Hazy Boundaries

I like writing poetry, on the occasion some thought inspires me to weave my thoughts and feelings into a word-painting. I'd also like to share them with an audience, get some feedback and provoke discussion, but something always holds me back: the risk of someone stealing my work.

On the Internet, people play fast and loose with rules, bending them, breaking them with impunity, relatively safe within the anonymous mass. Unless you're a serial downloader on the RIAA's hitlist, or on the federal hitlist for other things, there's plenty you can get away with.

I speak mainly of copyright laws, though the same sort of incursions on other individual rights also frequently occur. Music, movies, books (look no further than leaked versions of the last Harry Potter book), and art all become so vulnerable, once placed in the vast unregulated reservoir of the Web. And regulation, or lack of it, is the key point. (The Founders must've thought that the commerce clause was pretty clever in dealing with boundaries- what a headache the Internet would have given them). The absolute freedom of this decentralized medium is what makes it great, but it also puts the intellectual property of many at risk.

With a click, you can share your ideas with the world; but with another, you can also share someone else's without attribution. That's not to say this doesn't happen in the world of print and hard copies. After all, plagiarism and accusations of plagiarism have long plagued scholars, artists, musicians, and other thinker-creators. Still, the scope of such unlawful copying is more limited than what it would be on the Internet.

So the main reason for this post comes down to a plea, an appeal to the good nature of the Internet audience, an argument for attributional responsibility. (I may be wasting my breath, I know, but at least I'm trying): Please. Don't pass off as your own what is not yours. Think of the artist, the poet, the scientist, the analyst who labored to create what it is you're enjoying, and give them their due, be it proper payment, or simply a citation.

And if you share this with someone else, please give me credit.

In Protest Against Reality Checks

Remember Handi-Snacks Cheez'n'Crackers? Yeah, I'm talking about those packages of artificial cheese, crackers, and the little red plastic rectangle that served as a spreader. Ubiquitous component of the elementary lunch or mid-morning snack scene; crucial currency in classroom economics, where a single cracker (or one of those "breadsticks," even) with cheese might be worth a few Cheetoes or Doritoes; honey and ambrosia of the first-grader.

While my present health-conscious sensibilities cringe at the unsophisticated palate of my former self, Handi-Snacks do hold their nostalgic place in my school memories. However, I'm not here to praise them. You see, I blame Nabisco (or whatever the controlling conglomerate was at the time) for bursting my imaginary and imaginative bubble. For beginning the process of crashing into the real world all too soon. For my first reality check. For some people, this moment comes when they first begin to doubt or are suddenly informed that Santa Claus doesn't exist. With me, it was Handi-Snacks.

This is the story. I was 5 or thereabouts, maybe a bit younger, when I first became aware of the snack packages through television (behold the power of advertising). The commercial featured various children enthusiastically eating the cheese-and-cracker concoctions and subsequently jumping or running or waddling about. They had different footgear on, you see, be they scuba flippers or running shoes or snowshoes, and in walking off they left a set of snazzy purple/blue/turquoise-colored footprints in their wake. I thought it was the coolest thing.

I eventually badgered my mother into buying some of the snacks, carefully spread the "cheese" on a cracker, took a bite, walked a few steps, and twisted around to look for my snazzy-colored footprints. As you may expect, nothing. Biggest disappoinment of my five-year-old life.

Though it didn't bring all my castles in the air crashing to earth (I've still managed to keep a few aloft), that little episode raised the first sneaking suspicion that what I read in books and saw in movies or heard in stories might not be real, and for a child happy in her imaginary world, it was somewhat traumatic. After all, I remember it to this day. Has to count for something.

So Handi-Snacks, I blame you. And your supermegacorporate conglomerate parent. I dust my hands free of your mass-produced, preservative-laden crackers and your misleading marketing campaigns.

Now, where are my water crackers and Brie? I have tea with the Mad Hatter.

Technological Saturation

From Thu, May 15, 2008

Media, media, media. Internet, blogging, IM, texting, Myspace, Facebook, Blackberrys, pagers, iPhones, laptops, palmtops, cell phones....

Allow me to reintroduce an old-fashioned voice of concern, the one that usually resurfaces at the introduction of any innovation and is duly dismissed as over-conservative or pigheadedly stuck in the Middle Ages: Is all this technology really connecting people, or are we losing the human touch?

Now, this concern is but a tame shadow of the dystopian predictions of Huxley and Orwell. I'm not saying we're turning into slaves of machines, here. Nor am I a Luddite. But consider these situations: instead of going downstairs or even turning around to talk to your roommate, you IM her; instead of writing a letter or an email to an old friend, you simply glance over his Facebook profile or away message and leave a trite phrase on his wall; instead of full sentences, we rely on the shorthand of emoticons and texting abbreviations to communicate.

Part of this has to do with the charm of using technology. We do it because we can. Part of it is that those of my generation are physically separated from our closest friends, across state and national borders, and technology is the easiest and quickest way to connect. The issue, I think though, is that we don't connect as much as we'd like to.

Modern society is a mass society, in which individuals are part of the mass, but are isolated individuals within it, according to propaganda scholar Jacques Ellul. A mass, not a community. While I don't think it's quite so simple as to how we succumb to propaganda, there's something to be said for that feeling of isolation, and how we use our gadgets to manage it.

I would propose that this is partly why people post so much information online. We sense there's a community out there in cyberspace, one with similar tastes and passions and interests, and we want to know it, be part of it. I want my friends to know what I'm doing when I fill in that "What's your status" box. I want to tell people I enjoy fluffy towels fresh from the dryer. I put my opinions and thoughts up on a blog or a note. Because I want a response. It's an affirmation of my existence, in this isolated state.

We've seen how globalization is changing and essentially shrinking our world. But look at the tensions and conflicts and misunderstandings running rampant. More than ever, we need to connect. And we need to make sure the hands pressing the keys or maneuvering the touchscreen can still connect in a direct, human way.

On Crushes

From Thu, Mar 6, 2008

I wonder where the more recent variants of "crush" came from, specifically when used as a suffix like "man-crush," meaning a heterosexual man's strong liking/admiration/affection for another man. "Woman-crush" isn't used quite so often, but same idea.

Think of what these phrases imply, though. They are meant to express in a more socially "acceptable" way different degrees of liking or love that aren't acceptable. Or "normal." (Particularly for men, who seem as a social group to fear being emasculated, whether by having "their" territory encroached on by women or by accusation of homosexuality...my "women and communication" class has taken over my life).

English doesn't provide us with many options to express our different degrees of love, liking or lust. Those three words are pretty much it right there. Regarding the former, the oft-cited example of linguistic nuance are the Greek words "eros," "philia" and "agape," signifying passionate, fraternal/sororal and compassionate love, respectively. I'm sure other languages have better ways of putting it, too. In American culture, at least, not only the language is a barrier, but also the association of sex with love. Sex often underlies the use of "love," so what do we do? We qualify "crush" and "love" with other terms to avoid the sexual association. Using these qualifiers is at once apologetic and defiant: "Yes, I'm accommodating social norms by my indirect phrasing, but what I'm referring to, what I'm doing, is not the norm. I'm not following it."

Case in point, here's a song about "Guy Love" from Scrubs, the musical episode.