Beginning the chapter about government communication, and tipping the balance thereof towards education and away from propaganda, I was insulted by the first few paragraphs dumping on polisci as not examining the avenues of power that is so central to their disscussions on how governments operate. What about Constructivism? Neo Liberals, and their emphasis on the importance of nongovernmental actors? Only Classical Realism regards all of a country as a solitary rational actor!
Then, through the Carter references and the last paragraph in the conclusion, I realized that this article is from before the 80s. A thirty plus year old article, wherefrom much of the theories, arguments and evidence from my political science training come from after that. (Constructivism is from 83 or 87, I can't remember).
From this side of the Reagan era, it's easy to see that this article is prescient in its warnings of the government being able to promote its messages and agendas as its own agent (albeit a really big gorilla of an agent) in the ideas marketplace. The Republicans (and Clinton) seem to have become really good at this, and Obama less so. Hence phenomena like the media coverage of the Tea Party rally with Glenn Beck on the Mall, versus the amount of coverage Jon Stewart's rally got, even though more than two and a half times the number of people showed up to support Stewart.
I was struck by his point about school teachers as government agents of information spread, it seemed a powerful argument, until you consider how stubborn and pre opinionated most schoolteachers are. Maybe that is a Madison phenomenon bias however, to do with the power of the union here and how uppity it can make them.
Aside from good civics (and everybody needs more civics education) I didn't quite follow what this was supposed to contribute to libraries and librarians discussion, aside from the fact that we count as government agents too.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Week three
Welcome to the land of Procrastinia, I am their Queen.
(if you would like to join our ranks, please allow me to point out the PBS show Sherlock, a modern update of that Holmes business, which is the best thing on tv that I have seen in months. And I watch a shit ton of tv. Start with "A Study in Pink" http://video.pbs.org/video/1619685888/ Full episode, no commercials, god I love pbs.)
But on to the week three readings
Having read some of Pawley's other work, I was leery of her article for this week's reading, but I found it one of the most readable and compelling of this batch. I had a conservative political science professor who had pointed out the disturbing disconnect between the liberal encouragements of "Promote Diversity" and multiculturalism, and the emphasis on treating everybody the same ("just be nice to everybody" as one of the quoted librarian's in Pawley's introduction put it.
I like how Pawley zeroes in on this from a completely different direction, and how it affects library work, but more importantly (especially from our perspective) how it affects library training. I only wish she had gone into more specifics.
(if you would like to join our ranks, please allow me to point out the PBS show Sherlock, a modern update of that Holmes business, which is the best thing on tv that I have seen in months. And I watch a shit ton of tv. Start with "A Study in Pink" http://video.pbs.org/video/1619685888/ Full episode, no commercials, god I love pbs.)
But on to the week three readings
Having read some of Pawley's other work, I was leery of her article for this week's reading, but I found it one of the most readable and compelling of this batch. I had a conservative political science professor who had pointed out the disturbing disconnect between the liberal encouragements of "Promote Diversity" and multiculturalism, and the emphasis on treating everybody the same ("just be nice to everybody" as one of the quoted librarian's in Pawley's introduction put it.
I like how Pawley zeroes in on this from a completely different direction, and how it affects library work, but more importantly (especially from our perspective) how it affects library training. I only wish she had gone into more specifics.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Copyright Readings
I- hmmm.
I have stolen digital content on the internet, and I am likely to do so again. I self justify some of these thefts with later purchase of the works involved, but by no means all. Usually I steal things because their legitimate formats are unavailable to me (I don't own a tv, and also (therefore?) don't have cable) such as British tv, tv shows whose network does streaming with commercials, but using a horribly coded engine to do it with (I'm looking at you, CBS).
I understand and acknowledge that this is illegal. But I don't agree with the way that the law is currently set up. The systems in place to try and answer the reasons I steal have become much better (hulu, netflix, audible), but they still aren't optimized, and neither are the laws and underlying philosophical definitions of property and ownership of digital content.
Reading the readings this week I was saddened at how much hasn't changed law-wise since many of the readings were written (1996? Modems?), how much this is still a muddle.
In the Revising chapter, I enjoyed the history of copyrights, and I liked how the author pointed out the current disconnect in the "copyright bargain," which seems a very good way to think of it, even if that bargain is a drunken three way of a mess.
The Liberal state reading was good, but perphrastic. Immoderately so.
I have stolen digital content on the internet, and I am likely to do so again. I self justify some of these thefts with later purchase of the works involved, but by no means all. Usually I steal things because their legitimate formats are unavailable to me (I don't own a tv, and also (therefore?) don't have cable) such as British tv, tv shows whose network does streaming with commercials, but using a horribly coded engine to do it with (I'm looking at you, CBS).
I understand and acknowledge that this is illegal. But I don't agree with the way that the law is currently set up. The systems in place to try and answer the reasons I steal have become much better (hulu, netflix, audible), but they still aren't optimized, and neither are the laws and underlying philosophical definitions of property and ownership of digital content.
Reading the readings this week I was saddened at how much hasn't changed law-wise since many of the readings were written (1996? Modems?), how much this is still a muddle.
In the Revising chapter, I enjoyed the history of copyrights, and I liked how the author pointed out the current disconnect in the "copyright bargain," which seems a very good way to think of it, even if that bargain is a drunken three way of a mess.
The Liberal state reading was good, but perphrastic. Immoderately so.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Literacy
I was having trouble coming up with what I wanted to say about this week's book, Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brandt, so read a few of my fellow students' blog entries for this book. I agree with them on how difficult this book was to read, especially finding the argument, or even the point to many paragraphs. Brandt has lots of great anecdotal literacy histories, but she doesn't say anything definitive with her data. (maybe that's my science background speaking). I feel like many of the paragraphs in the conclusion were plug and chug along the lines of
"Of course [obvious and very general statement about literacy]. And while [extreme statement about the seedy and/or spurious economic motives for promoting literacy] is too extreme a thesis [idyllic naive happy fluffy bunnies universe of all good reading] is also false. Literacy Literacy literacy. we must keep in mind [urban/rural, rich/poor, racial, cultural, generational] factors when thinking about literacy, like in chapter[s 1-9].
Unlike others in this class, I did not see my family's literary history depicted in one or more of Brandt's subjects, in that my family's generational differences skewed her generational norms (my grandfather-my father's father- was a veteran of WWI, born in 1894), we didn't follow her rural to urban to suburban trend (all but one were urban and stayed so), nor did education level dramatically increase. My grandfather was a blue collar mechanic on train engines, but read his library out of books in the genres he preferred (westerns, mysteries, science fiction), and kept up correspondence with 10 siblings. My other grandfather was an optometrist, and very active in political causes, rating the op ed page in three different regional newspapers at least once a month.
I understand that this is not typical for this region, or from her examples in book.
I did like how broadly Brandt cast the net of literacy, and made the point that definitions of literacy have broadened and become more complicated from 'ability to sign one's name."
"Of course [obvious and very general statement about literacy]. And while [extreme statement about the seedy and/or spurious economic motives for promoting literacy] is too extreme a thesis [idyllic naive happy fluffy bunnies universe of all good reading] is also false. Literacy Literacy literacy. we must keep in mind [urban/rural, rich/poor, racial, cultural, generational] factors when thinking about literacy, like in chapter[s 1-9].
Unlike others in this class, I did not see my family's literary history depicted in one or more of Brandt's subjects, in that my family's generational differences skewed her generational norms (my grandfather-my father's father- was a veteran of WWI, born in 1894), we didn't follow her rural to urban to suburban trend (all but one were urban and stayed so), nor did education level dramatically increase. My grandfather was a blue collar mechanic on train engines, but read his library out of books in the genres he preferred (westerns, mysteries, science fiction), and kept up correspondence with 10 siblings. My other grandfather was an optometrist, and very active in political causes, rating the op ed page in three different regional newspapers at least once a month.
I understand that this is not typical for this region, or from her examples in book.
I did like how broadly Brandt cast the net of literacy, and made the point that definitions of literacy have broadened and become more complicated from 'ability to sign one's name."
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