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The Hypermedia Hazard
But the problem isn't only responsibility and ethics, it's technology. There's too much media, and when it's combined with a dreadful and scientifically complex story, and rapid-fire, immediate and ubiquitous information technologies, the results are disturbing, as well as dangerous. Even the most serious media executives seem unwilling to even consider the unthinking and frightening way complex stories like this are transmitted, reported and explained.
A generation ago, most Americans got their news once or twice a day -? from daily papers and evening network newscasts -? no matter what was going on. These were delayed, filtered media. Information could be transmitted, digested and organized before it was presented to the public. No matter how serious the story, you couldn't wallow in it for too long -- evening newscasts only lasted a half hour and there was only so much space in the paper. And reporters and editors had time to consider and check some of the information they passed along. In the Age of Hypermedia, it's commonplace to pass along information immediately and continuously before it can be verified or considered. The public, already frightened, seems to quickly lose track of what is factual and what isn't -- a perfect environment for panic.
But digital and screen technologies, from cable and satellite transmissions to the Net (especially the Web), have created an immediate, unfiltered, 24/7 kind of information delivery system. The mediastream is incessant, even when there is no new information to support it, or little time to make sure it's accurate or coherent. We are told continually, for example, that terrorist cells are dormant and waiting to strike again, and each new anthrax spore seems to have its own cable news hour.
Websites like CNN's bring the news to consumers, giving subscribers e-mail headlines all day long. Like the Net and the Web, cable TV channels are on all the time, every day, desperate and dependent on vivid and disturbing imagery, information, discussion and argument, even when the information isn?t reliable, the discussion not useful or the argument unhelpful. A staggering amount of alarmist information -- innaccurate or best incomplete -- has swamped the country in the past month, yet little is corrected or explained in the continuous rush of reports. This tidal wave of screen and e-information creates a distorted environment, a surreal sense of being surround by an ugly story. This is, literally, hyperreality. Trauma becomes pervasive, and all-encompassing. Normal, routine news and information -- that is, any sense of normalcy -- is drowned out, which adds to the Hypermedia-spawned environment. Even though the vast majority of people are living, working and behaving routinely, the images pouring out of screens suggests just the opposite.
Hypermedia have thus become a civic nightmare. They helped create the hysterical atmosphere surrounding the death of Princess Diana; they helped elevate a sordid presidential scandal ?- the Monica Lewinsky affair -? into a national political crisis.
And now, since the much more serious and legitimately newsworthy attacks on the World Trade Center, and especially following the anthrax mailings around the country, Hypermedia are generating waves of misinformation, confusion and panic. Politicians, reporters and bureaucrats rush in front of TV cameras before they know the facts or have considered how to present them. Images of death, destruction, and hazmat response teams are triggering waves of anxiety and depression. Even though only a handful of Americans have actually contracted anthrax, and it is treatable with available antibiotics, the House of Representatives fled the Capitol last week. People all over the country are flooding emergency rooms for nose swab tests and calling 911 when the see artificial sweetener on a coffee counter or flour residue on a pizza crust. Meanwhile, lobbyists, politicians and professional ideologues crowd the cable channels to take advantage of all that airtime, squabbling over everything from military strategy to airport security. National unity is not sustainable in an environment shaped byh Hypermedia. Whether there is any real news or not, you can turn on MSNBC or Fox or CNN any time of any day and get some saturation coverage. Hypermedia spreads rumors, prompts action where none is required, panic and anxiety where none is necessary.
Meanwhile, as with Desert Storm, the military conflict has been morphed into a techno-war, covered mostly in terms of exotic new weapons systems, analyzed by the generals and military analysts who created them. The corporatized networks no longer pay for enough foreign correspondents to cover conflicts; they prefer to rent military retirees who can talk about AC-130 Spectre gunships and their firepower.
Learning to cope with Hypermedia is an essential survival skill in difficult times. People are learning not to believe much of what they see, read or hear, even when it comes from the Speaker of the House of Representatives (who rushed to microphones Thursday to report -- falsely -- that anthrax spores were making their way through the Capitol ventilation system) and to take their media in small, managed regimens. You might try watching the news for 15 minutes in the morning, then again for 15 minutes at night. You'll be amazed at how little happens in between, and how much of it can wait.
It's no accident that anthrax is being mailed to media organizations. Hypermedia has become the dream tool of terrorists everywhere, sowing precisely the same sort of overblown rhetoric ("things will never be the same in this country again"), and fear that prompted the blowhards who run Congress to shut most of the Capitol down last week, even though the health threat to them and their staffs was both minimal and treatable. Sparked in part by a panicky media, Congressional leaders missed the chance to demonstrate that we aren't in terrible danger. Instead, they embraced the terrorist message that we are falling apart.
In a curious way, this is an old story for America's bizarre relationship with technology. Nobody makes more of it than we do, or is less prepared to deal with its consequences, from airline safety to hypermedia to biological terrorism. Sometimes it seems our ignorance about how technology really works -- and what its consequences really are -- will ultimately do more damage than terrorists can.
It's similar to the problem in advertising. Too much information; it's difficult for people to filter out the good from bad.
Also, when a big story strikes, the coverage is basically the same stuff rehashed every 30 minutes. Most of the time, things don't happen quickly enough to warrant it. The events of the morning of 9/11 did happen quickly enough to warrant it, but what about the constant coverage that lasted for several days?
I've gotten to the point where I no longer want to watch the news. I'll watch the Yankees in the World Series instead.
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
The problem is that people take little bits of information and don't filter it through their common sense. There's always going to be misinformation anywhere you look (just watch CNN).
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
The problem starts when people ONLY read biased news, and don't know about it. CNN is a good example here - if you have access to other sources you trust, you probably know as well as I do that the current affairs in Afghanistan are _very_ US-centric reported by CNN. When others say there are confirmed reports about civilian casualities, CNN still claims there are no such reports etc.
There's a saying that americans are ignorant - can't point out Egypt on a map, don't know that Sweden and Schwitzerland aren't the same countries etc. With the risk of immideate "flamebait" moderation, I must confess that I agree with that view. Do a test sometime, and compare your knowledge (if you're american) about the world affairs with someone from Europe or Asia
it's in my head
This is nothing new. Anybody ever hear of the radio "hoax" War of the Worlds? How did news of Christ spread throughout Rome? This "hypermedia" concept speeds things up a bit, but the internet and TV did not invent FUD.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I am totally confused now as to whether the web is the solution to all of our problems or the cause of it.
I can tell that it's black and white, at least, so I guess that's a start.
Ya know, I actually have to agree with him a bit on this one. I was speaking to some of our Haz-Mat crews (I also work for Fire/Rescue) and ours, the city's, and the next county over's Haz-Mat units have been running non-stop with Anthrax and other scares. But do we tell the media? We can't. It would only increase the load that we already have.
I agree that information has to get out there, and it seems as if most of the calls we get are people who are playing pranks more than anything else. Lots of people are exposed to Anthrax every day - it is a naturally occuring spore. And it is highly responsive to treatment when caught early. Take something like smallpox - that has potential to be dangerous. Something that hasn't been seen for years, we don't have enough vaccine for, AND is contagious? But again, it is treatable when caught early.
There is a fine line between reporting the news, keeping the citizens informed, and reporting to the point that you push people to the limit where copycats start happening and fear is rampent. I don't have a TV, so I don't know how well the TV media have done with the story, but all of the 'net coverage I have seen has been pretty responsible.
So should we run in fear because the media says it is so? Or perhaps we should merely take that as an opportunity to do more research and find out just how much danger you are really in. Remember, the media are humans too, and prone to make mistakes. Make sure that what they are reporting truly affects you before you go out an by Bio suits and build your bunkers.
Random Musings
Articles (like the microsoft .net pricing) are full of distortions, half-truths, and other ramblings.
The YRO shit is designed to inflame and anger the slashbots.
Remember Michael's "US Trashes Civil Liberties" headline not too long ago??
Jon, you have proven yourself once again!
What you speak of (hypermedia) has existed for DECADES!
I'm glad you noticed it after sept 11th, but it isn't something new!
You even covered most of the topics in your last article.
How about we talk about something new, k?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I deal with it by tuning out completely. This usually involves drugs of some sort.
I highly recommend that you all go out and find some acid and E, and take them together. This is commonly known as "candyflipping", and is a much more rewarding experience than bitching about meaningless crap on Slashdot.
You need to get a life, and by 'a life' I mean 'high'.
It all boils down to the simple economics of human interest. The information is offered, more information that we could possibly digest through more sources than we could possibly use, because we /ask/ for it by visiting these so-called 'hypermedia' sites. (Note that the very term 'hypermedia' is used to denote a certain panic about the methods by which we are able to access information. Why not use the term 'electronic media', or 'internet media'? It is another point in case. The article unnecessarily raises alarm via the condemnation of unnecessarily raising alarm!)
As a culture, we thrive on media and access to current events. Otherwise, all of these net-based news networks would go under in a day. I recall a photographer being interviewed following the death of Princess Diana as to why the paparazzi were so persistent about getting photos of celebrities. His answer was simple, "You ask for them."
Don't like continual coverage? Most devices come equipped with a power switch. Use it.
Learning how to cope with this Hypermedia -- especially in a crisis -- is now as critical to survival as combatting terrorism.
Yeah, remember that time CNN.com blew up a truck in front of the US Embassy?
ANTHRAX: Turning ppl into paraniod fucks since October 4th 2001. BTW if I was Katz and knowing how much ppl here hate him id be warey of emails contiaing white powder.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
For once I find myself in very close agreement with JK. I've been trying to explain this to others for years and to be honest it is a very hard message to get across, so many people think 'information is good, speedy information is better' and switch off if you start gainsaying this.
So I devised an example, I ask them to think of any time the mass media has ever reported on a subject they understand really well. I then ask them to think about how it was reported.. Was it accurate? Did it actually explain anything? or was it just trite generalisations interspersed with political, commercial and personal bias?
Since the answers to those three questions are generally 'No', 'No' and 'Yes', the next step is to ask them if they really believe that the media reports anything else (stuff they do not understand so well) with any level of accuracy and objectivity.
This is a useful little argument, and while there are exceptions, it has helped me convince several of my peers and family to be a lot more critical and subjective about 'facts' they hear on the mass media.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
So at first, Katz writes an article lauding the proliferation of media coverage/multiple sources of info regarding the Spet. 11 attacks, stating that it shows how traditional media's stasis is defeated by new 'net media's instant info. Now, Katz tells us that lots of different info from lots of different sources is actually "bad", confusing, and impacts negatively on the "truth". It's like his office has big dartboard full of buzz topics.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Really, I don't see the problem here. People (at least nobody I know) are not paralyzed by fear or OD'ing on raw information. And even if there was a problem, what would Mr. Katz like to see done about all this? Nothing that I could see from his article. It's like complaining about the weather, this is the way the media is today. Would we rather have one or two official news sources to hold our hands and say everything is going to be OK? I don't see the explosion of non-traditional media (nope, I'm not calling it Hypermedia) as a "hazard."
And correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an Apple guy, but wasn't Hypermedia an old Mac tech from back in the day? Just curious, the name rang a bell with me somehow.
Yes we know lots of people are needlessly going in for nasal swabs and some are panicking every time they see a white substance, but this is a very small percentage of people. Stop and think, how many people have you personally met that are going hysterical? Most people know better than to believe eveything media and politicians say, and we all commonly underestimate the intelligence of the other guy. And we can still count the number of confirmed anthrax cases on our fingers and toes.
Look, we have "hypermedia" because it's there.
/., Drudge or E-Bay. In part because we're interested, but in part because it adds some variety to the daily grind.
Unlike 10 years ago, we have an infrastructure that can push and pull text, audio, video and pretty much everything else but flesh and blood through a simple wire. It allows us to optimize, customize and quantize what news we're getting.
When we're bored at work, and depending on our social and religious leanings, we go to places where the content is continually changing, like
Those of us who surf this stuff alot are usually burned "once is often enough" to know know not to believe everything we read online.
Moreover, when we do take our vactions and get away from our computers, we realize just how much "hypermedia" we can live without.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
When it comes to "filtered media" I think my
Anyway, if someone did a 'War Of The Worlds' style broadcast over e-mail, I honestly think people would belive that we were being invaded by Martians.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Reporters have always seen their role as reporting the news, and not getting involved. While it may have on occasion involed risking one's life to get a story, the risk has always been voluntary. Now two popular journalists have been the targets of an attempted murder. Suddenly they are part of the news and they have no control over the situation.
This is probably one of the most stupid things a terrorist could have done. Most reporters have a liberal slant. That's no secret. If they weren't targets of anthrax, they may have intruduced a liberal bias into their reporting as civilian casualties mounted. Or they could have simply tried to find something negative about the war effort. No since they are pissed off at being target they may simply say screw the bastards and give a more hawkish bias into their reporting.
Another thing is the sending of anthrax to only democrats. Democrats are liberals and usually doves. They would probably be the first ones to try to bring about a peaceful ending. Before the Gulf War the vast majority of democrats voted against the war resolution. You don't try to kill of the peacemakers.
Your last point brings to mind an old riddle I heard once:
Q: If someone who knows three languages is called trilingual, and someone who knows two languages is called bilingual, what do you call someone who knows only one language?
A: American
Somebody should give this guy a medal !
From a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert : The truth about Bio/Terror/Chem Weapons.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
"Hypermedia" already has a meaning. Mr. Katz is attempting to coin a new usage for it here, which is only tangentially related to its current meaning.
/. audience, who undoubtedly know the existing meaning of the term.
In its current usage, "hyper" refers to beyond, as in "hypertext" (with a connotation of "beyond linear").
Mr. Katz is attempting to redefine the "hyper" in hypermedia to mean "hype" (a contraction of hyperbole), or possibly "hyper" as a contraction of hyperactive. This kind of misuse of terms which already have an important and useful meaning is damaging to communication.
The Web is an example of hypermedia, and television is not.
I define it thus: hypermedia occurs when multimedia information is structured in a hyperlinked information space. Simple enough? Please Jon, find another term with which to flag your rant. You'll only confuse and irritate your readers, especially playing to the
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.
I personally do not feel the need to have my media filtered and spoon-fed to me. I feel that one of the key strengths of the Internet is the ability for information to travel quickly.
Granted, some of this information is bound to be false, either through malicious or unscrupulous reporters or simply because of a "rush to market" mentality. This is not necessarily a flaw with the Internet; it is a flaw with how we perceive the Internet. I do not believe Internet news should be filtered, but rather that we, as consumers on the Internet must rise to the occasion.
People seem to assume that it is normal to have an Orwellian reaction to everything they see on the Internet. This is both foolish and dangerous. All it takes is stopping for a second thinking about what you are reading. Is it from a reliable source? Does it sound plausible? Etc. Then you double-check it at another site just to make sure.
If people do these simple things, then there would be no cause for panic every time someone starts a rumor on the net.
People want to blame the media because it is easier then blaming him or her for either not being intelligent enough or being to lazy to check the facts.
The problem is that people are reporting unsubstantiated rumors, dropping the time-honored journalistic tradition of confirmation from multiple sources in some illusory quest for "speed". Terry Pratchett wrote about this in his book The Truth. Journalism for small communities was a revelation. Before that, any crazy rumor would circulate around the town like wildfire. With journalism, people said, hey, maybe we should go talk to the baker who supposedly baked the Satanic bread, and the person who supposedly saw it, and see if there is any actual confirmation of it being true.
So the problem is not hypermedia, it's hyper people on TV who report anything immediately, in order to keep us "informed", without checking their facts.
Katz is trying to inspire us to think by writing the most thoughtless drivel he can come up with! That way we'll be inspired to actually wrestle with these ideas for ourselves and come up with our own answers!
Pure genius!!!
or has Katz over the past 1-2 years undertaken a 180 degree shift away from his original very pro-technology, new media, geek views?
Since Katz is Media (or fancies himself as such), shouldn't he consider the hysteria about the hysteria that he is creating?
Katz, please, write something original, something that hasn't already been hashed and rehashed. You know, writing, imagination, primary research, unique insights. Give it a shot.
Some of us have fallen in love with the notion of giving without reserve-Raoul Vanegiem, Revolution of Everyday Life
A generation ago, most Americans got their news once or twice a day -? from daily papers and evening network newscasts -? no matter what was going on. These were delayed, filtered media. Information could be transmitted, digested and organized before it was presented to the public. No matter how serious the story, you couldn't wallow in it for too long -- evening newscasts only lasted a half hour and there was only so much space in the paper. And reporters and editors had time to consider and check some of the information they passed along.
News of old may have been more carefully checked out, with less content that really says nothing, but the level of propeganda probably wasn't much different. As in it's very, very pro-USA. There is never any critical analysis of our government and what it's doing, which is unfortuante, because it's necessary to keep a democracy flourishing. Jingoistic chest-beating (as of late) does not make up for this.
Sensationalism is newer, or at least more sophisticated in how it grabs the viewer. But an American public whose biggest daily worry is how to pack all those groceries in the SUV is ripe for irrational thought.
If anything technology has led to a homogenization of media, even though there is far more content. Lets face it, all the news stations are saying pretty much the same thing. This started when television became the primary means of information dispersal. We don't have the Labor press handing out newspapers to factory workers like we did in the early 20th century. Media with different points of view and ideas like the labor press had don't exist except for a few fairly marginalized magazines like The Nation.
It's the sources of that media. Who controls these thousands of images that flash by us every day? A thousand different companies, each with their own take on it? No, it's a handful of conglomerates, each with their own agenda. Once they agree on what they want to show as facts, they become engrained in the minds of everyone in this country who still pays attention to this crap. There's an overwhelming majority of people who do this and this makes the problem worse.
I agree that the human mind needs to filter out crap. But when there's nothing else to compare it to, we're given the choice between crap or nothing; most people are going to choose crap because of some overwhelming need to be "informed".
I live in a small city in Canada, and every single news article to which I've had insider information has been totally botched to the point of being unrecognizable. Out of dozens of verbatim quotes, I've never seen one that someone never said "that's not what I actually said". I've more faith in the regularity of earthquakes than I do in the validity of the media.
Not to sound like a specialist luddite or paranoid conspirator theorist, but I think the news media is only a pawn of corporate media and corporate media a pawn of political and corporate interests.
Slashdot excluded.
...blame the Corporate Republic
First of all: nicely written, Katz. The media, due to several factors (one of which is the ability to deliver news instantly and frequently) has been getting much more alarmist and irresponsible recently. This point either seems to be missed, ignored, or misconstrued by most people.
But perhaps this is not necessarily all bad. Hopefully, the mainstream media (which is generally seen as having a responsibility to deliver relavent and truthful news) will lose a bit of credibility in the eyes of the common person, due to crying wolf one too many times. I think American media has for a long time been reporting one-sided and skewed news. For example: "International news" in mainstream US media is a joke, usually focusing on a couple US-focused events that happen to occur outside of US borders. It's pathetic. So the media flushing their own credibility down the drain is not necessarily a bad thing.
Now, the question is, how much credibility will mainstream media lose in the eyes of the people, and will it be enough to cause any sort of change in the general perception of reported events?
-Laxitive
Instead, read newspapers from the U.K. despite
it's leader being Tony "Blowhard" Blair:
Great London Newspapers
I recommend The Guardian Unlimited and The Daily
Telegraph.
Thank you and have an Afghan opium-filled day.
One striking trend: technology has spawned too much instant and unfiltered media.
No. Humans have spawned too much instant and unfiltered media. I've seen things like "5 ways you can protect yourself from terrorists" on the news. This isn't news its fear mongering and it isn't about informing the public-- its about people (not technology) maximizing eye balls and profit for their own greed. I hope they shall be judged accordingly for using a tragidy to their benefit.
Obligatory Jon Katz flame:
And yet again Jon fails to see the root of the problem instead sensationalizing the idea of technology controling everything the exact same way the big media sensationalizes terrorism.
The Anti-Blog
The only real answer is to disengage from the media hype machine. Stop watching TV news, stop surfing the net etc.
Having said that I think Mr Katz is on dangerous ground when he says unfiltered news in untrustworthy. Often the best sources are the uncensored ones straight from the front line.
Then you should also read this!
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Once again Katz whines about the obvious. Maybe the problem is that nobody in the media has a fsking clue. They're nothing but shills for the political machine. Look at the anthrax coverage. The FL anthrax broke at the same time as the bombing started. The media effectively ignored it, citing "not wanting to start a panic", and "no evidence it's related to 9/11" 2 days later, it gets a sidebar and another day later, Wolf Blitzer is apologizing for not covering it.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
Is this hypermedia 15 years old? SInce everyone knows that only 15 year olds produce anything of value I bet all the really good reporters in this hypermedia thing are 15 years old. They decided to learn reporting and in a few weeks of reading books they are now hypermedia.
The morning of the 11th, I was a bit late to work in my Fairfax VA office (about 12 miles from downtown DC, less than 10 from Dulles airport), arriving just about the time the Pentagon was hit. Needless to say, we were pretty worried. The question on all our lips was, "Are we at war?", and nobody knew. All 'Net outlets were swamped; all our cell phones were useless as the networks clogged; the only way to get any information at all was to go down to my car and turn on the radio. And at that point, the following things were "known" to be true:
- The Mall was on fire.
- The White House had been attacked.
- A bomb had blown up in the USA Today headquarters (which faces the Potomac, just up from the mall).
- Another hijacked plane was circling Dulles airport, practically over our heads.
- A car bomb had blown up outside the State department.
Needless to say, *none* of these stories turned out to be true - but it took hours to discover that, as all media outlets were reporting rumor as fact. Even the next day, the Washington Post was *still* reporting the State department rumor, even though anyone driving through downtown could clearly see that it was false.
You'd think that it would just have been the hurried rush of events, and that surely in the month since then, calm and reason would have returned to reporting. But if anything, some outlets seem to have become even more sensationalist. Many times the headlines look like something out of the New York Post. Granted these are extraordinary times; but that just calls for extraordinary measures, to make sure that facts are facts and the public isn't needlessly panicked. The past month has been a real eye-opener for me in terms of my ability to trust what the American media says.
On a separate note, describing this phenomenon in a hysterical meta-story, and creating a titled meme ("hypermedia") to describe it, are some of the same tactics that cause the problem in the first place.
And finally, the term "hypermedia" is already taken. Perhaps "hysterimedia" would work for you, if you have to have a meme to rally around instead of just calmly reporting facts.
From the length and content, surely this article should be posted here.
AOL
Isn't slashdot a form of hypermedia!
I'm glad you noticed it after sept 11th
Since Sept 11th most Americans have been runing around like headless chickens thinking the world is going to end and not seeming to realise that they are infinately more likely to die in a car smash.
Not that the MTV generation see's it that way of course.
The insistent noise and flashing lights of the TV are designed to mesmerize you, in the same way a Cobra mesmerizes a Rat. You become just a passive target, too numb to even press the buttons on the remote.
And since all the stations show basically the same thing, changing the channel wouldn't save you anyway.
So what you're saying, Mr. Katz, is that someone who is smart enough to FIND a news source that's running something other than the CNN news feed wouldn't be smart enough to try to verify its accuracy. I don't think I agree with that.
We say the media manipulates the news to create panic- and this is probably true. However, since people consume news faster than it can actually happen, reporters have to find new ways to re-hash old stories, making old bad news look like fresh bad news.
[Many people were convinced the world was coming to an end before 9/11 and now believe it already has.]
In light of the Anthrax situation, news organizations are already predicting the next big terror wave.
What's next? Cooties?
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?disp
Everything that has happened so far is, more or less, common fare in many countries in the world. After decades of hearing about the Irish and Palestinians, it's as though Americans never really felt what was going on there. Just as they don't understand that *millions* of Afghans face starvations.
It's as though we're-- being conditioned.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
While I'm sure it's not the only example of the dangers of the acceleration of news coverage, CNN recently ran a story in which the Taliban claimed to have shot down a U.S. Special Forces helicopter. Seems like reasonable news. But according to a blurb on Plastic, CNN could have gotten the real skinny on the story if they'd bothered to do a little research. As another poster noted earlier, journalists can't be bothered to take the time for fact-checking. The drive is to get the breaking news first, regardless of whether it must later be retracted. Facts? We don' need no stinkin' facts!
The biggest problem is that much of the hysterical news-watching public just plain doesn't care about facts. Sensationalism, spin and sordid details are the name of the game. Katz mentioned the Lewinsky scandal, a fine example of media sensationalism that glossed over the facts (like perjury and obstruction of justice) with sordid details (like activities with cigars and telephones). Welcome to the world of infotainment.
Some may see this as a bad thing, using the argument that it should be the media's job of filtering out the unimportant or irrelevant information. However, that assumes that the media knows what's important or relevant. These things are highly subjective.
So, to sum up what I'm trying to say, I think that today's abundance of hypermedia is a good thing, but it may take a while (a year, a generation?) for the public to adapt to knowning how to judge the imporetance or relevance of the news they hear.
Count on J. Katz to put they "hype" in "hypermedia."
I agree that information has to get out there,
This is something that everybody needs to read right now: http://cryptome.org/dont-panic.htm
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
As for this "hypermedia" -- well, I hate to be cynical (not really), but being factual and rational aren't conducive to RATINGS. Our "respected news organizations" are more like the tabloids than they (or their viewers) would like to admit, and as long as this profitable, they're not going to stop exploiting paranoia.
Personally, I fear anthrax about as much as I fear Michael Jackson, and I fear a rogue briefcase nuke about as much as I fear Bill Gates...which is saying that Gates is only a TINY bit more frightful than MJ, but they're both still mostly harmless. :)
(Oh, and how to make up for that first week of good reporting without ads? How better than by running spots that exploit patriotism...you've bought YOUR genuine U.S. Flag Pin and Medallion Set haven't you!? No? You must be a terrorist sympathizer then!)
Power to the Peaceful
Darn...that reminds me of something...some news site on the web. Can't remember what it's called.
I was burned during this whole thing. But by the CDC. If anyone should know, they should. And well they didn't. They reported that the first cases were accidental. Its not the media's fault for this kind of mis-information. Its not the internet's fault. Simply too many people jumping to too many conclusions and then the other side lying so as to calm the public. Almost everyone I know (except my boss) seems to have a level head.
I don't think Jon Katz's critique of the instant media is valid. Most people know not to jump to conclusions. Most people know not to trust the government's words. Most people know that the real fears are Small Pox, the Plague, nuclear weapons... And while Anthrax does liquify the few it gets, its not a serious threat to US national security. I do feel sorry for the letter carriers though. Jeez, who'd a thought that ultra-fine powder could get out of a letter. I'm not very impressed with the government health officials in this depressing story.
One lingering fear I have is this. If we have a representational democracy, and my representatives don't open their letters to read my view, and they don't read email because... well... they just don't, exactly how are they supposed to do what we want. I think the hijackers hijacked some planes and our government has been hijacked by fear.
TV did us the great favor of getting rid of the ads, so they could broadcast the WTC tape over and over and over. Now, they blast in with new promos: "More anthrax victims! Details at 11!" Newscasters' preference to refer to each anthrax exposure as a "victim," no matter how clean their bill of health (even the bogus MS anthrax "victims"), is a pure ratings ploy, completely in conflict with public interest.
And the FBI. Why would they think we need terrorist warnings? After the WTC, we damn well know that *anything* can happen. As I recall, there was a "100% likelihood" of a terrosist attack a few days ago, that never came about (unless you count the Lone Nut of Trenton). But the FBI gave us warning after warning...not coincidentally the "anti-terrorist" USA Act (which I recall you defending in this same forum) was in Congress over the same period....
Your essay doesn't name a single thing that originated on the Internet. What are you talking about? The story about the dude who "surfed" a building fragment from the top of the WTC? Yeah, that silly story was spread by the Internet, so what? Cipro marketers? Yeah, I get that spam, too. But the real harm is not coming from the people, or from their ability to communicate.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
It's bad enough how commentary masquerades as news these days, but the biggest problem is the media quoting unreliable, heavily biased, or strictly speculative sources as fact. Just the other day I saw a segment on CNN on sites you might want to check out for more information, including Stratfor, an interesting but mostly speculative independent analysis group, and the perennial clinton-hating Drudge report.
More significantly, they also cited Debkafile, a right-wing Israeli affiliated rumor/news site with the bad habits of:
1) presenting "facts" that later prove to be false, and then not acknowledging them (i.e. they said terrorists shot down that russian plane, when it was later shown to be an errant ukranian missile - they changed the story but did not admit error)
2) basing their headlines and articles entirely on unnamed "Debkafile sources" which they make out to be deep within the upper eschelons of every government in the world (US and China included).
If you follow the TV news closely, you'll see how "news" is making if from web to TV in record time. This needs to stop.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I found it irritating on cnn.com that you might find this list of headlines:
3 cases of Anthrax in Florida
CDC reports that 5 media cases isolated.
22 testing in DC, 4 positive in early results.
Second man dies of Anthrax.
Two reported dead due to Anthrax.
The point is, you never really get a clear picture of how many cases there are, where they are, etc. You might think that there were way more cases and deaths because they keep getting rereported, and its not clear if they are totals or new cases.
A map with all of the cases and a color code for death, infection, exposure would be nice.
there are 2 kinds of people. those who divide people into 2 kinds, and those who don't.
The problem is not "too much instant and unfiltered media.", its that people dont know how to filter everything in thier heads. If anything, there is too little "instant and unfiltered media" and too much "instant assimilation of everything seen on TV".
Besides, there are no good solutions to "too much instant and unfiltered media". The only obvious solution is to filter the media, and that is unacceptable for a multitude of reasons.
Paranoia can only be alleviated by teaching people to examine thier news carefully and consider everything that they see on TV with the knowledge that media outlets are competing to attract the most attention by producing the most terrifying news.
National TV news was much the same way for many years; people trusted 60 minutes and Walter Cronkite because those shows were not expected to pay for themselves. They were paid for by advertising revenue from other parts of the network, the idea was that if people trusted your news people, they would like your network and watch your other shows, too. Having a good evening news program was a public service designed to maintain viewer loyalty to the networks.
Enter the Cable News Network. How has this changed things? Well, how does CNN exist? On advertising dollars. How do you generate add revenue? You provide viewers for those ads. And how do you provide viewers? You repeat the same sensationalistic story over and over again, with a slight variation each time so that people are afraid to turn the channel.
"Oh my God! Anthrax is everywhere! I'd better stay home and watch CNN today instead of going to work and providing for my family and reassuring them that their chances of contracting anthrax are about one-tenth that of them winning the Florida lottery."
Any time the presentation of news is contingent on that news' ability to attract advertising dollars (whether explicitly or implicitly -- I'm not saying CNN only runs stories that it thinks will attract advertisers, but they sure as hell don't run things that will offend, or deal with issues that the majority of Americans aren't interested in) there is something dreadfully wrong. As a journalist, if money or politics (e.g. The Insider) is driving the content of your news, you should be cricified. But by and large, the public seems to accept news-as-entertainment without so much as a blink. Oh well.
And speaking of old-school journalism, Katz, how about a little proof reading. For a fun game, find the place where the word "the" shouldn't be, in the above article.
I think perhaps the scariest thing happening in the West right now is what I hear about people attempting to aquire anthrax-effective antibiotics. This is due entirely to uninformed panic.. if people really knew the implications of this, they wouldn't do it, but uniformed panic has driven many to attempting to get this medicine.
For those of you who may not know, antibiotics are very dangerous to take if you're not sick or if you fail to take them in the correct fashion. Bacteria (of all kinds, including anthrax), if not killed off by your medicine, will become bred to be resistant by successive small exposures, ensuring that the antibiotics become useless. The rate at which new antibiotics become developed is slow compared to the rate that baterial strains can become resistant if they get this kind of exposure. (Heck, it's even possible we'll lose this war if we DON'T do stupid things like taking antibiotics we don't need.)
I don't think I'd blame "Hypermedia" for this problem exclusively.. but I'm sure it must be a contributing factor.
While I think that hypermedia is an issue, I don't think it was necessary to pontificate THAT much on it.
People have to learn to be smart about what they read in the popular news media, and to speak up when they are spouting a line of BS. I am also offended by the sanitation of the past that occured in Mr. Katz's commentary. Sure, people only got news once or twice a day. It does NOT mean that coverage was good, well thought out or even accurate. There were media barons back then, just as there are now. For some reason we seem to think that the media barons were defeated.
Guess what, they were not. They just learned to keep a lower profile. Yellow journalism and outright lies were the order of the day 100 years ago. We went through "self-correcting" phase after that, and journalism got better. News reporting got better. We will self-correct again, now that some news is not as good.
One of the things to remember is that while errors occur in our hyper-fast news, corrections appear just as fast.
People need to use there heads. Question authority, and question what you are told. Have a skeptical eye. A healty dose of skepticism makes the world a better place.
Its the blind believers that cause panics. Its people who do not even begin to TRY to find out what is going on. Its ignorant commentary and a reliance on "common sense" that cannot be sensible due to lack real information. The only thing true about "common sense" when it comes to news is that it is is COMMON. Meaning that every ill-informed, ignorant fool who has seen a 5 minute video clip has an expert opinion.
If people do not educate themselves about issues that they care about, they will be decieved and deceive themselves about what news organizations present.
Take for example the E-mail that has been going around about former President Clinton and his promises to "get the terroists and make them pay" and the "common sense" failure to do so.
While I am not a big Clinton supporter, do you REALLY think that there was enough outrage in the public or in Congress to justify an invasion of another country over a couple of embassy attacks and the attack on the USS Cole, all spaced out over eight years?
Guess what, there wasn't. We all went about our merry little lives, and so did Congress. Had Clinton gone to war, he would have been decried as doing it for political reasons. He couldn't do it, so he didn't.
But yet we get ignorant, uninformed, badly thought-out email about it. For God's sake Paul Harvey even read the thing on the air. Common sense says that email is right. Examine your own attitudes about military action AT THAT TIME. Now is it REALLY right? Try to see through the fog of patriotism.
Be skeptical! Don't believe everything you read or hear. Look it up! Study it! And don't offer an opinion on something until you understand both sides of the issue.
Gedvondur
This article reminded me of my grandmother and my father's comment that the media consistently get her worked up over all kinds of things that she shouldn't be worked up about. When I asked him why she fell prey to this, here is the answer he gave me:
Imagine that you grow up all of your life watching 2-4 channels on TV, reading a paper that comes once, maybe twice, per day and subscribing to, at most, 3 magazines (most ppl had none) . Your ability to filter information is pretty much non-existent because you crave MORE information. Newscasts and papers were aimed at providing enough info to be conversational but I think it is safe to say that news stories were cleansed prior to being run. For this reason, a "filter mechanism" was not a requirement for watching/reading the news or any other program, for that matter. Obviously, people still filtered what they took in but the volume of data they received was 1000 times smaller than what we get now.
Fast-forward to the present. You now have hundreds of TV channels, thousands of magazines, and an entire internet from which to pull down news.
Let me ask a question: given that you have spent most of your life in an environment with limited news sources and a limited need for filtering, how do you know what to filter and what not to filter? Hell, if you watch you might think the world is coming to an end every single day.
I dont know the solution but I have a pretty good idea why most of the elderly folks in this country are freaked out all the time. I'm betting this trend has something to do with the amount calls the Emergency crews are getting out there.
I sit here in stunned amazement. I actually agree with Jon Katz!
As far as the anthrax "scare" goes, they could report on it once a day, for one minute and sum the necessary facts into a few sentences like so....
"To date, there have been xxx total exposures.
The most recent exposures have been in xxx,yyy
There have been xxxx total infections.
The most recent infections have been in xxx,yyy.
Be careful of suspicious mail.
Wash your hands after opening the mail.
If you feel ill, do not take any chances. See a Dr. immediately and ask for antibiotics as a precautionary measure.
To date only x people have died from anthrax exposure. In comparison the CDC estimates that upwards of 20,000 Americans will die from the flu.
Now on to Tom with the weather...."
Would that be so hard?
I'm still working on a clever footer.
While I agree with JK here, I find it interesting that he's chosen to use "hypermedia" to describe the phenomemon. Here's the definition I get from OmniDictionary:
Note that this says nothing about immediacy, overload, spastic news cycles, etc. This is exactly the kind of fuzzy/distorted communication that gets us in trouble. It's just as wrong to describe the admittedly hyperactive news media as "hypermedia" as it would be to describe US Steel as "ironic".
-- "" - Harpo Marx
Once again, the moral compass of geeks everywhere pontificates about what's wrong with the world in general and the media in specific.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
I also bet you wont see this story repeated on CNN or the NY Times (significant quote below). Another side effect that the frenzy causes, that Katz didnt mention, is that it brings viewers back. The terrorism stories are, unfortunately, better for ratings than your regular sweeps-week crap, and although their reporting is important and (usually) somewhat accurate, dont think they wont overlook a true story or fact that might make people feel a little more secure quite yet...
The only mass deaths apparently connected with anthrax came from an accidental release of apparently about one trillion spores at the Sverdlovsk (now Yekatinerinburg) biological weapons compound in the former Soviet Union in 1979. Records show that of the 1.2 million residents of the city, only 66 perished.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
My big beef with corporate media is that these corporations are still agents of government. They take 30 people working in tune with Agenda X, and ignore the 30,000 people working against it, and then promote it as the News.
Having unfiltered media over an anarchistic system is now a BAD thing? If people read everything at face value, then they're not properly exploiting the instant-access-to-everything paradigm of the Web, and really do have the rulers they deserve.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
This is true, as far as it goes. But garbage filters work very badly if they are given insufficient evidence. I could go out and hit web sites right now that would give me evidence of things like ESP, water memory, aliens in Roswell, that the Shrub is smart, etc. Naturally, if I continued to look at other (unbiased or differently biased) sources, I could work out what's correct and what isn't.. I'm not stupid, and I don't believe that most people ARE stupid.
However, this sifting and sorting takes a lot of time. You have to find sources. You have to validate sources. (Does this person have a reputation for making stuff up? Does this organization have a conflict of interest in publishing these scientific results? Is this online community biased strongly towards Open Source?) Then you have to sit and think. If the issue is complex (and there are very few simple issues), then you need to do a lot of thinking.
Now, this is a GOOD thing, but it's not easy, and not everyone can do it for all issues. Far better that we elect groups or individuals to do that filtering for us. And why not pay them for the service? Hence.. the journalist. Not a bad idea in principle.
Too bad there are so many lousy journalistic organizations....
n/m
Actually one of the reasons why the US media is so "hyper" is because it is not a CNN managed style Gulf War. The Taliban arrest any journalist who sneaks in as a spy. The US army and government refuse to let them in the front lines. So they are making up for their lack of "footage" by speculation and frenzy. Of course there is an argument that the press should go anywhere but the stupid thing is that they want the military to protect them. Western journalists have been protected for so long that a lot of them think that their country will save them no matter what. I think that the Gulf War was probably the root of this belief. Let us look at what demands the US media has been making: 1. When US Special forces did their hit and run strike a few days ago, journalists found out about it and published it WHILST the soldiers were still on the ground and fighting. 2. They want to replace army photographists on Special Forces missions with journalists. Not just normal missions where the soldiers parade around but a covert mission striking in the heart of Afghanistan with specially trained crack troops. I heard that when Rumsfield was first asked this request at a press conference he turned speechless with disbelief. For the first time in my life I agree with a Republican. In light of their lack of CNN Gulf War style coverage they are turning to good old hype? Remember how everyone "knew" who was going to win on Election Night? Remember how when the judgements about the Election came out, the networks were so eager to be "first" that they didn't bother to even let their "experts" read the damn transcipt in the first place. I remember reading an article (in an Australian newspaper): "Pentagon battles the US Media"
Since Mr. Katz's "earlier times," there's been increased speed in distribuiting information; not only in better printing techniques, more efficient shipping, better and faster broadcasts (even interrupting other broadcasts), but especially the "instant" information on the Internet. Basically, any newly aquired information is immediately posted or displayed or written up for immediate viewing. This means there's often little (or there seems to be little) double-checking of facts and/or validity. This part of the misinformation can be blamed on the news agencies and reporters.
There's also the consumer who reads/ingests all this instant info. Perhaps there should be a personal responsibility to check on the accuracy of stuff before the "news" is passed on (sorta like those stupid email forwards). As someone else mentioned, there can be a saturation of the market, so that everything you hear about has something to do with a particular topic (like anthrax or the mad-cow disease stuff from last year). Because this is "all" you hear about, it's what is talked about. Think of how far those email forwards go before they're sort of refuted. So this part of misinformation propagation can be blamed on the consumer.
There's also the factor of people's desire to hear the greatest or most sensational news (shark attacks get more press than discoveries of new stars). News agencies feel the need to come up with impressive stories and sound bites to attract an audience. Audiences eat them up. This part of distributing misinformation can be blamed on everyone.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Hypermedia? Jon, do you know what this term even means? You aren't coining a term here, Jon, you are trying to change a meaning of a term instead, because the real term hypermedia has nothing to do with your "too much media" definition.
This is just another example of why you're not qualified to write articles like this of Slashdot... you don't even know the proper terms.
I've noticed quite a bit recently that the media outlets keep talking and talking and talking, but they aren't saying anything anymore. So few reports actually convey real, decent information that can useful. Like George W. and most websites, there is a general lack of content, so they repeat the same thing over and over again thinking that if they change the graphic at the bottom of the screen or the reporter wears a different outfit, that that somehow makes the "news" new and important.
I've seen several stories in the past year where on the first day the story breaks, the media outlets make sure to report to us that they aren't going to report on the story because it's not news or just doesn't matter to the general public (see the GWB daughter's stories). The outlets then go on to report on what they've just told us they weren't going to simply because they don't want to be "scooped" by other outlets and risk not being uninsightful, unimaginative, and uninformative.
How many stories did we see about that Condit guy? how many of them did we need to see? The answer to the second questions is probably zero or very close to zero. While the media is blasting out all these stories and talking about the same things over and over again, how many stories of real merit are slipping by uncovered? The "mainstream" news media should no longer be considered sources of real information and should be thrown in the pile along with all the other "entertainment" programs since they seem to be more concerned with ratings than with conveying real information on subject that are important to the public. How many stories have we seen in the mainstream all the convoluted ties to the power and oil industry that our current administration has? Is there a discussion going on in the mainstream media about how so many children are going hungry in the Appalachian back country since their family's can't even afford food everyday? Why is it that so many things like the SSSCA, DMCA, ATA, etc go unnoticed and unquestioned by the general public? We know that the government doesn't want the public to really know about these issues because it would mean they would have to stop bickering about stupid crap and passing bad laws that only make it look like they are doing something worthwhile with their time in DC and have to start answering tough questions and dealing with real issues that deal with real problems. Instead of misguided proposals like a missle defense shield (thank goodness we're wasting money on one of the least likely threats instead of putting that money towards combating the real terrorist threats), our "leaders" should be more concerned about making sure they are informed about more important issues so they can make intelligent decisions instead of ones that seem to have been made by throwing a dart at a big board that says "yes" and "no".
When our government starts being more responsible, I think our media will follow suit and stop pandering to government and corporate interests in their reporting.
I have to say I think you completely mis-read this one. It's the traditional news outlets such as the 6 o'clock news and daily newspapers that are the primary source of hysteria these days. By non-stop anthrax coverage and "special reports" on the one or two nuts who have outfitted their families with gas masks, they are obscuring the fact that this threat is relatively minor. Only three people have died of anthrax -- tens of thousands of people die every year in the U.S. from the common flu.
In fact, I usually turn to technology (the internet) to get the real facts. For example, the 6 o'clock news teaches you that the USA is involved in the Middle East because they're dependent on Gulf oil. However by surfing the web you learn that the USA gets the vast majority of its oil domestically, and most foreign oil from South America. However since many U.S. allies are heavily dependent on Gulf oil, the USA tries to maintain the status quo in the Gulf to prevent global instability.
It's amazing what you can learn when your news isn't filtered for you.
Always a month late and too timid in his comments.
Its like reading last year's newspaper.
Way to go, Jon, or whatever your real name is.
This new, mostly screen-driven strain of Hypermedia are becoming a health and civic hazard all of their own
go back to grammar school, katz.
This is honestly not an attempt to be flamebait. But I have heard this old argument so many times I feel it needs explaining.
The reason most Americans know nothing about Sweden, Switzerland or Egypt is because they are irrelevant countries. You can bet your ass most Americans could point out China, Russia, Japan or Germany because those countries matter. This is not an attack on the self-worth of the peoples of Sweden, Switzerland or Egypt, they are fine people, but the countries are not major political players.
To use a metaphor: I know about Linus Torvalds because he is a famous, important person. Linus knows nothing about me because I am not famous or particularly important. Does this make him ignorant?
Turn off your telivision. One wonderful feature of hypermedia is that you can choose what to consume and when to consume it. Yes, this is theoretically also true with TV, but the fact of the matter is, for most people, the TV just stays on, "in the background", and this greatly contributes to your feeling of being inundated with reporting, which as you've noted is frequently gratuitous and often inaccurate.
With hypermedia, I'm back to the newspaper model of having news from different sources, with the advantage that I can choose the update rate (modulo the timeliness of the source, of course). With the newspaper, I have to wait until the next day, even if something important is happening, With TV, I get it shoved at me even if nothing is happening. Hypermedia puts you back in control of your information consumption.
Kuwait was about oil, but none of the other U.S. military actions of the last few decades have been about oil--Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo.
A pipeline across Afghanistan would be extremely costly and impossible to defend. It's just the black helicopter set that takes this idea seriously.
I could not disagree more with this story. Before the telegraph (remember Sam Morse?) we would have hung out at the local Inn, quaffing fine ales, and muttering in hushed tones about the traveller that just passed through. His stories and polemic would be how we got our 'news.'
Today we have the electronic means of hearing 6 billion peoples rumours. You naturally filter what you want. If you get overloaded, stop listening, wait a week and things will be clearer. We are a country obsessed with the 5 second sound bite: the clicker culture.
As they say, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
If anything, the current tidal wave of nauseous news is the consequence of a total vacuum of real facts. The Pentagon is silent about Afghanistan, the FBI is silent on its efforts to find the terrorists, and we end up inventing stories to fill the time. Accept it, get over it. See the re-run in 2 months and decide then what was pertinent.
All in all, I think the American public is pretty much dealing with the situation in a calm and reasonable way, but you'd never know it by listening to the media wail. But then again, I suppose "Nation Gripped By Anthrax Terror!" makes a much better headline than "Anthrax Not So Bad After All".
He claims that the media and government is responsible for providing clarity and coherent information. I'm sorry, I've read the U.S. constitution, and I don't see anything that gives them that responsibility.
JonKatz doesn't believe in this theory called "economics". It is a simple theory, really; it just states that people pay for things that they want. People are paying a lot of money right now to dredge up every last bit of information related to the Sept11 attacks, regardless whether it is substantiated, relavent, or "coherent". For example, people are tuning in to CNN to see the latest details. Unfortunately, there is about 5 minutes of "coherent" news each day, so in order to satisfy the viewer's wishes, CNN fills in the remaining time with the "non-coherent" stuff.
This is where the idea of "responsibility" comes in. It is the consumers who are irresponsible: they will keep searching for more news related to Sept11, and when they hear an unsubstantiated rumor, they treat it as fact rather than as a rumor. If all the "responsible" journalistic outlets refused to give it to them, they will continue searching until they find irresponsible providers. I guess this is why hypermedia is bad -- it doesn't impose any limits on how far you can search. Actually, if you were to stick to a single news source, you actually would find a nice coherent synapsis. It is just that consumers aren't sticking with one news source, but hoping around through all of them.
I'm always at a loss to understand JonKatz. On one hand, he believes that there is some sort of Big Conspiracy that hides information from the Populace, giving Us only the information They think We should have. On the other hand, he is critizing Media and Government for NOT doing that: he wants the Media/Government to be responsible and give us only the coherent news They think We should have, hiding from us all the other details.
Anyway, the choice is yours. You can be a whiner like JonKatz and demand flimsy news and then complain it's flimsy, or you could choose better news sources (WallStreetJournal,Slate) and interpret the news responsibly.
I think I'm ging to be sick
I live in Canada, and that's definitely the case up here - people are only nervous because they are told to be. Things don't *have* to change forever. I'm not saying that certain things shouldn't change (security, etc.) but I think people just like talking about how the whole national psyche has changed. It hasn't really.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Most of the nerve agent symptoms will be familiar to anyone who's been tear gassed.
Best Slashdot Co
Katz is right for once, sort of.
Because scare headlines/stories boost ratings, which are they going to run:
"Mail safe for ordinary citizens", or
"Anthrax! Are you at risk!!!!???"
Hint, it's not the first. In the US, at least, news is now more entertainment with ratings as the bottom line, rather than journalistic integrity.
Anyone remember Oprah's interview with Michael Jackson? If you watched ABC news (local anyways) that night, absolutely nothing else happened in the world except the interview. It's all about ratings, and unless their feet are put to the fire somehow, nothing's going to change.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It seems to me that the general media want to put out any news as quick as possiable, without checking facts! This is a bad development since this SHOULD be one of their main objectives, to deliver credible new.
;-((
I also miss any background information. E.g. in the antrax case I see everyone run to a gasmask but I haven't heard of this has any effect since you can also get sick by direct contact. And what about other biological warfare, what can you do to protect yourself (without walking around in a biosuit)? For once I would like to see a information blok longer than the 5 minutes that CCN use before there is a commercial of something else. Take 1 hour to inform the general public about what is a real threat and what are the chances for certain cenario's. All what the media is doing right now is repeating themself that antrax is dangerus. That is no news, that is making the public scared
I'm not going to say that this war is a _PURELY_ about oil, but it is most definately true that there was a plan for an oil pipeline. The company was Unocal. Do a google search, it's right there. Google search
Having the raw information available is ok, as long as people understand that it is unverified information.
It's how we keep major media outlets honest...
Hypermedia spreads rumors, prompts action where none is required, panic and anxiety where none is necessary.
I doubt that panic and anxiety are ever "necessary". It may be understandable given a particular context, but it's usually more important to keep your wits about you. Panic often turns an otherwise orderly evacuation into a deadly stampede.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
It takes a great deal of ignorance to make comments like this on an American website developed for the free spead of information that is sitting on an American invented information network. I must say that I did not used to be very patriotic until I started to read stuff from people like you Troed.
Whatever happened to the 'Information wants to be free' JonKatz?
Jon seems willing to ignore previous statements he's made, frequently contradicting himself so he can write some new BS. What happened to the information zealot JonKatz, talking about geeks gathering online and Old media dying in the face of new media? Did the JonKatz who wrote this piece, about how newspapers can't compete with 'new media', do an about face since then?
Face it, Jon: distortion of facts pre-dated your 'new media' by many, many years. What, you say? There were rumors and urban legends BEFORE e-mail forwarding became a national pastime? The list of pre-1990s frenzies and distorted facts is too numerous to list them all.. how about:
The LSD scares of the 1960s, which last to this day: Teens staring into the sun, jumping out of windows, evil 'pushers' getting your elementary-school kids hooked on Mickey Mouse acid. The 'old media' reported on much of this as if it were fact.
The psychiatric debacle called 'repressed memories,' where the power of suggestion has caused thousands of people to invent stories of ritual and satanic abuse. Again, the old media ate this stuff up.
Jon, you can't change your opinion every time it would result in a good story. A year or two ago, you were singing praises of the Internet and online communication.
...by supplying his own form of misinformation. Way to go!
Kosovo was about the world's richest resource: a humongous mine with an almost endless supply of incredibly valuable mineral wealth.
Not surprisingly, it's now being run by an American firm. Or perhaps an American board of directors. Either way, it ain't owned by the locals.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Having been brought up on USENET news, I learned a long time ago to sift through many voices and opinions on any topic, watch a concensus form and build by own opinion for all that was said.
I see the world learning to do the same thing -- hear all the voices and drawing their own conclusions.
I don't see a need for more centralized control of the media or any self moderation on their part. I don't need a parent deciding what us children need to hear. We are learning to live in the firehose of information and, yes it's hard and yes it's uncomfortable, but we will be better for it. I want to hear the pros and cons so I can decide instead of having someone else edit and decide for me.
Lebanon? Our entire Middle East policy is dominated by the black gold.
Kosovo? Again, not oil, but I'm sure that lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, silver, and coal mines have the interest of the US ruling class.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It was posted elsewhere, where I saw it.
So remember, as with any other computing problem, the results you get are entirely dependant on the quality of your data. Propanganda is concerned with making sure that the data you think with generates the results that the propogandists want.
Fortunately, even compared to the Gulf War, the availability of alternate data is much more open than it was back then. The main problem seems to be that perpetual problem of the criminals trying to intimidate the ethical with concerns and worries of un-ethical actions against themselves, the criminals.
It is like saying that police cannot do their job because of the possibility of upsetting the neighbors, etc. You have to be able to take effective action. The caveat is that once you step in, you got to clean up the mess you made after the fact.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The media are spreading disinformation. So what? That's what they are there for. It's called the society of the spectacle.
Call it another benefit of hypermedia.
...disavow all knowledge...
He just described /. perfectly.
I AM reading too much media.
[alt]-[f4]
click.
I sig, therefore I am.
Jon,
The reason you see so much prattle and talking head pundits with nothing new to say is becuase the real media aren't allowed access to a lot of material that the US government has.
Nearly a dozen federal agencies have dismantled their Web sites or removed information from the sites. News helicopters are still grounded. Cameras and film belonging to the press and the public were confiscated at the World Trade Center and further photography banned. Journalists' reporting on U.S. military operations has been confined essentially to official briefings and announcements.
Are these restriction necessary? The press historically has been very careful in reporting sensitive information in the past.
It is this fettered access to information, combined with the increasing reliance on "experts" over the past 20 years that has led to "Talking Heads" syndrome.
This behavior will backfire on the press in the long run. A study I read recently (don't recall the source but it was something akin to The Economist) stated that the public's opinion of the press deteriorates as these practices continue. The public opinion of the press dipped into new lows when it covered the Monica Lewinsky case, and more recently the Gary Condit charade. These drug out non-events hurt the press.
Whether the gravity of the bombing of Afghanistan and the World Trade Center disaster chaneg the equation i unknow at this time. However, if the press and media continue the same techniques of providing non-relevent and trivial information with no confirmation and no access to hard facts I fear the press and the media as a whole will suffer the same confidence slip that it has inthe past.
That has nothing to do with hypermedia. The term "hypermedia" refers to media with links between documents. If anything, hypermedia are a little bit of an antidote to media hysteria because there is a much better chance that going to another information source via a hyperlink will provide you with more accurate information.
Post hoc logic is a great thing. Using post hoc logic I can make statements like: Last year the Tabiban stopped poppy production thus causing a rise in the price of smak. Then Bush Administration didn't like this so they set out to destroy the Taliban so that they could get their fix on the cheap.
Really this is just about as plausible as the oil thing.
Jon, can you agree that unfiltered news could affect National Security?
If so, then I submit that even "HyperNews" is filtered.
Our Government provides us with rights unparalleled by any other society, EXCEPT in cases where National Security could be compromised. Daily Pentagon "briefings" are a prime example.
So how much do you think Exxon-Mobil would pay AOL-Time Warner to keep those 50 Billion Barrels of untapped crude oil a secret?
I'm a 2000 man.
It could be linked to the same group that destroyed the WTC towers and slaughtered all those people
It's not weapons grade stuff
It is, but someone told us not to tell you
It's all from the same strain
and lots of stories of buying antibiotics, dangers of opening mail, etc.
The one significant nugget I picked up, and only heard once, was that the particular strain of anthrax is native the the US, not the middle east, not somewhere else in the world. This is very significant because it begins to shed light on who's behind, and who may not be. In my humble, and possibly flawed, observation and induction: Someone likely has a lab, in the US where it came from, start looking for it. I suppose the FBI already is on this tack, as there's a lot we don't know until someone tells someone in the media.
Another thought, Loose Lips Sink Ships was once an admonition to keep a tight lip on where soldiers or sailors where departing for, when and such, during WWII. I've been disturbed how often I hear something in the news, which, if I were part of a cell or friendly to the Taliban, I would consider very useful information. The TV and radio virtually spews what I would consider sensitive information. Saddam Hussein even commented, back during the gulf war, that his best source of information as to what the US was doing or planning to to was CNN.
It's not beyond possibility that the US govt. wants this dispersal of information, for psychological or other strategies, i.e. "Man, are we pissed, we are so pissed we are sending 3 aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf and arming B52s for carpet bombing of some country in the vicinity of Kabul, that's how pissed we are, will you give up before they get there and we start using them, huh? will ya?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We need thick clients to allow us to control our own view of the news.
Think of our news clients: the television, the radio, the Web browser. Each of these are particularly dumb entities.
What you need is a program that can search your favorite news sources, download the appropriate stories, apply your filters (e.g. "Drop all articles with a Jon Katz byline; give top priority to crypto articles; ignore all sports except major league soccer"), and give you a personalized, online newspaper.
This program could be on your own computer, or virtually hosted elsewhere (so that you can be mobile and get your news scroll anywhere), but it needs to be under your control.
This sort of thing, done right, would allow us to go to one place for all our news, because that has gone to every other place for us and applied our own filters. IMHO, there is economic incentive to do this as well. If a company wants to run virtual news filter hosting, they can track your preferences and advertise based on those prefs. Or, you can subscribe to it and pay a monthly fee like a newspaper if you hate ads.
--The basis of all love is respect
Let's just have everyone read Slashdot for a few weeks. They'll quickly learn to deal with "huge amounts of data and misinformation." They'll learn that, although information [on CNN | in a "5, Informative" comment] is more likely to be accurate than information [on Drudge | in a "-1, Troll" comment], it's still far from an absolute guarantee of accuracy.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
"This new, mostly screen-driven strain of Hypermedia are becoming a health and civic hazard all of their own, transmitting huge amounts of data and misinformation and fear along with real news. "
Yeah. What ever happened to the good old days when we used to get all our misinformation and fear along with the real news on channels 4,5, and 7 only?
8^}
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Large incidence of CJD cases
Governments resort to death rate manipulation
Increase anxiety using mass media
Heart Disease
Saturated Fat + citric acid
What a surprise this got modded up to 5.
/almost/ buy into what this guy is saying, the conspiracy theory he's throwing out, until the last paragraph or two where he calls our President "the Bushies" and the "phony president".
You can
Nice try, but I'd like to read something non-partisan, not some kind of whiny liberal conspiratorial pap.
JonKatz is trying to be sneaky...
Adorned in condoms and camoflauge make-up, his scrawny body glides silently through the marsh grass. He is stalking his prey.
The penis is grazing, unaware of the penis stalker lurking in the midnight shadows.
But JonKatz's cover is blown when he breaks wind, immediately sending wave after wave of pungent stench through the swamp.
The penis suddenly realizes what is happening and bolts. JonKatz pursues, his condoms getting caught on marsh grass and ripped from his naked flesh.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
They've kicked all foreign correspondents out of the country, remember?
The Taliban wants to make sure the only footage coming out of the conflict are the shots of the collateral damage.
Please think more, or at least think.
I agree with you. I would not like my news filtered either.
I must ask: Do you watch TV news all day long? I work at HSN, which is a telephone ordering company broadcasts to every state in the US. I work in customer service and speak with people all over the country 8hrs a day, and I must say that this continuous flow of news needs to be filtered, at least a little, before it reaches the general public.
Many of the people I speak with every day may be disabled, elderly, or simply addicted to TV, but as nearly every call comes to an end the customer makes a remark such as: "be safe", "make sure you wear gloves when you open your mail", "pray for our souls, we won't be around much longer", or some other nonsense. These people do nothing but flip channels all day long and watch mostly news, and these people are affraid to leave their homes because the terrorists will attack them while driving down the street, or that they will die of antrax after stepping off the front porch to pick up the morning paper. Many of the customers have called HASMAT because of a badly damaged envelope, or broken bottle received from HSN. This is an utter waste of time, and of course the local news breaks in with a special report showing the community pictures of a local family whose house is crawling HASMAT officials, inciting further panic. It isn't so much the information that causes the anxiety, but the repetition of the information, using new words, and unconfirmed details 24/7.
To be honest, these people would be much better of having news broadcasted in 30 minute, facts only, segments. It would incite far less panic.
I am an American. I can point out Egypt on a map. I know there is a difference between Sweden and Schwiterland. I keep up to date on current affairs. It isn't being an American that causes people to be ignorant, but simply that there are just ignorant people every where. Those insearch of the unfiltered truth will always find it, but those that are unable to digest the unfiltered truth 24/7 need some form of protection.
sPh
I used Slashdot a lot on 9-11 and the following days, and I noticed something. Slashdot got all the same rumors that all the other media outlets reported, but because of the instant feedback that comments provided, the untrue rumors were debunked much faster than on the TV networks.
Just my $.02. I agree that filtering sounds more dangerous than the disease it is supposed to cure. Who gets to be in charge of this, Jon? Isn't it a better (long term) solution to improve our educational system to produce citizens with better skills in critical thinking?
Brook
I think periods of upeaval in our information gathering system is good. It helps re-tune everyone's bullshit detectors. Sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but that's always been. Maybe it's a little worse now that there is a real potential for personal impact, especially if you're a postal worker. It just seems every now and then there is a "big lie" that reshapes how people interperate and authenticate what they see. From War of the Worlds, to Quiz Shows, to the Nixon administration and dot-gones, we've learned that being generous with our trust isn't always a good thing. Maybe it's time for another big lie.
I think this Anthrax scare isn't it. While there has been a lot of missinformation, even some that might get you killed if followed, it's certainly not the stupidest garbage to make it on under the guise of news. Why once on Fox News (and I realize this admission has cost me any credibility I might have once had) I saw a gentalman from a "think tank" say that we would have "zero point energy" generators in our homes in 4 to 5 years, if the big oil companies didn't interfere. This is probably one of the stupider things I've ever heard in public, and they decided to put him on TV.
To me the great thing about capitalism is it brings the information and resources together so increadibly quickly. But at some point people factor in, and before more money is sunk into poor development models for ethereal companies who have a logo looking for a product, it might be nice if we tuned up everyone's bullshit detector.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
...is that a topic that Jon Kats can make into an unintelligible mess can be succinctly summed up at an article on a similar topic at k5. He's really saying the same thing, but doesn't fill it with buzzwords, a much more interesting read. =)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Link
Well hello, Mr. Bateman. How are you today?
my favorite two examples:
... if you can't translate it and can't see it... whatever CNN
Right after the WTC towers were hit CNN started playing a feed they couldn't translate of kabul at night and flashes of lights... and claimed the US was bombing afghanistan
When a bomb sniffing dog layed down they claimed there was a bomb in the sears tower... the dog was just tired.
Way to go CNN!
ha ha.
Yes, but I expect they might be able to trace this strain back to a lab and determine whether that strain has been sent out as samples or otherwise. Would the sample sent to the Iraqi Ministry of Health have been alive or nutralized?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There's a great source of anti-war articles, plus background information on American military involvement in the middle east and elsewhere at www.informationwar.org.
it's funny how the same freaking arguments and concepts keep creeping up over and over only in a different context and people (like many of you posters) take them as something new.
didn't they say something similar when the radio first came out? the tv? ever recall when parents complained that tv's turned kids into zombies? then the same thing about computers? fer krice sakes you could call a freaking news paper "hypermedia".
frankly i think the only thing that's changed is that technology has made the information somewhat more interactive. it's still as "dangerous" as ever.
i love it when people say they're afraid of technology, or come up with some reason why it's so horrible- i just wink and ask 'em if they've gotten running water and electricity in their homes yet.
The bit that implies the State Department somehow conspired with Pakistan to funnel arms to the Taliban is untrue and implausible. Furthermore, if the US were planning at any point to deal with the Taliban, why have we never recognized the legitimacy of their government?
In the 1980s we did blatantly send arms to Afghanistan. But in the 1990s (since before the Taliban existed) our policy has been hands off.
If you've been keeping up with the news during the last decade and you think otherwise, you are probably a die-hard conspiracy theorist anyway.
... the early days of the WWW, when journalists put their noses in the air and said "No one will ultimately use this newfangled net-thingy. There are no editors, no jouralistics ethics. It propagates wild rumors and out right-lies mixed in with the truth. When people see how untrustworthy it is, they will come running back to traditional media, which they can rely upon to be fact-checked, considered, and true?"
Is anyone else as amused as I am by the recent turn of events?
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Seriously... I agree that the ease of the internet gives anyone with a half-decent web site a quasi-official status... but is this any worse than the yellow journalism of the turn of last century?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
The article you linked to is unsupported, unverified conjecture. To put this mildly, that is opinion, not news. Although you may not realize it, there is a difference.
You, and those who modded you up to (+5, Informative) have just demonstrated "the Hypermedia Hazard."
Arundhati Roy covers that and some other disturbing connections in this article. Really interesting read.
In response to the parent post, I am an American and I consider myself to be as well or better informed about world events as most Europeans. However, I agree with you that this would not be the case if I swallowed all the crap that the major American news agencies try to spoon feed us. Most Americans do not expend the effort to find articles like the one I mentioned above.
For most Americans, the wtc tragedy will mean buying an american flag, and coming together with other Americans to support a war that, while diminishing the fear that we feel in the short term, will only engender hatred against America into a new generation of people around the world. I am only slightly worried about terrorism today. I am petrified about terrorism twenty years from now.
I find it shameful that the people running America do this. And by this, I don't just mean bombing a country that is barely out of the stone age back into it. I also mean using the fear and pain of its citizens as a means of obtaining further profits for American companies and even themselves (read the article above...it details how Bush himself will literally make *millions* off this war). This country founded on such lofty ideals which have so much potential. We just need to realize again that capitalism is a result of freedom, not vice versa.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Q: What do you call someone who left footsteps on the Moon?
A: American.
Q: What do you call the people who saved the Swedes and everyone else in W. Europe from Hitler?
A: American.
Q: What do you call the inventor of the Internet and most of the technologies that allow you to post your anti-American drivel?
A: American.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Have a friend read the exchange and explain it to you.
I agree that information has to get out there, and it seems as if most of the calls we get are people who are playing pranks more than anything else. Lots of people are exposed to Anthrax every day - it is a naturally occuring spore. And it is highly responsive to treatment when caught early.
:)
I don't want this to sound sarcastic at all, because I seriously want to know what I should be doing. I have what appears to be a cold. Unfortunately a good strong cold or flu has all the same symptoms as an Anthrax infection. Now, if Anthrax is only treatable when it is caught early, do I go to the doctor right now and get tested just in case? If every person in the country is running to the doctor for anthrax testing every time they get a cold, we are going to way overburden the healthcare system.
So what do we do? We are being told "not to panic" and we are also being told to "be alert". Alert to what? What are we supposed to do? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every mysteriously unattended package? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every unusual powder? Aren't we supposed to be making sure we catch an Anthrax infection before it is too late? If not, then what are we supposed to be doing.
It seems that realistically the only approach we can take is either to vaccinate the whole population or use people as canaries in the coal mine. So basically we have to wait for people to die before we can take anybody seriously who comes to the hospital afraid that they have Anthrax. This is the facts, but I don't hear anybody in government saying this. They are saying it's treatable and that we can stop it, but they don't admit to the fact that ultimately we have to assume the first infected victims for any particular attack are screwed (like those postal workers and the guy in Florida). Frankly if they would just come out and say, "if you are one of the first infected you are screwed but we can help the rest," I might stop worrying about my cold because I'd realize there was jack shit I could do if it was Anthrax.
Not to plug myself, but I've got an article I wrote on my site earlier today where I discussed this. Okay, I suppose I am plugging myself, but oh well , it isn't like I make a cent on it
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I am posting anonymously because Slashdot doesn't seem to accept my login at the moment.
In 1937, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was created to educate the American public about the widespread nature of political propaganda. The institute, which has published several books about propaganda techniques, is composed of social scientists and journalists.
Here is a link to their website if you would like to acquaint yourself with some propaganda techniques.
"So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together."
There is something surreal about watching Katz rant hysterically and ignorantly about the major news media spreading hysteria and misinformation... True, this is about par for Jon Katz, but the synchronicity of comment and commentator is ironic, or perhaps inevitable.
Someone please send Katz on a tour of the historical archives of any library or newspaper. Read the newspapers of the 18th or 19th century; you'll see the same hysteria and rumors-as-news whenever war or disaster struck. Rumors have always spread faster than accurate news; this is nothing new.
As for the overload of cable/internet/nightly news: turn the damn things off if it bothers you! If hearing that the postman in Podunk, Nebraska is being tested for anthrax every half-hour is causing you panic everytime one of your fellow office slobs spills the dairy creamer in the coffee room, stop listening to it! You don't actually need to know the news every hour, on the hour unless there's a tornado or hurricane bearing down on you. I'd rather watch Dragonball Z than Peter Jennings any day.
As for all the stuff about our neat high-tech war machines, one might note that the Pentagon is not releasing a whole lot of information about the actual combat in Afghanistan for obvious reasons. (I'm sure certain people in the Pentagon remember when CNN and other news reports were happily broadcasting to all and sundry real-time reports of troop actions). In the absence of real information about the war, the newsies resort to interviewing talking heads and showing pictures of neat hardware--they have to show *something*, after all. I do not doubt that the Pentagon encourages the news networks to show off our high-tech stuff--it's a form of propaganda, a show of power meant to intimidate our enemies, encourage our allies and hearten our own citizens.
Doesn't anyone remember the Gulf War, where talking heads were the order of the day when there was no combat news forthcoming? It got to the point where the reporters were interviewing each other about reporting the war!
---dragoness
There is a term that describes the effects Katz is talking about, it's called agenda setting. Since there is only a limited amount of information that can be broadcast in a limited amount of time, the news agencies must pick and choose what issues they will cover and what issues they will not. The effect is that the level of importance the public perceives an issue to be is directly proportional to the amount of coverage it recieves. Remember the recent shark attacks? There was so much coverage about shark attacks a quarter of a year ago that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the public thought shark attacks was one of the top 10 leading causes of death worldwide.
So the real problem, as I see it, is not that technology spreads ideas faster (which I have some issue with, since even in Katz's article, he commonly refers to the cable and television broadcast media), but that the media do not choose their agenda properly. This stems from the fact that media today are operated strictly from a business standpoint; they run the stories that they believe will attract the most viewers so that they may maximize advertising revenue. Political news doesn't draw in the crowds, unless the topic is scandal or in-fighting. And when there are no puppy dogs or children to report on, the media use fear to attract people. "Are smoke detectors safe? 10 things you the smoke detector manufacturers don't want you to know!" Today, they use anthrax; afterall, if you don't keep up to date with the latest methods of avoiding contact with anthrax, you just might catch it.
It is my belief that nothing short of a shift of journalism from the private to the public sector will result in media reporting the kind of news that matters to us.
And then just as that happens, watch tabloid sales skyrocket.
If you got a letter containing a white powder and the words "NOW TAKE PENACILIN" then take your cold to a doctor. If you didn't, calm down, take a Tylenol, and go back to work.
Others would prefer aneurysmedia, of course...
The fact that he describes a subway station as "perfect conditions" to release a nerve agent was the first thing that made me question him - I don't see how anything with as strong winds and constantly moving population as a subway would be conducive to a successful nerve gas attack. So it's uderground, so what? So are a lot of wind tunnels. The nerve agent would easily be dispersed by the constatnt rushes of air, not giving it time to settle on people or let them inhale sufficient quantities.
Who is this retired sgt? What makes him credible? Did he work as a potato washer, a tank gunner, a grunt? What's the deal? Looks like some feelgood propaganda to me. Don't believe everything you read, boys and girls. Including everything I write.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Ted Ralls trots out the old "Taliban are on the payroll of Union Oil" theory again without benefit of any evidence or logic.
#1-If Taliban were the creation of Union Oil why didn't construction of the pipeline begin immediately after they had taken 90% of Afghanistan?
#2-Fact: The Taliban were the creation of Pakistan, who were sick of the bickering and instability occuring in Afghanistan after the anti-soviet alliance took power. Remember 15% of Pakistanis are Pashtun. The south Asians I know all seemed aware of this long before anyone in the US did. Now the US media have begun to realize this and have begun to report on it. Ted Ralls is blithly unaware of the fact.
It was coined by the french postmodernist Jean Baudrillard in his infamous book Simulation and Simulacra. This book also shows up in the matrix; it's the book with the minidisc inside that neo hands to the guy on mescaline. Also, 'welcome to the valley of the real' is another one of his quotes. Anyway, it's an interesting perspective of the media in the present age, though thick in wording.
Matrix fans should love it...
It'll be 4:20 in a few minutes!
Evil can be defined as "that which cannot be tolerated". The killing of 6000+ non-involved bystanders certainly qualifies. This evil action requires the destruction of its perpetrators and their supporters. War is the tool that we have at hand to accomplish this.
The extent to which the US, British, Canadian and other governments prosecute this war is the extent to which they fulfill their only real purpose and reason for being. People are displaying flags to let the government know they support the war. Many of us wish we could go to fight ourselves. We can't, so we fly flags instead. When you see a flag these days, most likely you see somebody who's ready to personally fight the terrorists holding it.
People who do such heinous evil must be destroyed. Should an oil pipeline be built over their smoking corpses and should DECENT people make money out of it some day, that will be an added bonus.
The fact that you are ashamed of this indicates that you have no idea who you are dealing with, and you need to pull your head out of your ass.
These people are religious zealots and totalitarian dictarors rolled into one nasty package. They hate your personal guts because you are an American, no other justification is needed.
They do NOT care about fairness, social justice, trade unionism, the Palestinians, multi-cultural tolerance, economics, socialism vs. capitalism or any other damn thing you ascribe to them. The very fact that you personally draw breath is an affront to them, and they will use airliner bombs, nukes, bugs, bullets or their bare hands to remove you, me and every other non-Muslim from Earth.
They cannot be appeased, reasoned with, bought or otherwise dealt with. They understand no language but naked force and will respond to nothing less. They must be destroyed because nothing else will stop them from killing us.
Evil! Get it?
[Flamebait]
t -j ustice
They are both full of shit, since Sept 11 the US
Government has been doing more to promote terror
among it's own citizens then any terrorist has.
There has been such a stream of constant BS
coming from the Government at every level higher
then the Gov of NY City (who I commend for the
unparalleled class they have shown)... You
have officals saying this and that tested
positive for Anthrax and if someone dies, it's
proably Anthrax...
Honestly they have been bombing for 2 weeks
in Afganistan, Afganistan was a stone-age
country before they started bombing... If they
were doing the job right there ought not be
any stationary 'military' targets left to
bomb by now... So I guess if there is a soldier
standing near it bomb it... who cares if it's
the Red Cross,
or not-a-hostipal-anymore-after-we-bombed-it.
There is never any evidence presented to support
either sides claims that this was Anthrax or
that many civilians were killed...
Though I don't doubt that civilians have been
killed, and Anthrax may have been found, I would
love to see PROOF supporting these claims (though
I realize that it's difficult for the Taliban
to present their info). Maybe if there was a
willingness to be more open with proof
this whole
bomb-a-starving-country-in-the-name-of-wild-wes
thing could have been avoid.
[/Flamebait]
Oh get off it already. The fact that the majority of native-born not-first-generation Americans know little of world politics, geography, or a second, let alone third or fourth language is not unAmerican. Everytime people point out something that is true but unflattering in the last couple of weeks, one of you boneheads has coming in proclaiming that they are unAmerican and generally telling them they should just leave the country. I am sick of it. Face the facts: the average European is much more "worldly" than is the average American. Stop telling me that because that is true I am not a real American.
Since I don't have time to find my password here at work, I will tell you that I am Mapultoid, and not an anonymous coward.
The perfect analogy for the coverage of recent events (especially the Afghanistan bombing) is the NFL on CBS. We got the pre-game and post-game. The retired players who give the color commentary, the speculation about next weeks match-ups. And, Terry, the Pakistani's have seen a lot of team dissention in the past couple of weeks, do you thing Coach Musharrif can turn the team around?
Where do I start?
As a member of this so-called "hypermedia", I can tell you that time gives a story context. "Cutting-edge news" is a one-source story reporting that say, Intel is harboring aliens. Over the course of a day, you may have the chance to talk to another source or a spokesman who can refute that rumor, or other sources who can analyze this.
But let's step back a moment. Let's say that original source sent this out in a mass email, or posted to a mailing list. A competitor might just run with it. Do you wait and check it? Sure, probably. But if it's ex-President Clinton? Linus Torvalds? What if they want anonymity? Wade through those judgement calls and see what you come up with.
OK, let's say you decide to wait and check the story out further. Some media outlet runs with a story that says "Linux Guru Says Intel Harboring E.T." You're going to read that story, right? Because Linus looks like an idiot, or because you really think Intel's made contact? What's the justification for holding this story? Running it?
In a biography of Torvalds, this "incident" may get one page. In a history of space travel, it might get a footnote. In the hitory of the U.S.A., not even a mention. But if you constantly read and solicit information from cutting-edge news outlets in a particular field (say, technology or politcs) those are the stories you're going to get. National news reporters try just as hard as the guy at LinuxToday; it's just that their beats are different.
And you think you know differently than that reporter who butchered that story? Email him. Prove it. Attach documents. Links. If you just call him an "ignorant asshole", than so are you.
And yes, let's not forget the overwhelming hypocrisy here: next to this article are a list of links that Slashdot readers contributed during the Sept. 11 attacks.
Finally, keep in mind one thing--I read the Register and the Inquirer ( I consider the Inq to be a stronger news source) daily, just like you. I acknowledge that their sources may in fact be better than the majority of reporters, but they also do a significant amount of rehashing too. I can embed a link amid a creamy filling of droll commentary as well as the next guy.
Now take the Intel story and substitute "anthrax", "Osama bin Laden", or whatever. And then reread this post the next time you feel the need to contribute articles to Slashdot.
I have this sense of feeling like this "war" is like the "wars" described in Orwell's 1984 - it is a background thing, that no one knows much about, but that it is happenning, only because our government and the media say it is happenning.
I want real information - I want the truth on what is happenning. For all I _really_ know - nothing is happenning - no war, no anthrax - other than the WTC collapse, nothing else has verifiable impartial 3rd party support. Maybe the anthrax stuff does - but I already know that I should fear it less than getting in my car to drive to work.
But the war? No info, every day - it seemed immediately after the attack on the WTC, the news was bustling - new stories every day - stories of horror and hope. A week later, the shutdown began.
Now, nothing new really happens - or so it seems. I think if this sense of "nothing happening" goes on long enough, the average joe on the street is going to end up not caring about anything that is going on in regards to the "War on Terrorism" - that it will become pure background noise, nobody caring about rights and other crap being trampled upon.
Similar to the "War on (some) Drugs" - today, nobody really cares, and even the news have stopped reporting on it - but it still goes on, every day - I remember in the 80's when it seemed like they were reporting a drive by gang-related drug related shooting every day - now, it still happens - but you never hear about it anymore - people have tuned it out, to the detriment of their rights, among a ton of other stuff.
The same thing is occurring with the current situation, but it seems to be occuring faster - it has been barely a month since the WTC attack - but it feels like years, in a way...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This is a copy of an email my step-mother sent me. It is rather rediculous the information the media Force feeds us, yet they never assume any accountability. Has anyone checked out the Nanbomb website? It destroys nearly (if not) all bio-terrorism weapons.
I posted this message on CNN's web site, along with many other people who
feel the same way, and CNN reacted by saying on Lou Dobbs', "Moneyline,"
"God gave you a remote, go ahead and use it." This cliche reaction
entirely missed the point that I and so many others are trying to make.
If you don't feel like reading this entire message, just read the last
paragraph. If you agree with what I'm saying, please pass on this
message to others on your mailing list. My intent is to get others to
tell the media what they think about their anthrax coverage. Thanks.
Donelle Sydow
Everett
Topic: Media as a Weapon of Mass Destruction
I believe that the Media is currently being used as a weapon against the
American people relative to the anthrax attacks. My belief is based on
the fact that the terrorists simply had to ask themselves: What can we do
to use one of the most powerful American infrastructures, the media, as a
weapon? answer: Give them a topic so compelling and so related to
themselves that they will have no choice but to report in depth. Sending
anthrax to top media personalities was like sending mice some nice, fat
poison cheese. The media coverage of this situation is worse for us than
anthrax.
I have respect for the media in its vital role in supporting democracy,
but I must say that due to the hubristic nature of the Media, especially
televised media, it is a natural for perpetuating the type of terrorism I
believe is occurring right now: the spread of mass panic.
I have seen the discussions with the analysts and anchors trying to bring
a realistic scope to all of the reporting: i.e. saying that there are few
cases of anthrax relative to the amount of exposure, etc., etc. However,
the constant repetition is playing into the hands of the terrorists.
As the biggest media organization in the country, I ask you to step back
and evaluate the ways in which you are being used by the terrorists and
take appropriate, responsible action to protect your viewers. Maybe
you'll have to stop business-as-usual by canceling some of your more
exploitive endeavors. The Sept. 11 attacks changed the airline industry,
changed comedians, and changed the entertainment industry. Why hasn't the
media industry tried to make positive changes out of respect for the
lives of the citizens it serves?
I was going to go on a rant about how consumers of media need to take responsibility for filtering and finding coherent nuggets of information as much as the producers do, but your post said it so nicely that I think I'll go play Age of Empires instead ;-)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
It's interesting to me how these even more underground" articles and things propogate. It seems to propogate to the media too. The stalwart conservative news anchors may decry them but clearly they scan drudgereport, and subscribe pseudonymously to some of the more wakbar mailing lists where these things first turn up.
Someone said that CNN would never cover something like htis because the panic is good for ratings. True, but I wouldn't be a bit surpised to see the author of this on Larry King tomorrow night either. Remember that Afghan ex-pat that circulated his email comparing radial islamics to christian kkk members? I can't find a link to it at the moment but many/most of us saw it. Bill Moyers dug the guy up and interviewed him on PBS for 15 minutes. That incredibly preachy West Wing script basically plagarized the entire thing and put in in a character's mouth.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Thanks for the mod point, but not that informative given that we just got slashdotted... must remember don't post link to site on end of cable modem.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 91473
Of course, the nut cases are going to have a field day with this one.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I like that article. I'm going to file it away. In 30 years or so, when I retire and go off to teach at some tweedy little liberal arts mosque in the New Kabul highlands of New York, I'm going to use it as a teaching aid. It's a beautiful example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Rall fairly clangs off the rails as he careens between credulity and incredulity. I think I need a dramamine.
--Blair
Q: What do you call the people who saved the Swedes and everyone else in W. Europe from Hitler?
A: American
I am always surprised when this comes up. By the time the US entered the war against the Nazis Britain had fought them off 2 years before in what is generally called "The Battle of Britain" where the RAF stopped Hitler from gaining air superiority over Britain and so they did not invade. It was a close run thing, and it was a combination of technology/brains (RADAR, Enigma cracking etc) guts (I think the average lifespan of an RAF pilot was just a couple of days in the air) and luck in that the Nazis started bombing the civilian population vs. military targets and they turned their attention towards the Western front. By the time the US entered the war, there were thousands of SOE (Special Operations Executive) commandos in continental Europe sabotaging the Nazi military and organising resistance groups and the Nazis were losing on the Western front againt the Soviets. The US entry into the war did shorten the conflict, and stopped the Soviets from having an almost complete monopoly on all of Europe. This was all because the US before Pearl Harbour had considered WWII as a "European war" and didnt give a damn about the slaughter of Jews / Gays / Romany Gypsies / mentally or physically disabled people, as say compared to Britain that took an immediate stand on the invasion of Poland by immediately declaring war on Germany. The US entered the war out of self interest, Britain had forces in the Pacific area, more advanced technologies like RADAR and code cracking par excellance. If you are going to spout off about things, please in the future be informed.
Q: What do you call the inventor of the Internet and most of the technologies that allow you to post your anti-American drivel?
A: American.
Packet switching was invented in Britain, well ahead of the US, IP which did come out of the US is basically just like the technology developed in the UK. The reason the UK did not persue the technology was due to the government turning down funding for the R&D by the Science Minister of the time Tony Ben MP. Again, please get your history right next time, thanks in advance.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
No, there are many languages in the US, Mall-Speak which is a dialect of Valley-Speak ("like totally very"), Corporate-Speak ("In Q4 we will leverage our synergies to..."), McSpeak ("would you like fries with that?"), Techno-Babble ("Onramps to the Information superhighway will be snarled up due to Code Red..."), Pyscho-Babble ("The Jungian interpretation of that Freudian slip is it's ultimate Gestalt variation"), NewAge-Speak ("Crystal healing of your Aura will transend you to the higher plane") etc etc etc
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
there are a lot of excellent articles on post september 11 reporting available from poynter http://www.poynter.org
AJR newslink has also posted some great info http://ajr.newslink.org/
it's like this - people will start to complain of a conspiracy to keep information from them if they DON'T find out about every anthrax scare, every building closure, every bomb threat.
this is what has led to the oversaturation of information today - an intense desire for more information, from different points of view.
the journalists are not to blame - this is what people want to hear about, so they are going to hear about it.
people are prone to panic - people have been told that they shouldn't worry of massive anthrax outbreaks and yet they are foolish enough to want testing and vaccination.
as for objectivity in journalism - that is a complete fallacy. no matter what you do, everything is out of context and everything is bias because none of us could be there to watch every evacuation, press conference, or talk to the people on the street.
also - australian media has warned of the bias in reports from afghanistan, because they are only getting info from the military and the northern alliance at the moment.
the media is a complex, complex beast. to understand it is not as simple as saying, 'the media panics people' or 'the media is bias'. the story you see or read has been shaped by hundreds of people, according to hundreds of different filters and criteria.
I read from two too three novels a day worth of text and information on the internet.
And I want more.
If it wasn't for the fact that I am forced to leave my computer screen (and sleep/eat/etc) I would do nothing at all but take in more information.
I do not suffer from information overload, I suffer from information withdrawls if I am taken away from it for more then a few minutes.
I
Want
I
_NEED_
more
DATA!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
It's just the black helicopter set that takes this idea seriously.
And of course they don't run the country and in other news The Warren Commision is now required reading at US schools and mention of The Grassy Knoll is grounds for immediate suspension...
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Just clarify the Battle of Britain issue, the real cruncher for the Germans not wanting to invade Britain was not so much the air war but more so that the Brits had one of the most formidable Navies in the world at that time. There was no way the Germans were going to cross the chanel with all that British Iron floating there. As for the RAF, there was a lot of miss information floating about on them. The RAF was on its knees and only the silly miss drop of German bonbs on London (which was a mistake) led to the reprieve the RAF needed. After the Battle of Britain, the Germans only had 200 Front line fighters stationed in France whilst they sent the rest to the Eastern Front. These fighters had no problems holding off the RAF with 4 to 1 kill ratios and it wasn't until the US came into the European Air War that the Germans had to deploy more air power on the Western Front.
Well we did have a formidable Navy, that didnt stop the Wolfpacks from destroying alot of convoys of material from the US though ( and the US charged us a lot of money for the material, maybe thats when price gouging by Americans started :), again we beat them by cracking the Enigma and gaining the information advantage. The British Navy did have great successes like cutting off Rommels supplies in Africa, again due to intelligence gathered by cracking the Enigma. As for the fighters, well once Hitler had turned his attention from Britain he didnt really care about invading, though they still tried to bomb us into submission, and in the later part of the war they were more concerned with having fighters over Germany to try and stop Allied forces bombing them into the Stone Age. Again it was part luck, courage, technology and brains that stopped themin the end, the US did have a part to play, but not as significant as most Americans seem to think, in fact the recent series Band of Brothers showed how distorted Americans views of history are. At the end of one episode about Operation Market Garden they give one line at the end to the 8,000 British troups killed vs the 100s of Americans that died, thats because the British paratroops were up front (in Arnhiem) were the real resistance was as opposed to were the Americans landed behind with little resistance. Another example would be the recent film about the capture of the first naval Enigma machine in the film U-571, where the Americans capture the sub, actually it was U110 and it was the British that captured it, I hope the American population starts to learn about history and truth soon.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
You're right. Americans ARE ignorant. I'm sick and tired of seeing some blow-dried idiot on CNN ramble on about the anthrax "virus" and about how there's a "cutaneous strain" and an "inhaled strain" and how "weapons grade" anthrax has "smaller spores", etc., etc, etc. Isn't biology a requirement for journalism majors? I'd like to think that an editor would never let crap like that get through, but something is definitely wrong.
So how exactly are we being served by consuming unfiltered news? Sure, there's less bias, but how is the average citizen supposed to filter out the truth from the endless mounds of horseshit being shoveled at them?
Two points: 1) What is hypermedia ? While technological advances have clearly made access to media more available, it hasn't fundamentally changed the nature of the images present. In fact, there is more editorial and governmental control over the media now than there was during the Vietnam war. Also, I would conjecture that if anything, a proliferation of sources leads to an environment where media is implicitly interpreted as _more_ subjective. 2) The idea that we could be 'overwhelmed' by hypermedia is bogus. Arguments like this have been made since around the turn of the century, when the speed and jarring nature of train travel was thought to be a source of degeneration in the nervous system (thus tying in with notions of hysteria or neurasthenia so prevelent in the day). There is not a set amount of 'nerve force' or 'brain energy' in the brain; we can't spend a 'daily quota' of thought power.
"Mathematics is the language of nature"
I guess Mr.Katz,atleast by his writing style can go work for the big newspapers.He has the same gift as th big boys opf making a 2 sentence thing last all the way to a 2000 word article.
Wanted : A Signature.
It was called Lend-Lease and it was never payed back....
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Journalists used to process the news they delivered to you. Newscasts were just a couple of times a day. Wire services had a much larger cadre of editors and experienced senior reporters. Now it is unprocessed, directly to your living room.
My prescription: Watch only a few minutes a day.
Scan your paper for only really significant new facts in the headlines. And read your weekly newsmagazines which still have time to give their content some perspective.
Uhmmm. You seem to suggest that the Americans were cowering in the rear whilst the brave Brits were doing all the work in Operation Market Garden. Who was responsible for thinking up this grand plan and sending the British on what had to be one of the most poorly planned military missions in the war? Why Field Marshall Montgomery, of course. His ineptitude was responsible for putting those Brits, and the Americans who went with them, in mortal danger. As to Britain's contribution vis á vis the American's contribution to winning the war: Neither hold a candle to the Soviet's contribution. They tied down the creme of the German armed forces in large numbers, allowing the western allies to face better odds on the Continent. And frankly, without the Americans, the British would not have been able to do much at all to clear the Nazis out of Europe. Very little of our Army was left after the evacuation of Dunkirk. And without the American war plants turning out an ungodly amount of materiel, we would not have been able to equip the Army we had left. Now, as to Band of Brothers being "distorted"...it is the history of one company of American paratroopers. This may come as a surprise to the uneducated, but unit histories tend to emphasize what just that one unit did. Doh! They don't show what the U.S. Marines, or the Rangers, or the Navy, or the Canadians, or the Soviets, etc., did because they are not about those other units/services/nations!
Finally, as a British citizen living in the United States, I have to say that the American lack of geographical knowledge is not any worse than a lot of Europeans of my acquaintance. Most folks know the half of the hemisphere in which they live, but not a lot else. Sad.
Madness takes its toll...
"If you are going to spout off about things, please in the future be informed."
So you're arguing that had the Americans not intervened, either directly through what grew to be a 700,000 man attack force by the end of the war or indirectly through the Lend-Lease Act which helped keep Britain afloat financially, the British would have invaded continental Europe on their own and defeated the Nazis completely either on their own or in partnership with the Soviets.
I think it's much more likely that without the USA, Britain would have kept its independence but that the Nazis and Stalin would have fought it out on the continent, possibly with a stalemate occurring at some point with Germany controlling the western portion and Russia reconquering its own territory and possibly some of the Slavic countries as a buffer. Of course the Germans would have kept working on their atomic bomb and missile delivery systems so who knows what a few more years of Nazism would have meant for Britain's survival.
"Again, please get your history right next time, thanks in advance."
OK so Britain played a role in developing underlying technologies and has continuted to contribute to the field. Yet the original point still stands. Are you implying that US technology was a trivial or non-existent factor in the development of modern networks? How absolutely ludicrous.
Regarding your original point about lack of multi-lingualism in the USA, it's simply not true and bespeaks a tired old closed-minded view that Europeans typically adopted (and that elitist Americans mimicked), probably out of resentment over the USA's displacement of Europe as the premier economic and and cultural power. Most kids get at least some Spanish in secondary school, or else French or German. The fact that there's little opportunity or need to use foreign languages in most of the US and Canada, except for inroads of Spanish speaking communities in the South and West and access by portions of the population to Mexico and Quebec, accounts for a lack of fluency in a second language by most 3rd generation and earlier immigrants. I have met countless Chinese Americans who speak Cantonese or Mandarin in the home, Italian Americans who can converse in their grandparents' native Italian, Polish Americans who learned Polish in the home, Jewish Americans who learned Yiddish from their parents or grandparents, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Hispanic immigrants who have Spanish, and British immigrants who speak... well... English. To say Americans are monolingual is simply wrong. Furthermore some American universities have begun in recent years to reinstate language requirements that were dropped in the early 1970s. I majored in Chinese and studied Japanese as well; I can get by in French and I took a year of Spanish in high school, plus four years of Latin. My wife speaks passable Cantonese, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, and a bit of several African languages as a result of her work with various immigrant groups. We are Americans. A friend of mine majored in Russian, someone else I know somehow took French and Spanish and German and Chinese in college. They, too, are Americans. Take a walk down the street in Manhattan and you will hear thirty languages spoken within a few city blocks.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
And if it IS about oil, so what? Any other powerful nation in the history of the world would simply have colonized Iraq and made this question about oil prices go away.
Would that have been the Right Thing to Do? No, probably not. But, like it or not, the United States does have a vested interest in the oil reserves of the Middle East, and does have the responsibility to defend those interests, using diplomacy when possible or the military when necessary.
Welcome to geopolitics. It's not a nice game, but people who stop playing it start speaking other languages.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Can I name 5 large cities in Canada? Sure. Quebec, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Montreal.
Oh wait, I went to college near Canada. Guess I'm disqualified.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Even supposedly serious journalism sites have eye catching headlines that belie the actual content of the articles. We have become media junkies by virtue of our need for stimulus, and the need to feel emotions (negative or positive). Boring is the biggest possible sin of our times. If its Katz that pisses you off or Bart Simpson that makes you laugh, we seek stimulus. Any media that wants to differentiate itself or carve out a larger market share must be MORE STIMULATING than its competetion. The facts in their own right aren't necessarily that stimulating. Hence sensationalism and the creation of Hyper/hysteria/media. And of course one of the major profiteers of any major news events is the media itself and so they have a fiscal responsibiliy to themselves to whip into a money making frenzy. Desert Storm made CNN and they need as many MAJOR MAJOR news stories to fuel growth and not level off.
Tim@mobilelinux.com
Then you should also read this!
Your author in not only an "avowed Marxist" waiting for the communist revolution,
he's dangerous " Peaceful protests are doomed to be ignored. Only a dose of destruction leads to real social change" and "Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence "
and his "facts" are really fiction!
You need to be more careful when you take the "filter" off of your news sources.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.