured the climate change bears advertisement.

Coca-Cola Co. moved swiftly to introduce more sustainable practices.

With the use of the Internet to spread the message, culture jamming has become a powerful activist tool. One reason mentioned in the article is that NGOs (even small ones) are able to make use of the Internet, as well as ‘having an increasing capacity to compete with multinational corporations on the brand-name level’.

I think, that the success lies in the image itself. It is self-explanatory: everyone knows Coca-Cola and almost everyone has heard of climate change. It is easy to make the connection. The nature of the message (easy to understand and creative) and the fact that this image can be sent anywhere in the world in the matter of seconds must make CEOs think hard about the consequences a similar campaign is likely to have on their company’s image.

In my earlier post on the adoption of the March of the Penguins movie by the conservative movement, I had wondered how proponents of Intelligent Design could use the story of emperor penguins to exemplify ID when the opposite seemed true. Then I came across this:

But intelligent design advocates don’t mind misunderstandings like these at all. In fact, it is precisely this kind of confusion that I.D. proponents and other antievolution activists hope to foster, the movement’s critics say. Adopting a “Gee whiz” attitude seems to be how some laypeople digest the idea of intelligent design: Any animal that looks strange or exists in a fashion that is not readily understandable must be a manifestation of divine artistry.

Back to the exploitation of uncertainty to undermine science.

A newly re-opened rest stop on Vermont Highway cuts across nature, war and memory, fiscal sensibilities, technology, and toilets. Oh and there’s a linkage to Canada, too.

It goes like this. The very first Vietnam War veterans’ memorial was located on Interstate Highway 89 in Vermont. The rest stop, where it was located, had to be shut down because of an inability to manage the sewage system (toilets being an essential component of a rest stop). Instead of trying something prosaic, the state decided to innovate and try to link waste water treatment in some way with the memorial. Insulting? Fiscally irresponsible? Read the article for the amazing conclusion.

BTW, the living machines mentioned in the article come from Living Systems, a company in Taos, New Mexico.

Another in our toilet series: see previous post for a list of posts as well as a silly Japanese advertisement.

An update to a previous post on the toxic “soup bowl” that is now a large portion of New Orleans.

Solid Waste Magazine has an article on the Superfund site, a huge toxic site called the Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL), that’s likely been exposed by the flood.

To place it in perspective, the article states that “the ASL can be thought of a sort of Love Canal for New Orleans -– and now it sits under water.”

Here’s a case study of the environmental justice issues at the site.

Some high tech ways to control floods. Interesting that in the article, the reporter asserts that high tech must be accompanied by natural controls but then completely dismisses the idea.

I’m in the middle of writing serious posts about Katrina and I come across this. It’s hysterical and a good break from the tradegy around us.

Meets in 428 Burnside Hall at 4pm.

Wired news reports on the first disaster map wiki. The site is at Scipionus.com. A wiki is a webpage that anyone with permission can edit in a very simple user interface. The most famous wiki site is wikipedia. The disaster wiki combines the collaborative ideas of wikis with an api (application programming interface) of Google Maps. (FYI: unfortunately, the google maps api doesn’t work in all browsers. So use IE to view it.)

The result is a simple and heart wrenching website where people can communicate using a map interface. Here are some examples:

There are two ventilator dependent brothers at 907 Galliard Dr., Mobile, AL

Water above rooflines on Chapalie [NO]

lost my sister

The NYTimes has just posted an article (mostly) on the growing use of remote-sensed images by the general public to get information about disasters.

Revisions to the US National Park System would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes, permit snowmobiles to travel over any national park road, authorize activities such as grazing and mining, and tolerate higher levels of air pollution. Understandably, current and former park employees are furious and leaked the proposed amendments.

Instead of recognizing the needs of animals and vegetation and protecting the parks for future generations, the amendments would narrow the focus to the needs of people right now. I guess we really need to use our cell phones from anywhere inside a national park.

Dissenting opinions among the climate scientists working for the Bush administration’s 10-year climate report have driven apart colleagues, and propelled one scientist out the door. Quite simply put:

“A scientist who has long disagreed with the dominant view that global warming stems mainly from human activity has resigned from a panel that is completing a report for the Bush administration on temperature trends in the atmosphere.”

The report has at its core the question of disparity between tropospheric and surface-level temperatures (some explanation from the US Climate Change Science Program). Outburts such as these make a clear statement, but unfortunately, little directional change in governmental climate science can be seen through the media after such instances. A year ago, when a collaborative effort from the Union of Concerned Scientists – including many Nobel prize laureates – declared the Bush administration a science-phobic ostrich, that was it. So too with the recent “hockey stick” controversy.

When the report is published, it will fall prey to heavy scrutiny… but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it will be up for revisions.

An aside: The Markets keep on truckin’… fleets once became economically viable by adding airdams to the tops of their truck cabs, back when oil prices were too high in the 70’s. Now, BioDiesel is becoming a close competitor for diesel. It’s happening in Oregon.

CNN has an article about people in Saudi Arabia using bluetooth enabled phones and laptops to evade the restrictions on conversing with the opposite sex. We’ve already mentioned the possibilities for similar technology to evade political oppression, this takes it to a more… personal level.

It still seems to me that technology will not be the answer in this case, even if I’d like to believe so, if this truly becomes a widespread means for Saudi’s to evade the religious police, I could imagine them either banning such personal wireless devices, coming up with a monitoring or control system, or even limiting some wireless technologies to one gender. It brings up some interesting questions about how interpersonal behavioural restrictions will evolve as technology does. If you don’t know the gender/religion/race of the person you’re talking to, how can you restrict it?

The military has developed a “green bullet”. The eco-friendly bullet has no lead, which is apparently a problem at military bases where lots of ordance is fired. The lead leaches into the ground and contaminates the ground water. However, the green bullets, composed of tungsten and nylon, are not as environmentally friendly as first thought.

“It’s frustrating,” Col. William FitzPatrick of the National Guard’s Environmental Readiness Center said Thursday. “You’re doing what you think are the right things. As science evolves, you wonder, ‘Am I in front of the curve, or behind?”‘

?? Isn’t doing the right thing limiting the number of bullets, period?