Digital Culture Studies

Ben Stein has a new movie out, called Expelled: No intelligence allowed. The tagline is pretty precious: Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is every generation has its rebel…Ben blows the horn on supression. Apparently, Big Science also expelled grammar from the classroom. Its hard not to automatically reach for the joke on this one, but the movie is dead serious about ‘exposing’ the stranglehold so called Big Science has on …. science…and how unaccommodating they are about teaching things that….aren’t scientific….in science classrooms.

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We did it, even though most of our neighbours did not. And although we live pretty green, we learned that we still have too many things that plug in. More frustrating was how little changed the Chicago skyline was during the hour - big buildings did turn off their lights, but plenty did not.

Scrabble by candelight is hard. Or maybe it was the wine. Better pictures than mine of Earth hour events can be seen in the Earth Hour Flickr Pool. But the big question is, did participation make a difference? Time says, maybe. Sceptics say no. Believers say yes. ComEd says there was a 5% reduction in power useage between 8-9, as compared to last Saturday. Is 5% enough? I don’t think so.

Of course the essential problem remains: people who think this is a problem will always be looking for ways to lower their carbon footprint number, and people who don’t think it is a problem will not, and as long as there are more people in the second camp than the first, very little will change, and that seems like a great shame.

Its called “getting your Google MD”, and you know you have done it - that late night search to diagnose yourself. This scratch, is it infected? That ache - sprain or break or strain, or cancer? Because all Google medical searches end in cancer, according to my own n=1 experiments. Hangnail, or …cancer? ACL issue, or….cancer? Migraine or brain tumour? Its cancer, always cancer in the end, with Google searches, but we do it anyway, and for the not squeamish and highly hypochondriacal, there are always Google image searches on medical ailments to help the diagnosis along.
But now Google is getting into the business of individual health on a very real basis, via our health records, by creating a system that will allow patients to access and transfer their health records to a google repository. While the official word is that these records will remain secure, as soon as I saw this I started wondering about the privacy implications. Fred Stutzman says it more eloquently than I:

Can I ever really give informed consent when I’m trading my health records, deeply personal and private information, for the measly tradeoff of what essentially boils down to online hosting of text files? Sure, I’ve already given Google my search and communication information, but they had to work for it. But my entire medical history just so I can access it when I want? And they can market to me with that information? This is simply too much to give away for convenience.

My own health service has a wonderful online component - I can see and track my test results, run simple charts to show change over time, and message my doctor for minor stuff and/or request refills online. Its convenient, and private, and gives me a measure of control over my medical history, and it isn’t hosted by Google. Accessing my records digitally in this manner is covered by HIPAA, but using a third party vendor like Google may be considered a form of opting out of the protection of HIPAA. I cannot help but wonder who will see those records at Google, how will that information be mined, and what will they do with it? After all, Google isn’t an impartial philanthropic foundation devoted to the betterment of society via technology, although that seems to be the stance most users take when they use the search engine, download the search bar, and link google functionality to their Firefox browsers.

How much does Google know about you, and about me, and where is the balance going to be - where is that thin line where what we give up to them, privacy-wise, no longer is enough for what they offer?

Earth Hour originated in Sydney, in 2007, but on March 29, 2008, will be a global event. Chicago is one of the cities participating, as the flagship city in the United States. Never heard of Earth Hour? Their video explains it all.

….that pagan holiday where we consume ceremonial depictions of men, in ginger, to celebrate the tauroctony. I love December 25th! You non-classics majors may have another use for that day.

It doesn’t take a genius (good thing!) to see the heavy-handed marketing aimed at children, who already see 40,000 advertisments a year and have a difficult time differentiating between advertising and media content. Speaking of which, I am a big fan of the Commercial Free Childhood.  Nonetheless, it is heartwarming (dare I say that, since ’tis the season for heartwarming acts?) to know that other people share my abject horreur of the Bratz phenomenon. Best of all, that post lead me to a great op-ed on the Bratz movie, which is really about all movies aimed at pre-teen girls, and how those movies all have the same elements, and virtually interchangeable frames.

 If you think the sexualization of little girls via marketing isn’t really a problem in America, well…can you tell me how the marketing goals of these two images differ?

Ben can see, without eyes.

Sleepy Urbanite: Cell Phone Art
The Kings Of MySpace (slightly NSFW, very funny)

Video The Vote: Stopping voter suppression, by observingthe vote and sharing the results - on election day.