Those systems that don’t produce the outcomes we desire? We can change them, right?
The theory is easy. There’re inputs and outputs. We say we want more of this than that, and we set it to accept certain types of inputs, and tweak the desired output level, and voila.
The reality is complicated. Systems are not simple black-box processes we can toy with in isolation. They exist in relationship with other systems. Sometimes they’re part of massively nested sets of such complexity that it’s really hard to figure out what’s going on, let alone understand what changes will have what effects (see: the global economy).
Economists are a perfect case, actually. Lots of extremely smart people invest a lot of time into developing comprehensive models of the economic system, what goes in and what comes out and how changing x will affect y. Everything’s riding on these models – everyone wants them to be accurate as they can be. But, as those who heard This American Life last week know, even the most highly paid analysts don’t really know what the heck is going on.
For any system complex enough to survive in the real world, it’s tough to make adjustments that give the desired results, and even tougher to make adjustments that only give the desired results.
This doesn’t make us helpless, though, because every system is ultimately responsive to our human characteristics. This fact might give us some clues about where might find points of intervention.
(to be continued, but in a few days, because I need to think this next step through some more. and some examples might be nice too, instead of just talking in generalities all the time)
(I had planned to blog about something completely different all this week, but this is what’s come out. huh.)
Category: mediawatch
[mediawatch] *Sigh* DomPost does it again
In today’s DomPost, an article by Paul Easton about John Key’s decision to go to Copenhagen, as blogged extensively here last week.
Boxout section headed “Tackling The Environment”, in its entirety:
Lucy Lawless, actress: “There is no planet B. Let’s go about the business of tackling climate change. Our Government needs to sign on to a 40 per cent reduction target by 2020.”
Gerrit van der Lingen, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition: “I hope no agreement will be reached. After all, there is no scientific evidence human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming. Actually, the planet has been cooling for the last 10 years while CO2 levels kept on increasing. I call it the greatest scam in human history.”
Joe Milne, 19, shoe salesman, Wadestown: “It’s going to be a problem for my kids, and their kids. It’s good that Key’s going; you need the top figures there.”
Angelica Vestin, 27, mother, Tawa: “Hopefully it will not just be talking, and it will lead to some real action. Climate change does have an effect on the Earth, and it’s something that everyone can do something about.”
Why did Paul Easton feel the need to invite comment from the Climate “Science” Coalition?
Why did Paul Easton think it was fine to include that comment without any contrary scientific voice?
Does Paul Easton understand the implicit messages that result when you balance the concerns of three laypeople against the contrary views of someone identified with science?
Just… for heaven’s sake. Paul Easton – or, of course, the subeditors/editors who achieved this result – you get a big fat FAIL for this.
Ignorance is Priceless
Yeah, I know, I’m about to rant about advertising again. Sorry.
The new Mastercard Moments “Pebble” campaign bothers me more than any other ad in recent memory. I saw it first as a print spot (see it here), then discovered it had a TV incarnation as well.
The print ad shows a lush landscape, with a timeline superimposed. The timeline describes geological activity over millenia that led to a particular pebble sitting beside a lake. A dad has just skipped the pebble across the water, impressing his son. The clincher: “Not knowing what goes into a moment: priceless.”
The campaign is by McCann Worldgroup (warning: their website is really poorly designed). They helpfully outline the reasoning behind the campaign here:
“Show MasterCard Moments as the enabler to making having priceless experiences easier, without you having to worry about a thing… Unbeknown to him is everything that gone into making that [moment] happen for him.”
Oooh I hate it so much. The phrasing they use is just so obnoxious. “Not knowing what goes into a moment”, i.e. being ignorant. In this case, ignorance of the natural world and the scale on which it operates, of the massive interconnectedness of the global eco-system, of the many complex contingencies that led to life playing out as it did. The less you know about this stuff, the better.
They could have phrased it differently. “Not needing to know”, say. “Having all the hard work done for you”. There are lots of other ways to keep the same general solution to the brief without saying ignorance is the neatest thing. We didn’t get those ways, though, we got “ignorance is priceless”, straight up. The fact that none of the copywriters or editors and Mastercard approvals people thought this was an issue just goes to show how little people think about ensuring they are really saying what they mean. Or perhaps that’s being charitable, and they actually mean to deride an awareness of the bigger picture.
Argh, it’s such a horrible, horrible spot. While I’m upset about it, consider: this ignorance of geological scale and interconnectedness, this fundamentally self-centred view of the world, is exactly the same affliction that is leading us to massively overexploit the natural world and underprepare for the consequences. The dude who is ignorant of all these things is surely driving a big ol’ Humvee, right?
Also: this priceless moment is all about a dad showing off to his son. That’s the one! Show that kid you’re way better than he is at skipping stones! Proving to him that you are still the man! Surely an experience to be cherished universally.
Y’know, if Dad wasn’t ignorant of all that history, maybe he could explain it to his son. Blow the kid’s mind a bit about how big time is and how small we are in comparison and how amazing it is that time shakes out a whole lot of chances into one specific result.
I know I’d find that a whole lot more priceless than watching my dad skip a stone across the water.
Filament Issue 2
So, a while back I received issue 2 of Filament in the post. I’ve been dipping in and out of it since, and finally feel I can write usefully about it. Here’s the thing: it’s really pretty amazing.
Filament, subtitled the thinking woman’s crumpet, is an adult magazine aimed at women, with a mix of smart articles and sexy pictures of men. The editor, Suraya Singh, aims to provide images of men that are aimed at straight women, rather than gay men. I wrote about it back before launch, here.
This issue includes an interview with the new member of Placebo, some short fiction*, and articles on: cover trends in erotic fiction for women; autism and neurodiversity; pegging; Brazilian dance/martial art/game capoeira; working as a television editor; drugs and fair trade; living with a low sex drive; and the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864. The content mix is wonderfully diverse and interesting; this is how you do “womens content” in a way that makes sense to me, i.e., that reflects the diverse interests and opinions of all the smart women I know. (Compare with this example of how not to do it.)
Almost all the articles are from a woman’s perspective, but the tone is as far from Woman’s Day as you can get; for example the autism article was written by a mother who talks about her autistic son, but the focus is on how disability is positioned in society and completely devoid of the confessional/empathetic style that would dominate a glossy’s approach to the same subject.
Note also the article on living with a low sex drive – for a mag with a strong positive focus on sexuality and on women, to live up to its own ideals, it needs to be inclusive, and it achieves that here, with a smart piece interviewing women with low sex drive that allows women to decide for themselves if that’s a problem for them, and discusses what they can do if it is. (Compare to every single magazine targetted at men, and most of the glossy mags for women, where high sex-drive is the assumed default and alternatives are either invisible or actively derided.)
So much for the words. Also, lots of photos of chaps in various states of undress, including one photo of a man with an erection. This pic was the source of a lot of difficulty in getting the magazine printed and distributed, but I think the resultant controversy (e.g. NZ newspaper articles) gave the mag a lot of publicity so a good result overall.
Anyway, it’s a great slab of culture, and while I continue to be not the target audience, I really enjoy it. It occurred to me, reading this issue, that this is the magazine that the lead character of my Ron the Body manuscript** was looking for; magazine culture is an sub-theme and motif in the book, and it’s entirely possible that Cass wouldn’t be so bloody grumpy at the start of the story if she knew Filament existed. So, definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a smart woman who’s feeling out of synch with the culture. It will remind you that you’re not crazy.
Check it out here, including plentiful preview pages.
Final note of awesome: there’s a rumour that Warren Ellis will be answering reader’s etiquette questions in issue 3.
* including the first published work by my buddy Jenni Talula
** currently accumulating rejection slips if you were wondering
Spin Profiles
Oh, I do like this.
Spin Profiles is an “encyclopedia of people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda that is being written collaboratively”. It’s a wiki and anyone can add info to it – there are editors exercising some control. Info is divided into portals e.g. “Nuclear Spin“.
Best bit, and presumably the point of the project, is the individual profiles of people involved in “message control”. As an example, here’s the page on our old friend David Capitanchik, who I first wrote about in the wake of the July 2005 bombings in London. The page graphs his presence in the media, details his links to elements of the power structure, and details his publication record during his academic career (a rather light record of three peer-reviewed journal publications in 25+ years!).
The project’s editor (and, presumably, initiator) is one Claire Robinson* who seems to have first started walking in the world of govt lobbying and opinion shaping by fighting against genetically modified foods (which is an interesting issue to get started on because of sharp opinion divides within the leftosphere).
This is a great resource and I know I’m going to be coming back to this one in future. Decoding the identities and agendas of the people who turn up in TV, radio and newspapers is often tricky, and this will help a great deal with making sense of the noise. (We could definitely do with an NZ verion, but the task would be much smaller as our media commentariat at the moment seems to consist solely of Russell Brown, Finlay McDonald and Cameron Slater.)
* note: not the NZ political communications specialist Claire Robinson, who comes from an academic background; this is a UK Claire Robinson who comes from a freelance journo background. These Claire Robinsons get up to all sorts of trouble.
Not a great time to be a chap
The news and current affairs are, as we all know, systems designed to shout the most abrasive and divisive things to generate interest. Lately I’ve been trying to steer clear of NZ news because of the omnipresent coverage of Clayton Weatherston. This man is now the most hated man in the country, and I imagine he will hold that title for a long time to come. He is on trial for murdering his girlfriend, a much younger girl who was his student. The crime was appallingly violent. He is claiming a defence of provocation.
His claims are nonsensical, but there might be an effective legal strategy behind this defence. Most of all it bothers me that the victim’s family and friends are forced to endure this prolonged character assault as it is amplified through the media. (As Bartok noted, If they didn’t allow TV cameras in the courtroom, would it be getting nearly as much play?) I hate that our news coverage is so dominated by this man and his justifications for an act of the most extreme violence against a young girl. Never mind that he is hated, and none of his words are believed, and that he is certain to be found guilty; the mere fact that we have given him this national platform and that we attend to his words demeans us all. (See also NotKate’s take.)
Also we had in the last few days the woman who was in an abusive relationship with an NZ TV celeb telling her side of the story. Russell Brown has a good summary of why it matters. Remember, also, that this violent celeb has maintained a lot of public support throughout “his” ordeal.
And finally, the British midwife who thinks the pain of childbirth is important for parent/child bonding. Of course, this is a chap talking about what’s good for the womens. Jonny Nexus notes the appropriate response.
News Roundup
Bernie Madoff thrown in the klink. Good. Dude may just be the sacrificial goat for the sins of an industry, but still feels mighty satisfying.
The strange, sad story of Bastareaud, the French rugby player who claimed to have been violently attacked here in Wellington by a gang of angry locals, gets stranger and sadder as he is admitted to a psychiatric unit after attempting suicide; the injuries that he covered up with his story of being assaulted may have come from his own team-mates. Horrible. I hope the guy finds his way right.
Women tennis players who make noise are now “grunters”. Am I the only one who wonders what men would be called if this was about them? “Roarers”? “Shouters”? “Growlers”? Okay maybe not that last one.
Assorted notes
Got Filament issue the first in the post. It’s really nice! Well-put together physical artifact = awesome. Content is smart and has a good rhythm. We liked it very much. Can get your copy here.
It was Bloomsday yesterday! Here is a comic of Ulysses with neato notes and guides. Related: Ulysses as a Twitter feed.
And here is the meal Dan of Freshly Ground made for me and Cal. OMG NOM NOM.
No Men On Cover plskthx
Suraya’s Filament magazine has been getting a fair bit of press of late – a five-minute feature on nightly current affairs TV show Close Up, an interview on NatRad and BBC Radio 1, and also The Daily Mail spat the dummy and missed the point which, Suraya reports, is quite good for the credibility.
So this latest post from Suraya gives you a good opportunity to raise your eyebrows in consternation:
Filament has just been knocked back by the first distributor to say they’re not going to distribute us on the basis that we have a man on our cover, not a woman. That’s the rule – women’s magazines can’t have men on the cover. But men’s magazines can have either a man or a woman on their cover.
Yes indeed. I leave all the ways in which this is stupidwrong as an exercise for the reader. (Okay, you get one free to start you off: there is a global print media crisis happening. These old rules do not work.)
Filament – the thinking woman’s crumpet
[I’m advertising at you again – what can I say, except that friends are doing cool stuff.]
My friend Suraya is launching a print magazine. This, in itself, is a sign of madness in today’s world, but thankfully hers is a beautiful madness, and a clever one too.
Filament magazine is “72 quarterly pages of intelligent thought and beautiful men”. It offers smart articles and sexy pictures aimed at straight women. Here’s the website, which is worksafe provided your work doesn’t mind topless men and the word “erotic”.
It’s likely not gonna be available in shops (unless some enterprising indie mag shops chase Suraya down and ask to carry it, I guess) – but you can grab it easily using Paypal. Looksee. And if you act fast you can pick it up cheap! Reduced prices until the end of Wednesday (U.K. time?)!
It sounds like a great idea for a mag to me (speaking as someone who thinks an awful lot about the magazine as medium but is profoundly disappointed whenever he stands in front of a magazine sales rack). I’ve put my money where my mouth is and signed up for a copy, even though (as the alert among you may have noticed) i’d be a pretty poor excuse for a straight woman. But don’t take my word for it: terrifying internet prophet Warren Ellis has also lent his support.
If it sounds like your flavour of crumpet, you know what to do.