PostIts brings you some snippets of general media comment.
Cyber terrorists
– evolution at work?
The US Government says they have credible intelligence that al-Qaida’s newest bombs are people with surgically implanted explosives or explosive components. This is the logical extension of the current arms race.
But something else is happening here. When I read this report, I couldn’t help but think of the first viable artificial life forms created by man – computer viruses. Yep, you read it right. The first self-replicating, non- biological life created by us (human beings) was a malevolent computer virus. There are something like two million species of active computer viruses floating around the Internet.
Which brings me to this week’s thought experiment. We are already Cyborgs. According to Wikipedia, a Cyborg is a “being” with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts.
Looking at a typical connected person in 2011, you can clearly see that we augment our biological abili- ties with digital tools. From search engines to cloud-computing services to GPS to communications tools like text, voice and video, our handheld devices empower us in ways that we could hardly imagine just a few years ago. And, while all of these tools are external, they combine in a symbiotic way to make us Cyborgs.
What fascinates me is that it’s al- Qaida, not Big Brother or the NSA or Skynet, who is going to take the first steps implanting technology in humans for interaction with the out- side world. (We’ve been implanting pacemakers and other medical devices to keep us alive for years, but those devices have worked in a closed sys- tem.) It looks like history is repeating itself. The first human machines, the very first Cyber-Symbiont is going to be a human being with explosives surgically implanted in them – a malevolent life form – just like the first artificial life form.
Why couldn’t the first Cyber- Symbiont be a combination of electronic computer components to help us see better or think faster or give us better access to facts? Why does it have to be a weapon? To me, the question is more terrifying than the terrorist.
Shelly Palmer is the host of NBC Universal Live Digital, a weekly half- hour television show in the USA about living and working in a digital world.
www.shellypalmer.com
Public Trust Journalism?
The commercial model that has historically funded large-scale “public trust” print journalism is collapsing, and so far in the media revolution nothing on the same scale has emerged to replace it. Although this trend has been evolving for several years, it has reached a new inflection point this year due to a combination of cyclical and structural factors.
Which raises a seminal question: if the free market can no longer fund it, should quality civic journalism be supported by some form of government funding? As it is in countries such as France and Sweden.
Such a suggestion may seem radical. But if government support becomes the only way to main- tain public trust journalism, just as government support is the primary funding source of the arts, culture, museums and libraries, surely that’s preferable to watching it disappear.
Getting the Media we Deserve
The News of the World phone hacking scandal has exposed newspapers, police and politicians to uncomfort- able questions about relationships at the top of British society. One question less aired but equally relevant (in Australia, as much as the UK) is the nature of the relationship between the public and the media more generally.
The media often present themselves as lenses on the world, upholding the public’s ‘right to know’. They can be right.
For some time, however, people have suggested that, even in a democracy, media outlets can be quite selective about what they report and how they do it.
In 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman stated that the interests of advertisers, political elites and media owners (among other factors) have a disproportionate influence on the media and its focus. Drawing on an essay by Walter Lippmann in 1922, they used the term ‘manufacturing Consent’ to describe this distortion.
It is certainly true that in this Internet age, we rely on the media not only for information, but often also for our opinions about the world around us. In short, the (print, broadcast and electronic) media all too often tell us what to see and think.
On the other hand, it is too easy to wring our hands and blame the media for bias and shoddy practices. There is a symbiotic relationship between media and the public. The brutal fact is that media present to its readers/ viewers the world that they wish to view, whether it’s ‘sleb’ gossip, football or anything else.
We like our fix of gossip and out-rage; viewed, of course, through our favourite political spectacles – and are not always too concerned how we get it. That is notoriously why tabloids sell. As Billy Bragg puts it in his recent song about the scandal, ‘Scousers Never Buy the Sun’, “Everyone who loves that kiss and tell,You must share the blame as well”
Efficiency versus
Humanity
Eureka Street’s Consulting Editor Andrew Hamilton SJ wrote on the collapse of Bluescope Steel on August 28.
(T)his crisis cannot be seen simply in terms of economic abstractions.
It has to do centrally with human beings. The loss of jobs immediately affects the employees. The ways in which Australia shapes its economy also creates a society in which human beings may flourish or be diminished. Bluescope and similar events invite reflections on the ways we can shape a humane society.
We should think first about the workers and their families. But the closures affect neighbourhoods and cities, too, because the workers’ ill fortune will be visited on local shops and businesses and be felt in community organisations. It will be translated into depression whose results will be seen in families and schools.
The closure also raises larger questions about how the economic arrangements of society support human development and humane relationships. Economic efficiency is not the sole or decisive value.
The structuring of a humane society also involves encouraging people to connect with one another in local communities. This can conflict with maximum economic efficiency.
The transformation of Australian rural life has led to more economically efficient production. But it has also hollowed out rural communities and the resources available to them.
It is not self-evident that the quality of Australian society has been better served by this process than has France by the protection it offers to its small farmers.
The social justification of withdrawing support from small, remote Indigenous communities in the name of economic efficiency is even more questionable.
Good and Bad Religion
British theologian Peter Vardy made the following comments on Eureka Street TV on June 30, admitting there is much bad religion out there.
Feral Bishop disrupts
Zimbabwe church
The Anglican Church in Harare is under attack from an ex-communicated bishop, Dr Nolbert Kunonga, a supporter of President Mugabe, who left the Anglican Province of Central Africa (CPCA) in 2007 to try and set up a rival church.
Kunonga, with the support of police and henchmen, has seized CPCA church property and used violence to break up church services.
On September 11, sheriff ’s deputies accompanied by supporters of Dr Kunonga ejected the staff of the Arthur Shearly Cripps Children’s Home – an orphanage 100 kilometres south of Harare in Chikwaka. Three nursing sisters were ordered to leave the premises immediately, while the five other staff were given 24 hours notice to vacate the property
Visiting Zimbabwe from 9-10 October the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, preached at a Eucharist at the National Sports Stadium in Harare and met local bishops who continue to serve the community despite an environment of disruption and intimidation.
