"Cleaner sweeping the floor after the Wall Street crash, 1929," The Nationaal Archief in The Hague

Discussing money is generally afforded the same privacy as the balance of one’s bank account. Inviting an open conversation about the subject in public, from basic finance to complex economics, is thought to be rude and even poorer politics.

It is perhaps the most polarizing field of contemporary journalism because it has absolutely no means of circumventing readers’ class ties and can only clash with their compromised socio-economic opinions: what time readers could devote to the possible merits of ‘tax cuts’ or increased ‘government spending’ from one year to the next is usually put in the service of bolstering their own particular side of the trench.

And then there’s the fact that financial reporting was tasked with covering the ascendancy of “Reaganomics” in Western political discourse during the 1980s, and outright drafted to make sense of “globalization” (a vague catch-all for the apparent international prosperity brought about by free trade agreements but also the arrival of budgetary shortfalls, lapsed or eliminated regulatory provisions, and rising unemployment) since the 1990s.

To meet the demand, and keep pace with a burgeoning cottage industry of self-appointed financial experts, we borrowed more and more aloof language and overly-complicated concepts from the notoriously noncommittal (read: variable-rich) social science of economics that is inaccessible to most of us, even if we had the time between our first and now second jobs to look into it.

The result is a version of information that is not exactly propaganda (although media concentration does present clear conflicts of interest) but not strictly informative either. Here’s a fun example from Bloomberg News, with their editorial, “Black Friday 2011 Turns Freaky for Economists, Politicians: View” (24 November):

Black Friday 2011 is especially fraught for several reasons. First, the future is more uncertain than usual. We don’t know whether we’re emerging from the deepest recession since the Great Depression or about to plunge into a ‘double dip.’ Second, the 2012 elections are approaching and both the White House and the Senate, now in Democratic hands, are very much up for grabs. Historically, the state of the economy is the most important factor in determining the winner of the presidency.

Third, it’s not even clear what we should be hoping for in the Black Friday sales figures, when they start pouring out tomorrow. Our every instinct is to hope for brisk sales and record highs, signs of what’s charmingly called ‘consumer confidence.’ The consumer has been the engine of past prosperity, and consumption has always played a large role in America’s particular style of the pursuit of happiness. Economic recovery depends on whether the consumer has got his or her confidence back. Some fear that we are losing our taste for things — that the recession may have taught us that we don’t really need. Others, of course, applaud the same development.

It’s the perfect Rumsfeldian nightmare.

OCCUPY THE EVERYDAY

In short: we don’t talk about money. We talk around it. And when a crisis makes it impossible not to talk about, we discover that we’re not very good at it.

We easily remember “Black Tuesday” 29 October 1929, the original financial catastrophe of our time, but we recall less about the Glass-Steagall Act of 16 June 1932 and its regulatory framework for averting another crash — and we know even less about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, passed under President Bill Clinton (not President George W. Bush), which nullified its most powerful provisions and started the countdown to the next catastrophe.

Still, there is an emerging pool of general audience material that makes our complex international financial situation more accessible in new ways: Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008), Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s This Time is Different (2009), David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capital (2010), Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm’s Crisis Economics (2010), Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia (2010), and Dambisa Moyo’s How the West Was Lost (2011) — along with documentaries like Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) and Inside Job (2010).

These and similar works, by both economists and non-economists, cover a wide variety of problems and solutions (not to mention financial crimes) and can ultimately serve as the foundation for a new conversation about money while perhaps even provoking an unprecedented demand for serious and permanent financial literacy.

Which brings me to the current international Occupy Movement. What makes it so interesting is its loose platform and the lack of any formal centralized bureaucratic authority (even that of a ‘big tent’ political party). You don’t have to endorse or even agree with the movement to see it as basically an international confession that we have a problem.

We would do well to recall that mass calls for radical financial upheaval or reform are historically followed by hard right or left turns, as parties attempt to capture the moment and co-opt enthusiasm. Until we simplify and popularize the elements of economic order (that is to say, become more open and willing to discuss money), from domestic policies to regional agreements, we will continue to swing from one extreme to the other.

Share/Save

Age of Empires boardgame. Picture by Kumar Jhuremalani, 13 December 2009.

I recently caught up with CNN’s running series, “Restoring the American Dream”, hosted by Fareed Zakaria and presented as a special edition of his Sunday morning cable show, Global Public Square. (GPS)

The inaugural installment (something of a thematic introduction) aired back in October 2010 and went on to become a recurring theme each week. Part 1 (“How to Innovate”) recently aired on 5 June 2011, with part 2 (“How to Educate America”) advertised to follow soon.

I’m sharing it here for two reasons.

The first is that it’s a rare attempt by a basic cable news host to establish a historically-minded, public dialogue between while exploring the core causes of the on-going financial crisis and potential solutions.

The second reason is that it’s a chance to pursue the underlying assumption of “How to Innovate” – that we conceive of innovation as a matter of national identity – and to ask whether or not such an association is useful or even necessary. In short: does such an association risk reducing history to a series of innovations by region?

“How to Innovate” essentially argues that part of what makes America different is a unique appreciation for innovation and that this has been the ‘secret ingredient’ in a comparative edge over other nations. It warns that without a critical re-emphasis on innovation (and soon!), America will cede the leadership role and its unprecedented reign as chief-innovator.

This is fascinating but an incomplete assessment: it fails to consider that innovation can be its own instigator, outside of a specific national purpose.[1]

Sure, association innovation with national identity made some sense during the Cold War — where each side used the fruits of technological progressivism to assert the apparent superiority of their respective economic systems. It fed the space race and left us with mutually assured destruction.

It even makes a little sense comparing early-modern nation-states and ancient civilizations. In fact, the reduction of whole peoples to a veritable cast of native-son inventors and thinkers is a considerable part of how we view them in posterity (for better or worse, clearly).[2]

Take, for example, the Age of Empires and Civilization game franchises, where players adopt a people and rush to conquer the world by out-innovating others through history: as ancient Egyptians with ever-grander pyramids, as ancient Romans with increasingly complicated criss-crossing roads, or as early-modern France with more rights declarations than citizens.

However, does associating national identity with innovation make any sense in the present?

We’ve built massive global corporations, economic blocs like the European Union, and various free trade regions — do we really care who comes up with the best ideas?

The only real issue would be whether or not everyone has equal access to them through the market, right? Since we’re part of the same global capitalist system.

Still, Zakaria’s instance on associating innovation with a nationalistic purpose is mostly an attempt to qualify President Obama’s empty-sounding “win the future” 2011 State of the Union slogan. And the statistics are indeed worrying: 4.9% annual growth in research and development from 1953-1987 to 0.3% from 1987-2008.

That isn’t good for America or the global economy.

After all, we’re all in this together.

NOTES

[1] This would explain most of history’s relationship with innovation: mostly accidental discoveries, compounded over time. It’s best not to assume that previous eras shared our obsession with purposeful, deliberate, and methodical innovation — even if this process is indebted to, and built upon, their own research and discoveries.

[2] It’s curious how certain groups or nationalities attempt to claim certain people. For example, Canada, America, and Scotland all claim Alexander Graham Bell as their own — even though it has absolutely no bearing on your access to a telephone or its terms of use. As if: “Never mind the charges, I’m Canadian, put me through…” would persuade an operator: “Oh, why didn’t you say so!”

Picture by White House Photographer Pete Souza, White House Flickr Collection, 2 May 2011.

You likely saw this photograph sometime over the last few weeks.

It depicts U.S. President Barack Obama and his national security team — including, among others: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Vice President — in the White House Situation Room, Sunday 1 May 2011.

The subject of their fascination, as the president would go on to reveal in a televised national address only a few hours later, is “Operation Neptune Spear” — otherwise known as the covert assassination of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs.

Let’s come back to this photograph shortly.

Since the end of World War II, the President of the United States of America has been increasingly surrounded by, and associated with, technology. This has transformed otherwise lackluster head-of-state affairs — domestic and foreign diplomacy, inter-governmental coordination (including military), and legislative consultation and assent — into a mobile, press-ready event with a “what’s next” action-sheen.

Consider that: the president travels short distances by Marine Corps helicopter (Marine One, c. 1957) or custom limousine, and long distances in a modified commercial airliner (Air Force One, c. 1953); and is accompanied, at all times, by guards (reputed for their sophisticated location-to-location coordination), and briefcase (carried by a military attaché) that contains the launch codes to the nuclear arsenal — which is, itself, deployed over a wide variety of military technology (missiles, submarines, jets, etc.), all coordinated through a vast satellite network.

And this is to say nothing of other things, like the White House Situation Room (c. 1961) for stay-at-home military and nuclear coordination, and John. F. Kennedy’s indelible association between the presidency and NASA space technology (c. 1962) in the minds of an entire generation.

In short: no other head-of-state has this much tech and gadgetry at their disposal, let alone associated with their image. It has significantly helped to entrench the myth-like reverence for the office and its holders — far beyond the previous era’s apocryphal silliness: George Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Abraham Lincoln freed all of the slaves.

Some of this technology has been a deliberate, albeit kitschy attempt to antagonize the Soviets throughout the Cold War; but mostly, it been a genuine display of affluence and ingenuity in keeping with other executive branches around the world, in various forms throughout recent history.

Now, back to that photograph.

The presidency’s over-saturation with technology has aided and abetted the expectation that the president can fix the nation’s ills — perhaps single-handedly, if necessary — while diminishing the executive’s actual function in contrast to the broader constitutional entitlements of the legislative branch.

Of course, it doesn’t help that every would-be president since Harry Truman’s “buck stops here” photo-op sloganeering has perpetuated this expectation on the campaign trail, which seems to start earlier and earlier every election cycle.

Most recently, it explains how President Obama slid from an inaugural approval rating of 82% to approximately 50% for the better part of 2010 and into 2011, without any major scandal or incident. It would seem that, however unfairly, Americans expected their new president to settle all of their foreign and domestic woes, post-haste.

After news of Osama bin Laden’s death and the release of this photograph, Obama’s approval rating increased; however, it has since declined following the media’s rediscovery of stalled unemployment figures and other economic problems.

The photograph illustrates how the president can rise to the expectation of mobilizing every technological edge to further national interest, to be literally caught in action, but also fail to curb the appetite for further actions; or, more directly, to use the opportunity to describe the cost of past policies and outline a national course-correction.

While an abundance of superior technology came to elevate the apparent capabilities of the U.S. head-of-state over its counterparts around the word, it may end up limiting both the occupants of that office and the nation itself to solutions based solely on those tools.

The presidency has the capacity for more than the gadgetry it has come to be associated with, and known for, but it will take a deliberate effort to rebuild the office’s capacity for other forms of leadership within the popular imagination.

Picture remix by Emad Raúf; original photograph by Yannis Behrakis of Reuters. Tahrir square, Cairo, Egypt, 29 January 2011.

While the recent protest movements in the Middle East reveal much about the present state of civic community among the people of those nations — Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt (and a growing list of others) — our reaction to them reveals more about ourselves than we should perhaps find flattering.[1]

I will explain.

Consider the Egyptian “revolution” that started with a few demonstrations on 25 January 2011 and snowballed into a national movement that came to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and his thirty-year reign — and succeeded in securing it by 11 February 2011.[2]

And Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” that also ended a presidential career — the twenty-four year rule of President Ben Ali — with Ali’s resignation on 14 January 2011, some few weeks after protests broke out in December 2010.

And, of course, Iran’s “Green Revolution” that raged into 2010, long after the initial fury over electoral fraud during the June 2009 presidential election — now, admittedly, less successful by Egyptian Tunisian standards (since President Ahmadinejad has yet to resign) but presumably still simmering.

These revolutions belong to their respective peoples and nations and no one else; yet, they are being championed as proof of the inevitable march of history — aided by technology — toward progress.

Social media have claimed these revolutions as a victory for itself and technology.

That citizens in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt are using the latest communications technology to organize is interesting but belies the fact that such tools are also used by the state to suppress dissidents and the general public. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be used to build community and facilitate commerce but have little direct impact on solving the underlying socio-economic conditions that force people to organize — at considerable personal and familial risk — in the first place.[3]

Politicians have claimed these revolutions as a victory for themselves and democracy.

That citizens in Tunisia and Egypt (and to a lesser extent, Iran) have suddenly gathered en mass to contest their current state of governance — to topple tyrants — belies the fact that many of these rulers enjoy (or have enjoyed) the support of supposedly pro-democratic governments around the world. The tendency by many in the West to denigrate other peoples for their apparent backwardness, while praising them for finally ‘joining history’ when they gather to depose tyrants, is contradicted by the actual policies pursued by the so-called “free world” as it publicly preaches freedom and progress.[4]

And so, while you might find these protest movements inspiring — and indeed, they are — we would do well to remember that these our not our movements. Whatever governance structure emerges from them is entirely up to the citizenry of those nations. If we are so excited about freedom and democracy, we might tap that enthusiasm for use at home.

To be clear, my point here is not to take sides or join the familiar chorus of established Western criticism with a redundant reading from the book of Contemptible Hypocrisy and Other Duplicitous Misdeeds; rather, it is to suggest that while we look at Egypt and want to say, “what took so long?” we should actually be saying, “excuse us for interfering.”

And, more importantly, we must recognize that what happened in Egypt during the thirty-years of Mubarak’s rule was, in fact, history — not just the made-for-TV summation of an era — as is what went before and what will come in the next days, months, and years.

We forget that history happens whether or not we’re paying attention.

We should make more of an effort to listen for the voices of the people all of the time — not just when they seem poised to march forward, aided and abetted by the tools we see as having already delivered ourselves.

NOTES

[1] By “our” I mean anyone who is not a citizen of these nations but also the West in general. This applies throughout the post.

[2] Calling last week’s events in Egypt a “revolution” may be premature. Do recall the hydra-like persistence of military rule in post-colonial Egypt: General Naguib formally succeeded the monarchy in 1953; to be succeeded by Nasser in 1954; to be succeeded by Sadat in 1970; to be succeeded by Mubarak in 1981; only to be succeeded, last week, by Omar Suleiman. It is unlikely the protest movement in Egypt will succeed in altering this pattern overnight. The revolution, in other words, is likely to be slow and gradual.

[3] Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted” attempted to cover as much in the aftermath of Iran’s “Green Revolution” but did so poorly and without much nuance. His update last week, “Does Egypt Need Twitter?” reiterated his earlier argument and resulted in what can perhaps only be referred to as the first formal social media character assassination. Still, he may have a point. And the same can be said of his critics, particularly Ari Melber.

[4] Mubarak, for example, enjoyed the support of numerous world leaders throughout his time in office. And, within the same example, it is not difficult to observe how the public rhetoric differs from the actual policy.

A.J. Rowley is currently completing his MA in History at Trent University that examines the Canadian media reaction to the Cuban Revolution. More of his writing can be found at http://www.ajrowley.org/

We do this (and succeed) because our celebration of the written word is often eclipsed by an insatiable infatuation with the image.

You’ve seen the evidence: well-meaning invitations and event posters, overcrowded institutional and organizational pamphlets, subtle omissions on television, overlooked citations in print media, and rather obvious borrowings to outright theft on the web — and yes, even in course outlines and materials.

All of this (particularly that last point) is rather unfortunate because it breaches the protection of intellectual property rights and threatens academic honesty.

Two types of online resources may help rein in this problem. The first resource is Creative Commons. Founded by law professor Lawrence Lessig and two partners in 2001, Creative Commons provides rights holders with the option of “opening” their content to users in a variety of ways, from specific conditions of use to no conditions at all.

Readers of ActiveHistory.ca, for example, will note that all of the content offered herein may be distributed and adapted as long as you attribute the site and its authors; and further, that you agree to not profit on said distribution or adaptation, and reissue any resulting work under the same license.

So, what does this have to do with images and where we get them from?

These licenses invert traditional conventions by preemptively dictating more elaborate and alternative forms of use. Take the Library of Congress’ efforts to “open” parts of the image collection to users through Flickr, for example — a site that has these licenses built in. Not everything is available, but enough to make using items from this collection — and not just random, unattributed images from a Google search — both effortless and efficient.

The Obama Administration’s decision to upload and curate an archive of the forty-forth president of the United States is a pretty clear indication of the potential applications of these licenses. In fact, this archive may be something of a historical first: where a world leader allows an extra level of access, even permitting further use of those images.  These images remain beyond his control but still within his control at the same time.

The second group of resources are websites that offer a specific micro-function like TinEye.com. This site describes itself as a “reverse image search” and can be used to locate the origins of image files you may have acquired but have failed to locate. This could also be used to locate all other sites that are using the image.

With the App-store rush to create micro-sites like this, new services appear almost daily. TinEye.com has been around for a few years but the most recent service that comes to mind is YouTube Time Machine — which allows you to pinpoint specific video content by year.

It’s not finished and not even directly useful just yet — but it certainly has a lot of potential. Just think of what you could do with a video archive at full capacity.

INSPIRATION BY ANY OTHER MEANS

I can’t seem to shake this phantom sensation that I’ve written this before. Or that I read it somewhere before. Maybe I did. And maybe you wrote it. I can’t recall.

And that’s the point, really.

Being inundated with more and more information is not unlike a perpetual search for a certain pair of car keys — keys to a car you can’t quite remember acquiring, let alone fathom where you might have parked it.

It can be difficult to remember and account for the origin and source of all the content that passes through your brain, let alone the inspiration that led you to seek out certain kinds of information in the first place — all within a daily communion with the great collective unconscious called the Internet, which produces and reproduces mass volumes of information daily.

I find this situation frightening and I don’t have any solutions. But I do know that citing everything we can — including images — helps us distinguish between malicious intent and inspiration by any other means.

NOTES

While I’ve focused on images, this discussion could include film clips (or movies) by extension. These are likely to become searchable in future, as the existence of YouTube Time Machine certainly suggests.

A.J. Rowley is currently completing his MA in History at Trent University that examines the Canadian media reaction to the Cuban Revolution.  More of his writing can be found at http://www.ajrowley.org/

While many writers will be surrendering their soapboxes to reflection and summation — perhaps as the basis for trying to predict where it seems we’re headed — I’d like to offer a different sort of historically-minded meditation: a brief you are here assessment informed by two somewhat interconnected statements that recently caught my attention.

Here’s my point of departure: both statements speak to the interdependent relationship between history, journalism, and something we’ll broadly refer to as “satire” — wherein a crisis-like event in one (let’s say “field”) can have a cascading impact on the others and society more generally.

To be clear, my aim here isn’t to pronounce a specific ailment or even outline a remedy, but to locate the present interplay of all three (history, journalism, and satire) for further discussion and a broader point I’ll get to shortly.

STATEMENT ONE: STEWART ON MADDOW

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (of the Rachel Maddow Show) aired parts of a fifty-minute interview with the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart during her Thursday 11 November 2010 show. Maddow’s staff uploaded the full interview the day after and it became something of a minor Internet attraction, spilling over into the following week.

The interview followed Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and / or Fear” that he co-hosted with Stephen Colbert at the National Mall in Washington, DC on 30 October 2010. Of course, this was a satirical (or not-so satirical) reduction of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s own “Restoring Honor rally” in Washington, DC from 28 August 2010 — which presented itself as something of a “response” [insert your viewpoint here] to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 28 August 1963 march on Washington which is best-known for his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Stewart’s rally concluded with what he described to Maddow as a speech that was “as far as [he] could go” in his role as a satirist. Saying, “[Satirists] can always criticize but [they] can’t actually do anything” [...] “They have no responsibility.”

Maddow responded by suggesting that what she does in her capacity as a cablenews host, and what he does as someone who satirizes the news is “…not seen as being all that different.”

Stewart replied:

I have existed — I am the highlander — there has been a form of me around in — forever — a comedian, who — with political and social concepts criticizes [those in power] from a haughty, yet ultimately feckless perch throwing things. Like, that — the box that I’m in has always existed. The box that you’re talking about, I think, is new. And, so I do think if that’s moving towards me that’s okay but I really feel like I’m on pretty solid ground with the footsteps of my ancestors.”

The box that Maddow is talking about is opinion-based journalism, which, if you discount the more romantic view of journalism as pure-objectivity, isn’t really all that different from journalism. Toward the end of the interview, she summarized it thusly: “We’re getting to be more like you, you’re not getting to be more like us.”

STATEMENT TWO: FERGUSON ON ZAKARIA

Last week, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hosted a panel on his show GPS — perhaps the only show on CNN hosted by an adult (who speaks to an audience of adults as though they were, well, adults) — regarding the latest batch of documents released by the controversial website/organization WikiLeaks that began on 28 November 2010.

The panel included Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, to whom Zakaria addressed this question: “Niall, it’s a historian’s treasure trove, though. I mean, it’s extraordinary, 250,000 of these — you — you would normally have to wait 30, 40, 50 years before you’d get to see all this.”

Ferguson replied:

Well, I’d frankly rather wait. I think it’s extremely depressing that — that this kind of thing happens because it — it renders the whole process in American diplomacy null and void.

But I agree that the content doesn’t appear particularly revelatory, and it — it told people who were more or less in the know what they more or less already knew. But I worry much more about the effect it has on future record keeping as well as future — traditional diplomacy.

The only consolation I have, before I pronounce the end of history, the nightmare scenario is that what happens now is that American foreign policy goes down the Goldman Sachs route. Nothing gets committed to paper. It’s all done by voicemail, and there’s no longer any written record.

That’s the nightmare scenario because that means future historians will suddenly find that the history of the Obama administration’s foreign policy stopped in November of 2010 and there wasn’t any detectable policy after that.

While virtually every aspect of this latest and on-going document dump by WikiLeaks has already been analyzed and re-analysed, Ferguson’s reaction is essentially conservative — and fairly representative of the academic community as a whole.

His language is evasive; he feels threatened.

YOU ARE HERE

Which brings me to my broader point: journalism, history, and satire can borrow from one another, but they operate differently and serve separate social functions. And while it’s not accurate to suggest that journalism is dying or that any apparent golden age is over — concentration and bias have always been problems — it is accurate to say there’s something of a crisis going on — one largely based on a confusion of roles.

This is important because history has a vested interest in a healthy journalistic culture. Over the past century, history has increasingly come to rely on a buffer between the past (and recent past) and what happened yesterday, as facilitated by journalism.

Ferguson’s statement captures this perfectly: journalism in crisis means more work for both historians and informed, self-respecting citizens everywhere.

While Stewart’s reaction covers the other side: in becoming satirists, or non-funny opinion-spouting shadows of themselves, journalists shed their responsibility. True objectivity might be a fallacy but responsibility (or lack thereof) has very real implications.

All three roles are important and have a specific function in our present social formation. Is WikiLeaks to blame? It’s probably too soon to tell. But it has put stress on existing fractures that have the historical community intrigued but intimidated, journalists confused, and satirists pleading for the return of sanity and responsibility in rare, off-character moments of sincerity.

You are here — wherever that is.

NOTES

While I have personally transcribed the interview between Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart, the official transcript from Fareed Zakaria’s show (air date 5 December 2010) is available here.

I shared my own thoughts on WikiLeaks back in August of this year.

My selection of “satire” over “comedy” is mostly informed by reasons set out by Paul Provenza in his book, ¡Satiristas! (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

With well over ten million articles to date, Wikipedia has evaded overt corporate influence through a non-profit structure and currently ranks among the top ten most visited sites on all of the web.  Or so it would seem.

Of course, all of that sounds about right; but, since the above information is entirely derived from Wikipedia itself we can’t really be too sure, can we?

And even if these facts are true they could have been altered or deleted by the time you verify them for yourself. Such is the trouble with Wikipedia.  But is that reason enough to dismiss it entirely?  Critics like Andrew Keen certainly think so.

In his recent book, The Cult of the Amateur (2007), Keen describes Wikipedia’s “free, user generated content” as a “threat” to “professional institutions” — including both expert offices (like Nobel laureates) and expert resources (like Encyclopedia Britannica). Keen argues that “…few of us have special training, knowledge, or hands-on experience to generate any kind of real perspective” apart from basic, personal opinion.

Keen is hardly alone in this view. And while his argument may be a bit blunt — not to mention somewhat hostile to community-sourced projects like this site — it does contain some truth and is worth keeping in mind.

Still, others are less categorically dismissive of Wikipedia’s presence and popularity, electing, rather, to look beyond these obvious flaws to examine how the site is used.

In an essay from his non-fiction collection, Content (2008), Cory Doctorow observes:

What’s most fascinating about [Wikipedia] entries isn’t their “final” text as currently present on Wikipedia. It is the history page for each, blow-by-blow revision lists that make it utterly transparent where the bodies were buried on the way to arriving at whatever Truth has emerged.

Wikipedia is therefore not simply a replacement for more traditional resources but an entirely different sort of historical artefact altogether.

Consider, for example, James Bridle‘s recent experiment with printing a single Wikipedia article — “The Iraq War” (from December 2004 and November 2009) — into a twelve volume collection that includes: “…arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes ‘Saddam Hussein was a dickhead’.”

Seeing it in print makes Wikipedia feel a bit different, doesn’t it?

So why can’t we draw on both Wikipedia and more traditional resources — (at the same time) and use them to keep each other in balance?

If David Foster Wallace can establish a tense but sensible peace between the dictionary and usage guides in his maddening (but brilliant) essay, “Authority and American Usage” from Consider the Lobster (2006), then such a thing is not only possible but practical.

We should give Wikipedia a chance: it might be worth the trouble after all.

NOTES

Where Wikipedia has thus far evaded overt corporate influence, they have proven rather prone to targeted manipulation and influence. Consider, for example, a recent attempt to alter Wikipedia entries (related to aircraft purchases) from Canadian air force computers in Winnipeg. It won’t be the last scandal, either.

I have refrained from italicizing “Wikipedia” in this post due to the frequency with which it appears.

BOOKS MENTIONED

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

Cory Doctorow, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2008).

David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006).

Share/Save

In honour of both the September crunch and ActiveHistory.ca‘s own expanding book review section — be sure to check out Mitch Primeau’s review of The Second Greatest Disappointment (1999) — I’ll be devoting this month’s post to some of my favourite used book websites.
History tends to involve a few more books than other disciplines — okay, a lot more.

This stems from the fact that all books — not just books about history — become relevant in new ways, as relics of their own time and place. That’s right: physicists and political memoirists alike can look forward to having their every miscalculation and narcissistic indulgence poured over by wave after wave of yet-born historians. But I digress…

Recently, I’ve found it useful to bolster my regular library borrowings with quite a few modest used book acquisitions (see picture). These mostly consist of core works that I am likely to require on demand for the foreseeable future. Of course, used books are also an affordable alternative to catalogue unavailability (i.e. damage, demand, rare editions, etc.) and certain course readings.

One of the things the Internet has done exceptionally well is facilitate a market for used books. This tends to be overlooked amid the arrival of more and more digital formats and platforms; but, it will likely persist long after the publishing industry officially “goes digital” (as so foretold by nearly a decade of tech journalism).

Since wading into this market can be overwhelming, I thought I’d pair some of my favourite websites with some passing tips below.

SEARCH ENGINES

Google is usually your best friend but its core algorithm is not designed to differentiate between passing references to the title you seek and copies for purchase or borrow.

Specific search engines are much more reliable and accurate: BookFinder.com is similar to Google (in scope and approach) and allows you to narrow your search by a few languages and currencies; while its affiliate owner, AbeBooks.com is a book retailer collective (spanning 57 countries) and can be used (among other things) to explore the inventory of some retailers in your area.

Of course, you should try and leverage the potential cost of acquiring a used copy against a library copy through WorldCat.org — a site with plenty of bibliographic data that also runs an automatic search for copies in your area.

And you may also want to see if a copy is currently being previewed (in whole or part) online through GoogleBooks — either because its free (hello?) or to use the service to compare different editions and other details. GoogleBooks is still an infant service but the company’s “…inten[tion] to scan every book ever published…” is ambitious and should prove fruitful, legal conflicts notwithstanding.

COMMERCIAL SITES

Sometimes the title you’re after has been recently reprinted or republished. Most commercial sites like Amazon.com and Powells.com maintain used book sections and also list used inventory alongside new copies. Both sections are worth comparing because the new editions could be less expensive.

Commercial sites tend to also have the latest information about recent releases. I find it’s useful to run a search through these sites and copy, say the ISBN, to plug it into one of the search engines mentioned above for contrast.

CLEARANCE SITES

Clearance sites — like BookCloseOuts.com and ThriftBooks.com — have unstable inventories but their prices are very attractive. Returning to run new searches can be annoying but it can also help locate material you were not aware of — like the autobiography of a certain politician you seem to recall hearing about …from a friend? …at a conference? …on television?

Remember, as with everything for sale on the Internet, always check the feedback of other users and the descriptions of products before ordering. You don’t want your research deadline or that gift for your uncle to be ruined by damaged merchandise and a fight with a retailer.

Finally, for a culture that’s often described as materialistic to a fault, I’m surprised we don’t spend more time exchanging niche sites and tips — particularly because it’s such an interesting way to share history (however commercially) with one another and it’ll be a while yet before we digitize everything ever printed.

Don’t be shy in the comments if I’ve overlooked your favourite book site!

Share/Save

It accurately distills the blind conspiracy between the exponential availability of high-speed Internet, the gradual decrease in the cost of personal computers, the rise of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and websites like Napster and its clones (built largely on BitTorrent protocols) and, of course, the generation of youth at the centre of it all.

This evolution in communications has changed consumer habits, challenged traditional media, and kindled still-raging debates about ethical use and legislative reform.

But most of all: it has given file-sharing a bad name.

This even extends to whistleblower sites like WikiLeaks — which was responsible for the unprecedented disclosure of approximately 90,000 United States military files on the War in Afghanistan on Sunday 25 July. Three newspapers (Der Spiegel, the Guardian, and the New York Times) were given advanced access to write an initial wave of articles but any user may download the files (for free) directly from WikiLeaks.

While the exposure of these files fulfills a democratic deficit that many in participating countries associate with the Afghanistan campaign, their unapproved release and the anonymous means by which they were obtained is also perceived as a direct threat to national security and government authority.

Despite the Internet’s responsibility for spreading this leak, there is nothing new about them. Daniel Ellsberg’s exposition of the “Pentagon Papers” through the New York Times in 1971 is perhaps the most recent and high-profile example with a potential correlative impact on policy.

Still, WikiLeaks’ specific use of file-sharing has important implications for the future of historical research. Specifically, the circumvention of the various freedom of information laws practiced by most democracies that limits researchers behind the “30 year rule” or its equivalent convention before declassifying most sensitive files.

The exact legality and broader implications of this exposure will be the focus of intense debate for weeks and months to come.

For now, let’s return to the idea of file-sharing and consider its most basic role (while also avoiding the longstanding dispute most commonly associated with it): it is a critical part of research acquisition and publication (both online and off) — between any combination of individuals, groups, archives, libraries, students, and schools.

In short: if we can’t share files, we can’t share history.

Redeeming the role of sharing files as a community is something to seriously explore in the future. Obviously this needs to occur within the context of fair use or dealing but that is already a core value and part of established practices.

As far as the immediate future is concerned, you may be frustrated with the limit on email attachments and want a useful means of avoiding spamming your contacts with multiple messages.

Toward that end, I offer my favourite file-sharing platform, drop.io, which I have used on several research projects. I particularly like the fact that you can set each “drop” to self-terminate after a certain date, and it will process emails, faxes, and audio files set to it externally.

Sites like this are part of a growing wave of start-ups and you may even have your own preferred site (do feel free to share below). Best of all, they allow for the controlled distribution of files among groups (account for increasing file sizes) and may go a long way in the broader effort to redeem the perception of file-sharing.

Share/Save

Today is the one-hundred and forty-third anniversary of Canada’s Confederation and the formal birth of the country’s federal political system.

And instead of waving the flag in a perfunctory fashion (yes, I know the Queen is visiting), I’d like to wave it in distress over the present dysfunction in our federal politics by briefly singling out four serious issues in the form of a short reading list.

This is not a review or even a formal examination of the sources mentioned by any means; rather, it is an attempt to share ideas and provoke debate on a day reserved for national reflection that is seldom used to actively further a collective discourse.

While some readers will perhaps favour more drastic structural and electoral changes, I would argue that it is worth considering a few subtle alterations before entertaining more ambitious renovations.

GOVERNOR GENERAL’S DISCLOSURE

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s suspension of Parliament in 2008 was widely perceived as an abuse of power. When he did it again the following year, it was considered an unprecedented breach of convention and provoked considerable protest across Canada.

Since both prorogations required the consent of Governor General Michaëlle Jean, many questioned her role in permitting them. However, as Lorne Sossin and Adam Dodek’s chapter in Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis (2009) details, the governor general is not obliged to “disclose” her reasoning and there is no public record of her conversation with Harper on either occasion.

Sossin and Dodek recommend adopting a fairly recent Australian precedent, whereby the governor general’s reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with a prime minister’s request (to suspend or dissolve parliament) are shared in a brief public letter. While this will not necessarily prevent similar abuses, it may empower the (unelected) governor general to make decisions without fear of incurring a contemporary reenactment of the so-called King/Byng Affair of 1925.

INCLUSIVE PARTY

Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s recent book, Losing Confidence (2009) highlights a number of parliamentary dysfunctions, including the fact that party leaders are selected almost exclusively by party members.

May suggests that parties should open their leadership elections to all Canadians, regardless of party affiliation. While any sitting MP (member of parliament) is technically able to conduct a leadership challenge if the caucus will entertain a vote — as Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard did last week — May’s remedy takes into account the fact that parties do not generally tolerate such leadership challenges and will likely continue to hold extravagant leadership conventions outside of the caucus.

May also sees this as a means of encouraging more people to become involved in their political process.

LEAVE YOUR LEGACY OBSESSION BEHIND

Ron Graham’s Walrus (Jan/Feb 2010) essay, “The Stranger Within” follows the Liberal Party of Canada’s leadership struggle in the aftermath of Paul Martin Jr.’s fall, and his surprise succession by Stéphane Dion in 2006.

Graham explores how a handful of legacy-minded “kingmakers” have traditionally presided over party leader selection (excluding spontaneous selections like Dion). The most recent party brain-trust helped select Martin (himself the son of a three-time would-be Liberal leader), and handpicked Michael Ignatieff, the man who would replace Dion in 2008.

Dealing with legacy baggage is a problem that all parties encounter from time to time; however, it can seriously impair their ability to govern or hold the government to task in opposition.

The present success of the now united Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party left their seven year-old amalgamated offspring, the Conservative Party of Canada, largely free from the influence of former leaders and to campaign on a blank slate. In fact, it has let them openly quarrel with former leaders associated with the new party.

The merger between the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress in 1961 that created the New Democratic Party is similar example.

In short, Graham’s article works to suggest that voters should not reward parties looking to coast on past achievements or stale solutions and ideas.

CIVILITY, DAMMIT

Mark Kingwell’s Walrus (March 2010) essay, “The Shout Doctrine” laments the deficit of wit, ideas, and civility in exchanges between MPs. Both obstructionism and increasingly partisan attacks have triggered a “race to the bottom” at the expense of governance and discourse, he says.

While this is to be somewhat expected and does play a role in parliamentary history (Sir John A. Macdonald’s behaviour comes to mind), Kingwell suggests that the longer this persists, the more damage it does to our political fabric and only increases the number of alienated voters.

This problem is more difficult than most but maybe there’s something to be said for writing your MP about their apparent inability to behave or play well with others. They don’t have to agree but they should at least attempt to get along.

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

The main reason I wanted to share a brief reading list and highlight a few problems was to encourage readers to do the same.

So, what do you think and what have you been reading about our federal political woes?

One last thing: Canada Day (or Dominion Day, until 1982) means different things to different peoples. Some celebrate a lot, others a little, while others do not — perhaps in light of different perspectives or strained relationships and the historical events from which they proceed. That’s a part of Canada’s history, too.

Still, July first is, at the very least, the belated inauguration of summer (for a northern nation) and the arrival of a cherished long weekend. So, wherever you are today and whatever you happen to be doing, enjoy.

Share/Save