One Bite at a Time

Cory Doctorow's column for the March 2023 issue of LOCUS, for once, asserts a position I can support without reservation:

End-to-End

Concerning the many problems involved in making the internet user-friendly, a quest for perfection may result in no improvement at all. As Doctorow summarizes the situation, "The internet succeeded where other networks failed" because it didn't try to implement a "seemingly monolithic technological project" that would require all parties to agree on an ultimate solution that would deal with all difficulties once and for all. Instead, find one small element that everyone can accept. "Build that, then do it again, finding another step that everyone can get behind." In other words, figuratively speaking, eat the elephant one bite (or byte?) at a time. To quote Doctorow again, "I want a better internet now, not years down the road. I’ll happily take a smaller bite."

The main issue to which his current column applies this approach is the end-to-end principle, an older name for what's now usually called net neutrality. In brief, "when a willing speaker wants to say something to a willing listener, our technology should be designed to make a best effort to deliver the speaker’s message to the person who asked to get it." After decades of development of the internet, why don't we have this transparently obvious, user-friendly system?

When we ask a question with Google, why does it prioritize its own search engine's results over those of others that might be more relevant to the questioner's needs? When we search for a specific book or other product on Amazon, why do several other products pop up at the top of the page ahead of the one we typed in the search box? Why do Facebook posts from people and organizations we actually want to hear from get drowned in a sea of sponsored posts? Well, yeah, money and profit (duh). But why are such practices legally permitted? Why is Facebook allowed to restrict our access to posts from users we've liked or followed by blackmailing them into "boosting" their posts—paying to have their material seen by people who've expressed a wish to see it? Suppose when we tried to telephone a local business, the phone company routed the call to a rival business that had paid for the privilege? Nobody would stand for that, yet the equivalent happens online all the time.

Doctorow suggests examples of a few modest rules that internet companies should be required to follow: E.g. “The first result for a search should be the product that most closely matches the thing I searched for” and “If I subscribe to your feed, then when you publish something, it should show up in my feed.”

For a long time I was puzzled that my posts on my Facebook author page showed such low numbers of "Reach." The page doesn't have a huge throng of followers, but it certainly has a lot more than those being "reached." It was a shock to learn that in order to be read by more than a handful of followers, those posts needed to be boosted. In other words, I would have to bribe Facebook to carry out the function it purports to perform, connecting senders with willing receivers. Likewise, it's a constant, though minor irritant that searching for a book on Amazon often connects to a page where I have to scroll halfway down to find the desired item. According to Doctorow, the volume of ads and sponsored posts is delicately designed to stay "just below the threshold where the service becomes useless to you." I fear he may be right.

Will the limited ideal of his online utopia ever become a reality? Maybe not, but it's worth discussing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Fates of Social Networks

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column explores the breakdown of social networking sites, which he seems to believe is the inevitable culmination of their life cycles:

Social Quitting

He focuses on Facebook and Twitter. Are they doomed to go the way of their predecessors such as MySpace? They've had a longer run, but he thinks they, too, are in the process of changing from "permanent to ephemeral."

Personally, I don't expect Facebook to fade away anytime soon like previous services that imploded "into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten ruins." I can't speak about Twitter, since I've never joined it and, given the current turmoil surrounding it, I don't plan to, even though lots of authors make productive use of it. Mainly, I can't imagine myself conjuring up cogent, entertaining tweets several times a day, which seems to be the criterion for using Twitter effectively. I had a MySpace account during the height of its popularity. The site struck me as a visually exhausting mess, dominated by flashy ads and hard to comprehend or navigate. Also, if anybody I knew used it, I never managed to connect with them. I joined Facebook because it became the only reliable way to keep track of many of our contemporary and younger relatives. (People who ignore e-mails will often answer Facebook messages.) Later, numerous organizations and businesses I wanted to keep up with established dedicated Facebook pages.

Doctorow analyzes these "network effects," summarized as, "A system has ‘network effects’ if it gets more valuable as more people use it." Facebook's attraction of more and more customers has a snowballing effect; people want to go where other people they know are. When the volume of users reaches critical mass, the "switching cost" becomes prohibitively high for most customers. Leaving the service becomes more trouble than it's worth. As long as the benefits of the service outweigh disadvantages such as becoming the object of targeted advertising, most people who've grown used to the advantages will stick around. But, as Doctorow explains the current situation, social media platforms shift more of their value—the "surplus," in economics terminology—to advertisers rather than users. Later, they tend to get greedy and make things difficult for advertisers, too. Then the "inverse network effects" kick in: The greater number of customers and advertisers that quit the network, the less value exists for those who stay, so even more leave.

Although Doctorow doesn't use the term, his explanation reminds me of the "sunk cost" principle. If we've already poured a lot of time, money, or energy into something, we're reluctant to give up on it. We continue to invest in it because otherwise our previous efforts would seem "wasted."

In my opinion, although based on my own probably limited experiences and interests, Doctorow exaggerates as far as Facebook is concerned. I have no intent of abandoning it in the foreseeable future. Our relatives and real-world friends who use the service haven't begun to disappear. (In fact, one who stopped several years ago has come back.) Local businesses still post updates there. Our church has an active page we rely on. My various writing-related groups continue to thrive. As for the advertising, it doesn't bother me. How hard is it to scroll down to the next post? Besides, some ads alert me to products such as new books that might actually interest me. The occasionally outright spooky knowledge of my habits and interests many websites display (how does the weather page know what I recently searched for on Amazon?) has a definite downside in terms of privacy concerns. However, it also offers advantages by way of customizing and streamlining the user's internet experience. And how can I legitimately complain about Facebook advertising when I use the site to promote my own books?

In short, there must be enough people and organizations among my contacts who are as change-averse as I am, to maintain the site's value for me. And I can't believe I'm alone in that position.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Monopolies and Interoperabilty

Another LOCUS article by Cory Doctorow on monopolies and trust-busting:

Tech Monopolies

He begins this essay by stating that he doesn't oppose monopolies for the sake of competition or choice as ends in themselves. He cares most about "self-determination." By this he means the individual consumer "having the final say over how you live your life." When a small handful of companies controls any given field or industry, customers have only a limited range of products or services to choose among, preselected by those companies, even if this limitation remains mostly invisible to the average consumer. Not surprisingly, Doctorow focuses on this constraint as imposed by Big Tech. He recaps the growth of "the modern epidemic of tolerance for monopolies" over the past forty years. In the present, technology giants tend to crush small competitors and merge with large ones.

To some extent, this tendency—e.g., the situation Doctorow highlights in which everybody is on Facebook because everybody else is, in a feedback loop of expansion—provides a convenience to consumers. I'm glad I can find just about anyone I want to get in touch with on Facebook. As a result of such "network effects," a system becomes more valuable the more users it has. As a reader and a bibliographer, I don't know how I'd manage nowadays if Amazon didn't list almost every book ever published. I resent the brave new broadcasting world in which I have to pay for several different streaming services to watch only a couple of desired programs on each. I LIKED knowing almost any new series I wanted to see would air on one of our hundreds of cable channels. (Yes, we're keeping our cable until they pry it out of my cold, dead remote-clicking hand.) On the other hand, I acknowledge Doctorow's point that those conveniences also leave us at the mercy of the tech moguls' whims.

Half of his article discusses interoperability as a major factor in resisting the effects of monopolies. Interoperability refers to things working together regardless of their sources of origin. All appliances can plug into all electrical outlets of the proper voltage. Any brands of light bulbs or batteries can work with any brands of lamps or electronic devices. Amazon embraces interoperability with its Kindle books by allowing customers to download the Kindle e-reading app on any device. Likewise, "all computers are capable of running all programs." For self-published writers, services such as Draft2Digital offer the capacity to get books into a wide range of sales outlets with no up-front cost. Facebook, on the other hand, forecloses interoperability by preventing users from taking their "friends" lists to other services, a problem that falls under "switching costs." If it's too much trouble to leave Facebook, similar to the way it used to be too much trouble to change cell phone providers before it became possible to keep your old phone number, consumers are effectively held hostage unless willing to pay ransom in the form of switching costs (monetary or other).

Doctorow concludes, however, with the statement that the fundamental remedy for "market concentration" isn't interoperability but "de-concentrating markets." Granting a certain validity to his position, though, how far would we willingly shift in that direction if we had to give up major conveniences we've become accustomed to?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

When Should You Give Up On A Manuscript Part 7 -- How To Climb Over The Wall That Hit You

When Should You Give Up On A Manuscript

Part 7

How To Climb Over The Wall That Hit You 

Index to  "When Should You Give Up On A Manuscript" 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/index-to-when-should-you-give-up-on.html

Sometimes you shouldn't try to burst through that brick wall that just loomed up and hit you, and sometimes you shouldn't climb over or burrow under. Sometimes, the solution is to go write something else. Sometimes that's not an option if you have sold the thing on the basis of a one-paragraph description (which I've done -- even sold a trilogy like that), so here are ideas about what to do if you must produce that particular novel or story.

If you hit a wall in midst of a novel length work, there's a very high probability you made a huge mistake on PAGE 1, very likely Parag 1.

Go back to the outline, nail the point at which the conflict is initiated, nail the resolution, and find the MIDPOINT. 

With those three "beats" (see SAVE THE CAT! writing textbooks) explicitly one-sentenced before your eyes, you can draw the line between them with defined SCENES.  

Three Book Series SAVE THE CAT!

Find the scene that derailed your writing -- chances are it is either a) off the because-line between conflict and resolution,,,

... so CURE is to delete that scene ...

...or b) involves explicitly showing rather than telling something deeply personal that's been festering in your sub-conscious for years and needs some psychological probing ...

... so CURE is harder. 

You don't need to put in your idiosyncratic life details (which is probably the wall that you hit) -- you need to put in the details you will find by reading "self-help" books on that psychological hangup.

To find exactly how to craft that scene, read the most popular current self-help on that topic and then articulate the problem as a question to post on QUORA -- see what answers turn up, and that will likely be what you can use to convey an understanding to your audience.

Now go back to drafting the manuscript and start on page one incorporating the "foreshadowing" for that emotionally potent and revealing scene using every art of SYMBOLISM ... 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

...and Art of subconscious cultural associations -- every ART -- because this "hit a wall" problem is best and most expeditiously resolved by the use of ART. 

This process will allow you to deliver your manuscript on contract deadline and in publishable form -- and likely facilitate the publisher wanting to buy your next novel.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Afterthoughts Part 3 - Grimdark in Genre Fiction

Afterthoughts

Part 3

Grimdark in Genre Fiction 

Part 1 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/04/afterthoughts-part-1.html

Part 2

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/06/afterthoughts-part-2-good-and-evil.html

I found a question posed on Facebook in Fantasy & Science Fiction Writers Group by Jonathan Russell on May 5, 2021, "Is anyone else sick to death of Grimdark in genre fiction?"  

----Wikipedia quote-----
Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, or violent. The term is inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war."[1][2]
---end Wikipedia quote-----

I responded as follows.  

Art requires contrast.  

The problem with "Grimdark" genre fiction is not the presence of ugly-underside-of-human-nature, or even the thematic statement that life is hopeless, Evil Always Wins. 

Those elements are present in the real world, and thus have a place in works of art such as Genre Fiction.  However, as in "reality" the whole point of there being "darkness" is that it showcases the "light."  

Light without darkness is just blinding and meaningless.  

Our current problem stems from an absence of "light" not the presence of "dark."  

This historic origin of this "Grimdark" view may be a shift in our daily vocabulary, likely due to popular self-help books trying to buck up the dejected.  

It was suddenly recommended, as a prescription to fix society, that strong demands for performance in any situation were responsible for an epidemic of depression.  Therefore, no employee should be required to do more than they "can." The employee got to decide what they can or can't do - where the limits to their efforts should be. 

As a result, it became "politically correct" to explain one's failures as "I'm doing all I can."  Which declaration immediately let you off the hook because you weren't responsible for doing something you obviously can't do.  That was an entirely NEW concept in American culture, peopled at that time with the "Can Do" Generation.  

Promises and guarantees went from "I'll do it," to "I'll do all I can" which morphed into meaning under no circumstances will I enlarge my inventory of what I can do in order to accomplish what I've promised.

We accepted limits imposed from without (or within) as "real" and the violation of those limits as "wrong."  We must stay within limits.  

Under no circumstances may you do what you can't.

THAT IS NOT THE ATTITUDE OF A HERO.  

Science Fiction is the literature of ideas -- and adopted that idea, that heroism itself is wrong because to be a hero you must do something that is beyond your ability, and beyond the limits of the possible.  

Going faster than light was (is) considered impossible. Science fiction presented many visions of what we could do if we could break the "light barrier" as we once broke the "sound barrier."  Breaking the sound barrier was deemed impossible.  We did it. Getting into orbit was deemed impossible. We did it.  And so forth -- life was lived for the purpose of doing what you can't.

Today it is deemed anti-social to transgress limits set by others -- you must only do what you can.  You are never responsible for succeeding if it means doing what you can't do (thus changing where the "here be dragons" line lies on your psychological map.)

Science fiction like all fiction and all art reflects the audience's view of reality.  Writers are spokesmen for those who can't craft words to describe what they feel.  

Is Elon Musk only doing all he can?  

Marriages fail when one party refuses to do something they can't do.  Marriages succeed when both parties ignore their limits and do whatever it takes, regardless of any previous limitations.  

Every first novel ever written was an exercise in doing something you can't do -- before writing that novel, you "can't" write a novel.  You change reality by doing what can't be done. '

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

On Intellectual Property

Cory Doctorow has an unusually long, information-dense post this bimonth, about the background of the concept of intellectual property:

IP

He reviews the history of open source software and the shift toward increasingly stringent restrictions, leading up to the present situation in which taking the wrapper off a box legally commits users to agreements they haven't yet had a chance to read. He discusses in great detail the principle of "interoperability," which lets all railroads run on the same tracks, all brands of lightbulbs work in lamps from different manufacturers, in general all the benefits of standardization. "Interoperability lowers 'switching costs' –- the cost of leaving behind whatever you’re using now in favor of something you think will suit you better." This advantage to consumers, naturally, is something a lot of commercial interests would like to eliminate or minimize. Doctorow analyzes how companies such as Google and Facebook make it easy for customers to start using their services but hard to get out, sometimes impossible to do so without abandoning a wide network of services and contacts. He explores the differences among copyright, patent, and trademark and how those different "creators' monopolies" became bundled together under the single term "intellectual property" -- a development he disapproves of, by the way.

Market monopolists, according to Doctorow, often strip power from the alleged "creator's monopoly." Corporate monopolists also tilt the balance of power as far as possible from the consumer to the seller. The abuse of DRM, one of Doctorow's recurrent topics, is a conspicuous example. Laws against bypassing software, as more and more devices in common use become computerized, will inevitably lead (according to him) to this result: "Software isn’t just a way to put IP into otherwise inert objects. It’s also a way to automate them, to make them into unblinking, ever-vigilant enforcers for the manufacturer/monopolist’s interests. They can detect and interdict any attempt at unauthorized interoperability, and call the appropriate authorities to punish the offenders." Furthermore, "Even where tech is challenging these monopolies, it is doing so in order to create more monopolies." He mentions the Kindle program and Amazon's dominance of the audiobook market as examples.

This article contains much to reread, digest, and debate. Is Doctorow's concluding manifesto valid? "There are no digital rights, only human rights. There is no software freedom, only human freedom."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 14 - Ripping A Headline For Theme

Worldbuilding From Reality

Part 14

Ripping A Headline For Theme

Previous entries in Worldbuilding From Reality are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

On Facebook back in May, 2020, I ran across a comment on a Headline I considered extremely "rip-able" -- so much drama entwined in the scenes behind such headlines.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/16/state-department-inspector-general-fired-democrats-decry-dangerous-pattern-retaliation/

The article is fraught with emotionally loaded, semantically powerful, language which drives inexorably toward a specific conclusion, and careful reading of the article reveals much about the very nature of theme.

We have discussed theme and targeting an audience many times, looking at the use of theme from many angles.

One of the most commercial uses of Theme in fiction creation is simply to target an audience.  This article illustrates that usage in journalistic prose.  Master writing articles in this style to insert into Chapters where your protagonist needs to learn something about the theme of his story, her life.

Theme is a statement (or question)  about some matter of ultimate concern -- but what matters concern an audience varies with the average age of the audience, maybe gender, maybe economic status, maybe political bias, whether they believe the HEA is real or wish-fulfillment-fantasy.

Currently, we are in an election-of-a-lifetime, and it truly is a life or death election for many people who have had their lives ruined by the shut down.  Some see the shut down as due to a virus that may or may not have been deliberately created, maybe not genetically engineered but just deliberately bred, and weaponized.  Others see it as an artifact of malfunctioning government.

We can only imagine what might have happened, and we've all seen enough horror movies to have vivid imaginations about what governments might do, while journalism is agitating our imagination.

So, no matter who is in charge of a government and no matter what that person might do with government power, most of the people will just purely hate that person.

It's natural to hate anything that coerces you -- including parents, and even the most passionate Soul Mate.

We all understand striking back at people whose actions constrain our actions.

So we impute our own most probable motives to those who strike back and to those who constrain.  We imagine ourselves into the characters portrayed in the real-life news, and firmly believe we know what went on behind the scenes.  As long as we're governed by humans, we're probably pretty close to accurate.

Because we understand the world in fictional terms, journalism has learned to extract, distill and present to us a "narrative" -- a plot, a because-line of events -- that leads us to conclude whatever the owners of the news outlet want us to conclude.

In fiction writing, we use the term "show don't tell" to indicate that we must portray, illustrate, but never come out and SAY IT to the reader.

The reader will believe what the reader figures out for themselves, NOT what the writer tells them to believe.  So we show emotions, but we don't name them.

This technique of inducing the reader to adopt a specific conclusion by figuring it out for themselves has been perfected by journalism.

By carefully editing away extraneous or confusing events, focusing on a "narrative" the journalists lead the audience to believe something that will motivate the audience to act in a certain way -- vote for a particular candidate, or vote for someone they hate just to get a particular policy enacted.

This is called "slant" in journalism, and "genre" in fiction.

It is the selective recreation of reality with emphasis on selective.

The particular issue being highlighted doesn't matter.  What matters is the spotlight of the highlighting.  As in stagecraft the spotlight has to "follow" the actor -- making everything else shadowed, but real and acknowledged. The spotlight shows the audience what to pay attention to, and what to ignore.

Taking the spotlighted issue of the era (say, Climate Change, Weapons In Space, Financial Malfeasance In Office, Government Funding, anything really) and extracting from it a THEME you can use in fiction to enthrall your reader is the foundation of good writing.

Write about what the reader is interested in, but say something on that topic that the reader does not expect.

The THEME is what you have to say about the issue, but a theme is an abstraction, a principle of reality as you understand it, or as your Main Character understands or misunderstands it.  The Main Character then learns through the Plot Events of the novel.  That's Character Arc.

For example: In my Romantic Times Award Winning novel, Dushau
https://www.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-3-Book/dp/B0725GLJL5/

I used the overall theme of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" to generate a plot driven by an unjust accusation making a fugitive out of an innocent non-human who couldn't comprehend the injustice.

This is a theme dear to my heart, and so when I see any hint of it in real-world headlines, it gets me revved up.

That happened with this Washington Post article to my Facebook Feed.

So one of my Facebook contacts summarized the meat of the article in a way that drew many comments.

----quote------
It should be noted that the investigation here involved whether or not Pompeo and his wife used a federal employee for personal errands.

State Department inspector general fired as Democrats decry ‘dangerous pattern of retaliation’ State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was fired Friday in a late-night ouster that drew condemnations from Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning of an acceleration in a “dangerous pattern of retaliation” against federal watchdogs.

Linick, a 2013 Obama appointee who has criticized department leadership for alleged retribution toward staffers, will be replaced by Ambassador Stephen J. Akard, a State Department spokesperson confirmed Friday. It was the latest in a string of weekend removals of oversight officials who have clashed with the Trump administration.

------end quote-----

Way down the active comment thread, someone said something that prompted me to reply:

-----
It's not supposed to be "investigate this person to see if they did this crime" -- it's supposed to be, "here's a crime somebody did, FIND THE CULPRIT."
-----

Someone commented:

------
When the crime is misuse of an employee's time, it is difficult not to look at the employer as the source of the directions being followed.
----------

Which is so true, I stared at it a long while before replying:

---------
Yes, and the most attractive suspect is rarely the culprit.
---------

So one of the other commenters on the thread jumped in with:

---
Really? Where did you find statistics supporting that claim?
-------

And then added:

--------

In reality both approaches are used; that's how the DEA goes after drug cartel members, among other criminals. Sometimes you just know someone is guilty; the problem is finding good evidence that proves your case.

---------

Clearly that double comment had come after a reaction somewhat like mine -- thinking hard about the entire context.  But he was thinking in an entirely different context than I was thinking.

So I wrote the following long-essay reply:

-------
As a professional science fiction writer, I've studied perception and subjectivity and language and culture, etc (but my degree is in Physical Chemistry). Read some of my novels to see if you think I have a handle on that.

Recently, research has surfaced (again) about subjectivity, and expertise. Bottom line: the more certain you are that you are correct and know exactly what you're talking about, the more likely it is that you're wrong, or not correct, or only partially correct in a special case.

It used to be a surprise that "the butler did it" -- now it's a cliche.

So in this context, if it's "difficult not to look at the employer" as noted (accurately)  for misuse of an employee, then don't look at the employer first or that's misuse of your employer's time.

Note, rather, how the phrasing of the headlines leads you to a specific interpretation of the text of the articles - and away from other interpretations.

"Late night firing..." does not constitute a crime. There's no statute against firing an employee - no statute that says what time of day you may fire an employee.  The person who suggested the firing and the person who did the firing were both entitled to fire the job holder.

All those involved held the correct titles and authority to act. No crime is sited.  It is our suspicions about motives that make us sit up straight - and our very low opinion of the persons holding the various offices make us certain there has to be some nefarious deed here and it must, absolutely must, be illegal! It just must be a crime - must. We feel that deeply.

Or put another way, it's hard to assume a person innocent until proven guilty if you hold that person in low esteem - and as you point out, finding PROOF is the difficult job.

Accusation does not imply guilt.

"Knowing" does not even hint at guilt. You must start with the crime and work up the tenuous connecting thread(s) to the culprit -- not the other way around.

Starting with the person and "investigating" them until you find some crime they must have committed is the foundation of tyranny.

Once the culture accepts "investigate the person to find the crime," two to four generations later, it seems perfectly plausible to people who never knew any other way of governing that government and law enforcement must investigate everyone to find their crimes, but since the budget won't allow that, law enforcement depends on friends and family to rat out the culprits (and the rat can lie with impunity.)  Accusation=Guilt.

So new "leaders" make so many laws or decrees that every single person is guilty of something horrendous, and the new tyrants just need to pick out their enemies and sic the investigators on them -- because everyone is guilty of something.

In those intervening decades, the kind of person, the sort of character who is attracted into a career in government or law enforcement shifts from true public servants and statesmen  to wannabe dictators with a frenetic inner compulsion to control other people's behavior.

So I pointed out that this story about an appointed paper-pusher being investigated is presented via headlines phrased to encourage the assumption that accusation=guilt. This assumption is indicating we are edging into the procedural black hole of investigating people instead of crimes.  I'm sure you can name a bunch more in the headlines who are people being investigated.
----------

So go read some current pre-election headlines, search for the connecting theme underlying the issues spotlighted, look into the shadows around the spotlight and find what you have to say on the matter.

If you need more inspiration for building a Science Fiction Romance world, check out my blog entry from May 12, 2020:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/theme-story-integration-part-5-how-to.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-worldbuilding Integration Part 22 - Furnishing Your First Home

Theme-worldbuilding Integration

Part 22

Furnishing Your First Home 

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Posts are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Worldbuilding From Reality posts are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Our everyday world is spinning into a huge eruption of change.

The change in the way the world works may have a direction we have not yet identified.

Science Fiction is now famous for having spotted many trends and created many inventions, many IMPOSSIBLE things, that children who grew up reading those novels such as Heinlein's adventures for children then just went and invented because they didn't believe adults who said it was impossible to go to the Moon.

How do you find those trends?  How do you create a vision of the future, of life on far-away planets out of touch with Earth, of life in the asteroid belt?  What impossible things (other than a cure for the COVID-19 virus and its relative, the common cold) have to be invented and then deployed to children who grow up considering them commonplace?

Science Fiction writers missed the impact of the World Wide Web.  They got the Internet, and Artificial Intelligence, but not the direct-person-to-person social impact of the Web, or today Video-Conferencing.

They got the video-conferencing possibility, even in 3-D hologram, but not the social impact.

Mix Romance with Science Fiction and you follow the threads that begin to depict social impacts, the impact on families, on people living together, raising each others' children, and even working at a distance.

How do you find the key invention you can spring on the world, the impossible thing your Characters take for granted, and sketch out a future where the impact of that impossible thing is made clear? Is it a cautionary tale or a Wish Fulfillment Fantasy?

Think about the following quick reprise of prevailing trends of the last 70 to 100 years.  Follow these datapoint out another hundred years and look for the connecting links, the threads that embroider a theme.

https://www.facebook.com/david.lubkin
--------quote--------
It's striking how few products are durable now, compared to earlier times.

I just used a stapler I'd bought at seventeen for college. A bit of rust underneath but no hint that it won't last the rest of my life. Go back further, to the office furniture that's twenty or sixty years older still. Or the wood, stone, ceramic, or glass that might be in use centuries. In some cases, millennia.

The fragility now is sometimes mislabeled as planned obsolescence. That's not products that cease to work; that's products that still work but you're not satisfied with.

I'd say the fragility now is not unrelated though. If you can save a penny or a dime per unit in a VCR by using a plastic cog instead of metal, you do. Even though its failure will make the entire device unusable. Because by the time that happens, there'll be much better VCRs. Or people will be shedding their VCRs for DVD players.

And the sad truth of product sales—physical or software—is that people do not buy on the basis of quality. They might say they do. But they buy on features.

Time to market vs. features vs. price point vs. quality. Quality and durability are niche markets. *I* seek out quality, will wait for it, and will pay a premium price; most people aren't me.

-------end quote--------

And I replied to this post as follows:
https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg


------quote Jacqueline Lichtenberg--------

It is done that way on purpose.

However next to the durability list by decade, put a column of the total US (and world) population, then remember what people were saying about the population growth problem in the 1950's during the baby boom.

Next remember why the dollar price of a paperback book skyrocketed. Then remember the '50's transition to PLASTIC and the economic reasons for that. Note the total audience in the US for a TV show to be a success and get renewed.

Cross-correlate all those data points and memories with the population growth curve.

Then look at University course material in the Business and Accounting (even Law) majors, and your eyes will pop out at the discovery.

Then cross-correlate your discovery with a much-longer-range view of the History of Philosophy (from say 500 BC to today), then probe the course curriculum material for a major in Philosophy in 1950 compared to the content of those courses in 1990.

THEN you'll have a whole new understanding and a bunch of brand new questions about the nature of reality.

I could go on into particle physics, but check this list of data points before you delve into particle physics and astrophysics (my favorite topics, you know).

------end quote-----

Lin Bordwell noted there must be a special place in hell for Fox News. 

I replied to that because I was still revved up about the long-view data-point-set I had replied to David Lubkin with, about how the world has changed, what we see with our daily view eyes, and the hidden reasons behind the change we see.

The writer - especially of science fiction, but double-especially of Romance - needs to focus on those HIDDEN reasons, the hidden forces driving the apparent reality that people react to.

That is where THEME comes from. Theme is not intellectual in origin. It is GUT - pure, primal, survival instinct, and totally non-verbal.

But once you've isolated and refined that gut experience, the writer has to cast that understanding into a story that shares that experience with readers who have never had it, and may never have it.  People need to understand other people - and the easiest way to fill that need is to walk a mile in another's moccasins -- to become the viewpoint character in a story.

Here is my comment on Fox News and how it fits with the sweeping forces reshaping our children's and future grandchildren's world:

--------quote-------

Since the Fox founder resigned and then passed away, Fox's philosophy has become muddled, mixed, and there is no clear editorial policy right now except the fight for ratings. There's the problem with today's news organizations! I posted on David Lubkin's item about how products don't last these days:

------end quote------

I inserted a link to the comment I made to David Lubkin's post, then added:

--------quote-----

Relevant to why products don't last, Fox News (and all the national ones) are doing the same thing as manufacturers of products are doing, and they are doing it for exactly the same reasons. 

Tax Law is the core of the matter for writers -- which utterly changed the fiction writer's business model. Cj Cherryh summarized it beautifully, but I can't find her post on that. 

When News was actually NEWS, the "News Division" of a network was a loss-leader -- not intended to make money, but as a tax loss write-off and brownie-point audience winner. 

Bit by Bit tax law was changed, probably, for all I know, in footnotes and amendments to "must pass" headline bills voters don't read, so that networks and other outfits (like CNN), Indie outfits, MUST make a profit delivering news and weather. 

Advertising doesn't work the same way any more, either. 

But like FICTION, News audiences are the PRODUCT not the CUSTOMER.  Hence clickbait, rumor-mongering, emotion-whipping, opinion-shaping headlines - clickbait headlines - are the only way they can make money. So the competition has shifted from JUST THE FACTS FIRST - (the scoop) - to AIN'T IT AWFUL - (puff-piece).

-------end quote------

OK, if you've read all that, you're probably fuming and chomping at the bit about all the counter information you've got on tap. There are things you want to say.  Who wants to listen? 

That's how writers think, which is what my blogs here are about -- not about reality and not entirely about writing craft, per se, but about what a writer does inside their mind before they reach for craftsmanship tools and produce a product someone will pay for.

To write a story, you have to have something to say.  What you have to say, what you feel you must say, is your theme.

You've seen how scholars divide writers' output into phases or epochs.  Your theme can change as events impact your life, just events impact your Characters and cause them to "arc" as we highlighted in the series on the mysteries of pacing. 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

You have a theme. Your work will hit commercial sales level when you let that theme show in your fiction.  That theme, uniquely yours, is personal but also universal, "the same but different" as they say in Hollywood. 

Writers have always striven to monetize an otherwise useless ability - the very common, maybe universal, ability to tell yourself stories. 

The difference between a writer and a non-writer is absolutely non-existent.

What differences you observe between writers and non-writers are not talent at all, but the determined, grim-faced, teeth-gritted, do-or-die acquisition of skills, craft, lore, expertise.  The craft to present your personal theme as a universal theme which the reader will experience as their own personal theme (because it's universal.)

One of the skills writers have to develop more robustly than non-writers is multi-tasking, learning to "integrate" two and more opposed, mutually exclusive, modes of thinking, and not let the reader see you doing it.

At first, all great writers suffer through producing awkward, flawed, ass-backwards arranged, incomprehensible manuscripts.  They aren't worthless.  They just need work - work that can't be done until the writer acquires the right tools.

One of those tools is the ability to build an artificial world around a Character who is suffering through a life-lesson, a karmic-backlash, or debt payoff, or getting his ass caught in a bear trap.

Those first, awkward, manuscripts have to be abandoned, decomposed, re-digested, then mined for the salient ingredients of theme.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/index-to-when-should-you-give-up-on.html

Theme is what a decorator does when furnishing a house, office, store, or TV Set -- or these days, a Zoom or Facebook Room, or whatever Google is running for conferences. All objects are chosen to illustrate a theme - a color palate.  Nothing is allowed in that does not fit the unifying theme - color, shape, texture, composition. 

A proper Zoom "meeting" set behind you (an artificial background) is your "world" built out of the "theme" your meeting is about.

Have you watched the sets of News Shows these days? Every couple years, they (for no explicable reason) remake the sets for news anchors.

Today, we know the views of streets or the artwork is just a projection on a big screen behind the News Anchor.  Fake sets. 

Likewise, a couple just at the "move in together" part of Romance has to build their world by furnishing their apartment or house.  Whose sofa gets sent to recycle?  Whose arm chair gets kept? What COLOR rugs, walls?

Moving-in is building a world.  It needs a theme if it is going to become permanent.  If the pieces don't go together, they will fly apart. Coherence of blended themes is key to the HEA.

What's your theme? 

Create a Zoom background that reflects your gut-theme in non-verbal symbolism.

Your first novel, or room-decor, is your first home, so furnish it with a unified theme that bespeaks the firm foundation of the Happily Ever After.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

"The Width Of The Buttocks" (NOT!)

It all comes down to profitable voyeurism, or spying, and it is all rooted in the many possible meanings of "beaming".

If you have a mobile phone, and most people do, you beam a lot, whether you know it or not, and around the world, what you beam is of profit and interest to governments, Silicon Valley, advertisers, and more...especially if you have Bluetooth.

Writing for Privacy Zone, a blog of the law firm Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck PC, legal blogger Jenny L. Colgate discusses Facebook's request to the Ninth Circuit to reconsider the question, "Are Targeted Ads The Result Of Wiretapping?"
https://www.theprivacylaw.com/2020/05/are-targeted-ads-the-result-of-wiretapping-facebook-asks-the-ninth-circuit-to-reconsider/#page=1

Is it "wiretapping" when Facebook spies on a person who is not logged in to Facebook, who might not even have a Facebook account and therefore has never agreed to Facebook's terms, and who does not visit Facebook or one of Facebook's businesses?

Allegedly, Facebook manages to beam up data about such a person via the ubiquitous Facebook "plugins" that litter the internet. If you see a "Like" symbol on any page on the internet, and then check what tracking cookies have been added to your device, you'll see Facebook ones, like nits, sucking up your power and memory and beaming messages to Zuck.

They're not alone, and Jenny L. Colgate's colleague Jennifer B. Maisel recently reported with especial scrutiny on Bluetooth beacon technology that enables carriers of mobile phones --and also of Covid-19-- to beam warnings to each other, albeit, apparently only after they have passed on another unnoticed like ships in the night.

More sinister is the rise of the tracking apps in Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, as examined for law firm Tay & Partners by legal bloggers  Lee Lin Li and Chong Kah Yee.
http://www.taypartners.com.my/en/index.php/covid-19-20200528

There's a whole lot of beaming going on, also compulsory bracelet wearing, and one wonders whether someone who did not voluntarily own a mobile phone would be allowed to go anywhere or do anything. Apparently, it might be a condition of employment that a worker sets up their own QR code for themself.

Finally, an update from Brian Murphy on the Instagram issue, that is, whether putting a copyrighted work on instagram means that you unwittingly allow all the internet to exploit your work without permission or payment as long as they "embed" your work with a linkback to Instagram.  Maybe not so fast....
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102g8ym/instagram-and-embedding-photos-an-update-and-a-bombshell-from-instagram

Not "finally".  In case you didn't hear it, "inamebooks" is allegedly a phishing site. It allegedly does not have books. It wants names, addresses, credit card numbers.

Another alleged bad actor, Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, has received two stern letters from Thom Tillis and a lawsuit from four publishers, so it is shutting down its piratical "Emergency Library".

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  

What You Don't See (May Bind You)

First there was the "fine print"; then there was the probably intentionally mind-numbing scroll of all caps print, page after page of it; then, there were sites such as EBay that forced you to join their club and agree to all their Terms (which of course meant that you held them harmless) before you could defend your copyrights; now --perhaps-- you have to agree to THE TERMS before you can read them.

Perhaps I misread this from Peloton to musicians:
"Click HERE to log into your MusicReports.com account and review the proposed license agreement. If it is acceptable to you, simply check the box to confirm you have read the agreement, then click the “I Agree” button to accept the terms. You can then download a full copy of the agreement from the “My Licenses” page in your account."

Credits to
https://thetrichordist.com/2020/04/16/is-musicreports-license-pitch-for-onepeloton-the-equivalent-of-a-poor-persons-class-action-settlement-without-court-supervision/

The tentacles of Mark Zuckerberg reach into your portfolio, and lift your copyrights, and there is nothing you can do about the filching of your photographic rights if you post a picture on Instagram.

"A New York federal district court has dismissed a photographer’s copyright infringement claims after finding that the photographer gave Instagram the right to sublicense her photograph to the accused infringer, Mashable, Inc. Mashable used the photograph at issue on its site by embedding a link to an Instagram post published on the photographer’s public Instagram profile. In Sinclair v. Ziff Davis, the court decided that, by including the photograph in a post on her public Instagram profile, the photographer had..." 

... unintentionally given Instagram a legal license to "share" her intellectual property.

Legal bloggers David W. Holt and Ryan J. Letson, writing for the law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, discuss the unsuccessful copyright infringement complaint by the photographer, Stephanie Sinclair, against Mashable Inc.
https://www.bradley.com/insights/publications/2020/04/looking-for-likes-social-media-post-results-in-unintended-license-to-share-photograph

They offer great constructive advice, but the bottom line is "User Beware".

Legal bloggers Radhika K. Raman and  Jeff Van Hoosear examines the perils of snagging someone else's photograph, even if the photo is of oneself.
https://www.knobbe.com/blog/its-photo-me-celebrities-face-legal-action-unauthorized-use-images-social-media

"Social media managers, celebrities, and individuals alike should exercise caution before posting photos online for which they do not own the copyright rights. Often, a simple source attribution, or a small licensing fee, can save months of legal trouble later. While many disagree with the public policy or reasoning prohibiting celebrities from re-sharing photos of themselves..."

OR, find the photo on Instagram, and embed the link.

Mark Sableman says as much about the same Sinclair/Mashable disagreement, in his legal blog for Thomson Coburn LLP, "It's not infringing if it's an authorized embedding."

https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/in-focus/post/2020-04-17/it-s-not-infringing-if-it-s-an-authorized-embedding#page=1

Or
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=139cc166-c3d8-49c8-add3-1a39725d7d2d

Facebook also, somehow, can snag Zoom users' information, even if the Zoom users don't have a Facebook account, or so it is alleged, and reported by legal bloggers for Troutman Sanders LLP Anne-Marie Dao, Wynter L. Deagle, and  Yarazel Mejorado.

Allegations include:

"Zoom sending data from users of its iOS app to Facebook for advertising persons [sic], even if the user does not have a Facebook account; The Windows version of Zoom being vulnerable to attackers who could send malicious links to users’ chat interfaces and gain access to their network credentials; Zoom not requiring a user’s consent before allowing the host of the meeting to record the session; The presence of a security flaw that would enable hackers to take over a user’s Mac..."

There are some precautions that Zoom users can take.  Read more on Linked In:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=013b92f2-4b1e-4dc9-89f4-8d78c3785a27&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2020-04-27&utm_term=

Or on the Troutman blog:
https://www.troutman.com/insights/to-zoom-or-not-to-zoomprivacy-and-cybersecurity-challenges.html


Legal bloggers Warwick Andersen, Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Allison Wallace and Max Evans collectively point out not only that some have alleged that Zoom's Privacy Policy does not disclose its leaks of users' data to Facebook but also that Windows users' passwords may be snagged.

Original link:
https://www.cyberwatchaustralia.com/2020/04/zooming-in-zooms-significant-privacy-and-data-security-risks-brought-to-light-again-and-again/

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3b6d57ff-bfb4-402d-9e66-9dd03f2d8513&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2020-04-17&utm_term=

So, even if you do everything right, and read all the "agreements" and "terms" and "policies" before joining someone else's Zoom meeting as an invited guest, your privacy and more is still likely to be violated.


It's more a case of seller beware (rather than caveat emptor) when it comes to Amazon. The Authors Guild provides a  perspective on Bezos behaving badly towards publishers and authors.
https://www.authorsguild.org/where-we-stand/amazons-anticompetitive-history/

And CopyrightAlliance continues to fulminate against immense copyright infringers and the senator who shields them.
https://copyrightalliance.org/news-events/copyright-news-newsletters/internet-archive-emergency-library-harms-authors/?_zs=TqSBb&_zl=5fF52


All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Willy Nilly and the Erosion of Privacy

Does personal privacy matter? Less so, it seems, in the age where a priority is put on the convenience of others and the profitability of "data", whether the subject of the eroded privacy likes it or not.

"Willy Nilly" harks back to the Old English for "will he" and "ne-will he", "ne" being the negative prefix which is not usually cited in online dictionaries. Most resources condense "ne-will" to "nill", but not all.

Millennials don't seem to mind.  Authors are accustomed to having to give up some privacy as a trade off for pursuing a career, and some authors use pen names... and sometimes, a pen name is not the guarantee of privacy that it used to be.

Perhaps, it is not a good thing for all those sites --that post disclaimers asking paid users to refrain from making employment, or housing, or lending, or other important decisions about the person whose alleged info they are selling online-- to be allowed to monetize private information.  They don't always get it right.  Even if they did get everything right, that information tends to deny persons a fair chance or a second chance.

It is divisive.

Ironically, to read a Loeb and Loeb legal blog article about privacy, you have to accept cookies.
https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2020/02/new-uspto-rule-makes-trademark-owner-email-and-mailing

Lexology link.

Loeb and Loeb LLP legal bloggers Melanie Howard, David W. Grace and Ashley Van Leer explain for the benefit of trademark owners how new USPTO rules make trademark owners' street addresses and email addresses available to the public. Authors cannot hide behind their intellectual properties attorney any more.

That is lovely for the "Person-Locator-type" internet businesses that sell personal information, and also for scammers, robocallers, spear phishers, and other common varieties of spammers... and advertisers and marketers.

By the way, on the subject of government helpfulness.... the Copyright Office will be raising many fees as of March 20th, 2020. (Not for photographers.)
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-02-19/pdf/2020-03268.pdf

Reverting to advertising and targeting, and the annoying loss of privacy, the Charles Russell Speechlys LLP  UK focused legal blog has some must-read insights into data driven online targeting.

Lexology link.

Original:
https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/news-and-insights/insights/commercial/2020/2020-update-data-driven-online-targeting/

Legal blogger Olivia Crane does a deep dive into what data-driven online targeted advertising means, especially for Britons. This author sympathizes with Olivia Crane's unpleasant experience with shower curtains.

I had a similar experience recently with a synthetic planking product that popped up and virtually stalked me wherever I went (online).  This was after I made a purchase which I regret to this day... so where was the commercial sense in metaphorically bludgeoning me with a Lumber product?

It seems to me, the sensible advertisement targeters might be using "targeting" in much the same way as click-fraud.  "This woman recently bought a new roof for her house (usually a 15 - 30 year warrantied purchase), let's sell her name to roofers, so they can try --in vain-- to sell her a new roof!"

Most authors use Facebook, too.  The Socially Aware legal blog asks, "Are your facebook posts discoverable?"  Of course they are!
https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2020/02/24/are-your-facebook-posts-discoverable-application-of-the-forman-test-in-new-york/#page=1

Lexology.

J. Alexander Lawrence and Lily Smith for Morrison Foerster LLP give chapter and verse on how far your privacy can be eroded and information you shared semi-privately on Facebook can be exploited and used against you in a court of law.

So, if you are ever going to sign a lease to rent a home that says "No cats", and having an illicit cat is grounds for eviction, do not post photos of your beloved cat on your Facebook page with distinctive features of said rental house in the background... for example.

Finally, for readers who love fine art, your ability to acquire anonymously is receeding, as Andrea N. Perez, writing for Carrington Coleman explains.
https://www.ccsb.com/our-firm/publish/loss-of-privacy-rights-when-purchasing-art/

Lexology.

Art lovers are presumed to be terrorists and/or money launderers until they prove otherwise according to the EU's Fifth Directive.

What an excellent book title "The Fifth Directive" would be!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Social Media in the Raging 20s

In her latest LOCUS post, Kameron Hurley writes about tension and anxiety in the era of instantaneous communication and miscommunication:

Into the Raging 20s We Ride

She discusses misinformation, the pitfalls of following news bites in real time, the anxiety caused by exposure to floods of "unfettered" and unfiltered content, and feelings of helplessness when overwhelmed by what appear to be irresistible, impersonal forces. The essay begins with this generalization: "I’ve found that the insidious problem for me in scrolling through social media is that it feels like action. Ironically, it also creates – in me – a profound feeling of being out of control over events in the wider world, while generating a huge amount of anxiety and worry."

We tend to think if we Like or Share a post on a vital topic, we've done something about it. We often forget to dig deeper for reliable information or to seek out something concrete we can do in the real world. Hurley recommends rekindling the joy of creation, as well as becoming more intentional and selective about the online sources we expose ourselves to. She points out, "Our always-on culture has been driven by organizations that seek to get an increasing share of a finite resource: our attention. The more attention I give their services and algorithms, the less attention I have for the things that matter to me." The "luxury of deep focus" is an important resource of which social media can deprive us; Hurley writes about the need to rediscover that focus.

I was surprised at her remark that she's trying to spend more time on books. When and why did her book-reading decrease, I wonder? I can't imagine not reading a portion of a book-length work every day (in practice, two or three, since I always have several books going at one time, each for a different reading slot in my schedule). Unlike many people, including Hurley, I don't get ensnared by Facebook for long sessions. Some days, if time runs out, I barely glance at it or don't open it at all. When I do scan my feed, I devote only twenty minutes or so to it. Since I've friended or followed so many people, the content is effectively infinite, so there's no point in trying to consume all of it. The organizations and individuals I'm really interested in, I see regularly near the top of the page. My personal infinite black holes in terms of online reading are Quora and TV Tropes, where I have to make a conscious effort not to get sucked in except during free time I've specifically allotted to recreational surfing.

Hurley's comments about the illusion of taking action remind me of some lines from C. S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. (Like Shakespeare, Lewis offers an apt quote for almost any situation.) With regard to steering the victim's "wandering attention" away from what he ought to be spending his time on, senior demon Screwtape advises his pupil, "You no longer need a good book, which he really likes" to distract the "patient"; "a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about." Later, Screwtape says, "The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel." Screwtape would probably get a lot of mileage from the temptation to chase an endless chain of web links down multiple rabbit holes. In a different work (I can't remember which), Lewis points out that our brains weren't designed to cope with infinite demands on our sympathy in the form of a torrent of news about crises and disasters in distant places that we have no power to affect. I wonder what Lewis would say about social media and the 24-hour news cycle. His reaction would definitely not be favorable; in his lifetime, he avoided reading newspapers on the grounds that the content was often distorted or downright false.

Hurley's essay concludes with a declaration that's easy to applaud but often hard to practice: "Our attention, like our lives, is finite. Choose wisely."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Freedom of Speech Online

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column explores the distinction between freedom of speech in the legal sense and the pragmatic limitations encountered on the Internet:

Inaction Is a Form of Action

He focuses on the effects of the dominance exerted by tech giants such as Facebook and Google. The Constitution forbids government interference with freedom of speech, but it doesn't prevent private businesses from setting their own rules. Constructing a parable of two restaurants, one that forbids political conversation on its premises and another with no such prohibition, he acknowledges that customers who don't like the restrictions of No Politics Diner can eat at Anything Goes Bistro. But suppose No Politics Diner not only buys up all its competitors but branches out to own a variety of other kinds of businesses as well? It's theoretically possible that soon there won't be any privately owned public spaces in town where customers can discuss politics. Without any interference by government, freedom of speech has effectively been limited.

With the pithy comment that Facebook "has hostages, not users," he applies this analogy to online services. When the giants have swallowed up so many of their competitors that (in an exaggerated but still chilling quote) the Internet has become “five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four,” policies set by these companies can restrict online speech even though no state censorship is involved. Services such as Facebook make rules, followed by exceptions to the rules, then additional layers of regulations to close the loopholes created by the exceptions. The resulting incomprehensibly complex tangle of exceptions and loopholes, according to Doctorow, "will always yield up exploitable vulnerabilities to people who systematically probe it." While the trolls run rampant, the rest of us may have no means of defending ourselves against them.

He has a list of suggestions for "fixing" the Internet to transform it into an environment "that values pluralism (power diffused into many hands) and self-determination (you get choose which tech you use and how you use it)." One thing he urges is breaking up the Big Tech monopolies. I have reservations about whether this course of action is practical (or, under current law, legal, but that's an area I don't know much of anything about). It's hard to argue with his summary of the problem, however: "When the state allows the online world to become the near-exclusive domain of a small coterie of tech execs, with the power to decide on matters of speech – to say nothing of all the other ways in which our rights are impacted by the policies on their platforms, everything from employment to education to romance to (obviously) privacy – for all the rest of us, they are making policy."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

What's In A ... Face?

Much ado about...  faces is my takeaway from this week's legal (and copyleft activist) blogs. Not that "faces" equate to nothing. Far from it. And there's a lot of  facial violation going on.

Facebook is doing it. Amazon is doing it. Bad actors in the advertising world are doing it. EFF would like you to worry, and they may be correct (but never right!).

Electronic Freedom Foundation policy analyst Matthew Guariglia highlights how bad Amazon's Ring is, especially for passers-by whose faces are caught up by a Ring-using household's surveillance device and shared for all time with the police without their knowledge or consent and without a warrant or probable --or improbable-- cause.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/five-senators-join-fight-learn-just-how-bad-ring-really

Nathan Sheard, also writing for the EFF,  has a follow up, calling for an About Face protest.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/about-face-ending-government-use-face-surveillance

Legal blogger Sean C. Griffin, writing for Dykema-Gossett PLLC, discusses a class action lawsuit against Facebook's facial recognition technology, which matches up faces in their database with unidentified faces in uploaded photographs, and suggests "tags" to link the photograph to the person allegedly identified by Facebook as being in the photograph.
https://www.thefirewall-blog.com/2019/11/facebook-seeks-post-spokeo-review-of-biometric-privacy-class-action/

The question is, does a person need a concrete injury in order to sue Facebook?

Perhaps eventually, Facebook will misidentify someone in the background of an uploaded photo of what turns out to be a crime scene, and then the proverbial cat will be among the pigeons.

Meanwhile, the British grocery chain Tesco got itself into hot water when it relied on a Getty image license for a photograph of a celebrity.

Hallam Whitehead, writing for Virtuoso Legal, discusses the issues at stake when commercial use (as in advertising) is made of a celebrity's face without her knowledge or permission.
https://www.virtuosolegal.com/ip-insight-things-get-scary-for-tesco/

Authors who want a celebrity on their cover art need to obtain a model release from the model in addition to a copyright license from the photographer.

There have been advertising campaigns that have tried to "get around" the problem of a perfect but reluctant celebrity by using lookalikes.

Legal blogger Barry M. Benjamin, for Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton LLP lays out  the issue of "false endorsements" and what can be done about it.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/5294934f-5f6c-4a50-a40b-91407fd14f72.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1574613881&Signature=%2Bd891%2FmV5%2BEPeiBPRmHBDB86P0I%3D

or
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c29600ca-8ef8-4ff6-a678-5a5ccb95b6f0

Also, author Po Yi, blogging for Manatt Phelps and Phillips LLP describes what Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres are doing to fight the pernicious problem of  "Celebrity Endorsement Theft".

https://www.manatt.com/Insights/Newsletters/Advertising-Law/Bullock-DeGeneres-Fight-Celebrity-Endorsement

This may not seem like it would affect us, but if we were to come across a photograph of a major influencer reading a paper copy of one of our books, a temptation would arise, wouldn't it?  Get permission!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

PS. For our European readers, please check your caches. The authors of this blog do not intentionally track you, but Amazon, Facebook, Google and many others do so.

Monopolies, Publishing, and Online Media

Cory Doctorow's latest column briefly surveys the history of antitrust enforcement, considers the effect on creative artists of the concentration of market share in a few mega-organizations, and analyzes a provision of the European Union's new Copyright Directive. Spoiler: He's against it (that one clause, anyway).

Steering with the Windshield Wipers

I must admit my initial reaction to the first paragraph was amusement at a tangential thought. Doctorow illustrates the monopolizing of an industry by a few corporations or only one with this suggestion: "Take off your glasses for a sec (you’re a Locus reader, so I’m guessing that you, like me, are currently wearing prescription eyewear) and have a look at the manufacturer’s name on the temples." If you need glasses to read text on a screen, how are you supposed to read the brand name on them when you take them off? I tried, and as I expected, the print is way too small. LOL. Anyway, Doctorow reveals that most eyeglass frames and lenses are made by the same company that owns the major retailers in the field. (So my personal choice, Lenscrafters, isn't really independent of its alleged competitors such as Pearle Vision. We live in a weird world, all right.) From that point, he asks how we got into this situation and proceeds to discuss Facebook and other Internet social media engines. He offers examples of "overconcentration blues" in film and TV, the music industry, publishing, and social media sites (with particular emphasis on Facebook's privacy problems).

He strenuously objects to the EU Copyright Directive's clause that requires online providers to "block anything that might be unlicensed, using automated filters." In Doctorow's opinion, "This is a plan of almost unfathomable foolishness." One of his primary objections is that the policy won't stop infringement, because filters are susceptible to abuse, "imperfect and prone to catching false positives," and "cheap and easy to subvert." He also believes the rule will be so expensive to comply with that smaller companies will be squeezed out, to the benefit of the mega-conglomerates.

In near-apocalyptic language, he works up to the conclusion that "monopolies are strangling the possibility of a pluralistic, egalitarian society." This article, however, doesn't answer the logical next question: What must we do to be saved? As for the publishing industry, it doesn't seem to me that the dominance of the Big Five (possibly soon to become four) is quite so dire for authors as it used to be. We now have alternative outlets that didn't exist in the past, in the form of a multitude of small presses and e-publishers, as well as inexpensive self-publishing.

Some services, in my opinion, SHOULD be provided by monopolies. Maintaining utility infrastructure such as the electrical grid or the sewer system, for instance. But not publishing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Is The DOJ Watching Facebook Advertisements?

"Targeted" advertising is probably efficient and convenient.  If you don't think that it is worth paying for puce eyeballs to view your book advertisement (because you assume that people with puce eyeballs will never buy your book, anyway), Facebook allows you to make fairly sure that puce eyeballs don't see your ad.

Leave aside the moral hazard, and the possibility that you are setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is probably no "Title" in American law that obliges a Romance author to pay a social media site to show book advertisements to persons not interested in reading/fiction/women's fiction.

On the other hand, if you are a homeowner or landlord and your advertisement is intended to find a tenant or a buyer, you need to be careful about the demographic choices by race/gender/zip code/nationality etc that you can make on Facebook.

Legal bloggers A. Michelle Canter,  Heather Howell Wright  and Christopher K. Friedman  discuss the issue of discrimination in advertising on Facebook for the law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP

HUD and DOJ Challenge Facebook's Advertising Platforms Under The Fair Housing Act.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7ddea6b2-740b-488c-885a-afe42fa274dd

It's a fascinating insight, that points out that data-driven, targeted marketing might create new avenues for liability, both for the platforms, and possibly for those who use the bells and whistles that the platform provides.

It is also astounding how much information "the Internet" has on myriad individuals. The privacy enthusiasts at EFF are raising the alarm about warrantless surveillance of utilities company customers (electric, gas) through the use of "smart meters" that have been forcibly installed across the USA. Allegedly, law enforcement has started to ask the utilities companies for access to the data.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/win-landmark-seventh-circuit-decision-says-fourth-amendment-applies-smart-meter

Allegedly, as often as every five minutes, 24/7, a smart meter on your home may be transmitting information about what you are doing inside your home (as long as you are using either gas or electricity to do whatever it is you are doing.)

1984 indeed.  Perhaps this might lead to prosecutions of persons using their irrigation system under cover of darkness during watering bans! These rfi emitting devices may be hazardous to health (but there is a device you can purchase from Amazon to interfere with the rfi. )

For more info on smart meters:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/08/05/smart-meter-dangers.aspx
 

https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/harvard-medical-doctor-warns-against-smart-meters/

http://emfsafetynetwork.org/smart-meters/

Back to Facebook, blogger Stefan Herwig discusses "Networked Propaganda" and copyright issues in a thought provoking article.

https://thetrichordist.com/2018/09/09/networked-propaganda-guest-post-by-stefan-herwig/

Apparently, with Facebook, a user does not have to make choices about what he/she sees.  Facebook, allegedly, takes it upon itself to ensure that users see views that reinforce and encourage and validate their views beliefs and biases that are already held by the user.

For those who wish to advertise to like minded readers, here are some very helpful resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3hIafdFCmM&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiH-hfhonDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6ATUw0BIU

Especially for our European readers, please be advised that this blog contains an eclectic selection of links, almost all of which may come with assorted "cookies", whether you click on them or not. Enjoy!

(Or clear your history and your cache!)

All the best,
Rowena Cherry