Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Champagne Toast for Net Neutrality Advocates Premature

In spite of the recent victory in the language of the stimulus budget, it would be extremely naive for net neutrality advocates to toast champagne and take their eyes off the ball just yet.  At the 11th hour Dianne Feinstein D-CA attempted to add language to the stimulus act that would have allowed for "network management" techniques protecting against copyright infringement.  The intersection between the issues of net neutrality and copyright are rarely discussed in the press.  Nevertheless, one of the primary arguments against neutral networks is to protect copyright.  Unfortunately, protecting against copyright typically means degrading innovative file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent.  Network management practices employed by big business will only serve their old economic models and disadvantage the new economy burgeoning on the net.

Net Neutrality, Copyright Spoiling for a Fight

And the Pursuit of Happiness: In Love With A. Lincoln

And the Pursuit of Happiness: In Love With A. Lincoln

This lovely illustrated essay by Maira Kalman, published: February 26, 2009 in the New York Times, highlights our new found love of President Lincoln thanks to President Obama paying continual homage to his legacy with his words, practices and spirit.  This summer I had the opportunity to go to the Lincoln Memorial and read Lincoln's wonderful words inscribed on its walls.  There were many tourists, mostly taking pictures of friends on church trips.  As I finished reading the words, the African-American guard approached me and said, "Deep, huh?"  I could only agree.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

A Lesson in Framing Ideologies for the Democrats...

In Christine Bowman's recent post on Buzzflash.com entitled, What's David Axelrod Saying? A Lesson in Framing For Congressional Democrats, she points out the democrats could take a lesson from David Axelrod when discussing the economic stimulus.  Unfortunately, and admittedly, the democrats lost a bit of the plot and allowed republicans to cease the moral high ground on fiscal responsibility.  If the republicans are able to come off as responsible, you know the democrats have messed up. 

Reflections on Interconnectivity

The idea of interconnectivity has been around since well before Adorno, McLuhan, Heidegger, Hume, Bacon, Hegel, Nietzsche and all the Western philosophers who argued for, against and about rationality.  This idea predates Aristotle’s attempt to analyze the senses in De Anima, and it predates the arrival of Jesus and Christianity.  Some would argue that its essence travels outside of time, and that it is the idea, the one on which the foundation of existence rests, connecting past and present and future, and me and you and all of everything.  But because we cannot see it or feel it or touch it, and because the history of “The West” came to separate religion and myth from philosophy and epistemology, and center life on dichotomy and dialectic and power and hegemony, it is hidden from Western view and now we must live within the illusion of disconnectivity.  This disconnectivity begets rationality, and this rationality begets disconnectivity, but still the circle is communication itself:  an unbroken chain of source and encoder, decoder and receiver and feedback, and noise.  The idea cannot be extinguished, only disguised.