Vol. 4 No. 4 (August 2005)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"The Romans [in
-- Edward Gibbon
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: Eyes in the skies
Wit and Wisdom: Zell Miller
to duel Cindy Sheehan
Check It Out: Follow the money
Quoted! Franklin Graham on the healing power of
love
Featured Article: "Defining Conservatism
Down"
Happenings: New Executive Director
Endorsements: Nancy Pelosi
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a
contributor
TALKING POINTS
The world - and it is a small world indeed - is at
your fingertips. Let them do the satellite tracking.
The Age of Surveillance is in full swing, and it is we who are swinging.
In contrast to the dystopic visions of yesterday's
sci-fi writers, in which the people endure constant surveillance by governments
or corporations, today's technologies of surveillance are increasingly
decentralized and increasingly publicly available. Mark Crispin Miller's
elegant revision of George Orwell -- "Big Brother is you, watching"
-- seems strangely apt in a world where it's becoming easier and easier for us
to see what our fellow human beings are doing.
The occasion for such ruminating is the advent of Google Earth, a software
program that allows the user to view any spot on the globe, from various
"altitudes," through the eyes of orbiting satellites. The
"streaming" images that Google Earth provides are not quite
real-time, but they are three-dimensional, and they include both terrain
features and man-made environments. Want to see the
Since the software is free for public consumption, the
technology is not quite what the military enjoys, and the resolution gives out
if you zoom in too close. But it is still possible to identify individual cars
and individual houses -- or if you choose to "look" at, say,
* Massively scalable
architecture publishes terabytes of geo-data to thousands of users from single
server cluster
* 3D view provides a complete picture of the area of interest by fusing
imagery, elevation data, GIS data, and your own points and annotations
* Fluid and responsive interaction streaming technology enables easy
exploration of massive datasets
* Collaboration and sharing are enabled through built in tools to email views, placemarks and annotations using flexible XML format
All
this is a natural -- or rather inevitable -- extension, we might suppose, of
the inexorable miniaturization and domestication of high-end computer
technologies, a process that is making our society seem more like Star Trek
every day. And it also seems entirely predictable that, among its other
features, Google Earth provides ready information on such geographic features
as shopping malls, golf courses, and coffee houses. MapQuest,
eat your heart out.
But this goes beyond Google Earth. In part, that's because other companies are
getting in on the act. Microsoft, Google's arch-competitor, has released an
early version of a program called Virtual Earth, which also combines mapping
and searching technologies. And a software company in
The broader philosophical and social questions here are not far to seek, but
they may be harder to answer than we would expect. How will widely
available satellite and photographic imagery change our understanding of public
space? The image and the ideal of the agora, from ancient
One obvious concern is security, with the
In the meantime, the more generalized fear is of the loss of privacy we all
face, and many people, as Tom Lehrer put it long ago, are "beginning to
feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." Indeed, it is even
possible to argue that what is at stake is our sense of privacy itself -- in
other words, that what we will lose is actually the fear of our loss of
privacy, and that we will become reconciled to living under the ever-watchful
eye of the global panopticon. This darker perspective
will be explored in more depth in the next issue of the Uncommon Denominator.
Here, let's first ask whether there are any positive practical implications to
public-use surveillance imagery. Given that this particular genie probably
won't go back into the bottle, and that those who can profit from it in
different military and corporate bureaucracies will continue to expand its use,
is there any way in which this technology can be put to good use? What is
its democratic potential, its potential for strengthening ordinary people
against the encroachments of the powerful?
The best way to approach this question is to ask, What
are we not supposed to see? What visual information about the surface of
the earth is meant to be kept from public view, and why?
And the answer to these questions leads us quickly to environmental issues.
The physical transformations of the biosphere that modern industrialism and
population growth have entailed can be shocking. That is why business
interests, and the governments they collude with, go to great lengths to prevent
people from seeing such things as agricultural feed-lots, or
strip-mines, or logging sites. We're supposed to believe that such places
are the unfortunate but inevitable cost of development, and of our lifestyle,
but they are not inevitable, and if people could actually lay eyes on
them, the potential exists for a mobilization of public sentiment against
business-as-usual.
Out of sight, out of mind. In sight,
in mind. Here's what a factory farm really looks like, or an offshore
oil well. Here are the mountains 5 years ago; here they are after the coal and
logging companies got to them. Hmmm…
The politics of visual evidence has deep roots in the American reform
tradition. In nineteenth-century abolitionist and temperance literature,
reformist authors wanted their readers to visualize the horrors of the plantation
and the saloon. With the rise of photography, and its creative use by Jacob Riis, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, the
realities of both the city tenement and the country farm could be brought home
to the American middle class. During the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam war, television images of violence here and abroad shocked
many viewers out of their ethical torpor. Today, satellite technology might
possess the same potential for showing us, in literal ways, those goings-on in
the world which the forces of greed and conservatism would prefer to conceal
from us. At present, the technology may not be sufficiently sophisticated
to achieve everything we hope, but if we move in that direction, and if we look
beyond its merely commercial potential, democratized satellite imagery could
begin to shape the environmental debate.
One of the moments that marked a turning point in modern environmental
consciousness was the picture taken, from outer space, in the 1960s, of the
Earth. This photograph suggested, at a visceral level, that whatever one's
political or theological views might be, all humankind inhabited the same
blue-green orb sailing through the vast, cold wastes of the universe. Could we
be at a juncture where readily available visual access to every spot on the
globe, from our next-door neighbor's patio to the tip of
WIT AND WISDOM
Zell Miller
Challenges Cindy Sheehan to Duel
Former Georgia Senator Prepared to Defend President's Honor
President
Bush picked up an impassioned supporter in his conflict with antiwar protesters
outside his Crawford,
Dressed in what he called "an eighteenth century dueling costume" and
brandishing a gleaming antique sword, Senator Miller said that Ms. Sheehan had
"besmirched the president's honor" and that he intended to defend it.
. .
. . . Meanwhile, President
Bush used his weekly radio address to send the message that he intends to
"stay the course" in his war against Cindy Sheehan.
Mr. Bush's remarks came amid new polls showing that public support for the war
against Cindy Sheehan is on the wane.
-- from The Borowitz Report. Read
more.
CHECK IT OUT
In the spirit of universal surveillance (see "Talking Points" above), we'd like to recommend three websites that provide
nitty-gritty information, not just hot air, about the role of money in
American politics.
The most in-depth and serious of these sites is OpenSecrets.org, sponsored by the Center
for Responsive Politics. It provides vast amounts of financial data regarding
contributions to Congressional and Presidential races, corporate PACs, 527
committees, the FEC, lobbyists and legislation, and on and on. Budget time for
this site, and be prepared to learn a lot.
Then there's PoliticalMoneyLine,
which is not quite as comprehensive, but easier to use and to read. Of
particular interest is the Donor Geography map, which allows you easily to zero
in on state, then city, then last name, in tracking down the flow of dollars
into the electoral process.
Finally, there's FundRace 2004 Neighbor Search, which markets itself as
a means "to find those who live near you that have made presidential
campaign contributions," and makes it easy to do so. The site also
provides a red/blue detailed map of the
Check 'em out.
QUOTED!
"[E]very tongue is going to confess Him as Lord one day. Now, either
you're going to do it voluntarily and submit your heart to the Lord Jesus
Christ, or you're going to be forced. And when you're forced it's going to be
too late then." -- Evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham,
as quoted in the New Yorker
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from Austin Bramwell's "Defining Conservatism Down: As the
Right's popularity has grown, its intellectual challenge to the Left has
diminished," which appeared in the August 29, 2005, issue of The
American Conservative.
"Had conservatism a
Cassandra, she might, amidst the current mood of triumph, point out that
whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists
destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit. In
the 1950s and '60s, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Willmoore Kendall (among others) were all at the apex of
their powers. No figure of similar stature remains….
"Though every year the conservative movement raises thousands of aspiring
intellectuals, they have no interest in creating a new intellectual synthesis.
If they go into academia or the think-tank world, they contribute to research
projects long under way; if they go into journalism, they defend an established
editorial line. In blogosphere parlance, they become
"instapundits," not philosophers.
"Meanwhile, young conservatives-in contrast to the anticommunists of the
1950s and the neoconservatives of the 1970s-rarely come to right-wing ideas
through any kind of epiphany. Rather, they inherit their conservatism from
parents or grandparents. Through generously funded seminars and think-tank
internships, they study the canon of conservative thought: The Road to
Serfdom, Ideas Have Consequences, Capitalism and Freedom, The
Conservative Mind, Witness, Atlas Shrugged, In Defense of Freedom, The Closing
of the American Mind, and others. These works, almost all written in the
1940s, '50s, and '60s, define the ideology they are charged with
advancing."
Click here to read
the whole article.
HAPPENINGS
New Executive Director -- The Commonweal Institute is proud to announce
that Laurie Spivak, one of CI's Fellows, has accepted the post of
Executive Director. Ms. Spivak brings to the position
substantial experience in marketing and communications in the nonprofit sector.
Prior to joining the Commonweal Institute, she managed the UCLA Center for
Civil Society, a research center devoted to the study of civil society,
philanthropy, and nonprofit and grassroots organizations and movements.
Previously, as a consultant with a strategic marketing firm working on public
interest campaigns and the multi-million dollar Ford Foundation Corporate
Involvement Initiative campaign, Ms. Spivak advised
national nonprofit organizations on marketing, communications, and public
relations. Throughout her career, she has created numerous marketing and
communications strategies, plans, and materials for a variety of private,
academic, and nonprofit entities.
In her new role as Executive Director, Ms. Spivak
intends to build the Commonweal Institute's capacity to impact public opinion
and the political environment through strategic communications to diverse
audiences and participation in the wider network of progressive organizations.
Her initial emphasis will be on securing funding for two new Commonweal
Institute initiatives and overseeing their implementation. The first of these
is convening a working group for launching the development of a progressive
marketing and communications infrastructure, with follow-on activities to
ensure that the working group's plans are carried out; preliminary work on this
project has already commenced. The second is developing and offering a series
of two-day intensive, participatory communications workshops for progressive
nonprofit leaders and advocates, which will train participants in effective
idea marketing, framing, and media relations; the overarching goal of this
training is to begin to develop a national cadre of trained progressive
spokespeople who are experts on diverse issues.
Ms. Spivak is a regular contributor to the
progressive, online magazine AlterNet, which was named one of NPR's five
"winners on the Internet," and won Utne's
Independent Press Award for Online Political Coverage. Her articles have ranged
in subject from pop culture pieces to in-depth policy critiques, and have been
posted on hundreds of web sites including Yahoo.news
and TomPaine.com. A 2000-2001 U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Spivak received the distinguished British American Chamber
of Commerce Fulbright award. With master's degrees from the London School of
Economics and Political Science and the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social
Research, she has an extensive understanding of public policy, economics,
political science, and organizational theory.
Ms. Spivak has a long history of progressive public
service and is currently a commissioner on the Los Angeles County Community
Action Board. Part of the national network of Community Action Boards (CABs)
established under President Johnson, these volunteer boards allocate federal
funds to nonprofit and grassroots organizations that provide vital services to
the underserved individuals and families across
ENDORSEMENTS
"In these challenging times, we need an advocacy think tank like
Commonweal Institute to communicate our principles and programs in ways that
will resonate with the broad public and empower citizens to take a more active
role in our democracy. Commonweal takes a strategic approach to advancing
issues in a way that will help decision-makers be proactive in confronting the
challenges of the future." -- Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-San
Francisco, 8th CD-CA, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives
GET INVOLVED
If you agree with Nancy Pelosi (see above), there are a number of ways you can
help the Commonweal Institute achieve its goals.
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© 2005 The Commonweal
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