Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I scrolled back up looking for just that, and how'd I miss it?
  

    
Hi Gail! I'm doing a "Media Salon" at the KQED studio, 7 PM next Monday, 
Feb 10. I will talk briefly -- 15-20 minutes -- and the rest of the 
evening will be devoted to group discussion.  2601 Mariposa St. at Bryant

It runs until 9 PM
  

    
Sounds like a blast! Is that going to be webcast?
  

    
I dunno. I don't think so.
  

    
There is an article in the SFGATE today on how protests are being
organized quickly by technology. Interesting enough there is a quote
from Howard included in the article about Smartmobs (tm?). 8-)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/14/MN97614.DTL

Jeff
  

    
The political right has been using impromptu, small scale guerrilla
theater as a means of harassing their opposition for several years.
These events have almost certainly been organized by pager and cell
phone, but they haven't been advertising themselves as such.  If you
weren't a target of their activities you might not recognize them as
being anything out of the ordinary.
  

    
Can you say more about that, (satyr)?

There's this today:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/weekinreview/23JLEE.html>
  

    
Actually, about ten years would be closer to accurate, since about the 
time that Rush Limbaugh began his countdown of days until Clinton was 
out of office and Newt Gingerich was well on his way to becoming Speaker 
of the House, although I think the practice has probably been becoming 
gradually more widespread and sophisticated since then.

It's a combination of pseudo-conversation centering on 'talking points'
and at least some smidgen of information about the target, for whose
ears the 'conversation' is actually intended.  Rather like good sales 
practice, basically "know your customer" with a twist.  (And it probably 
amounts to harassment only because people they've identified as being part 
of their opposition end up getting targeted more frequently.)

Used to be that it required teams, but the prevalence of  cell phones 
has made that unnecessary, since one-sided conversations have now become 
unremarkable.

The giveaway is usually the (lack of) depth of understanding of whatever 
is used as the hook to get the attention of the target.  I suppose they 
can't run the risk of looking too deeply into what they don't understand, 
for fear of being transformed themselves...

(No surprise if I sound like a delusional paranoid; you'll just have to 
take my word for it that I'm not.  ;-)
  

    
Has anyone identified such a scenario and documented exactly what was done
-- or can you give a detailed example?
  

    <scribbled by satyr Tue 25 Feb 03 10:12>
  

    
Possibly, I wouldn't know.  My impression is that most who resolved the
pattern in their minds at all, including some of the participants, took it
for a sort of parlor game and failed to discern any serious motive behind
it.  It would be a very difficult phenomenon to actually study, without
one of the organizers describing how it was done, and why.

I'm extrapolating from what I've seen and heard for myself, which suggests
the existence of a sort of cadre, the M.O. of which is primarily public
performance in ordinary settings -- guerilla theater, but not meant to be
taken for such -- possibly for hire(*), possibly politically motivated,
possibly both (and possibly motivated by the personal ambition of the 
participants), which, at its most effective, is capable of leaving the
unsuspecting with the impression that practically the whole world shares
whatever obsession or point of view they're pushing at the moment.

 * In a time when advertising is everywhere and becoming less effective, 
   for those more concerned with producing an effect than how much it 
   costs, getting your representatives out in public in sufficient 
   numbers to (by means of talking more and more loudly) dominate the 
   appearance of what's on the mind of people in general (over one small 
   area at a time) might seem like a worthwhile investment.  Personally,
   I can't imagine that it would be cost-effective, but it seems like
   one of the more plausible explanations for what I've experienced.

It's possible that I'm conflating multiple, competing groups, but I'd
stand by the assertion that there are people out there doing this as
though it were as a profession, and that my subjective evidence indicates
coordination that could only be accomplished by means of wireless
communications.

Sorry for the drift.  I didn't mean to coopt this topic, just interject 
a connection.

It seems to me that the use of wireless isn't really so much the issue 
here as the willingness of people to perform at the direction of whoever 
is doing the coordination.  Either they must trust that person or those 
people to share their own interests, or they just don't care and are in 
it for the thrill (or the money).

That's for the few-to-many scenario.  Are you aware of any examples of
mass activity self-organizing without communications being filtered
through a sort of clearinghouse, in many-to-many fashion?
  

    
Has anyone admitted to doing this?  What did they do?
  

    
Admitted to it clearly, unambiguously, and for the record?  Not that I'm
aware.  Admitted to it among themselves, in hushed, slightly embarrassed 
tones, yes.

There's nothing unusual about talking for the ears of someone not 
directly involved in a conversation.  That's a human pattern that's older 
than dirt.  What's novel here is the coordination of such activity for 
some larger purpose, with regard both to placement of the talkers in time 
and space, and to the content of what they say, using them rather like 
storm gossips.

What that larger purpose is remains obscure, although there have been 
instances where it seemed to clearly be political and right-wing.  There 
may not be just one.

At least they're just talking...
  

    
"The political right has been using impromptu, small scale guerrilla
theater as a means of harassing their opposition for several years.
These events have almost certainly been organized by pager and cell
phone, but they haven't been advertising themselves as such."

I would like to read more about this.  Do you have a source?
  

    
'Fraid I haven't had need to read about it, so, if there is a literature,
I'm not aware of it...

And I should probably make explicit admission to a degree of inconsistency
on this topic.  Reconstructing in one's mind the 90% of an iceberg that's
below the water line based on the 10% that's above it is a chancy
business.  One can roughly estimate its bulk, but, in the absence of tools
adequate to detect it, its actual shape remains a matter of conjecture.

I have, at various times, conceived various explanations, some of which 
still seem plausible, but they don't all occur to me immediately when the 
subject comes up again after being out of mind for awhile.

If you really want to study this phenomenon, though, I'd suggest having a 
very close look at the crowd that appeared outside the room where ballots 
were being counted in (Dade County?) Florida, in November of 2000.  Where 
did those people come from, how were they mobilized, did they truly 
believe what they were saying or was there a degree of performance 
involved, and, if it was at least in part a performance, who wrote the 
script and when and where did they develop their skills as players?

That was a particularly incautious and revealing scene, in a high-stakes 
moment, not just an isolated incident.
  

    
That was a pretty ordinary phony demonstration using washington staffers.  I
think it was despicable, but I am not sure it is an example of what you have
been saying.
  

    
When did phony demonstrations using washington staffers become ordinary?
  

    
That appeared to be a pretty ordinary phony demonstration, with the 
fatal flaw of using identifiable washington staffers.  I can't recall 
reading that swarming or smart mobbing or coordianted milling 
around were aspects, but I'd be interested if you have. It sure stunk.
  

    
Okay, when did phony demonstrations become ordinary?

To me it all looks very much the same, whether walking around in a public
square carrying on an overly loud conversation composed of incongruous
content (and the occasional catch-phrase) or standing outside a room where
ballots are being counted yelling at the top of one's lungs.

The essence of both is the suspension of the connection between the usual
rules of conduct (what one might be expected or appears to be doing in any
given circumstance) and what's actually happening, and the substitution of
an agenda.

And I expect there's a farm-team equivalent of those Washington staffers,
composed of wannabe and former staffers, and wannabe and present party
insiders, who practice public dissemblance whenever they happen to be in a 
place where they're unlikely to be recognized, possibly combining it with 
a ski holiday or some such.

Granted that the connection to most "smart mobs" is tenuous, since, in
most cases, protestors organized as Howard has described are probably
openly representing their own real opinions, even if doing it under the
coordination of some 'communications clearinghouse'.
  

    
re: "walking around in a public square carrying on an overly loud
conversation composed of incongruous content (and the occasional
catch-phrase)"

So you've seen this somewhere?  When and where?  Tell us a story.
  

    
Actually, I want to stop talking about it; I never meant to go on at 
such length in the first place.

My perspective has been basically that of the practice dummy in bayonet
school, a safe target that keeps taking the jabs...not a useful focus 
for inquiry...it was mostly just for practice.

But where there is practice there is usually utilization, and I wouldn't
want to dull your imagination as to what that might mean with the petty
examples I've seen/heard first-hand.
  

    
I talk about some of these disconnects in Chapter One, (satyr).

FYI:

<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030310-428047,00.html>
  

    
Howard, how mobily networked are you these days?  Do you use telephone, 
email, or more when you are out and about in your regular routine?
  

    
I use a Treo 300 for telephone and mobile email and mobile web access. I'm
hooked! I never leave home without it. Of course, I tend to not want to   
leave home if I don't have to. Ever since Airport, my spring-summer-fall  
office is under the plum tree in my garden.
  

    
That's sanity. Airport and a garden is halfway to heaven.
Planting any corn this season?