A Sendup That Cuts To The Bone

Marie at A Puff of Absurdity recently posted on the dysfunction, debasement and corrosiveness that social media has wrought in human relationships. The following seems like an apt complement to her post:

Manipulation 101

It is to state the obvious that politicians and their party apparatchiks are practiced manipulators. They target their demographic, employ experts to craft messages to that demographic and, sadly, seem to expend a disproportionate amount of time on the art of politicking at the expense of true democratic representation. Managing optics, not formulating principled policy, has become the raison d'être for far too many.

Combine this with an increasingly credulous and partisan populace, and you have a recipe for a decidedly unhealthy democracy. It is one in which increasing numbers of voters are forsaking critical thinking and the kind of challenge and critical analysis offered by traditional media for the much easier task of cheering on their favourite 'team' while embracing the animus directed at their opponents, skillfully cultivated by hired talent who see politics as a game to be strategized, with nary a thought for the public good. There are only Winners and Losers in this world of black and white, and the biggest loser is, of course, democracy's health and vitality.

Start at the seven-minute mark of the following news report, and you will see that the base art of manipulation is alive and well in Canada.

France Has The Right Idea

I am a member of an increasingly endangered and probably peculiarly-regarded minority. I do not have a smartphone. While I am an avid user of the Internet via my laptop and generic tablet, the thought of constant connectivity has never appealed to me. I value the kind of focussed solitude that promotes true connectivity with the world around me far too much.

I therefore applaud the bold step that France has taken: it has banned phones from all state middle schools.

“I thought I would be freaked out, but it has been fine,” said one 13-year-old girl, who got an iPhone when she was 11. “I left my phone in my bag all day and I was surprised to find it didn’t bother me. Normally I’d be on Snapchat and Instagram. But my friends are here at school so it’s pretty easy to just talk instead.”

To prepare for the ban, Claude Debussy middle school in Paris started with Monday bans on phones. And one of the results I suspect they hoped for, increased social interaction, emerged early in the ban, according to principal Eric Lathière.

“About four or five weeks into our phone-free Monday experiment, we saw children bringing packs of cards into school to play in break time...We hadn’t seen cards at school for years. Children brought books in to read and pupils stood around chatting far more than they had before.”

The logic for the ban is compelling:

The French education minister has called the ban a detox law for the 21st century, saying teenagers should have the right to disconnect. Children’s phones were already banned in classrooms – except for teaching purposes – but under the new law they are banned everywhere inside the gates, including playgrounds and canteens. The French senate expanded this to allow high schools to ban phones if they choose, but few, if any, are expected to do so. Many suggest 18-year-old pupils with the right to vote can make their own decision on phones.

I doubt that the political will for such a ban exists in Canada. For example, going completely in the opposite direction is the Toronto District School Board which last week restored access to Netflix, Instagram and Snapchat. The blocking of access to those services had nothing to do with educational principles but was prompted by the high amount of bandwidth such services require.

The board's egregious vacuum of leadership is perhaps best reflected in this statement by board spokesperson Ryan Bird:

“We leave the decision up to individual schools and individual teachers to put in place guidelines that work best for them.”

It is heartening to know that at least in France, that kind of buck-passing has yielded to educational integrity that puts the real needs of students first.

Signs Of The Times

Your Apps Have Eyes

I am convinced that, like so many other traditional values, our right to, and desire for, privacy is quickly becoming but a vestige of an earlier era, We readily share information on Facebook, for example, most never checking their privacy settings, leaving ourselves open to all kinds of manipulations and intrusions and even giving potential employers ample reason not to hire us. When we download apps (since I don't have a smartphone, I am somewhat protected) we blithely check of the Accept Agreement that is mandatory before we get our 'free' new application that, after all, promises to make our life so much better given the promise of control literally at our fingertips.

However, as most of us know on some level, nothing is ever really free. At the very least, the following report should serve as a wake-up call to regularly check our privacy setting on all of our devices:

An Update On An Update

Yesterday, I posted about a man an one of Edmonton's LRT stations showing his Islamophobic/racist colours, as reported by CBC. I am happy to report that an arrest has been made:

Edmonton police have a suspect in custody in connection with a possible hate crime aimed at two hijab-wearing women.

Police thanked the public for helping the Hate Crimes Unit with the investigation.

Further details will be released when they become available, police said in a news release.

Meanwhile the Islamic community is speaking out about the incident.

"It's very unfortunate to say the least," said Arangzeb Qureshi, with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council. "This is Islamophobia at its worst."

Qureshi credits technology with holding people who may be committing a hate crime to account.

"It's an advantage for people who are unfortunately going through this type of discrimination."

When these kinds of incidents occur, we have an obligation to intervene. To turn away from such hate crimes is to be complicit in them. End of discussion.

Social Media and Margaret Wente

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post explaining why we cancelled our subscription to The Globe and Mail. At the same time, I sent an email with a link to the post to Globe editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, suggesting that if he wanted to know why he had lost a long-term subscriber, he should read my post.

Later that evening, I received a response from Stackhouse which I have never discussed in this blog, simply because I regarded it as private communication. While I am not prepared to reveal the content of the letter, I will tell you his closing observation, which was something along the lines of, "You seem to prefer the smaller world of the blogosphere. Sad."

Well, it would seem that the world of bloggers is not so small after all, given it was Medi Culpa's analysis of Margaret Wente's plagiarism that has created something of a firestorm within the world of journalism, shaking to its foundations the once proud Globe. In his column today, The Star's Tim Harper addresses the role it plays in journalists' lives, and how it forces everyone to be very careful in how they write.

Of additional interest is a brief profile of Professor Carol Wainio, the blogger behind Media Culpa.

Oh, and Torontoist has some thoughts worth perusal as well.