"Our business is advertising."

These are the words of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, from an interview published in the April 20, 2009 issue of BusinessWeek. She continued:

"We believe advertising needs to blend into the experience ... we don't have big banners across the site, nor do we have text-based ads that are really part of the search experience. We have ads that act like our site."

Facebook is the world's premier social networking website. Hundreds of millions of people use it to keep in touch with their friends, families, and associates. These are the relationships and conversations that make human life meaningful. But:

"These naturally occurring social actions now also can be paired with sponsored content and advertising to create a Social Ad."
- Facebook Product Overview FAQ

Facebook is a privately owned company that profits by surreptitiously injecting paid advertisements into its users' human relationships.

"You understand that we may not identify paid communications as such."
- Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. ("By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement.")

Research firm eMarketer predicts that advertisers will spend $605 million to reach Facebook users in 2010 — a 39% increase from 2009. Marketers are increasingly confident that the money they spend at Facebook will draw consumers to pay for their products and services.

"People treat Facebook as an authentic part of their lives, so you can be sure you are connecting with real people with real interest in your products."
- Facebook case study in a promotional message to advertisers.

People from around the globe login to Facebook hoping to share stories of life, love, hope, and achievement. Facebook's aim is to make them talk about commercial products instead.

"The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. ... We are announcing a new advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people."
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at a press conference on November 6, 2007. Quoted by TechCrunch.

"[Facebook has] put the power of recommendation and referrals into a systematic environment."
- Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook VP-product marketing and operations. Quoted in the November 12, 2007 issue of Advertising Age.

Facebook's entire financial model rests on the fact that its users — or more accurately its used — are willing to display products as prominently as their friends and build their identities out of advertisements. John Doe's Facebook profile does not list his beliefs, his achievements, or his goals. It is not set up to demonstrate his individuality or creativity or personality. It simply lists, "John Doe is a fan of: [insert brands here]." This is exactly how Facebook wants it to be.

"Facebook Pages are designed for businesses and brands to efficiently interact and communicate with users. Through Pages, businesses can engage with their fans and capture new audiences virally through their fans’ recommendations to their friends."
- Facebook Product Overview FAQ.

It doesn't stop here. Third party companies that develop Facebook applications also sell their users to advertisers.

"Slide offers brands a direct conduit to the most valuable audience on the web: young, engaged users who are eager to click and eager to share ... Slide placements perform better than traditional online placements because the ads are not merely near the entertainment, they are the entertainment."
- Slide promotional message to advertisers.

Slide, Inc. develops popular Facebook applications including SuperPoke!, which boasts approximately 150 million users. Its promotion continues:

"By weaving advertisements into the sponsored actions, brands receive maximum engagement. SuperPoke! is the definitive and most recognizable application on Facebook, and metrics prove that it is a highly effective advertising buy."

These applications encourage Facebook users to structure their daily social interaction around branded products (e.g. spray a friend with branded perfume). Facebook makes it easy for application developers to deliver targeted advertising to their users:

"When you add an application and use [the] Platform, your content and information is shared with the application."
- Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Meanwhile, market research companies such as the Acxiom Corporation offer to help businesses develop targeting advertising campaigns using social networking sites.

"Acxiom Relevance-X® Social helps you see the social networks of your customers and how many friends or contacts they may have within online communities. ... With Acxiom Relevance-X Social data, marketers can establish and maintain up-to-date social intelligence on their customers, interact with socially active brand advocates ... and influence the influencers in a respectful and engaging way to drive purchase behavior."
- Acxiom Corporation promotional message for direct social media marketing.

Facebook's advertising creates a culture of consumerism. Users of the network define themselves by things rather than actions. Without thinking, they announce that they are "fans" rather than striving to be leaders. As a result, Facebook discourages inventiveness and destroys individuality. It promotes the opposite, and its users buy into mindless money-driven fads, surrendering their personality to become a particle in the mass of millions. The entire site is structured to make users build their relationships and identities around commercial products, turning human emotion, affection, and trust into commodities packaged and sold to advertisers.

The only way out of this hyper-commercial environment is to leave Facebook — but often that means losing the best way to keep in touch with friends, family and loved ones. Facebook makes it hard to leave. It has assembled the perfect captive audience for marketers. Don't be trapped. Imagine life off Facebook, without advertising, on your terms. Imagine the potential of relationships built around meaning rather than marketing, and commitments rather than clicks. I will not be held hostage. Will you?

Category: Internet | Permalink | 6 Comments — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

The Supreme Court's ruling, announced on January 21, marks a major change in the rules of electoral politics in America. It makes it possible for private corporations — whether for-profit companies, non-profit organizations, or unions — to use their money to air political advertisements in favor of or against specific candidates in the days before an election. This kind of direct corporate involvement in politics had previously been illegal, banned by legislation going back to the Tillman Act of 1907 and including most recently the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Their bill passed 59-41 in the Senate, but part of the act has now been voided by the 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision.

Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for the court's majority by arguing that any law restricting corporations from airing political advertisements was an infringement on the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Kennedy wrote:

By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. ... We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers. Both history and logic lead us to this conclusion.

Meanwhile, dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens disagreed with the premise that a corporation constituted a "disadvantaged person." Speaking for the court's minority, he wrote:

The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it. ... It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

Madison's demonstrators agreed with those words. Some carried signs with slogans like "Abolish Corporate Personhood" and "Overrule the Court!" I applaud their position. Corporations are not humans. They exist only on paper as tools created by people to achieve some goal. The individual rights of the people involved in corporations — shareholders, directors and employees — were never in question. They have always held the right to speak as individual citizens. The Supreme Court's ruling, as I see it, now gives corporate executives twice the rights that other people hold: their own unalienable right to speak as individuals, plus the right to speak through the corporations they control using those corporations' money and power. Corporations hold immense concentrations of wealth, and because they are often structured simply to generate more, their interests are self-serving. Wealthy multinational corporations can easily outspend real individuals in a race to promote their profit-driven political agendas. Far from enhancing free speech, the court's ruling will help powerful corporations drown out the voices of actual people with real human needs.

The Supreme Court's ruling cannot easily be reversed. Although the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act passed in 2002 with a measure of bipartisan support, today's Congress may be too deeply divided to act on the issue. Senator Russ Feingold issued an official statement calling the court's decision a "terrible mistake," and he pledged to work towards legislation to limit the impact of the ruling. Other Democrats have expressed similar sentiments. Republican Senator John McCain announced that he was "disappointed by the decision," but he made no commitment to pass new legislation on the issue. Many Republicans actually praised the court, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said: "For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process. With today’s monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups."

Even if Congress could muster the support to pass new laws to regulate campaign finance, it can do no more than discourage corporate involvement with new rules. Any full ban, according to the Supreme Court, would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution. As a result, only a change to the U.S. Constitution could completely overturn the decision. This has led activists like those in Madison to call for a constitutional amendment declaring that the protections of the Bill of Rights apply only to natural human beings, and not corporations.

Constitutional amendments are not easy to enact. They must be initiated by either a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress or a by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the states. In either case, any amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states. This can take a tremendous amount of time, organization and effort. An amendment granting women the right to vote was first introduced in Congress in 1868, but it was not ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment until 1919. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment was proposed in 1789 but only ratified in 1992. Nevertheless, it is clear that amendments have succeeded when vital issues of American democracy were at stake. Perhaps that is the case again today.

The demonstrators who gathered this week in Madison clearly hope to overturn the Supreme Court's decision on corporate election financing. Their rally — coordinated by MoveToAmend.org — was an important first step in the long, hard process of achieving a new constitutional amendment. Much more work will be needed to make such an amendment reality. What is your opinion of the ruling in Citizens United v. F.E.C.? Would you support a constitutional amendment to keep corporations out of political campaigns?

Category: Headlines | Permalink | One Comment — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

Dear Friend,
They say a picture is worth a thousand words —

— but the perfect words are priceless.

Together we could write a rose.

Category: Miscellany | Permalink | Leave A Comment
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar commemorates one of the great turning points in the history of Western Civilization: the transition of Rome from a republic to an empire. Before the time of Caesar, Roman sovereignty had resided with the people and the Senate. After Caesar, power fell into the hands of a hereditary emperor. Shakespeare's play only presents a snapshot of one moment in this long period of transition. It is more poetry than history — but this is its virtue. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare asserts the power of words to mold minds and shape events. He makes language the real force behind history, casts oratory as its general, and crowns clever beguiling rhetoric as the true master of mankind.

Rome's true history is at times indistinguishable from its legends. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Roman Republic began in 509 BCE when the people of Rome revolted against King Tarquin the Proud and conferred authority upon an elected senate. Livy's stories and dates may only be myth, but it is clear that the SPQR — Senatus Populusque Romanus, or the Senate and the People of Rome — governed Rome for several centuries with no king. Then, in 49 BCE, the Roman general Julius Caesar led his troops into civil war against the Senate. As Caesar gained power, he prevailed upon the Senate to declare him dictator in perpetuity in 45 BCE. Very quickly, however, a band of senators began to plot Caesar's assassination, fearful that he might otherwise establish a new monarchy and dissolve their republic. On March 15, 44 BCE, as many as sixty conspirators led by Senators Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus attacked Caesar in the Theatre of Pompey, stabbing him 23 times. Although Caesar's dictatorship had ended, his murder provoked a new civil war that ultimately led to the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of a new imperial monarchy under Octavius, who became Emperor Caesar Augustus in 27 BCE. Monarchy remained the dominant form of government in Europe until the twentieth century.

The play Julius Caesar, written around 1599 CE, is a dramatization of the Roman Senate's conspiracy against Julius Caesar and the beginnings of the civil war unleashed by his death, culminating in the defeat of the assassins Cassius and Brutus.¹ Shakespeare based his play closely on the work of the Roman historian Plutarch, but he mixed tradition with poetic invention and contemporary English concerns. For Shakespeare, living in Elizabethan England, there was no such thing as a government without kings or queens. This certainly shaped the way Shakespeare viewed Rome's historic struggle between monarchy and republicanism. Julius Caesar was structured as a tragedy — the conspirators who hoped to maintain popular sovereignty by killing Caesar ultimately lost everything by their deed. The play was in part a warning of the chaos and conflict that could arise from the absence of strong leadership.

The most critical moments of Shakespeare's play take place in Act III, Scene 2 (read the text), shortly after Caesar's death. Rumors of the assassination had spread through Rome, and the scene opened upon a mass of citizens who had gathered in the forum awaiting more news. This crowd was addressed in turn by Marcus Brutus, one of the leading senators involved in the assassination, and Mark Antony, a fellow general and supporter of Caesar. As these men delivered their oratory, the people of Rome would decide on their reaction to Caesar's death and choose whether to support Brutus, the Senate and the Republic, or Antony, Caesar and tyranny.

Shakespeare depicted the "throng of citizens" in Julius Caesar as helpless to think for themselves in the face of the powerful language wielded by Brutus and Antony. The masses were convinced first by one speaker and then the other. In the end, the people made Antony and Caesar their heroes and Brutus their villain. Tyranny prevailed, and the scene appropriately closed with news of the arrival of Octavius ― the man who would become Emperor. In order to see why the citizens in Shakespeare's play ultimately chose to revolt against their own sovereignty, it is essential to examine the speeches of this scene and uncover the inner workings of their rhetorical magic.

Brutus was the first speaker to take the platform. His task was simple. He had arrived directly from site of Caesar's assassination, and he had made no attempt to hide his involvement in the deed. In the previous scene, he had even bathed his hands in Caesar's blood so that he might walk forth and be recognized as one of the assassins. Now he needed to justify Caesar's death to the people of Rome. Brutus addressed his listeners directly with plain prose and offered them a succinct appeal to reason: "If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer,—Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." This was followed by a rhetorical question to the crowd: "Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?" The crowd was thus encouraged to consider the logical tenants of Brutus' argument for themselves.

The essence of Brutus' defense was that his patriotism triumphed over his friendship. He had killed Caesar to save Rome's republic. Brutus next employed a series of repetitive parallelisms to reinforce this point. He began each parallelism by attributing his own affection for Caesar to each of Caesar's virtues: love, fortune, and valor. He ended, however, with an antithesis: justifying his murder of Caesar by Caesar's vice, ambition. This was a clever tactic, for by juxtaposing Caesar's positive qualities against his vice, the vice seemed all the more egregious by contrast. Moreover, as Caesar's noble traits were heroically good, the audience was encouraged to see the contrasting fault in opposite terms, as villainously evil.

Brutus next offered a set of parallel questions directly to his listeners: "Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended." Once again, Brutus had used direct, forceful language to prompt each listener to examine the logical merit of his perspective.

As Brutus continued to speak, Mark Antony entered the scene with the bloodstained body of Caesar. This dramatic interruption foreshadowed the way Antony would soon hijack the emotion of Caesar's death in his own speech. Presently, however, Brutus continued in his calm, rational demeanor. He acknowledged Mark Antony by announcing that although Antony had taken no part in Caesar's assassination, he, like all of Rome's citizens, would inherit Caesar's power as they joined together in a new commonwealth — a renewed republic. Brutus ended by saying, "as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death."

The crowd responded to Brutus' mortal pledge with shouts of "Live!" His modest and rational remarks had succeeded in winning the minds of the masses, at least for the moment. "Bring him with triumph home unto his house," yelled one citizen, and another cried, "Let him be Caesar." Notably, despite all that Brutus had just said and done, the people still wanted a leader.

Mark Antony spoke next, but the crowd was at first unwilling to listen. Antony was a cousin and close supporter of Julius Caesar, and following Brutus' speech, the people were reluctant to heed the words of anyone defending the late dictator. Brutus, however, now urged the crowd to stay — his misplaced trust in Antony forms yet another layer in Shakespeare's drama — and the people grudgingly lent Antony their ears.

Antony could sense that public sentiment was against him. His first task in the famous "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech was to gain the trust of his audience. "I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him," he said, calming the crowd. Next he referenced the people's sudden hero, Brutus, and repeated what Brutus had claimed for his argument: that Caesar was slain for his ambition. Brutus, said Antony, was an honorable man. These words quickly won the confidence of the citizens.

Already, however, Antony was laying the foundation for a series of rhetorical tricks. "Brutus says he was ambitious," said Antony regarding Caesar, "and Brutus is an honourable man." By pairing these lines repeatedly during his speech, Antony was able to make the audience perceive them as a single unit. As a result, Antony could discredit the entire unit while only providing a contradiction to one of its two lines. Antony had no choice but to praise Brutus, for doing otherwise at this point would have drawn ire from the crowd. He could, however, make the people doubt Caesar's ambition, and because of the consistent pairing, this would lead the crowd to question Brutus' honor as well.

Arguing that Julius Caesar lacked ambition would be a difficult task. Caesar, after all, had only recently fought a civil war in order to become dictator. Antony nonetheless prevailed upon the citizens with a cunning juxtaposition of words and ideas. Earlier, when Brutus had spoken, he had described Caesar's ambition as a vice that contrasted with Caesar's virtues: love, fortune, and valor. These virtues, said Brutus, led to friendship, but the vice necessitated Caesar's death. Antony now surreptitiously broke down these distinctions between virtue and vice. "Brutus says he was ambitious," said Antony, beginning this motif, "and Brutus is an honourable man." Antony then recalled both the great wealth that Caesar's military campaigns had produced for the country and the sympathy that Caesar had felt for the poor. These were signs of the very love, fortune and valor that Brutus had praised in his own speech, but Antony ignored what Brutus had said in praise, simply repeating, "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; and Brutus is an honourable man." Cleverly, Antony had intertwined the good and bad elements of Caesar's character by posing each virtue as a direct counterexample to his vice, rather than maintaining a distinct contrast between them as Brutus had done. Up to this point in the scene, Antony and Brutus had referenced essentially the same facts about Caesar, but each speaker had now used language to frame these facts for opposite ends.

Antony continued by reminding his audience that Caesar had recently refused the crown. "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;" said Antony again, "and, sure, he is an honourable man." The citizens, however, were now skeptical of both Caesar's ambition and Brutus' honour. Antony now turned his praise of Brutus to sarcasm, but he still held back from overtly contesting Brutus' honor. Indeed, Antony would not speak ill of any of Caesar's assassins, but he nonetheless incited the crowd against them using a rhetorical device known as paralipsis. This means mentioning something in order to deny that it should be said. After Antony implied to the crowd that Caesar's ambition had been alleged falsely, he announced, "if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong, who, you all know, are honourable men: I will not do them wrong." In this way, Antony led the crowd towards mutiny by introducing its possibility and then safely distancing himself from it. He was able to express his true desires by detailing precisely what he claimed he would hold back from saying. Antony next declared, "I rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, than I will wrong such honourable men." Ultimately, it would not be Antony but a man in crowd who exclaimed, "They were traitors: honourable men!" Antony's rhetorical talent had persuaded the crowd to his own way of thinking even though Antony had never appeared, at the surface, to argue against his adversaries.

All of Antony's remarks were also interspersed with powerful appeals to the crowd's emotion, beginning when he posed a rhetorical question aimed not at making the audience think, but at making them feel: "You all did love him once, not without cause," he said of Caesar, "What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?" Emotional pleas like this appear throughout Antony's speech. He continued, "Men have lost their reason!" Antony made no attempt, however, to use any reasoning to directly challenge Brutus' logic, for already he had said he did not intend to disprove Brutus' words. Instead he remarked, "My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me." The ensuing break in Antony's speech — a well known rhetorical device called by the Greeks aposiopesis — both emphasized the emotion of Caesar's death and provided the citizens a chance to let Antony's words sink into their hearts.

When Antony resumed speaking, he revealed that he possessed Caesar's will. He hinted that Caesar had bequeathed something to the people which would make them "go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds." This elevated the crowd's excitement, but Antony refused to read them the will. Instead, he tantalized them with its prospects, relying once again on paralipsis to reveal the will's content by explicitly telling the crowd what he must not say while tacitly leading his listeners towards the desired reaction: "It will inflame you, it will make you mad. 'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs; for if you should, O, what would come of it!"

Instead of reading the will, Antony continued to work to excite the crowd's emotions. He made the most powerful impact yet by descending from his platform to show the people Caesar's corpse, uniting himself with the crowd in a shared moment of grief and horror. It was not merely the gruesome sight which enraged the crowd, however. Antony's use of language at this moment remained as crucial as ever. He did not simply announce what the crowd already saw, that Caesar lay dead before them. Instead, Antony divided the scene into parts and called attention each individual wound. Not only did this make his description extremely graphic, but it also allowed Antony to divide the blame for Caesar's death among the several conspirators: "Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd; and as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it,—as rushing out of doors..."

The people erupted into vengeful fury after hearing Caesar's murder so vividly described. Antony, ever careful, distanced himself from their rage. "Let me not stir you up," he said. "I am no orator, as Brutus is; but, as you know me all, a plain blunt man ... For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth; Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, to stir men's blood." These claims are false; language now subverted reality altogether. Antony was not a plain man, but rather an army general and a cousin of the late dictator, a clear member of the Roman elite. Shakespeare illustrated this irony vividly, for although he had written Brutus' speech in plain prose, he penned all of Antony's remarks in metered verse — iambic pentameter, to be precise — and Antony, in spite of his claim to the contrary, is clearly the most artful and persuasive orator of the play.

The people continued to rage. They were so embroiled at seeing Caesar's wounds that they hastened to mutiny before even hearing the terms of the will that they had pleaded with Antony to read. Their emotions had swept them away before Antony had even provided a logical reason for their anger. His rhetoric had cast a powerful spell over their senses. When Antony did at last reveal the terms of the will, the people found that Caesar, having departed both the world and his worldly fortune, had elected to bequeath seventy-five drachmas to each man in Rome and set aside a portion of his estate for a public park. It was a small gesture from beyond the grave, but it bought the people's affection, and it now moved them to even greater fury at the assassins. The crowd broke into a violent riot, and the mob would even kill an innocent man in the next scene of the play. The people now wanted no part of the assassins' commonwealth. Antony's clever and emotional language had triumphed over Brutus' logic. The same citizen who had only minutes before praised Brutus saying, "Bring him with triumph home unto his house," now shouted "We'll burn the house of Brutus." The people had forgotten their free republic. They only wondered at Antony's behest, "Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?"

Speaking quietly to himself, Antony revealed that this mayhem had been his intent. "Now let it work. — Mischief, thou art afoot, take thou what course thou wilt!" In consequence of Antony's rhetoric, the citizens failed to heed Brutus' warnings of ambition and tyranny. They only wanted a new Caesar. Just before the scene closed, Antony's attendant brought news that Octavius had arrived in Rome. It was Octavius, Julius Caesar's great nephew, who would found Rome's new imperial dynasty under the name Caesar Augustus in 27 BCE.

In the speeches of Act III, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare illustrated the great power of language to move and incite the masses, even against their own interest. The crowd was persuaded by Brutus' logic and penetrating questions, and then by Antony and his strong appeal to emotion. Each speaker used words to frame the facts in his favor, and through language they could direct the thoughts and actions of the people. Indeed, when Antony sought to evoke an image of Caesar's power in his speech, he did not reference his sword or his armies or his wealth, but rather his speech: "But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world." Power, implied Shakespeare, rests in language — language is what moves people to act.

Shakespeare was not the first writer to suggest the power of language, and he would not be the last. Centuries later, in 1895, the British playwright Oscar Wilde remarked on the power of language to shape public opinion in his age, saying, "In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. ... We are dominated by Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever. ... The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary."² In 1949, the English novelist George Orwell put language at the center of his classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government refashioned language in an attempt to control what its subjects could say and think.

Many authors have asserted that language is power — but it is perhaps too easy for a writer to be convinced of the power in words. What of the world outside literature? Does rhetoric really hold such command over the masses? Shakespeare based Julius Caesar on Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, as translated into English by Sir Thomas North.³ Plutarch described the speeches by Brutus and Antony in his Life of Marcus Brutus, and while Shakespeare gave these speeches his own words, his play followed the basic outline that Plutarch provided. Plutarch's history, however, is itself something of a dramatization. It was written more than a century after Caesar's assassination, and it lists historical figures alongside mythical characters like Romulus and Theseus. It is impossible to know with any certainty what really took place in the hours and days that followed Caesar's assassination.

There are examples of persuasive rhetoric in our own time. Stephen Colbert, the popular comedian, has built his career on a parody of the language used by the media to stir political opinion. His parody succeeds best when its own satirical propaganda results in mass action. When Colbert instructs his viewers to change a Wikipedia article, they will do so. If he tells them to vote to name a bridge or a space node after him, they do it in vast numbers. Colbert has crafted a masterful cult of personality with devout worshipers, and while he makes points about the media's corrupt influence in his monologues, he proves these points by cajoling his own fans into inane but harmless foppery. The true brilliance of his comedy is the ironic way in which the same people who ridicule the illogical spin put out by politicians and talk show hosts will rapaciously gobble up the spin spun by Colbert — much like the Roman citizens before Antony — as if Colbert and his producers at Viacom were somehow unattached to the media establishment they mock.

Colbert, however, is only an entertainer — his words are only as persuasive as they are whimsical. What of real politics and actual news? Can clever language really command the masses on an issue of importance? Would real people ever be persuaded to revolt against their own self-interest, as happened in Shakespeare's play? These questions will be the subject of a future article at Acceity. In the meantime, I invite your comments below.

Notes:

1. The full text of Julius Caesar is available online from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, MIT, and other sources
2. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.
3. Google Books has scanned this translation of Plutarch's Lives, and the Life of Marcus Brutus is available for your examination.

Category: History, Language | Permalink | One Comment — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

In 2008, I posted an article at Acceity entitled Music Everywhere. In it, I asked whether the ubiquitous nature of recorded music in the digital age enhanced or cheapened the role of of music in our lives. Those who read the post replied that today's abundant music is a good thing. Although music may no longer be as highly valued as it was in the past, there are now unparalleled opportunities for everyone to enjoy it.

I've been prompted to consider the value of music again after reading the results of a study released two weeks ago by Wharton marketing professor Raghuram Iyengar. The study, which aimed to determine the optimal market price for digital music downloads, is summarized at the Knowledge@Wharton web site, which also provides a link to the complete paper. Iyengar's main finding: music today is too expensive.

Online music retailers like Apple iTunes and Amazon.com currently charge customers about 99¢ per song for most downloads. Iyengar's study showed that this price may actually be inhibiting demand. He based his research on conjoint analysis, which involves offering consumers a variety of theoretical purchasing options and prompting them to choose which, if any, they find attractive. Judging by consumer's choices, Iyengar predicts that if record companies would cut the retail price of their music to about 60¢ per song, the accompanying rise in demand and sales would actually lead to an increase in their profits.

There is no sign yet that any major record labels are paying attention to Iyengar's research, but any means of boosting profit should be welcome news to them. Traditional recording companies have struggled greatly with the technological changes of the past decade. Not only have computers and the internet changed the way consumers acquire and listen to music, but these technologies have also made professional recording studios and paid publicity obsolete to new generation of artists. Almost anyone with enough time, practice, and ambition can today record and distribute a professional sounding album, but the staggering volume and diversity of the music available now means that most new performers can only expect to build a small niche of dedicated fans. There is nothing wrong with that. Even as technology has made music more commonplace and mass-produced, it has also made it more personal, so that each individual is more likely than ever to posses a very different collection of songs than that of his neighbor.

Decreasing the retail price of online music might encourage people to build the diversity of their music collections and be more daring about spending their money for something new or unfamiliar. Iyengar's study is significant because it suggests that the increased sales from a dramatic price cut would actually help musicians and record labels earn more for their work.

I still wonder what it would really mean for listeners to peg the value of their songs at 60¢ a track — less than a candy bar. Such a low value strongly suggests that most recordings are regarded as passing entertainment or background noise, and only rarely as inspiring or transformational works of art. When is a song worth more than 60 cents? What is the future of meaningful music? Is that future outside the realm of recordings? What kind of creative innovations could make a song so moving, so thrilling, or so unique, that we would give it greater value?

Category: Arts | Permalink | 4 Comments — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

For example, in a September blog post, the EFF cited a study at Carnegie Mellon University to show that 87% of Americans have a unique combination of birth date, zip code, and gender. If you live in the United States, that means there is an 87% chance that these three supposedly "anonymous" facts, taken together, are enough to identify you. The less populous your zip code, the more likely that someone can link that data directly to your name. For a more detailed explanation of the mathematics of identifying unique individuals with this kind of demographic information, see the EFF's recent Primer on Information Theory and Privacy.

The technical information that your computer sends to each website you visit reduces your anonymity even further. Websites collect data on the configuration of your computer in order to optimize their own compatibility with your system. However, the high number of unique computer configurations means that few people are likely to be using exactly the same combination of operating system, screen resolution, web browser version, browser plug-ins, and fonts as you are. The EFF has launched a website called Panopticlick that can tell you just how unique your own setup is.

Like a fingerprint, a unique computer configuration can easily be tracked as it hops from web page to web page, even if you have cookies disabled and you have a dynamic IP address. If you share information as limited as your birth date, gender, and zip code at a website where someone connects it with your particular computer setup, that person could potentially track your movement online, gaining clues about your interests, your hobbies, your beliefs, your political opinions, and your friends, while linking this data directly to your name and address. Companies like Acxiom specialize in just this kind of data analysis in order to help advertisers develop targeted marketing campaigns, and to aid credit card and insurance companies in deciding whether or not to provide you their services and at what price.

You may think you have nothing to hide. Privacy isn't just about keeping dirty secrets, however. You can surely think of things in your life that you would be embarrassed to tell certain people. Is that wrong? How many people would tell their parents everything they tell their best friends, or tell their best friends everything they tell their parents, or tell either of these things to their children or their coworkers? The truth doesn't have to be "bad" to be uncomfortable. Think of the secrets you keep with good intentions, to surprise someone or protect someone. Is that wrong? Would you tell a random stranger where you live? Would you give away your email password or your bank account number?

We all have secrets. You have a right to privacy — a right to choose what the world should or should not know about you. Information is power, and information about you is the power to persuade you, to embarrass you, to manipulate you, to rob you, and even to predict you. Laws about privacy are defined by our expectations of privacy. What happens if you don't care what kind of information Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter collect from you? The U.S. Constitution only guarantees against "unreasonable searches and seizures." If you think it's reasonable to be spied on while you're on the web, then how much privacy does the law grant you?

Category: Internet | Permalink | 2 Comments — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

I went for a walk this morning. It was -6° Fahrenheit. As I've stated before, I like the cold. Even so, I couldn't help but think back longingly to summer as I hurried down State Street, my fingers turning a rather pretty shade of blue. Summer was just a few months ago, but it seems as though it was a different world. We dressed differently, we spent our time differently, we saw entirely different scenes outside our doors. I took the photograph above on August 31. The pretty scene disguises a greater adventure, for to get that shot I had to hike a few miles, climb some tall rocks, and balance awkwardly with one foot on a steep slope, holding my camera overhead at just the right angle to cut past the weeds towards the lovely Asters you see. I realized later that these flowers were everywhere, and that I could have just taken a picture of them in someone's flowerbed — but summer wouldn't have been nearly as fun if I'd just stayed home.

The same thought applies to winter. It is easy on these frigid days of January to think back fondly to August, but I can't honestly say that winter is any less beautiful. Indeed, some places that are rather ugly in summer become quite aesthetic under a freshly fallen layer of snow. I could never spend winter hiding indoors waiting for the warm weather to return, because I would miss too much. Going through winter without admiring the ice and frost would be like passing the summer without appreciating flowers or thunderstorms. The joy of living in a place like Wisconsin is that we get to pass through all these remarkable worlds just by staying put.

Category: Nature | Permalink | Leave A Comment
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

I was perplexed today by a preponderance of pens. Everyone around me on my first day of College Algebra was holding a pen. I felt very insecure with my sharp number two pencil. Was I surrounded by math wizards who know they will never make an error to erase? I am prone to false starts in math; I would never attempt to calculate in ink. This is not merely a matter of my miserable mathematics, however. Any time I am to put words to paper, I need a pencil in hand — certainly wood, preferably cedar. Plastic pencils have too many pieces and tend to fall apart when I use them. Pens I use only to write checks and sign my name. Otherwise the permanence that pen-points effuse just doesn't suit me.

The pencil is an almost magical device, empowering creation at one end and destruction at the other. The two are inseparable with me, for my writing always implies erasing. This is a symptom of my inability to ever make up my mind. I am endlessly tweaking my statements, coordinating my conjunctions and canceling my commas, scheming up new tropes or repositioning a preposition. The right word often comes to me only after I have written the wrong one, and my most interesting thoughts tend to elude me until I get the dull ones out of the way. How would I manage without my eraser? Work is always in progress; a finished work isn't work at all.

I am also fond of the variation that pencils permit. I speak of shade, of tone, of nuance. With a pencil I have every shade of gray at my command. My lines can be bold or they can disguise themselves into the page. Ink is monochrome, and by extension monotonous.

Even so, it seems that others prefer their pens. I don't mean to put them down. I would not advocate that everyone do as I do or like as I like. I am simply curious as to what other people see in ink that I don't — not to make this a Rorschach test. Which do you prefer, pencil or pen?

Category: Miscellany | Permalink | 3 Comments — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

Category: Nature | Permalink | One Comment — Add Yours
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© 2010 Joshua Wachuta

It has been a few days since my last post. When I wrote before, we were still savoring the last weeks of a cool Wisconsin summer. Now we're wading through a December mix of rain and snow, which has turned our White Christmas into a slushy, icy mess. The Christmas Tree in the front yard seems to be surviving all the same — and that's good, because it still has a lot of growing to do. I feel the same way about this blog.

Acceity lives, despite my lack of attention to it. Indeed, visitors have been trickling in daily from search engines, and there were even one or two new comments while I was away. It is good to know that my work is useful to a few people, occasionally. That is enough reason to press on, and now that I have an entire month free from school and other tedious obligations, I plan to post quite a lot in the coming weeks. There is a whole world to talk about, so I hope you'll join me here for the impending discussions. In the meantime, have a Merry Christmas!

Category: Site News | Permalink | One Comment — Add Yours
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© 2009 Joshua Wachuta