Archive for category Truth

FOE Plays Anti-Corporate Card

While recently reviewing the Friends of the Earth US (FOE) website, I saw that they introduced a new genetic engineering policy campaigner named Eric Hoffman. Congratulations to Mr. Hoffman. Perhaps at a future time, he and I can have some interesting discussions on issues of mutual concern. But I hope that those future discussions would be based upon better writing than that which I found in connection with Mr. Hoffman’s employment announcement.

As part of the FOE US introduction of Mr. Hoffman, FOE used the following lead-in passage:

Friends of the Earth is a fierce advocate of scientific progress, but corporations often seek profit from scientific developments with little regard for human health. We must take precaution (sic) to ensure new technologies don’t do more harm than good.

Now, I’ll put aside the minor spelling error in their second sentence. I’ll also put aside the fact that there was no date on this post, which is really just a “bush league” error when it comes to Website writing and management. Instead of those small errors, I’ll just concentrate on the meaning of the passage itself.

playing card 1This approach of playing the “anti-corporate card” gets a bit wearisome, and is plainly just bad argumentation. The anti-corporate card to which I refer is the phrase, “corporations often seek profit from scientific development with little regard for human health.” Let’s take this phrase apart to see how it represents poor argumentation on the part of FOE and only weakens any argument that they are trying to make.

“Corporations often seek profit.” Yes. Okay, I can go along with that part. That is the function of a corporation, to seek a profit in its activities, many of which are directed at scientific developments. Thankfully they do that. Without profits, no one would ever get a merit raise in pay. And without scientific developments, people would be dropping dead from what are now, as compared to the past, “easily-cured” illnesses or from complications arising out of minor injuries. Now, let’s move on to the next part of the phrase and talk about “with little regard for human health.”

This part of the phrase conjures up a picture of research & development departments operated by zany, madcap scientists who indiscriminately toss new products out the door without adequately testing them, or at least without testing them to the satisfaction of government regulators within the jurisdictions in which their corporations do business. In my career, I’ve known many R&D personnel, and have found them to be painfully cautious and responsible personalities, almost to the point, perhaps, of being too cautious. I’ve yet to meet one who I would consider as either a businessperson or scientist with “little regard for human health.” If, indeed, these individuals, and the corporations for which they worked, “often” acted as portrayed by this phrase, their mad scientist-like lack of “regard for human health” would produce deadly products quickly killing thousands, drawing the ire of the marketplace, causing the corporation to lose revenue quickly, putting the company out of business in short order. And if the marketplace didn’t do this, government regulators surely could and, I would hope, would

Using unsupported phrases such as “corporations often seek profit from scientific developments with little regard for human health” is plainly unfair and irresponsible. Had they sourced that passage, I might not be writing this post. Phrasing of the sort used in this FOE example plays upon people’s tendency to believe whatever it is they read, just as long as it’s in black and white, and not vet what it is that they read, especially on the Web. (How can I make a statement such as that one? With support. For more on this human tendency to believe without question what’s written on the Web, please see: “Making the Call on Web ‘Facts’.” The Christian Science Monitor. October 11, 2009, and Universal Mc Cann’s study entitled “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers?”)

In using this type of phrasing, it appears that FOE and perhaps many other NGO and activist organizations base their media tactics on this knowledge that people won’t question what they see in writing. And in making such unsupported, anti-corporate statements, it seems that organizations making such statements will count on their audience to call upon the NGO or activist organization to “right the wrong” as defined by the self-appointed “expert” group. (Don’t forget the second sentence in the passage: “We must take precaution (sic) to ensure new technologies don’t do more harm than good.”)

No. For me, at least, unsupported, “anti-corporate card” plays of this sort only make this organization appear weaker, as if they can’t find enough examples to support what they contend. And I would think that an organization of FOE’s stature would be able to find examples through which to set up a better argument.

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Sociological Hacking

Here’s a link to a really great resource about guarding against what I call sociological hacking.  Others call it social engineering, not the kind that the government tries to foist upon us, but the kind that hackers employ to get through the weakest defense of a computer network, the human mind.

The European Network & Information Security Agency has produced a great overview of the problem that presents itself in social networks: people masquerading as others to get into your friend or professional network.  Well, you may be thinking, “So what? What harm could that do to me?”  Probably nothing if you kept your virtual mouth shut.  But that’s not what social networks are about, are they?  SNs are about opening up and advising your friends and co-workers on you status, latest thoughts, latest activities, future activities, business trips, interactions with that guy or gal in the next cube, etc.

If there is someone in your network who’s not really who they claim to be, you might just be giving them juicy tidbits that they might be able to leverage against you.  Like what?  Well, like your birthdate for one.  Put that little tidbit together with other personal info that’s even easier to surf and voila you might just have yourself a nasty case of identity theft.  Or perhaps you like to update all on your travel status, taking a business trip here or there, or some personal time at some other location.  In certain circumstances, giving us that TMI is like putting a sign on your house saying, “Hey all you Nasties out there, there’s no one home here.”  A little, or perhaps a lot, of discretion should be practiced.

Well, anyway, check out the link and you’ll get a better picture of what I mean.

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Is It Possible to be Too Connected?

Is it possible to be too connected.

Absolutely.

A recent article entitled “The Twitter Pandemic” played on the current news about the swine flu being so popular. In the article, the author talks about how sometime (or maybe much of the time) sensationalism is used by tweeters to gain attention for their tweet and for any connected blog post or web site. Sensationalism? How about the title of the article that discusses that? The article is titled the “Twitter Pandemic,” written about two days after the mainstream news hyped the heck out of the swine flu.

This kind of writing, or tweeting because when you come down to it tweeting really isn’t writing, sensationalism that is, is nothing new.  It’s been around since the days of “yellow journalism” perfected in the late 19th century.  But now this writing style is in the hands of people using it without supervision.  Not necessarily children, they often are, but folks who write and, by extension of this writing style, act like children.  People writing with no fear of liability or recrimination.  And as their connectedness increases, our sense of reality fades, leaving us to cut through the sensationalism to find reality.

All for the sake of being “connected.”

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Stop Watching the TV News – Part 2

I recently completed my first month of no TV news.  And I’m still feeling great.

My first post on this topic was March 9, 2009 and you can read that one here.  What a difference a month with no TV network or cable news can make.  The media induced drama was getting me down.  And there’s no need for that.  Very little of what’s broadcast on TV news actually affects my life; and the things that do affect my life are mostly business related.  So, I do watch the business news on TV.  CNBC and Bloomberg, my cable provider doesn’t make it easy to get Fox Business News, but CNBC and Bloomberg are enough.

Although I must say that I’m growing cautious of CNBC.  Recently on the early morning show they had Howard Dean as a guest host.  Howard Dean.  A political physician telling me about business.  When I saw him on the screen I quickly flipped over to another station.  Okay, I thought.  I’ll give CNBC a pass on this one.  Maybe they just temporarily had a problem finding guests, although if they did they could have called me. I would have made myself available.   But then on the morning of March 30, 2009 I turned on that same early morning program and saw Ariana Huffington’s face staring back at me.  I checked the channel.  Did I have on MSNBC on instead of CNBC? I thought.  Nope.  It was CNBC.  So, I switched it off before she could babble-pollute my mind.

I don’t want the media induced psycho-drama sprinkled into my business news, the last bastion of “reason.”  I don’t need my business news sprinkled with politics.  If CNBC greets me again with another political wonk, then I’ll stop watching them as well.  And I’ll only be left with Bloomberg.

I’ll let you know how I make out.

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Not Impressed with WP Remix Theme Purchase Process

We’re reorganizing this blog and company site.  After much shopping we decided on a new theme, WP Remix 2.3 available at www.wpremix.com.

Nice theme.  But a clumsy ordering process.

We bought the theme online.  Standard.  Then got the receipt from PayPal.  Standard, although nowhere along the line did they say how you would download the thing once payment was complete.  Such information could go a long way to assuring the customer of a good ordering process.

We got the confirmation email from PayPal.  Of course, no download instructions there.

Then we got the confirmation email from the vendor directly.  They gave us the user name to use for download.  OK, standard.  But then for the password they said to contact them.  Huh?  Not so standard.  We’ve never seen that before in any download purchase we’ve made.

Oh and yes, that confirmation email also said that we shouldn’t hit reply on that email because that email box isn’t monitored.  So how are we supposed to contact them for the password??? At this point the whole thing started to smell bad.

So then WE had to make the effort to hunt down their email addresses, to find out how to contact them to get the password that we just paid USD75 for.  In other words, we had to work harder then they did on this one.  And they didn’t seem to mind, especially since they didn’t tell us how to contact them.

So after the hunt, we found several email addresses for them.  We sent several emails to several addresses.  We did get a response, somewhat quickly, I’ll have to say that at least.  But the response was an excuse that their password system was down.

(I’m not even going to go into the exchange that took place when they asked for our receipt number even though it was already in our original email, at the bottom of their request email for it.)

Huh? again.  Our payment system wasn’t down.  PayPal wasn’t down.  We were ready.  If  their password system was down, they could have put a notice on the WPRemix.com purchase page informing us of the problem before we forked over our 75 bucks.  If they had done that, we just would have waited and come back later.

Nope. They didn’t do that.

We’re not impressed. Not one iota.

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Stop Watching the TV News

I’m now in my seventh day of not watching the TV news.  And I feel great.

It started last Monday, 3/9/09, after watching the early morning CNBC interviews with Warren Buffett.  Warren said a lot of things about the economy, some good and some not so good.  But the best thing that he said was that the economy would be “fine” in five years.  Okay.  Five years is a long time to wait.  But if Buffet is clairvoyant (sometimes he is and sometimes not so much), then if the economy would be “fine” in five years, we should be starting to pull out of this mess within the not too distant future.

Now, Buffett isn’t a sage.  He doesn’t have a crystal ball, but he is a solid, no-nonsense businessman with a more than demonstrated ability to pick winners.  He’s one of the “wise ones” that people look to when clarity is needed.  And he doesn’t disappoint.  So you think the news would jump onto his words of wisdom like linebackers on a fumble.  Nope.

All day on Monday, all the headlines I saw in reference to the Buffett interviews were downers.  All the headlines picked out the negatives about which Buffett spoke.  If it bleeds, it leads.  Not one of those headlines mentioned Buffett’s prediction about the economy being fine in five years.  That’s when I said to myself that I’ve had enough of the mainstream media, specifically the TV “news.”

It isn’t really “news.”  It’s more like a choreographed drama.  More reality “show” than objective reporting, actually.  But it figures.  Because humans are more able to relate to a continuing story, like a drama, than just an endless stream of facts.  News organizations are businesses and need to sell ads.  Drama draws eyeballs.  Endless streams of facts usually don’t.

The mainstream media have been talking up this recession since early in 2008, and back then I said to many colleagues that the mainstream media want a recession, so that’s what we’ll have. Voila.  I saw this coming, but I’ll admit I didn’t think that it would go as deep as it already has.

In a society that’s as continually connected as ours, both online and offline, when a meme is propagated, it’s believed.  True or not.  The self-fulfilling prophecy.  It’s too bad.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  If at least 10% of the American population would stop watching the TV news for, oh, about three months, we would probably see the economy start to turn around.

I’ll be doing my part.

How about you?

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The Repackaging of Reality

I’m going to jump on a thought from Michael Strangelove as put in The Empire of Mind, the allowing of all voices an outlet via the Internet weakens the “hegemonic construction of reality.” (The Empire of  Mind, p. 190; yes, it’s a book, not a blog post.)

Huh?

Simply put in less academic language, Michael means that we’re losing the centrally located, “objective,” liability-fearing, repository, reference points of reality. Reality is being diluted. And as I said before it’s becoming less real. Less objective. More subjective.

What’s causing this? Social media is partially to blame.

Now, that’s not to say that there wasn’t an active campaign to alter the face of reality prior to social media getting a strong foothold long about 2004 or 2005. There always have been campaigns to control or change reality. Within modern society the players in that game have usually been public relations firms or politicians. But now because of the pervasiveness and ease of use of social media tools, anyone can play in the repackaging of reality.

Social media (blogs, forums, social networks, vlogs, plogs, splogs, photo-sharing sites, mini-blogs, etc.) enable anyone with a pulse to either “report” or opine about reality and have that message shared with countless others, from only a few to millions. Previous to the existence of social media, that privilege was reserved primarily for organizations which took the time to create “reality” through an investigative/research process. And then withstand the consequences if that “truth” wasn’t actually true. Organizations producing such messages were well aware of their potential liabilities and put processes in place to reduce running afoul of libel and/or slander laws. Risk reduction always surpasses damage control.

But that concern for liability doesn’t exist with today’s participants in social media. That person with a pulse can use social media to say whatever they want and however they like. That’s great for the First Amendment freaks out there. But it’s not great for us reality freaks.

In today’s social media, participants can post under their own name if they so choose. When posting under a real name, liability enforcement would be more easily realized. But social media also enables people to post under an alias, a handle, or as it’s known in social media land, a screen name. (It’s that pesky anonymity crowd factor I discussed previously.) Call the alias what you like, it still offers a person with a pulse an opportunity to participate in the repackaging of reality. Unlike voting, where a person only gets one per election per candidate (well, at least that’s the theory except for some precincts in Chicago), that person with a pulse can post their reality-bending vote an infinite number of times under one, two, three, or an undetermined number of different screen names.

So what we can see here is reality being manufactured by opinion, sometimes hyperbole, sometimes innuendo, and often via snarkiness.

Is social media starting to sound like a dangerous tool yet?

I suppose your answer would be “Yes” if you believe that people take social media, or more precisely the content of social media, seriously. It appears that we do.

And it doesn’t appear likely that that attitude will change significantly in the future.

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