One of the things I miss most during this pandemic are the twice-monthly writer's social gatherings organized by the "Friends of the Vocamus Press". When I started going to them I found that I was having the sort of bright, intellectual conversations that I remember from my university days and never seem to be able to have anywhere else in life.
To that end, I thought readers might be interested in hearing a conversation with the fellow behind them---Jeremy Luke Hill.
I mentioned Hill's blog post but mangled the title. It wasn't "Social Media is the Opiate of the People", but rather Poetry as Opiate---but I do think that I got the general thrust of the essay right. Here's the cover of his book, Trumped, using the "found poetry" of the Trump administration.
For those readers who've never heard of Ivan Illich, or his book Deschooling Society, he was a Catholic priest and academic who had strong reservations about the social implications of education as it is currently used in most societies. If memory serves, the book argues that education is usually just as much about reinforcing class divisions and discouraging non-educated people from learning as it is about teaching. I suppose you could say he was an advocate of "life long" and "self-directed" learning. He didn't live long enough to see it, but he'd probably be a fan of the "Maker movement" that involves hordes of people teaching skills on-line through You Tube videos.
In contrast, I don't know what he'd make of the proliferation of false information being strewn around the Web by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. He was quite skeptical about mainstream medicine, but he wasn't a fool---so he might have changed some of his ideas if he'd seen the impact of self-taught medical info on society during a pandemic.
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| Ivan Illich. I got this image from the LA Progressive, where I didn't see any provenance for the photo. I'm using it under the "Fair Dealing" provision simply because I couldn't find any public domain images. |
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The economist that Jeremy is referring to is William A. Darity Jr who has done some very interesting work on the role of inter-generational wealth in America---especially with regard to people of colour. Probably one of the more startling results of his research is the fact that while education is related to income, it doesn't correlate with wealth.
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| William A. Darity. Image from the Duke University, Sanford School of Public Police, profile page. |
This might seem odd, but increases in income from education can---as Jeremy says---be offset by the cost of paying off student loans for a significant fraction of your working life. If someone has their education paid for by their parents or some other mechanism (such as the tuition waiver that Hill refers to in the conversation), then that becomes a source of significant inter-generation wealth transfer. (It's important to remember that tuition is significantly more expensive in the USA---which is where Darity is doing his work. But I suspect quite a few university graduates in Canada are also stuck paying off students loans for many years too.)
The problem with inter-generational wealth is that "it takes money to make money", and many white American's parents and grand parents benefited mightily from government programs that no longer exist---such as the "GI Bill" and government subsidized university tuition---and the historically unparalleled prosperity of the post-war boom. Unfortunately, because of Jim Crow laws and practices, people of colour were rarely able to take advantage of these opportunities. That means that there was no general accumulation of wealth for black parents during these decades which could then be used to help out their children and grand children.
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| Infographic from The Centre for Global Policy Solutions. This is a "think tank" that provides resources for organizations trying to spread the word about issues of public interest. |
Here's the You Tube video that Jeremy was referring to. It's a bit long, but well worth the time. Darity is a good speaker and unlike many economists who suffer from "math envy" and who just play around with theoretical models based on dubious assumptions, he actually does primary research. He only mentions in passing the suggestion he's come up with to deal with the racial wealth gap---baby bonds---but it is also worth looking into.
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What exactly am I trying to do with the "Guelph-Back-Grounder"? Primarily, it's a reaction to the shallow, emotionally-driven news stories that used to infuriate me when reading the mainstream media. What I'm trying to do is create news that is designed to educate instead of entertain. I think that it's working because when I look at the statistics, I see that even stories that I published years ago are still being read.
I've learned that "news as entertainment" is a thing because traditional media is first and foremost an advertising business. And advertising isn't about education at all---it's about driving people's emotions. This means that the "Back-Grounder" isn't a business in anything like a traditional sense. Instead, it's a public service. And like any other public service, it cannot support itself through sales. Instead, it has to be supported by donations.
That's why I ask for people who can afford it to subscribe through Pay Pal or Patreon, you aren't paying for traditional news. Instead, you're supporting a source of information that will help people find out why the world we inhabit is acting the way it is. Personally, I think that this is tremendously important. If you do too, then consider signing up for a monthly subscription.
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Publishers are suffering financially, just like journalists and musicians, so I asked Hill what he thought about the Liberal plan to channel tax money towards the "legacy media".
Jeremy talks about why support for makers shouldn't be all about trying to hold back the transition to a new form of distribution. Instead, it must accept that things are changing and try to manage that change in ways that benefit society.
Recently there have been moves by several countries to force social media to start paying news media for the stories that they publish on their platforms:
- Australia has legislation in front of Parliament to force both Google and Facebook to pay publishers for content that gets published on their media. In retaliation, Facebook has threatened to simply stop individuals from sharing news in Australia on either Facebook or Instagram
- The French National Assembly recently passed legislation that had been already OK'd by the European Parliament that allows governments to ask social media businesses to collect money "by the click" to be pay the original publishers of the content. (Google announced shortly afterwards that rather than collect these funds, it will change the way it lists content in it's search feeds in order to avoid the intent of the legislation.)
- The Liberals under Justin Trudeau appear ready to levy a 3% tax against the tech giants (ie: Facebook and Google) for revenue raised through advertisement and digital information sales. In contrast to Australia and France's attempt at enforcing copyright rules, both Facebook and Google have announced that they will comply with this legislation when it is passed. This is different legislation than that passed by France or considered by Australia, but there is no reason why Ottawa couldn't redirect the revenue raised towards publishers who find their content used by social media.
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| Heritage minister Steven Guilbeault is ready to tax social media companies. Official photo from government website. |
I may have misunderstood the impact of the legislation coming out of Australia and France, but it's hard to understand how one could use copyright legislation to deal with social media and content creators.
The value that Google and Facebook bring to the table is their artificial intelligence that allows people to search for information either through typing in a word search or by having their previous selections create a "profile" that anticipates your interests.
This is a tremendously useful feature (at least in theory) because it puts the entire world of information at your finger tips. The only way that the giant companies can pay for creating this and other features (think about the way Google translate can step in and translate---for example---French legislation into English just by clicking a box) is through ad revenue.
The legacy media is totally different. They have human gatekeepers who control what content readers see and charge admission for anyone who wants to see what they have in their "walled garden". For example, I have a paid subscription to the Toronto Star. Everything I read from it has been selected by editorial staff. This does have the benefit of keeping out fake news, but it also dramatically limits what I see. If the editorial board decides that its goal is to push a specific political party (like the Toronto Sun did in the last provincial election), then that's all I'm going to get. Moreover, if I don't have a paid subscription, odds are that if I search out an article that I want to see and I haven't got a subscription, I'm not going to see it. No one has enough money to subscribe to everything, and it can be very frustrating to see something that looks like exactly what you want---but you can't read it because it's behind a pay wall. (The other day I was looking for an academic paper and looked at the cost of purchasing it. It was listed at over $300---for one academic paper!)
The Google search engine and social media AI are crucially important to "small fry" like the Guelph-Back-Grounder in that they allow us to publish and market our work without having to first build a huge "brand" that will allow us to create our own "walled garden". This is exactly the point that Jeremy Luke Hill is making about how government policies need to be crafted that serve public interests instead of just propping up legacy media.
Having said that, however, there does seem to be some need to end the "Wild West" aspect of the Internet. There's a huge amount of content theft going on. For example, sometimes I "Google" my name just to find out what's going on. Among other surprising things, I sometimes find my books for sale on websites that I have never heard of, and who I know will never pay me royalties. I also am astounded how many on-line "journals" I see that are people with computers and a domain who just repackage stories they've lifted from other news sites so they can sell advertising around them. Obviously, there needs to be some way to cut down on this sort of business activity. I just hope that the governments don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
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Hill also expands on the discussion to talk specifically about government support of publishers like him. He admits that he'll take whatever money there is up for grabs, but in the long run thinks that there has to be a better way of supporting the arts than through government hand outs.
I think that this is a logical place to stop for now. I've got more interesting stuff "in the can" to put up at a later date, but I think that this post is already long enough.
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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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