"There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes 'the practice of freedom,' the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
—Richard Schaull, from the foreward for Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
If you're in New York during the next couple of months, you may want to stop by the Center Gallery at Fordham University to see the gallery's current exhibition, Visual Voices: the Freedom of Expression.
On display are posters from fifteen artists and designers, including the likes of Luba Lukova, the Guerilla Girls, and...get this...myself. It's pretty snazzy to be included with such good company.
The show has been extended through February 10th, with a closing reception on January 26th. For more details, download the announcement (PDF).
Visual Voices: The Freedom of Expression Center Gallery, Fordham University Lincoln Center 113 West 60th Street | New York, NY 10023
Hours: Monday-Friday 10-8 | Saturday & Sunday 10-5 Through February 10th Closing Reception: Tuesday, January 26th 5-7pm
Well, the results are in (sort of) for the Cooper Hewitt People's Design Award. My Re-nourish team has actually waited to post anything about the results because we were trying to find out what our final ranking was. Unfortunately, the Cooper Hewitt won't actually give us that information (nor will they release how many votes each nominee received).
Doesn't matter, though. The fact is, we placed in the top three, and we gave some pretty big players a run for their money. And way more important than that is that everyone who supported us sent a message that it's high time the design industry changes how it defines "good design."
Re-nourish believes design has to expand beyond politics, personalities, and mere aesthetics, and address—in real terms—both social and environmental impacts. Please read Re-nourish's full "thank you," because I think it says a lot about why we're doing this in the first place.
And please, let us know what your thoughts are—either here, or over there.
Thank you to everyone who voted, or has otherwise supported us as we continue to bring independent tools and information to working designers everywhere!
The dork in me is totally fascinated by early childhood brain development. This is a great example of it (and it's real cute to boot):
Notice how mom asks how big is a whale? to get sonny boy to raise his arms. He understands how to react to that input, but hasn't yet appeared to make the connection between his own input and the reaction he's causing. It's also a nice example of how a single action might get both the reaction we expect, and a completely unexpected one (see this recent post about habits). Plus, like I said, it's pretty darn cute.
With America's first black president-elect comes a wave of optimism, it seems: things will be okay. But even as the public breathes this collective sigh of relief, it turns a wary eye to Barack Obama and wonders, if quietly, will things really be okay? Because the Bush administration has done real damage to America's democratic structure by limiting civil liberties, creating undemocratic "justice" systems, and otherwise desecrating our constitution. This damage is frightenly cataloged by Naomi Wolf in her 2007 book The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.
Wolf's basic premise is simple and hard to dispute: when studying dictators throughout the world's history, there are ten patterns of behavior that emerge that contribute to their rise to power, and George W. Bush and his administration has pursued each of these steps. While never outright calling Bush and his posse a fascist dictatorship, Wolf certainly connects many dots and sounds a clear warning. Paper coups are still coups.
The Ten Steps Towards Fascist Dictatorship
Invoke an external and internal threat. Example: Terrorism
Establish secret prisons. Example: Guantánamo
Develop a paramilitary force. Example: Blackwater
Surveil ordinary citizens. Example: USA Patriot Act and TIPS
Infiltrate citizen's groups. Example: Talon and multiple state-level incidents
Arbitrarily detain and release citizens. Example: The TSA no-fly list, specific individual arrests
Target key individuals. Example: Direct Congressional pressure on academia, attorney firings
Restrict the press. Example: The outing of Valerie Plame, detainment of reporters, deliberate withholding of information
Cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason." Example: Revived use of the Espionage Act
Subvert the rule of law. Example: Military Commissions Act of 2006 (the suspension of habeous corpus), Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill (the gutting of posse comitatus law)
Wolf's arguments and examples in most cases are incredibly strong and well documented (including 14 pages of reference notes and a full bibliography). Unfortunately, there are stretches that undermine her message. She too often conflates the media (particularly the right-leaning outlets and blogosphere) with the administration itself, as when she hammers Ann Coulter for her book Treason. But these leaps become a little easier to swallow when we remember that much of Hitler's power lay in his use of ordinary citizens, as well as organized media, to further his message. Just because one's finger is not on the trigger doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the death.
That said, the book is by no means a simple comparison of Bush and Hitler. That would be too simplistic, and could be easily brushed off as left-wing rhetoric. Wolf's arguments transcend this, referencing more than just the obvious Nazi regime (who, after all, were simply better at such tactics than anyone else). Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin and others all appear frequently to bolster her points. In fact, there are suprisingly few histrionics; Wolf spends much of her writing merely cataloging events and listing actions from different regimes side by side for the reader to compare.
While the book's premise is strongly supported by facts, it's the epistolary format and sheer number of wrongdoings that makes the book a little heavy-handed. Of course, this is the author's intention, but it would have been nice to see a few practical suggestions other than be aware, be vigilant offered to the reader. I suspect this omission is deliberate, though. Wolf's aim is to awaken, not necessarily to direct. She is asking her reader to consider the true meaning of patriot, someone who actively participates in and engages with one's civic society. And to do so, one must first pay attention.
And with chilling examples, Wolf demands our attention. In the end, it's extremely difficult to write off such examples as merely rhetoric, or such warnings as unlikely to occur. Small events become significant when placed against the backdrop of government, as when she describes a TSA agent forcing a mother to prove the substance in her baby's bottle is really breastmilk by drinking it herself: "In Benito Mussolini's era, one intimidation tactic was to force citizens to drink emetics and other liquids...Of course, baby formula is not an emetic. But a state agent—some agents are armed—forcing a citizen to ingest a liquid is a new scene in America."
When the scenes play out, and the layers are peeled back, and the dots begin to connect, what remains are nagging questions: how far does the administration have to go it before its citizens refuse to cooperate? How many democratic protections must be suspended before the public demands its rights back? How many secret armies, Blackwaters, must be formed? How many innocent citizens must be harrassed, jailed, persecuted before their peers step up in their defense? On Tuesday, we heard one answer to these questions.
So, perhaps the recent election signalled The End of America over before it began. What sense is there in rehashing the last eight years, after all, when we all want to move forward? The truth is, it would be dangerous to sit back and rest easy. The Bush administration did a lot of damage; it took an extended series of measured, deliberate steps to maintain and grow its power at the expense of the U.S. Constitution. Those changes will still be operable under the new presidency—we need to know them, to study them, to be able to roll them back.
Wolf's book is, if no longer a warning of imminent danger, at the very least a guide to serious legal issues that need to be addressed by the still-forming Obama administration. So much of the Bush administration's activities were carried out in the shadows of a disinterested, and therefore uninformed, electorate, that one can only hope that Tuesday's engagement was the mark of an extended era, and not merely an emotional hiccup. The end of America may have been delayed, but this book remains a damning documentation of how close we were, and are.
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Whether you read the book or not, I highly recommend watching the following presentation, in which Wolf outlines her premise and presents incredible evidence to support it. A more polished version (with commercials) is also available from SnagFilms.
No one can argue that Michael Moore is a polarizing figure—but that's why he is so effective. He speaks, people listen. He organizes people, people react. This is a good thing. Now he's got a new movie coming out. Slacker Uprising is clearly an attempt to galvanize America's youth during this year's momentous election:
There has been a mounting buzz about the potential power and growing engagement of America's young voters. At the same time, it's not unusual to hear 30-plussers complain that kids today are apathetic and self-centered. So which is it? Well, here are just a few statistics:
Almost 25% of eligible voters are aged 18-30 (source).
On Super Tuesday '08, voters under 30 turned out in record numbers, in some states quadrupling their turnout numbers over the previous election (source).
Almost 50% of eligible under-30 voters went to the polls in the 2004 election, the highest youth turnout in over ten years. (source).
So, it looks like Moore may be onto something: the kids are getting more involved. And to encourage more of the same, he's giving his new movie away for free to anyone living in the U.S. and Canada. Sign up for the free download here. (Thanks, Noah!)
At the risk of sounding like a screaming conspiracy theorist...
Held at the New York Public Library, Here We Go Again: Orwell Comes to America was a recent conference focusing on propaganda in today's America—right here, right now—and how it hogties our public freedoms.
Another riveting lecture (no, seriously), is Naomi Wolf's discussion of American fascism and our current administration's echoes of previous dictatorships. It's quite well-reasoned and frighteningly enlightening. Instead of watching the latest episode of Lost or 24, watch this:
If you're one of the thousands of consumers who likes to know what chemicals go into your food, Pennsylvania has a big screw you for ya:
"Effective Jan. 1, dairies selling milk in Pennsylvania, the nation's fifth-largest dairy state, will be banned from advertising on milk containers that their product comes from cows that have never been treated with rBST, or recombinant bovine somatotropin."
That's right—dairies are no longer allowed to let their customers know that they don't give rBST to their cows. The result is that customers will have no way of knowing which dairy products they buy are hormone free (unless they buy certified organics).
The law is likely going to spread (New Jersey and Ohio are next) as Monsanto, the country's largest producer of agro-chemicals used on our nation's food supply, lobbies state governments to increase the ban. Their logic? Letting customers know what's not in our milk "implies that competitors' milk is not safe."
There is something excruciatingly perverse about this ruling, and it's not just that agribusiness and government are trying to keep information from consumers. What's really perverse is that dairies are labeling their milk "rBST free" because consumers want them to; it adds value to the product. Monsanto recognizes this, and instead of adapting their business paradigm to meet this dramatic shift in consumer demand, they are forcing consumers to conform to their standards. That's not really how the free market is supposed to work, though, is it?
Update [11.28.07]: "...early last week Gov. Ed Rendell's office initiated a review of the decision...Chuck Ardo, press secretary for Mr. Rendell, said the governor's office heard complaints from elected representatives of rural districts and agriculture lobbyists, prompting the review." [full story via The Ethicurian]
Update [01.17.08]: The ban's been reversed! [References via The Ethicurian]
When a neighbor recently traced the shadow of a parking sign onto our sidewalk using spray paint, it struck me as a fun way to play with light; the sign's shadow would fill up the spray-painted outline only at the exact moment of the day that the painter had done his work.
"The best way to counter an ideavirus, any ideavirus, is not by challenging the medium in which it spreads. It didn't stop pirate radio or salacious TV shows or online porn. What has always worked the best is countering one ideavirus with another one. To use the same medium to spread a different, better, more powerful ideavirus. You don't counter racism by making the act of uttering racist statements against the law. You do it by spreading an idea (racism is hateful, wrong and stupid) that keeps the racist from expressing his ideas because all his friends will shun him if he doesn't.
If you want moderate ideas to spread in a community, promote the people who are spreading those ideas. Make them heroes. Amplify their message and help it spread..."
Right on the heels of my recent post about internet censorship comes what might very well be a solution. Picidae is an project created to bypass governmental spying and censorship via the internet. The project has seen a mildflurryofpublicity across the internet as it nears release, and now as I try to load the site once again, I get an internal server error. Uh-oh.
The program (which, I believe, was developed by someone in Germany) is based on the technique used by governments like China in which a user's internet habits are tracked as they enter information online. Typically, censoring governments log search engine entries and URL entries, and if the offending site is restricted the user either is denied access to the site or gets their internet connection shut down completely. So, for example, Googling "Tiananmen democracy movement" might either return very few results, or shut down your internet connection.
Picidae allows you to enter an URL via their servers, and returns an image map of the target URL, as opposed to an html page. The links remain clickable and simple forms can still be filled out (so you could search Google all day long).
It's a brilliant concept, a potentially revolutionary system. I can only hope that the inability to access picidae.net at this moment is due more to some kind of access overload than to something more insidious.
[Edit: The Picidae site appears to be up and running now.]
Technology has broken down global barrier after global barrier, bringing the outside world into some of the most geographically obscure localities. American TV shows are exported to countries still jonesing for our brand of "culture" and products cross oceans both ways, scratching that consumerist itch that continues to spread like a rash over the earth's surface (the number of Chinese products, for example, imported to the U.S. more than tripled in the last twenty years1). China would seem to be reciprocating the favor, opening the mainland to U.S. imports as well.2 But some borders will not be breached no matter the price paid by the country's citizens.
China has the dubious distinction of joining a dozen other countries in enforcing an internet "black hole." The above map, produced by Reporters Without Borders, shows us who is not allowed to freely surf the net throughout the world. Some of these countries filter out sites that disagree with the ruling government, some monitor and log users' internet activity, others ban private service providers and still others go as far as to imprison those who use the internet to freely express themselves.
While it strikes me as unforgivably unjust that our global economy continues to support such political oppression, maps like the one above remind me how deeply graphic depictions of this kind of injustice can strike a chord. With so much visual clutter bouncing off our retinas, it's nice to see some meaningful messages being sent through the airwaves and internet tubes, too.
Although the idea of an art show at a San Francisco nightclub featuring propaganda posters from around the world freaks me out to no end (honey, let's get our politics on while sipping cosmos by the pool, shall we?), I am truly fascinated by this collection of propoganda posters pulled together by the organizers of Propaganda III. You can check out the growing collection of posters on Flickr but remember: these are propaganda posters and are full of anger, hate and resentment.
Imagine a city with no outdoor advertising: the billboards become naked skeletons, bare taxicabs and buses drive past leaving you with no final message, there are no posters, or flashing neon, or cardboard cutouts begging from you and teasing you and screaming for your wallet/mind/soul. When you close your eyes and imagine this new city, does it look something like this?
Welcome to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the mayor has outlawed all outdoor signage. He's been called a fascist for doing so, hailed as a visionary, and generally gotten a whole lot of publicity. But will it work? Will stripping the city bare really mark a "victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash," as writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo described the new law?
I can think of three possible arguments against the ban:
It restricts free speech.
It ignores the possibility that advertising might actually add to the public good.
It will put an industry out of work and affect the livelihood of thousands of small businesses.
Of course, the first argument goes without saying. But the government knows this already: one city councilman admitted that "some people are going to have to pay a price" for what he described as a "complete change of culture."
And what about the second argument? Is it possible that advertising isn't all evil? (Bill Hicks is rolling over in his grave as I type.) Gustavo Piqueira is a designer who "worries that much of the 'vernacular' lettering and signage from small businesses—'an important part of the city's history and culture'—will be lost." I think this is a valid point. Hand painted signs, storefronts and artisan vendor advertising all add to a visual language that is inevitably unique to the community that produces it. Can it be ugly? Sure. Should it be banned? Not so sure.
And, of course, there is the final question of money; only time will tell if the law will put people out of work and negatively impact Sau Paulo's economy. I suspect it will cause more problems than it solves, although the government does expect to slowly allow a more regulated advertising industry back on the streets.
But more importantly, it raises some interesting questions about what is and what isn't culturally worthwhile. Will stripping away ads while leaving the physical framework really look better? And will it impact consumer habits? I have to admit that I'm excited that a city as large as Sau Paulo has actually taken such a dramatic step to find out, regardless of whether or not it's the right step. Some questions you just can't answer without actually acting first.
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