I read a couple of provocative items tonight. Joe Bageant’s “Escape from America” provides distance and perspective on the malaise affecting us all. Joe says,
Tomorrow I will not worry about losing my ass in the declining real estate market. I will not commute three nerve grinding hours a day, or nervously engorge myself in front of my laptop for hours on end. Nor will I or wake up with the crimes of the empire running like adding machine tape in my head, annotated with all the ways I contributed to those crimes by participating in the American lifestyle.
And I read this from Eric Fair, a man whose sleep is not as settled:
I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.
I suspect Tom Matrullo belongs in the “sleeping well” category… I’ll mention two of his recent posts. The first provides sweet and thoughtful contrast to some recent rantings and maunderings from Dave Winer. Tom says,
Dave Winer thinks National Public Radio needs to do more listener-driven programming – his example is “This I believe”-type podcasting.
I thank the stars every time it occurs to me that Winer does not program anything on NPR.
Doc says he’s thinking about how NPR can get more funding.
I don’t believe Dave’s “solutions” go to the heart of the matter. And it’s unclear where Doc wants to go with his question. I’ve been thinking about NPR’s trajectory for a while, having listened fairly continuously since the early 70s, when its major news formats began taking form.
Over time, NPR has developed chattery, abrasive noise. This, plus it’s fallen victim to the self-enclosed feedback loop of playing to the audience that fills its coffers.
Not unlike Dave, I think. A week or so ago when Dave gratuitously inserted himself in a speaking role at the 2007 Public Media Conference I asked him why he didn’t choose to attend and learn, to listen and contribute as a member of the group instead of bullying his way into the front row, pontificating, and wasting bandwidth with a rant that will be self serving and ill-informed. He didn’t get my drift. He’s preparing though, thinking about his own contribution to public media and mulling that over in his blog. Today he says,
Monday, February 12, 2024 by Dave Winer.
9 times out of 10, I don’t give money to public radio stations, because once you do, you never hear the end of it.
A few weeks ago, in response to a request for support from On The Media podcast, I gave $100 to WNYC. I don’t even live in NY. Now I’m getting a steady stream of spam from them with all kinds of special offers. This really sucks.
Of course I have asked to be removed from the spam list, and how tacky is it to ask for a pledge less than a month after getting a gift of $100.
A hundred bucks. What can I say besides I think that about covers Dave’s contribution to public radio up to now. Hey, but how do I know he hasn’t dropped a six figure contribution into KPFA, his local public radio station, or subsidized KQED to the tune of a million bucks? I don’t know that. I only know that after he laid chump change on WNYC, he thought that gave him the right to have input to their fund raising process. I’m hoping he’s not there to waste the air while I’m in Boston next weekend.
In a separate but perhaps not unrelated post, Tom notes that “…calling for the commodity-driven markets to have the relationship modalities of gift economies remains a call that goes unanswered.” I’ve tied this thought to something Bageant said, “Everything is a goddamned identity in America, writing included. Identity is a racket in a nation of media controlled clones. And besides, who wants to be a one trick pony in the consumer zombie parade?”
These are rough words, but perhaps at least tangentially relevant to the VRM conceptual initiative that Doc has underway. Giving the “consumer” the illusion of control by providing an automated approach to resolving problems like single sign-on and fraud protection sounds like more of a sales job than a community building exercise to me. But this observation is just a shout out. Doc and a lot of serious people have been working hard on the VRM and Digital Identity stuff. It’s going to take me more than a few nights casual reading to catch up enough to offer an informed opinion.
Frank, how much money do you have to give to a charity before you’re entitled to an opinion about them spamming you?
And by the way, just FYI, last time we met was at a conference where I paid to participate, and just listened, didn’t speak. The last three conferences I went to were like that. I wanted to speak at this one because I have something to say. Not ashamed of that, and I don’t think calling me names is a very nice thing for you to do.
How about reverting to your mensch-like personna, I don’t like this nasty flamebaiting curmudgeon very much.
Over time, NPR has developed chattery, abrasive noise. This, plus it’s fallen victim to the self-enclosed feedback loop of playing to the audience that fills its coffers.
I’ll toss out Radio Open Source – a PRI program – that seems to be doing a good job dancing between ‘the old days’ and this new-fangled internet thing. They solicit program ideas from listeners. When an idea gels it gets it’s own post, people comment. Comments are incorporated into part of the show and thrown at the guests. Listeners can come back after the show and comment more.
All with a nice little group of regular posters. And (so far as I can tell) not a poo-flinging monkey in the lot.
Frank,
I do like it when you speak your mind. Your “mensch-like” personna is OK but only as a reaction to others. I suspect you’ve just lost patience with Winer’s form of “leading the discussion”.
I think Dave’s post about NPR asking for more money was petty.
It’s pretty simple to “auto file” mail from any offending sources and just move on. But Dave uses the power of the blog to try to change everything in the world that offends him.
NPR is figthing for it’s very existence. Dave’s $100 won’t change that. If they didn’t try to get more money from their supporters then we’d see even more Corporate influence over their content. Of course, they have active and persistent fund raising efforts… duh.
If Dave asked them for a price to avoid ALL requests I’m sure they’d be willing to propose a suitable figuring for making him “special” in that regard.
This show was brought to you by a generous endownment from the “Dave Winer Trust for Open Media in the Public Interest”.
Something way beyond a $100 check. Like some percentage of the funds genearted from selling Weblogs.com’s “ping server” to Verisign for $2.15 million.
Of course, you don’t make money from blogging… you make money because you created a software product that enable blogging and embedded a ping service in that software and others used it too… and then you retired and sold the ping site. See… there’s NO money in blogging. There’s money in services. Not a charity… a service that’s monetizeable… some thing you can capitalize on.
Dave had a similar NPR rant regarding them asking for money after he gave them a “What I Believe” submission… implying that the request was linked to the submission.
Dave’s on a mission for his next phase… he’s going to hang up the ol’ blog on April 1 and move in to the world of journalism, politics or a new start-up.
The only clues he’s giving are repeated mention of the “perfect iPod” which he appears to be “designing” by asking for users to list some specs and hope it finds someone willing to build it.
Dave’s perfect iPod will be programmable and not need a “mothership”. I’ll wager he hits 60 before the product is available. His specs seem to broad to be achieveable in a small device… but I WOULD love to be wrong.
Such a “podcatcher” would have all the fucntionality of a laptop and a phone and fit in my shirt pocket. “Beam up up, Scotty.” The iPhone is close but the reality of that device is that it’s a fixed function… there’s not much memory available for user programs. Larger flash memory parts will change that.
Frank,
You’re still a mensch-like personna… I still don’t see this post as being excessively nasty. If Betsy Devine reads it you may get scolded for hurting Dave’s feelings (join the club).
Dave may intend to stop blogging but he hasn’t stopped wanting to change the world… one conference at a time. It’s bound to get ugly.
Betsy might be sending out notes fast and furious when Dave starts “teaching us all” how to fix America .
He’s not ready for the world of politics. The world of politics will only want his money… not his advice. He won’t give them much and they won’t take his advice.
But, I’m a schmuck, so my opinion may not matter. At least I KNOW I’m a schmuck.
i was mulling this post over yesterday. i sat with the tragedy of eric fair’s experience for a while and then took time to read joe bageant’s whole blog. i took it further by asking chris locke if he had ever run into him in boulder (and if he had any info i might be interested in knowing — hoping, of course, it would be gossipy and astounding). gathering information. my job. HE HAD NOTHING.
when i read the winer thing, i did go and listen to a "this i believe" segment from npr. it was a sappy piece of crap about how no one imagines their daughter will grow up to be a heroin addict. douché.
i have never given dollar one to npr. they annoy me. and they fucking DO have ads people. pew and shit. i think i’m at least as qualified to have an opinion on their fund raising process as this or any other big mac bag lady. i would have to agree with winer on this.
winer is as essential as an asshole.
i don’t see any name calling or flamebaiting curmudgeoness though. i would consider "Did you see that megalomanic winer had the tasteless perhaps hardon informed idiocy to let that illiterate techwhore ponzi talk him into a disgusting orange couch that rosanne barr, anna nicole smith and kobi bryant probably passed on?" nasty.
I haven’t given NPR a dime either, although I have contributed to local public radio and TV from time to time. They have to catch me during their insufferable pledge drives though, since I don’t have them on any list of scheduled donations. When you pay into local media, you support NPR because they charge for their syndicated shows.
Hey! I think Dave should get a penny whenever anyone opens an RSS feed! He did invent it you know. There’s nothing wrong with that couch that a few decades of dog hair and cat puke won’t cure.
That orange couch is important: it creates the opportunity for Dave to shift any conversation back to the Orange “XML” button that appears on millions of web pages and means:
Click this for a page of the most confusing text available on the Web.
(Dave relates: “It’s really NOT that hard to understand… It’s clearly labeled data.”)
Soon, his helpless victim is falls asleep.
“And the enclosure element is the essential foundation for podcasting.”
Z-Z-Z-Z…