Critical Race Theory as Ideology

The word theory signifies proposed knowledge that is not merely subjective sentiment or belief that is being prescribed or advocated as an ideology; the purpose of a theory is rather to explain. Only in terms of better understanding is the implication that a better world could result (i.e., from the enhanced understanding). Even though a theory does not constitute established knowledge, that ideologues have seized on the label as a way of legitimating their respective cherished ideologies should come as no surprise because ideology sells better in the guise of knowledge even though a theory has yet to gain sufficient support epistemologically to be recognized as established knowledge. The epistemological subterfuge—a Trojan horse of sorts—also hides the fact that the ideologue seeks to persuade or advocate rather than primarily explain. Under the patina of a knowledge-claim lies quite another instinctual urge. Nietzsche’s claim that the content of a thought is none other than an instinctual urge of sufficient power to burst into consciousness—a manifestation of the will to power—provides an explanation for why the slight of hand is so easy for ideologues to make in sliding over to present the veneer of knowledge-claims even though such claims do in fact differ qualitatively from ideological claims. I contend that critical race “theory,” as well as the related interactionist “theory,” is in its very substance ideological in nature, rather than knowledge or even a theory.

The full essay is at "Critical Race Theory as Ideology."

Ex Machina

The Latin noun, machina, can be translated as “machine, engine, military machine, contrivance, trick, or artifice.” The Latin word, e, or ex, means “from” or “out of.” Hence, ex machina can mean out of a machine, which figuratively interpreted can refer to a certain function of a machine that does not seem possible for a mere machine to do.  Artificial intelligence, which is simply machine-learning, in a computer can seem to be outside or apart from what a mere machine built by humans can do. Ex machina is actually part of the phrase deus ex machina, which originally referred to a god or goddess appearing above the stage in a Greek tragedy—the deity being pulled across the top by pulleys (i.e., machina). A sacred deity appears above the other actors by means of profane, mechanical pulleys that do not seem capable of presenting deities, so the latter seem to come out of rather than being of the former. AI, or artificial intelligence, may seem to be coming out of an android because the “human” body is made of materials, including pullies perhaps, that do not seem capable of learning and other human likenesses. In fact, machine learning, which is beyond the programming that is written by humans, might seem at least initially like a miracle, or even as godlike relative to the materials that make up a computer and android “body.” Deus ex machina. More realistically, such an android is likely to appear human rather than divine. David Hume claimed that the human brain inexorably hangs human attributes on divine simplicity (i.e., a pure notion of the divine as One); perhaps today he would point out that we do the same thing when we encounter AI. The danger of the all-too-alluring anthropomorphism of which the human brain is so capable can not only be in viewing an android with AI as human, but also in lauding the inventor/programmer of the AI android as a god for having “created” such a “living” entity that can think for itself and even appear to feel and act as we do.  The movie, Ex Machina (2014) easily dispels both applications of deification. Furthermore, any anthropomorphic illusion that the androids are human and can be taken ethically as being so is also dismissed by the end of the film. Any apotheosis (i.e., rendering someone or something as divine) is so tenuous that the film’s main two human characters illustrate for us just how fallible we are in our understanding and perception of AI in an android-form. The danger is real that AI could get ahead of our emotions and reasoning such that we could leave ourselves vulnerable to being harmed by AI androids by projecting the human conscience into what is actually computer programmed coding. 

The full essay is at "Ex Machina."

Journalism Goes Only So Far in Empire-Scale Democracy

A news story only goes so far; only so much “digging” is possible against a pressing deadline. Moreover, we humans are not particularly good at “connecting the dots” when they are far afield. Through natural selection in an environment in which humans were prey as well as hunters, we are still “hard-wired” to privilege the immediate. So it takes more than a bit of effort to counter this natural predilection in order to make a truly informed judgment that takes into account the relevant tributaries. One such judgment concerns the impact of U.S. President Joe Biden’s age on his fitness to serve a second term.

The full essay is at "Journalism Goes Only So Far."

Religion and Ethics: A Christian Interpretation Transcending a Film

Although dramatic tension is a crucial element of a narrative, the main point is not necessarily in the resolution of the tension. Dramatic tension may be used as a means by retaining viewer-interest through a film whose main points are made along the way. Such points can transcend plot and be even more important than the resolution of the narrative. Man from Earth (2007) is a case in point. In the film, John, an anthropology professor, has just resigned from his teaching position. The entire film takes place during the send-off party at his house just before he is to move away. As the discussion ensues, John admits to his university guests that he is actually a 14,000 year-old caveman. Because he looks about 35 or 40, he explains that once he reached a certain age, he stopped aging due to a biological abnormality (i.e., a genetic mutation). That his anthropological and biological lenses cover even religious matters makes his religious interpretations interesting and even useful to the viewer. I am assuming here that coming in contact with a different perspective can enrich a person’s understanding of a phenomenon. It is in this sense that the film provides valuable information to the viewer and is entertaining even beyond viewing the film. Indeed, a method for interpreting the faith narratives of Christianity, and religion in general, can be extracted and applied outside of the film.

The full essay is at "Man from Earth."

Business & Society and Business Ethics: Two Distinct Fields of Business

As a field of business, business and society (which includes the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR)) can be viewed as falling within the rubric of the environment of business. Business and government can as well. Indeed, the environment goes beyond stakeholders. Although sometimes deemed as falling within this rubric, business ethics actually does not, as it is internal to a business even as unethical policies and decisions can impact stakeholders. In fact, business ethics and business and society are two distinct fields, even though they share a common border and are often fused as if they were one seamless country.

The full essay is at "Business & Society and Business Ethics."

Is Dark Trading Ethical?

“Dark trading” has a subterranean connotation, as if it were done by slithering snakes in the river Styx. In actuality, the term refers to trading in stocks that is done on computers that are less public than the exchanges. That is to say, the bid-and-ask quotations on a given computer network are known only to participants on it, and not to the traders on the public exchanges. Ethically, the public-private dichotomy is relevant. I submit that it reflects a wider trend in American society.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

Stifling Change: Columbus Day and Thanksgiving

In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated at harvest-time, on October 12^th, rather than a week before the first month of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. For the States south of Canada, whether their respective peoples are cold or warm on the third Thursday in November, the holiday’s date is etched in stone, given the illustrious aura of the U.S. president who had enshrined the date in the midst of a horrendous war between the USA and CSA in the 1860s. Few people would dare even entertain the natural assimilation of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day on October 12^th. So, well after harvest in most of the States and bunched in with Christmas and New Years—effectively ridding the latter of any left-over enthusiasm—people in the States in the northern climes are consigned to stuff themselves like Turkey birds while the surviving natural turkeys shiver outside. Human nature itself may be hardwired against change, and the massive scale of modern political association may exacerbate the paralysis. 

The full essay is at "Stifling Change."

Marx and Rousseau on Economic Inequality

Both Marx and Rousseau are “anti-history” in the sense that socioeconomic and sociopolitical large, complex organization, well beyond the small groups of prehistoric homo sapiens people living a sustenance existence, has alienated workers from themselves (Marx) and introduced artificial, or “moral,” inequalities and inauthentic fronts (Rousseau). In other words, the human condition in the modern world is not a story of progress; paradoxically, things have gotten worse in spite, and indeed in part due to the extent of technological progress. In other words, under the subterfuge (i.e., camouflage) of “progress,” the species has actually acquiesced to increasing decadence and deterioration as human organization has become larger and more complex.

The full essay is at "Marx and Rousseau on Economic Inequality"

Rousseau and Marx: Pushing Back Against Excessive Economic Inequality

Both Marx and Rousseau are “anti-history” in the sense that socioeconomic and sociopolitical large, complex organization, well beyond the small groups of prehistoric homo sapiens people living a sustenance existence, has alienated workers from themselves (Marx) and introduced artificial, or “moral,” inequalities and inauthentic fronts (Rousseau). In other words, the human condition in the modern world is not a story of progress; paradoxically, things have gotten worse in spite, and indeed in part due to the extent of technological progress. In other words, under the subterfuge (i.e., camouflage) of “progress,” the species has actually acquiesced to increasing decadence and deterioration as human organization has become larger and more complex.

The full essay is at "Rousseau and Marx"

A Diet Dug Out of Anthropology

The Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago. Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago out of “stardust.” So our planet is not nearly as old as our universe (which consists of clusters of galaxies). It was not until 1.8 million years ago that our species, homo sapiens, took shape, formed by the forces of natural selection. We are relative newcomers to our planet’s existence, yet much of what we encounter, make, or use in the modern world has existed as only a mere flicker in our species’s 1.8 million year life as a species.  

For example, it was not until about 70,000 years ago that our ancestors’ brains developed to the extent that a fictive imagination was possible. That is, the homo sapiens brain was no longer dependent on the senses (e.g., touch, sight, smell) and thus empirical observation of one’s environment (e.g., appearances). The brain could imagine a unicorn, justice as an ideal (even as a Platonic form!), and a utopian vision having little if anything to do with how the world is at the time.  

It was not until 9,500 BCE that homo sapiens settled into permanent settlements to farm. Only a relatively few types of plants were grown and animals were domesticated as a result of the agricultural revolution. For example, wheat originally grew only in a small area in the Middle East; by the end of the twentieth century, the crop’s area had reached 200 million hectares.[1] From roughly 6,000 BCE, wheat has been a basic staple food of Europe, West Asia, and North Africa.

It was not until the eighteenth century that the scientific revolution found some traction. At that time, the gravitational pull of the past, through tradition and custom, began to lose out to an orientation to the future, and thus to discovery and innovation. This was a major shift in the history of our species. As a result, the modern world as it exists would look like another world to a person living in the sixteenth century, whereas the same person would find the life of people living in the eleventh century to be familiar.

As a result of the agricultural and scientific revolutions, we moderns have a myriad of processed foods (e.g., hormones, preservatives). Paradoxically, even though agriculture has essentially mass-produced only a relative few of the foods that our ancestors ate from one day to another in the eons of time in the Stone Age, the advent of long-distance transportation has extended the reach of otherwise geographically limited foods (e.g., pineapples) as well as the agricultural staples (e.g., wheat). This all sounds well and good, but a subtle problem festers that can only be discovered by taking a very long historical perspective grounded in anthropology—the study of the homo sapiens species.

I have been applying my own study of what almost two million years of natural selection has etched in our biology to this day to dieting. The forces of natural selection have not had nearly enough time to tweak our bodies (including our brains) to the modern world in which we live. For example, we eat much more in complex carbohydrates (e.g., wheat, so breads, pasta, etc.) than our stomachs are designed to digest. In other words, it is difficult for our species to digest wheat because that food was not factored into the equation by the forces of natural selection in adapting the stomach of a homo sapiens over almost two million years. How long out of the 1.8 million years has wheat been a staple food for us? Almost a blink of an eye.

Additionally, sugar is difficult for our livers to process because that organ was formed when sugar was only consumed when fruits were in season. Accordingly, besides being overworked, the human liver produces cholesterol particles in the process. Coca-Cola is like a frontal assault on the liver, with the heart being hit as collateral damage through a lifetime. It is no wonder that heart disease is the leading killer of modern man.

Combining these snippets of anthropological food science with the fact that few of us get anywhere near the amount of exercise of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers, we cannot count on the burning of calories nearly as much. By the way, the hunting made our ancestors more muscular and fit (and without the pathogens that have plagued our species ever since we created large societies and domesticated animals).  Even with regular visits to a fitness center, we moderns really must attend to the intake side of the energy budget wherein a surplus of retained calories is bad. To reduce current and accumulated surpluses, we can apply a bit of anthropology with beneficial results.

Because complex carbs can turn into fat while a person sleeps and most exercise typically occurs during the day rather than at night (except, perhaps, in the bedroom), I have shifted my intake of “heavy foods” like bread, pasta, meat, and potatoes to breakfast and lunch. In this mix I have drastically reduced my intake of wheat foods (even whole wheat bread!) because I know my stomach is not well-suited to digesting them. Because fruits and vegetables are of relatively few calories and natural selection has taken them into account in adapting the human stomach, I emphasize them for dinner. I make sure the proportion of fruits and vegetables is than that of wheat foods.

In short, both timing and proportions are in the mix along with food servings when anthropology—taking the millions of years of natural selection as the default—is itself added into the equation in formulating a diet to lose weight. As Plato wrote, much of being virtuous is changing habits. I would add self-discipline in countering the lure of instant gratification as a vital ingredient. In terms of dieting, a changed habit that a person sustains can actually result is a smaller, shrunken stomach. This physiological change can in turn take away some of the pain in applying the self-discipline. Although I do not read published diets, I suspect that this anthropological approach is quite novel.

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[1] 2 million square kilometers or 77,204 square miles.

Arctic Warming: Not Just Another Natural Cycle This Time

In late October 2013, research was published on the average summer temperatures over time in the Canadian Arctic. The scientists found from analyzing deep ice samples and moss only recently freed from the grip of ice that the average temperatures in the twentieth century were the highest going back at least 44,000 years to 120,000 years. The most significant warming did not begin until the 1970s and is particularly striking in the 1992-2012 period. The most significant implication of the study is that the argument that we are merely seeing another natural cycle underway can finally be put on ice.

"The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is," Gifford Miller, one of the study’s scientists, said. "This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."[1] Particularly striking is the phrase, “outside of any kind of known natural variability.” We are in unchartered waters made possible only by melting glaciers. In other words, we could really get blind-sided.

To get some perspective on how long the moss had been encased in ice, our species reached Australia approximately 45,000 years ago. Another 25,000 years earlier (50,000 years after 120,000 years ago!), homo sapiens underwent a cognitive revolution, which resulted in the “fictive mind.” The sapiens brain had via development from natural selection become capable of apriori imaginary realities or ideas. Story-telling in the hunter-gatherer bands (i.e., small groups) no longer be bound to observable (i.e., empirical) phenomenon. After the agricultural revolution based on permanent settlements in place of the nomadic life of the hunter-gatherer, the imaginary ideas of the fictive mind would enable homo sapiens to get past the lack of any “hard-wiring”(via thousands of years of natural selection) enabling members of the species to live in close proximity with many strangers. Larger, more complex social living groups (e.g., cities, kingdoms, and eventually even empires) could be formed and maintained through inter-subjective imaginary ideas.

Perhaps then the question is whether the human fictive mind will be able to harness enough coordinated effort and invention to compensate for the non-natural roller-coaster ride in the twenty-first century.    

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[1] Douglas Main, “Arctic Temperatures Reach Highest Levels in 44,000 Years, Study Finds,” The Huffington Post, October 24, 2013.

The U.S. Government Shutdown: A Future of Clogged Consolidation?

Stalemate. A government shutdown. Well, not actually completely shut down, but significantly enough for many people to suffer as a result. Resisting the temptation to expound off the media reports, I proffer an alternative hypothesis altogether: The continuing impact from natural selection through 70,000 years when the homo sapiens species was in the state of nature manifests even today as an innate proclivity to a sort of wandering myopia. With tigers as predators of man and no available refrigerators for food, natural selection favored an orientation to one’s immediate surroundings and needs. 

The complete essay is at "Is the E.U. a Federal System?"

Are Science and Human Nature at Odds in Climate Change?

“Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time,” says Thomas F. Stocker, co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-sponsored group of scientists who presented their rather definitive report on September 27, 2013. “In short,” Stocker observed, the anticipated change “threatens our planet, our only home.”[1] Not only are the stakes painfully high; human nature itself must come through, perhaps beyond its very nature, for homo sapiens species to make it through the twenty-second century.

The natural human proclivity to seek a (schizogenic) maximum rather than be content with sustaining an equilibrium steady-state had been all too evident in production management alone during the industrial revolution. So too was the human approbation of instant gratification, including attempts to obviate the costs incurred. Accordingly, the 2013 report provides the rather unwelcome news that “(h)uman influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes.”[2]

                                                     The red and purple areas saw increases in avg. temps. Image Source: IPCC

In fact, the report claims, “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”[3] Reflecting advances in the science (e.g., the models), the report “finds a 95 to 100 percent chance that most of the warming of recent decades is human-caused, up from the 90 to 100 percent chance cited in the last report, in 2007.”[4]  Even as the confidence in these findings is improved by 5 percent, such clarified empirical knowledge does not necessarily translate into a brighter future.

 

The likely consequences, according to the report, is a range of potential warming of between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, should the carbon dioxide level double from the amount in already in the atmosphere in 2013. According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in the E.U. the 2013 report is more conservative in its underlying assumptions than the previous report in 2007.

“To stand the best chance of keeping the planetary warming below an internationally agreed target of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the level of preindustrial times, . . . no more than one trillion metric tons of carbon can be burned and the resulting gas released into the atmosphere,” according to the 2013 report.[5] Just over half that amount had already been emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and at the rate energy consumption was growing, the trillionth ton would be released somewhere around 2040.

That as of 2013 more than three trillion tons of carbon were still left in the ground as fossil fuels set the human species up for a confrontation with its own nature along the following lines: Can we keep our paws off the cookies freely within our reach that would make us sufficiently obese that we could die from our overeating? Moreover, just how strong is the species’ self-discipline as against the lure of the pleasure garnished from additional albeit baleful consumption? That 2012 saw record carbon emissions into the earth’s atmosphere suggests a rather dramatic disconnect between what the scientists report and how policy-makers, business practitioners, and consumers react. Incredibly, the two were going in opposite directions!

The flaw is likely in human nature itself. Specifically, the disproportionate worsening of an on-going, un-rectified situation receives too little weight in the human decision-making process on whether to engage immediate correctives (or even damage-control). “Continuing rapid emissions now is kicking the climate can down the road, leaving climate change for our children and grandchildren,” said Christopher B. Field, a scientist working at the time on another intergovernmental study on climate impacts. He added that the can “gets to be bigger, heavier and harder to move with each kick.”[6] Why would rational human beings kick the can nonetheless?

The answer could simply be that for the homo sapiens species through roughly 60,000 years, natural selection favored those humans who focused on the next meal or running away from the tiger closing in. Cognition and perception being limited, attention to solving problems that would turn harmful only much later could be expected to suffer. Put another way, for the vast majority of the species’ existence, societal problems inflicting only or primarily long-term harm did not exist because complex social living arrangements did not exist beyond the intimate relations of a small clan. We cannot expect natural selection to “turn on a dime.” After tens of thousands of years, suddenly humans live in large nations and work in big corporations. Our very design, while being well-adapted to the hunter-gatherer “stone age” human existence, has not sufficiently adapted (yet) to the radically changed agricultural and urban ways of life.

The sapiens name of our species means “knowledge” or “wisdom” in Latin. Such a prideful label notwithstanding, it is worth pondering whether human reason can compensate sufficiently for the lag in adaption. Does reason discount long-term costs (especially those that are low-probability but severe), or is human desire, still oriented to hunter-gatherer needs, as if still going forward even though the species only recently quickly turned left, performing the task? Nietzsche would likely point out that reasoning is simply contending instinctual urges striving to overcome each other. Unfortunately for modern man, the urges have been born and raised in a very different context and are behaving as though they were still in it. It could be that the quick (reckless?) development of complex social arrangements (politically, socially, and economically) will turn out to be our species’ undoing. That is to say, the sheer magnitude of the discounted long-term harm of our own doing could easily come about well before the process of natural selection will have had sufficient generations to effect enough adaptation to rid us of the tyranny of an antiquated human nature.

 

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[1] Justin Gillis, “U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions,” The New York Times, September 27, 2013.

[2] “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis,” The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
[3] Ibid.

[4] Gillis, “U.N. Climate.”

[5] “Climate Change 2013,” IPCC Report

[6] Ibid.

Traditional To Online Publishing: Why Is the Transition So Gradual?

Forging onward to where no one had gone before, the second decade of the 21^st century just catching its breath, the internet in 2011 was already generating the seeds that would subtly yet dramatically revolutionize the world of publishing. Even with traditional publishing houses already making plans to get into digital format as part of an envisioned hybrid market, the alternative of "blogging a book" (by subscription, or profiting off email lists or links to one's "real" books or services) could be expected to reduce manuscript submissions.  Additionally, the higher royalty percentages proffered by digital publishing companies that minimize costs by adapting the old "vanity press" model (without charging authors) could be expected to take a big bite out of the editorial and proof-reading model of the traditional publishing houses. To be sure, even just from their initial adaptations to broaden out to the digital format, such houses were not necessarily expected to become extinct as a species. Nevertheless, the future of publishing could already be seen as happening on the web. The enigma here pertains to why the economic slope toward easier (i.e., sans gatekeepers) and more lucrative publishing has been so sticky.

 

The juxtaposition of very different technologies illustrates the tectonic shift underway. Image Source: Alphapublication.com

 

Undoubtedly, some people found the unfathomable possibilities glimpsed from the internet to be all too alluring. Meanwhile, others held on for dear life to the melting icebergs of traditional publishing as though out of some instinctual reflex hardwired into the human genome. Viewing the shift as a Hegelian leap forward historically in the unfolding spirit of freedom already from the vantage-point of 2013, I found myself mystified as to the sheer gradualness of the massive shift. Inertia? Fear of the unknown? Stifling incomprehension of things very different? Whereas global warming had seemed to hit its threshold rather quickly and the internet was travelling at a rapid velocity through change—perhaps even warping the time-space dimensions in its universe—I found myself wondering when the threshold point of water pouring in would finally sink the vaunted publishing houses that seemed only to be fortifying themselves by closing doors more on passengers deemed marginal (profitwise).

 

I don’t believe the nature of the holdup is merely the refusal of the status quo to give into new theories, as described in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Rather, I think the answer goes back to the staying power, evolutionarily speaking, of tens of thousands of years when homo sapiens lived and passed on genes in a steady-state environment without the artifices of complex societies.  Simply put, just as global warming in the Artic was surpassing the adaptive ability of some northern ecosystems already in 2013, the pace of qualitative change in publishing opportunities was travelling past the speed of the human cognitive-neurological capacity of sense-making, not to mention comprehension and responding to the new stimuli.

Like dinosaurs, traditional publishers could only feel their moorings loosening and wonder what hidden force was causing the tremor. Indeed, the very ground underneath was already slowly moving, with much more kinetic energy to come. Like rats on the Titanic just after the shutter from impact, writers with the least to lose were beginning to sniff around the novel ebook alternative, barely able to make out the foggy shape ahead of an industry without traditional publishers, or at least without their annoying yet presumably necessary gate-keeping function. Vintage labels being required for tenure, young scholars teaching at academic institutions could not very well follow the rats. Meanwhile, tenured scholars were generally too accustomed to their well-worn ways to grasp the potential in publishing online, whether essays (or even chapters in-process) on a blog or entire ebooks linked to a blog and Facebook. With Google getting into the knowledge dissemination “business” and non-profits like Coursera providing free online courses taught by scholars at some of the best universities around, the internet platforms were poised to offer those scholars with some academic freedom and freedom of mind various means to revolutionize not only publishing scholarship, but also doing research and teaching. As in the case of the traditional publishers, the “rub” lies in the capacity of the human mind to move from a long-standing paradigm to think along a new line based in assumptions that would have seemed nonsensical ten or so years earlier.

 

Attached to the industrial framework undergirding the status quo in the modern world that was slowly giving way to another (post-modernity?), traditional publishers reacted by instinct to the sense that the tide was beginning to go out. Specifically, the reactive, knee-jerk strategy hounded costs by letting marginally-profitable authors go in order to prop up profits. It does not necessarily follow that the resulting level of quality would be higher.

 

By 2013, being published online was a formidable alternative to submitting a manuscript to an editor. That some well-established authors had already taken the plunge, even walking from their long-established publishers out onto clear ice with little way of ascertaining its thickness gave the up-and-coming writers enough confidence that they, too, could venture out on the ice without falling through.

 

Whereas the world of traditional publishing was built around scarcity, which could be controlled in order to gain pricing power, the internet platforms thrive in the midst of abundance. Whereas traditional editors are oriented to controlling the content that gets through, the tech mentality is geared to easing the way to publishing so as to maximize content. Whereas traditional publishing depends on mass production of content that can fetch a good price—the manufacturing model of the industrial revolution being still the immediate context—online media companies view themselves as providing services while the users contribute the content.

 

I suspect, however, that the scarcity-abundance dichotomy is overdrawn. Eddies of original content online may in fact be able to capture revenue, assuming that particular users do not “steal” the content by posting it on alternative sites open to the public. Although illegal in terms of copyright law (unless the author allows for duplication or reposting), “stealing” does not seem to quite fit the world of the internet where information is so freely available. Indeed, copyright law itself may turn into a leaky sieve that must inevitably give way on the internet. As in the case of laws forbidding pot, any presumed sense of control may finally be deemed illusory. Assuming sufficient enforcement of copyright law and the existence of writing that is well-crafted, unique, and of value to readers, the internet may turn out to be a spectrum of information ranging from free to highly monetized. Blogs that are essentially diaries will probably remain open-access, whereas on the other extreme ebooks will be priced sufficiently that writers can make a living from them (perhaps by building a large readership up first through a cost-leadership strategy).

 

Even for a given contributor of content, the spectrum may apply. Established scholars, for example, might sell an ebook for a decent price to recoup all the work that went into the research and writing. The same scholar might embed lecture videos in free blog posts that together make up a “book” or “course” that serves as a vehicle by which to bring certain ideas to as many minds as possible. Just as there are pitfalls in “stealing” suddenly not making sense, the potential for leaps in creativity  can be glimpsed just from the sudden obsolescence of  “book” and “course” in figuring out just what something never before seen online is.  “For this world in its present form is passing away.”[1]

 

According to Michael Wolff, traditional publishers focus “on what ought, or what ought not, to be said.” They hold the cards—the control—and they relish it. Like horses with blinders on, they “can only look on in wonder and stupefaction” at what blogging and ebook platforms have been doing.[2] Particularly baffling, attempts to control scarcity in the midst of abundance in order to gain pricing power can only be futile. From the standpoint of the industrial mass-production framework that assumes scarcity, that it is the content that is the product and has market value, and that mass production is necessary to capitalize on economies of scale, it’s all about controlling the scarcity to gain pricing power.  Where the dissemination of content cannot be controlled, the traditional editor would sooner face exhaustion than make the cognitive leap to the new assumptions that don’t seem to make sense.[3]

 

In short, as the web evolves like an ecosystem trying to keep up with accelerating climate change, the apparently sudden arrival of new species on the internet naturally confronts the eye and leaves the human mind grasping for linguistic straws that are too brittle to bend and thus to make sense out of the foreign things. As a result, the lag or gap between the emergence of a potentially fecund online opportunity and actual usage on a large scale can be considerable. I suspect the mind of a homo sapiens can only take so much of the unrecognizable before disorientation as an obstacle in itself to be surmounted kicks in. Because the internet is not based on the old assumptions of the industrial revolution, the human mind is particularly vulnerable to crashing when trying to use new apps or platforms and stubbornly resistant to rebooting using a different operating system and browser. By implication, tech people could help the rest of us out by putting more effort into including basic explanations of what it is that they have created and how to get started.   

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[1] 1 Cor. 7:31.

[2] Michael Wolff, “’Reader’s Digest’ For the Digital Era,” USA Today, September 15, 2013.

[3] If you have seen the ending of the film, The Others (starring Nicole Kidman), you have an idea of how disorienting it can be to have one’s fundamental assumptions turned inside-out. It is as though societal assumptions somehow get infused into our very being. Not only do we resist any extractions and replacements, many of us may instinctually freeze-up from the sheer extent of disorientation in stumbling upon the unrecognizable alien.