Public discourse, privatized

“State and commercial institutions have assumed some of the functions of the public sphere, and political institutions, such as parties, have assumed advocacy roles in support of their patrons.
…. this transformation has led to a refeudalization of the public sphere. Large and powerful organizations such as corporations, labor unions, political parties, professional groups and interest groups bargain with the state and one another — often out of sight or mind of the public — to allocate resoureces, opportunities, and patronage.
These institutions still seek public support and the marks of legitimacy, but they do this through the exercise of publicity or public relations, not necessarily through contributions to rich public discourse.

Siva Vaidhanathan paraphrasing Jurgen Habermas, in the footnotes to chapter 1 of Copyrights and Copywrongs
Based on recent forays into the world of public-interest advocacy, this quote rings true. Advocacy in practice consists of small-group, backroom lobbying, and large-group marketing.
Advocacy pros often react with puzzlement to suggestions about public education. They have the consumer marketing stereotype: people don’t want to think, but will respond to packaged ideas. Which rings false to me, from small-scale first-hand observation. People don’t have infinite time to study issues and form opinions, so they’ll delegate opinion-making to others they trust. But when people care, they learn, and when they learn, they’re more likely to act. (Call me naive, and see if I grow out of it.)
The “lobbying-and-marketing” approach isn’t just an elitist power-grab by special interests. It’s a practical response to a scaling problem. Representative democracy is a solution to the problem of aggregating decision-making power. The “lobbying and marketing” strategy is a solution to aggregating the power to influence decisions. The Sierra Club and the NRA can get hundreds of thousands of people to donate, vote, and contact representatives.
Question of the decade — are there other effective ways to solve the scaling problem?

People really are “bowling alone”

New research provides stronger evidence that social capital in the US is in decline.
In 1995, sociologist Robert Putnam published an article showing that Americans are less social then they used to be. The research was later published in a book, Bowling Alone.
Putnam analyzed attendance at men’s clubs (Elks, Lions), parent-teacher associations, and rural 4H clubs, and showed that these signs of social ties had been declining since about 1960.
The trouble with this analysis is that some of the longstanding organizations he studied had gone out of style like poodle skirts. It’s likely that there are fewer kids in 4H clubs because there are fewer kids on farms.
But in a somewhat more recent article, Putnam analyzes a wider range of data, including informal activities like going on picnics and eating with friends and family. The trend is still the same — a uniform decline in social engagement.
As people have become less socially engaged, the level of charity-giving has gone down, as measured by the percentage of income given to charity, and the level of trust in others has gone down, as measured in surveys.
Several thoughts on this, in contrasting directions.
A few data points that could show that things are as bad as they seem:
* if the “eating with family and friends” survey questions asked about eating at home, not eating out, then the questions are still missing the point. A strong study would include data about social meals at home and in restaurants.
* Time for Life is an excellent if rather dry book reporting a study on American’s use of time since the 1930s. The study shows that television watching has steadily crowded out most other hobbies and social activities since the 1950s. It would be interesting to measure the level of social engagement among demographic groups who have given up couch-potato TV for human-interactive internet communication.
On the other hand, take a look at new housing developments. Apartment complexes and subdivisions are built with walls and fences around them, even in low-crime areas. People are too afraid to have streets. After all, anyone could walk down the street, without any security checks at all.
Putnam’s numbers help explain the popularity of the prison-like architectural style, and the low level of protest at restrictions of freedom in the wake of 9/11.
via Clay Shirky on Corante’s Many to Many blog.

Email overload

This weekend, I’m clearing out 1200 messages in my inbox, accrued over the last 3 weeks, not counting spam and items already filed or deleted. One distributed start-up company, three non-profit affiliations, attempts to defeat the same bad law in several states, and three social/political mailing lists. All of this adds up to a truckload of mail, much of it interesting and relevant if not immediately urgent.
The “organize-yourself” books tell you to act upon or file each incoming message when it comes in.
Some messages are urgent — they relate to a current project or a customer and require an immediate response. When they come in, I think about them, make a decision, and put them away.
Other messages are less urgent. They’re about a conference in a month. They contain links to interesting-looking articles. They have an interesting-sounding conversational idea. They stay in the inbox.
I don’t have enough attention to think about every interesting idea that crosses my email box at the time.
What do you do? Do you have enough attention to deal with every piece of email every day? Are you bold enough to delete things that you didn’t have attention for that day?

Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals

I’ve had Rules for Radicals referred to me by several people and sources, on both sides of the political spectrum. It’s billed as a canonical work on political organizing.
Alinsky published the book in 1971, after over three decades of organizing in impoverished and powerless communities.
The political philosophy, from a leftist of Alinsky’s times, can be shredded any number of ways, and it’s not worth bothering.
What’s interesting about the book is the material on tactics.
The book gives interesting historical context for the confrontational, theatrical 60s activist tactics. I was always puzzled by the demonstrations and teach-ins among the left when I was in school. These rituals seemed unlikely to change anyone’s mind, and seemed more like excuses for the like-minded to party or commiserate. Michael Moore comes from the tradition of provocative activist theater — bother and confuse the powers that be, and they might notice and relent.
The communities Alinsky worked with had nothing, and the powers-that-were were not listening. Shock tactics worked at the time. The powers-that-were did notice, and did give in.
Alinsky himself makes the point that tactics need to change with the times, and expresses frustration that his followers borrowed his tactics, rather than his principles. By 1971, Alinsky notes, sit-ins had lost the power to shock and persuade, and calling cops “pigs” didn’t do anyone any good.
Many of Alinsky’s principles themselves are sensible. Communicate within the experience of the people you’re talking to. If they don’t have the experience, create the experience. Stay within the experience of your community, and work outside of the experience of your opponents. Build a group on multiple issues. Build tactics on the opportunities and choices in front of you.
But Alinsky’s experience is bounded by his work with the poor and powerless. He would come in, help a community solve some desperate problems, and then head on to the next battle. Once the unions, or an African-American community (name the group) gained power, the next step is to use that power. Alinsky never stayed long enough, it seems, to understand the set of tactics to use if you are more than powerless.
Perhaps you demonize the enemy if you’re fighting against the meat-packing plant that offers a perverse parody of health care. But if you use those tactics in neighborhood disputes, you may “win”, but your neighborhood loses.

New Models for Advertising and Art

Doc Searls has an excellent piece on the rise of new advertising models.

So what’s happening here? Simply put, companies like Google and Overture are blowing away everything the old advertising business holds dear. Beautiful images. Attention-grabbing graphics. Awards. Strategy. Even old conventions like branding–a term Procter & Gamble borrowed from the cattle industry, back when they created mass media advertising in the dawn of commercial radio more than 70 years ago. They’re blowing it away by connecting users and advertisers and helping both offer something valuable to each other.

Meanwhile, Dan Bricklin writes about the many ways that artists get paid, including performance, patronage, and commission.
Like Tim O’Reilly, Bricklin writes that mosts artists aren’t famous and would benefit from free exposure. There are many artists who can be economically profitable, if they reach their “natural audience.”
The music and movie industry is shooting itself in the foot by trying its best to preserve today’s mass-media discovery and distribution methods.

A problem with much of today’s pre-recorded media art (such as sound recordings and movies) is the method of discovery. Introduction to new artists and their work is done through advertising, paid placement (narrow radio and TV play lists), and other mass marketing techniques. These are very expensive, and the difficulty of rising above the noise becomes yet more and more expensive. There is a self-fulfilling prophesy where only huge sellers bringing in large revenues are pursued. Small fan bases, even if solid and large enough to fully fund the artist themselves with a very acceptable life compared to other professions, do not fit in this model. A few big hits are viewed as more important than a myriad of small ones, each with a happy artist and happy fans. There seems to be a drive to create a few “superstars” instead of many full-time artists. This is bad economics if in catering to the big players we develop technologies and norms that hamper the “business models” of the smaller players.
Technology is making the cost of practicing many types of art less expensive. For example, recording and editing equipment of high quality that used to cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars is becoming something even a hobbyist can afford and use. Manufacturing and distribution of many media forms is becoming almost cost free. Communications to a widely dispersed fan base has dropped to a minor cost as mailing and the need for advertising is replaced with email and web sites. (Discussing this with someone, he basically asked: “Is the Britney Spears model the mainframe of the music business?”)

The dot coms are gone. Change continues, as long as we don’t let the legal system enforce the old ways. The Ottoman Empire strictly limited printing presses for two hundred years.
via David Weinberger and Doc Searls.

Redistricting Hearings Continue

The hearings on the Delay plan to eviscerate Travis County continue today at 4pm in the State House. The plan splits Austin into three pieces — each a little bit of city, glommed onto a large swath of countryside. A new plan will be proposed today by Rep. King. Austinites who want congressional representation, head over to the Statehouse if you can.