Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts

Monday, April 14, 2008

Fame in the digital age

An AP report titled, “Video of teen beating raises questions”, sure does. The trend of becoming famous for nothing in particular, that has its roots firmly cemented in reality television and is proliferated on video sharing sites like YouTube, has morphed into some young people seeking fame by committing heinous acts of violence against anyone that they think won’t fight back.

Brazen teens are nothing new; videoing acts of violence, vandalism, or stupidity it’s new either, but prior to the YouTube revolution, videos of this nature were quietly circulated within tight lipped communities of teens. Because of this, worldwide infamy wasn’t even a possibility. They may have become the stars in their particular town, but the perpetrators’ identities or acts of distaste would have never be disclosed. Unless a nosey parent happen stumbled across the VHS tape.

Most likely, degenerates (at least at the time of filming) produce these kinds of videos because they have no motivation to achieve anything that will bring them actual praise. Instant fame; no work needed. They figure putting their freedom or well being, or both, on the line is an acceptable risk for being considered cool by the cool kids. After all, they aren’t rational humans, they’re teens.

Nevertheless, it’s not YouTube’s fault for providing the service, or even for keeping these videos up so long. Even though their “general policies call for the removal of clips that show someone getting ‘hurt, attacked or humiliated’”, YouTube seems much more diligent when it comes to taking down videos depicting acts of sex, or copies of copyrighted material. They do still have a responsibility to alert the authorities when an illegal act is depicted on amateur video. Did they?

Another important question is, if no way to distribute these clips worldwide existed would these types of videos still get made?

The lure of easy fame definitely motives some to act out of character, and apparently, blinds them to the fact that the clip might be seen by cops. Though, this problem is enigmatic of our society as a whole, in these United States, and may reflect the failure of a nationwide experiment that was perpetrated by the medical establishment on this country’s “disturbed” youth. Not to say the teens shouldn't be held accountable.

I don’t want to come off too crazy here, and this is a simplistic view, but really the pharmaceutical companies defined, or invented a disorder, ADHD, through funding research. They then formulated the “cure”, Ritalin a central nervous system stimulant, described by critics as “Kiddie Cocaine”. Ritalin’s job is to increases the level of dopamine the brain has access to in much the same way as Cocaine. Continued use of Ritalin can lead to depression due to depleted levels of dopamine which, in turn, is treated with drugs like Zoloft. Anti-depression drugs increase the level of serotonin the brain has access to, hoping to reverse the other drug’s depressive effect; basically, this puts patients in a drug dependency cycle for life.

Side effects of Zoloft type drugs can include agitation and confusion. This fact has led some to believe these practices are the cause of the rise in violence at schools and homes perpetrated by disturbed, now drug addicted youth. Add to this the fact that the government divvies up monies for education depending on how many ADHD kids a school has in their population, and you have a system that thrives on misdiagnoses, numerous kids in the crossfire, and parent’s who blame themselves.

Now that I’ve thoroughly brought you down go here to cheer up.


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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

iPods as Military Hardware Leads to New Civilian Uses

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for our soldiers that are deployed in war zones having the appropriate equipment to get the job done. But, I have to ask myself, are iPods really helping to get their jobs done?

According to Vcom3D, an Orlando purveyor of an avatar based authoring suite called Vcommunicator, the iPod is the perfect platform by which software written with their suite can operate. Mobile LC, as it’s been dubbed, is a program they've written to demonstrate the authoring suite's capabilities. It translates English to Iraqi Arabic or Kurdish language. More importantly, their avatars can indicate the appropriate gestures to go along with the phases. This translation technology has effectively been given an military field test, now they're morphing it into a translation application that’s more suitable for travelers than armed forces.

It’s true that the iPod is a good platform for this technology. iPods are cheap and readily available, but the translation application itself is a bit limited. Soldiers can only select from a list of predesignated sentences that are mission specific, like “open your trunk” or “U.S. Army please open the door”. It doesn’t seem very adaptable to the quickly evolving or escalating situations that regularly present themselves to soldiers at war.

Where're the Star Trek translator joints at anyway?

Two-way translation would be nice when you want to communicate with an Iraqi rather than just ordering one around. The blog entry from Vcom3D states “[knowing] local culture can mean the difference between life and death”. I guess the trick for the soldier is to make the gestures learned look natural, instead of it looking like an avatar taught them to you.

This is throwing a technology at a cultural divide that’s really too wide to be bridged by it. There would have to be a radical change in the Army’s culture to bridge that divide for real. This device will help, and may even save lives, but to really get at the problem soldiers would have to immerse themselves in the culture of the people whose land they occupy/liberate.

This kind of cultural immersion is not supported by U.S. military conventions. The military personnel communication technology, that has been so well funded and very well received by troops, connects up the soldiers to each other and their command in such a pervasive way that soldiers never have to develop cultural sensibilities towards the citizens of the land they're in.

Say, you got separated from you squad, in earlier days you had to depend on the locals residents to help you; nowadays your location is mapped on the command’s console and the Calvary arrives before you even get hungry.

This is great, if you’re that soldier, but think of the relationships that are lost because of this. Not to say we shouldn’t use these technologies, just deploy them with less of a ‘us and them’ attitude. The example doesn't even need to be that extreme, soldiers deployed in Germany for decades just stay on the base, all the time; it's that kind of culture.

To ‘win the hearts and minds’ it would help to seem a bit more connected to the people of the land through human relationships, rather than just being connected to a computer network.


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