We now know that Mike Daisey’s This American Life segment about Apple’s factories was full of fabrications. I wrote a piece for GOOD about what it means to be told something is true, and then find out it’s not:
Nothing is more depoliticizing than being lied to, and a close second is being condescended to. An exaggeration, oversimplification, or lie is not a persuasion tool; it’s a form of coercion. It’s a way of treating adults like children—of taking away our power to make up our minds independently. When people feel forced, they don’t want to comply; they want to rebel.
Here’s a link to my chat with BBC World News about the topic.
Is it time to kill the Five Star user review system? I explore the topic for New York Magazine:
When Yelp’s stock shot up 63 percent on March 2, its first full day of trading, commentators couldn’t resist pointing out that investors had given the user-generated ratings site “a five-star review.” The one-to-five scale is everywhere on the web, inviting surfers to become critics: Amazon, Netflix, and the iTunes app store also employ it. There’s just one problem: This democratization of reviewing tends to produce aggregate scores that reveal nothing much at all.
Here’s a different kind of piece - it’s a review of a book of essays and reporting that I really loved: John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead. An excerpt:
Reading John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.00) is like walking through pristine woods: just when you begin to get lost in the beauty, you hear a strange noise, and you turn around, startled, with a sped-up heart, and take stock of the fact that the woods, while beautiful, are full of terrifying mystery. You don’t forget where you are; you reconsider where you are and why you’re there.
Seriously, read this book.
My somewhat counterintuitive take in the Guardian on Obama’s campaign’s decision to cooperate with Super PACs:
The majority of Obama’s fundraising haul in 2008 came from online donations of $100 or less; without them, Obama would never be in the White House today. But this time around, why on earth would a hardworking mom from Ohio donate $25 of her paycheck to Obama, when a billionaire supporter like Jeffrey Katzenberg could easily cut a check for $25m to Priorities USA?
But soon, it hit me: ironically, thanks to Super Pacs, a small donation in 2012 is even more meaningful than it was in 2008.
Here’s why: with billionaires lining up to help Obama neutralize GOP Pacs in the war over the airwaves, Obama’s campaign can leave much of that dirty work to Priorities USA – and spend more of its small-donor cash on the far more wholesome ground war.
TechPresident asked a bunch of journalists, activists, and thinkers to weigh in on whether they are optimistic or pessimistic about 2012. I am cautiously optimistic:
In 2011, I saw people of my generation rising up, across the world, in unprecedented numbers. And while I doubt the scale of networked, bottom-up rebellion will be replicated this year, I expect that young people in Egypt, Spain, Israel, the US, and elsewhere will continue press for change — and that we’ll see new movements cropping up in other countries as well. Of course, I also expect that after a year like 2011, governments, corporations, and other bodies of concentrated power will redouble their efforts to counteract mass movements. But ultimately, I’m optimistic. In 2011, the sleeping giant of the Millennial generation woke up — realizing its own power — and I don’t think it will be sleeping in 2012, or any time soon.