WikiLeaks and Baghdad killings

Last week in class we discussed the value of revealing political secrets, with particular attention paid to the controversy over WikiLeaks. I was immediately reminded of a video that my friend suggested concerning some unwarranted killings that took place in Baghdad by some American soldiers. The video, which was disclosed by a brave American soldier named Bradley Manning, shows a group of innocent men being unexpectedly shot at by some troops in a helicopter. This is an event that I would readily categorize as a terrorist attack; yet, seeing as it is taking part on behalf of the United States Army, it is unlikely that it will ever be shown on the news, and the small number of Youtube views attests to this claim. I believe that this video, if seen by more people, has the potential to stimulate social change. For one, it might encourage soldiers to rethink their position, while those considering joining the army might think twice before doing so. Furthermore, it might encourage some to reassess the possible connection between video games and physical war. I am in no way claiming that there is a verifiable connection between the two, for I do not have the empirical evidence to prove this. However, when I consider games such as America’s Army, which was invented for the purpose of recruiting gamers into the U.S. Army, I find it difficult to entirely dismiss the idea that there is a connection between video games and war. Indeed, some of the dialogue provided by the U.S. soldiers in this clip vaguely resembles that of a gamer. But these are simply thoughts of my own, so I urge all of you to watch this video and offer an opinion; and please share it with as many people as possible.

Facebook Profiles

In the virtuality lecture we discussed how one manages their Facebook and cultivates a certain facework or impression through it (using tactics such as accumulating many friends etc). In this sense, Facebook is hierarchical and it is possible to move up and down in the ranks, increasing or decreasing your virtual worth. This reminded me of a very witty piece I read online last month from another blog - it's an interesting take on social / virtual currency.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/how-to-appear-cooler-on-facebook-than-you-really-are/

- emma

Egypt shuts down the Internet

In case you haven't heard, there is a bit of a revolution happening across the globe. Tunisia was successful in their revolution and now Egyptians are protesting. People have been communicating via the Internet to organize protests and get the word out. Now, the Egyptian authorities have essentially shut down the Internet in an attempt to censor the people that it is supposed to serve. People were even removing the passwords from their WiFi networks to allow protesters to communicate with each other and the world. Obviously this all ties in with what was discussed in class with offensive images and censorship.

People are now starting to gather in Jordan in protest of the government. Syria has already shut down Internet access, probably as a preemptive measure before people get too organized. This is the power of the Internet.

Did you think "Well, that's in Egypt, who cares?" Guess what, it could happen here too. In the US, a bill was introduced allowing the president to basically shut down the Internet in the US. Please also consider that in Canada there are only four corporations controlling ALL your data: Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw. Other ISPs are just resellers using the big guys' lines (and with usage based billing that they pushed the smaller ISPs can no longer be competitive, but that's another thing you should be angry about.) Do you really trust your information in the hands of these corporations?

Internet: Serious business.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8288163/How-Egypt-shut-down-the-internet.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/28/egypt-just-turned-of.html

Facebook hacked

On Tuesday's tutorial we discussed the ideology behind the internet and how internet users are not necessarily privatized online as one would so believe. Facebook, as the majority of us use, may not keep our online world solely to ourselves. It has the potential to release our personal information or "leak it" globally. Today I came home and, as per usual, checked CP24 for the latest news. While reading the new captions, Facebook was apparently hacked. On a side note, its ironic how this happened immediately after we spoke about it in class, but nevertheless, below is a URL that explains the events of this incident.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9206501/Mark_Zuckerberg_s_Facebook_page_apparently_hacked

Arguments for privacy?

Following today's discussion of wikileaks in tutorial, I was reminded of a very interesting op-ed I read regarding transparency, secrecy and wikileaks. The article, "In Defense of Secrecy", was written by a former diplomat in Indonesia called Scott Gilmore. The article can be read here.

Alan Watts - Man is a Hoax

An interesting talk by Alan Watts. It's about 15 minutes long in total. Watts discusses identity, how children are raised which leads to why society is the way it is today. It breaks down some of the expectations that society has of each individual, and our self-concept.

Virtual, Social, and Immortal

During the podcast, The Virtual Revolution, the comments about possible problems of young people today who actively use the Internet (...who may come to regret their actions later on), it reminded me of a story I heard from a friend about how she felt awkward about underclassmen from our highschool (who my friend had never met) 'friend request' her on Facebook. For these underclassmen, she mentioned, having a lot of 'friends' is the important part, not actual personal relations. Plus, she was a popular girl, so I guess it was all the more better for these kids to want her as a 'friend'.
The notion of (virtual and/or real-life) social status and relationships plays a big role in our lives, and as the podcast mentioned, the 'web makes us immortal' since the things we post or do on the web are preserved. The non-stop flow of information when I open Facebook annoy me at times because sometimes there are things that I do *not* want to know. For example, without thinking much, I accepted a friend request from a girl I met just once in my entire life and have never met since. To be honest, I don't know her that well (well, hardly at all), but her Facebook posts keep coming up on my page whenever I log in, as if I knew her well. It 'immortalized' our interaction from that day, unlike casual conversations I might have with a stranger which will remain as an ephemeral experience. Of course, if you ever want to meet that person again it's a problem, but to be given private (intimate) information of someone I hardly know is awkward because it is simply irrelevant to me. The 'newsfeeds' about a girl I don't really know coming up on my Facebook page is obviously because I made a 'choice' to add her as a friend. Awkward choices like the one I made, or how young people recklessly try to increase the number of 'friends' on Facebook, are examples of how the things we do online are not casual at all, but as the podcast mentioned, it is very revealing, a constant reminder of ourselves and our actions, like the recommendation engines that propose 'what you might want' based on previous purchases.

Unbounded Locality and 'O Noir', the Restaurant

The other day, when we discussed virtuality and unbounded locality, it reminded me of my experience I had at a restaurant called O Noir. This restaurant, (which is located in Toronto) provides a unique, physically unbounded experience for the customer. The setting is pitch black – no lights or digital devices are allowed within the restaurant. The premise for the restaurant is meant to replicate the experience of a blind person. Using self-perception, the customers are forced to use their imagination, sensory, impressions and thoughts to adapt to their loss of sight and conceptualize their sense of space. Upon entering the restaurant and being overwhelmed by compete darkness, an acute feeling of spatial displacement takes over your senses. It's as if there is a sensory vacuum – because of your sudden loss of sight – that takes time to adapt to. Once I settled into my seat, I began to conceptualize what I thought the restaurant looked like, how big it was, and how it was organized. The voices of other customers were heightened as I began to use sound as a guide for perceiving my surroundings. (the restaurant, people, etc)

In the end, it was definitely an experience I will never forget. I recommend this place to those of you who have not been to O Noir!

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/01/15/porn_in_relationships

thought this was an interesting link relating to what we were talking about in class last week !

-Jasmina

The Secret You

This is an excellent documentary that I came across earlier today. It explores issues surrounding consciousness, "self" awareness, mirror-stage, death awareness, and lots of stuff that ANT323 folks may find interesting. Hope you get a chance to watch the whole doc, it's about an hour long, but totally worth it. :)

Do You Really Know Me?

I don’t know how many people have seen the MTV TV show that began airing earlier this year called “If You Really Knew Me”, but it is a quite an interesting premise for a reality show.

The show follows a group which goes around to high schools in the United States of America where there have been long-standing problems of social group division, bullying, prejudice or racism. Two speakers are sent to the school to host a day of events with the intention of breaking down the judgement and division between the different students, called a Challenge Day. Some of the activities include identifying the societal expectations forced on both genders, having people break into groups to share a secret with about seven or eight other students in their grade and also having students publicly apologize to other students who they might have hurt through bullying or their prejudice.

While the intentions of the group are right; they want to lower the levels of prejudice and judgement in the high schools that they visit, it is interesting that the way that MTV seems to format the show only directs the audience’s attention to the divides within each school.

The show’s format specifically follows about five or six students who will be participating in the Challenge Day, and the show labels these individuals as clearly belonging to different social groups, such as ‘Jocks, ‘Popular’, ‘Loners’, ‘Nerds’, ‘Band Geeks’ et cetera. These stereotypical high school cliques that have been repeated over and over again in teen movies are being associated with the students highlighted in this show. Sometimes when the students are doing their own introductory videos, they even identify themselves with one of these titles.

Why, in a show that is trying to erase these social cliques and their boundaries, do they immediately identify the students they have chosen to highlight with these terms? I believe it points to the idea that the audience watching this show wouldn’t be able to completely process the events occurring if they did not have a base set of assumptions that they could associate to each of the students introduced. It is almost as if the students in the show have to be in some way turned into characters in order for the audience to properly identify with them.

In other reality TV shows, such as Jersey Shore which we have discussed often in class, the shows are much more direct in the way that they either chose people for the show that are like characters from scripted TV shows, or they portray them in very stereotypical ways. Yet whether it is done directly or more subversively, it seems to be a trend among reality TV shows to create caricatures of these real people. I think this is reflective of the inherent need for our society to have some set list of attributes from which we can form judgements. In order for our society to properly comprehend or empathize with another, a certain precedence of that person’s personality must be formed, even if it is based off of judgements and stereotypes.

Judging is not in the ‘holiday spirit’

It’s the season of giving, the season of brotherly love, the season of peace on earth. Who knew it was also the time of year when one’s social class is judged by their holiday decorations.

In class, we looked at houses around Toronto and judged the social class of the inhabitants based on the year-round decor they had put up. So it really doesn’t come as a surprise that holiday decorations are also indicative of social class.

Interestingly, Nate Burkus recently commented on his show The Nate Burkus Show about how the colours of lights that you put up reflect differently. With houses that have a lot of lights, if the lights are all different colours then the overall look will be jumbled and confused, however if all of the lights are white then it will seem peaceful and calm.

Does this insinuate that others walking past your house might be subconsciously judging your social class based on not just the decorations but even just the colours of the lights? In my opinion, Nate Burkus’ advice suggests that white lights are classier than their coloured counterparts. And I think that the majority of the population would agree that there is a class distinction between a house with minimal holiday decorations and one where the yard is littered with full size reindeer and blow-up snow men.

Take a look at this house I saw in downtown Toronto.

It definitely stood out among its neighbourhood, where most houses had minimal or no decorations.

I think that many people would judge these decorations to be tacky and would make the assumption that the occupants were of lower middle class or working class, much in the same way that we judged the photos of houses in class earlier in the year. It is interesting to consider why we make the association that these plastic decorations and bright multi-coloured lights are stylistically gauche. Is it because the majority of these decorations are made of cheap, plastic material? Is it because they can be bought quite inexpensively at a retail store such as Wal-Mart or Honest Ed’s? Is it because the jumble of ornaments and lights looks cluttered and uncaringly placed? Or is it simply due to the fact that the majority of our society associates a more minimalistic approach to decor to a higher social class, shown through everything from home decor to the plating of food at restaurants?

Whatever the reasoning is behind these societal associations to holiday decor, the fact remains that we continue to judge one another based on material possessions – the idea being broadened from the old saying “you are what you eat” to “you are what you buy”.

Myths

I just wanted to share a "mythical" image with the class. I remembered it as soon as we saw the picture of the mutilated Afghan girl, but thought of it again just now because I am in Pakistan, my home country, for winter break and thought I would say something about my experience here.



I would think, considering that we are all familiar with the insidious manipulation and effect of popular images, that it goes without saying that this image is obviously a lie, or hyperbolic, for the reluctant. I have grown up and lived in Pakistan my entire life, and of course, life for me is very different from what it would be for a foreign visitor, but I can safely say that I have never ever encountered such vicious-looking, teeth-baring men here. This is not to suggest that Pakistan is a haven of peace. We have our problems, lots of them, and yes there are frequent blasts and attacks and fighting going on, but that is still the exception, not the norm. Life, for most people, goes on as routine and ordinary (how else can it be, anyway? Life must go on).
The picture also implies another myth: that only men (and beareded ones, at that) exist in Pakistan and they probably keep any women oppressed and inside. This is also untrue, unlike the popular images of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia that people in the west have. Women are very much part of the public sphere here.

On class and taste

A while back a friend invited me to the opera to see Death in Venice which is based on the novella by Thomas Mann and turned into an operatic performance by Benjamin Britten. Now I do not claim to be well-versed in the classical arts, although my friend, G, fares much better and is a regular at such events. However, neither one of us were familiar with this particular piece beyond vaguely recalling have heard of it and that in itself was justification enough of its greatness and thus, worthiness of seeing. Also, we had cheap student tickets, and you don’t say no to an occasion to dress up and rub shoulders with the high-browers of Toronto who nonchalantly sip their champagnes during intermission whilst looking out the glass windows of the beautiful Four Seasons at the commoners below.

Our expectations were disappointed with painful slowness as we kept waiting for the real action to begin. The show was mind-numbingly boring, with what seemed to be too much repetition, of both thought and action, to me. Briefly (and badly put), the story involves an aging German writer suffering from writer’s block of sorts who decides to take a trip to Italy to find inspiration. While there, he encounters a beautiful teenage Polish boy and becomes obsessed with him, and eventually dies in the end, just as the boy begins to respond to his attentions. But I don’t know this from having watched the opera. G and I were so frustrated (and bored!) by the unexpected nature of the plot and the incredibly slow pace of the show that we walked out during the intermission. Despite our limited knowledge of art (rather social, and political) history, we decided that the story was decidedly too “modern” for us, with its austere set, the presentation of random-running-on-the-beach as dancing, and of course, its theme of homosexual love (let me make clear that I am not a homophobe, I am simply referring to the emergence of the subject in artistic expression as a modern phenomenon, but I could be wrong there too).

The reason I have just narrated this rather irrelevant sounding anecdote is to analyze the whole experience in terms of some social concepts we have been discussing in class, primarily questions of class and culture. And I will be putting myself on the line in the process, so bear with me.

I find it curious why, or rather, how a taste for “art” is considered “refined” and has become synonymous with eliteness. I cannot speak for my friend, G, who is a regular at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Four Seasons, but I know that an opportunity to go to such events sends me into a flurry of excitement and stressing over how to dress. This last time, I mentioned to an Aunt that I would be going to see an opera and she very seriously urged me to really dress properly, we didn’t want people there thinking that “brown people don’t know how to dress”! Of course, I put on my nice dress and make-up, but was grossly disappointed to see G rushing inside in jeans. Other people were in their finery too, but more casual clothing did not seem out of place either.

As to the content of the show, I could feign an appreciation for that. I genuinely enjoy music and performances and “art” and do not indulge just to satisfy some fancy fantasy of mine, but my appreciation and understanding is limited and admittedly, largely aesthetic (so call me simple). However, this show was beyond redemption in my opinion, and it gave my slightly-dented artistic opinion some satisfaction to hear the washroom-talk concur with my views.

Anyway, to put it briefly, even though we look at “class and culture” in class (no pun intended) from an academic point of view which inadvertently always removes ourselves from the picture (yes I know this course is about studying ourselves, but I think we always think of the material as referring to “others”), such concerns are relevant to us all at some level, be it going to the opera, or wondering how to dress for dinner at a fancy restaurant, or deciding between your friend who wants to go to the art gallery and the one who wants to have beer at the pub.