media

That Political Question

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I once had someone note that my blog wasn’t political, and that was refreshing. I can sort of get that, especially if you’ve encountered writers to A) turned “political” and B) did it for the clicks/attention/cash. “Politics” has become a dirty word in some ways, and people have made an effort to dirty it.

But that made me think. See my blog does talk politics. In fact it talks politics more than many readers may realize (and probably in some cases, than I realize). Because a lot of my blog is about organization, technology, culture, and getting things done. That’s all politics.

Ed Zitron may be the Lewis Black of technology, but if you ever heard or read his stuff, his work is political, he just doesn’t say it.

I do avoid, in some cases, making it explicitly political. Some of this is the dismal state of modern politics. A lot of it is about what I want to discuss. If I make specific political statements then that means those who automatically disagree won’t listen and those who automatically agree won’t question me. I’m fine with disagreement and agreement, but would like it to be heartfelt not automatic.

Praise me or call me a dumbass for real, not because I repeated a talking point.

When I do this consciously, I’m kind of annoyed with it, because politics should be interesting and engaging. Politics is part of society and civilization. In fact, to try to avoid politics is to avoid having a society. To emphasizes that let’s talk the Toledo Zoo and Civil Defense.

The Toledo Zoo, which I had visited many times, had some buildings made by the Works Progress Administration back in the 30s. Those lasted quite awhile, and the WPA was the result of politics. I’ve also dug up books create due to the WPA and so on. Parts of our history due to politics.

Civil Defense, for a time, interested me as well. At first for the nature of it’s communications, and later for what it meant. As a Project Manager seeing Americans come together in organized fashion intrigued me. It’s also part of my interest in disaster recovery. Yes, Civil Defense was propaganda-heavy, it was political, but it also left a legacy.

Politics can be sure we get things done. Ever go and say “someone should fix this?” Well getting it fixed is politics.

But why has it become such a dirty word? Why is it associated with screaming at each other over Thanksgiving? Why can’t we, you know, solve problems?

My short take is simply this – we’re in a media saturated culture where politics is somewhere between lousy soap opera and gladiatorial game. Some people compare it to wrestling but that’s insulting wrestling. We’ve made politics about anything but doing things, and all that does is serve entrenched interests at best. At worse (and I think we’re at worse), politics is essentially a media-industrial complex filled with people who will say and do anything for hits, money, and to release their own psychological complexes.

And while all this is going on? Terrible things are happening, only we’re not as aware of them or trying to fix them as she should be.

(I have suspected the origins of this are in Kennedy’s popularity and the mass media, but I think there’s more I need to chew over. A friend has been studying media history and his insights are depressingly useful.)

We’ve made politics not about getting anything done and politics has always had its problems. We should be engaged. We should have discussions, not arguments. We should do things for our communities of all kind. We should not be listening to some guy on YouTube who alternately argues for insane politics while pitching pills to fix erectile dysfunction or legal psychedelics.

So I may be talking politics more directly. Be the change I want to see in the world and all. Though I can’t say I won’t do a bit of a runaround before I admit something is about politics. Let’s keep things fun here – as opposed to what too much political talk is about.

Steven Savage

Alternate Steves: The Lost Empire

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I continue my series imagining different cultural, technical, and economic trends using myself as a lens. We’ve met a Steve who was in on the work-from-home craze of the early 90s, a Steve that watched Ohio’s high-speed rail boom of a similar era. Now let’s meet a very divergent Steve, in a world where big media empires crumbled – for the most part.

TRANSCRIPT FROM SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY RADIO: Professor Steven Savage on “TeachMeet”

Hello everyone out there! It’s your favorite lecturer on media history and the law, and by favorite I of course mean the only one. And that’s even my entire job!

So let’s get to my big announcement, one that’ll appeal to all twelve of you that took my “Media Turning Points” two-hundred level course. Can all you dozen please tell your friends?

My friend Serdar Yegulalp – yes, the guy you see in Rolling Stone – is coming to campus to speak on his new book “The Empire Of Media.” It’s his latest novel, a noir-deco tale of an alternate history where five giant corporations control world media. There’s murder, mayhem, skulduggery, and rich people doing awful things to each other. Now as much as we enjoy a good alternate history that involves annoying people killing each other, there’s even more!

You may ask why you haven’t heard of this novel yet. Well, that’s because it got released on the East Coast by Penguin. It hasn’t made it’s way here yet because, well, we all know how that works. But it also lets me speak with him on my next book – because we wrote ours together. Plus I get to ride his coattails.

Yes, some of you heard because I can’t shut up, but my next non-fiction book (with less murder) is coming out via Omnipress. It’s “The Lost Empire of Culture” and it’s going to explore how we got here in the world of media, communications, and ownership. Not interesting you say? More rich people being horrible? Well stay tuned.

Serdar and I wrote our books together because one thing that people forget – besides you specific twelve students, thanks again – is that we nearly had a world where only a few oversized corporations owned most of the media. Yes, you may have heard it, but he asks what happens if that was real, and I explore how we dodged not so much a bullet but an atomic bomb.

Imagine Disney as a dominant economic and cultural force, instead of a cautionary tale and favorite political target of politicians before you were born. Not many people remember the Berne Convention walkout of 1993. Or perhaps you’d like to get back to skullduggery as I dissect how several media companies, while pretending to cooperate, ended up backstabbing each other.

As you’ve heard me say, we dodged a world where ownership of works was basically eternal and creativity at best optional.

Imagine a world without your regional publisher. Imagine a world where Kinko’s isn’t sued over a price-fixing scandal for books! Imagine Diamond being worse than they were! Yes, I’ll even go into the famous Paper Scandal of 2015 for anyone who cares about it – which honestly isn’t me, I just like to be complete.

Serdar will cover what could have happened in a world of megacorporations putting out cartoons. I’ll cover why Publishers and Copyhouses got so big and why lawyers got into fistfights in Sweden. Hopefully it also means our books sell on both coasts.

See you there! Look for details soon! And for everyone attending my “Zines in action class” tomorrow, please bring your homework!

This was a fun one. I didn’t want to spell out the world too much, but more explore it from someone’s point of view. What’s media like when big media powerhouses wore down and in some ways destroyed themselves? What’s it like when publishers and distributors gain much more power but are also regional?

Steven Savage

Dada And Empty Media

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Though i don’t discuss it as much here, I have an interest in the art movement of Surrealism and its origins. Surrealism is fascinating in its many manifestations, it intersects with politics and culture movements, and the many personalities and people are compelling. As I continue to learn about it, I keep finding new lessons, one of which I want to share here.

Surrealism’s origins are rooted in Dada, an art movement that appeared post World War I that was mistrustful of the supposed age of reason and the horrors of the time. Dada appeared to be art, in form of paintings or performances and such, but was intentionally nonsensical. Today it may seem amusing, but at the time people found it infuriating – imagine giving a speech made of nonsense words and angry folk rioting.

Dada laid the groundwork for Surrealism, something else I may discuss, but what fascinated me most about Dada beyond that was that it used the framework of existing media and filled it with nonsense. What an idea that the container of art can be abstracted from any meaningful content! Perhaps its easy to understand people angered by Dada, confronted with a play or a song or a painting that had the form of work but was filled with nothing

You can remove the art from art but still have a form we associate with art.

That idea has sat with me for some time since I had it, but I hadn’t done much with it – as my interests were in Surrealism and how the artistic framework was a vehicle for unconscious, almost spiritual expression. But lately I thought about Dada using a framework of art filled with nonsense and internet content and what we learn from it.

It’s hard to find anyone who won’t complain about nonsense, slop, propaganda, and low-effort content on the internet. I certainly do as any of my regular readers knows, and to my gratitude, tolerate. I’m sure you’re also used to encountering and complaining of such things.

We wonder how people can take such things seriously. How they can fall for propaganda or low-info listicles and the like? Well that’s because, beyond our vulnerabilities or ability to enjoy trash, it comes in the form of information. Internet dross has the shape of information or art or spiritual insight even if it’s filled with B.S.

No different than how Dada took the form of art and blew people’s minds by delivering rampant nonsense.

Think about how easily technology lets us have the form of something useful. It’s easy to spin up a website or a book or a video, pour anything into premade patterns, even go to technology or freelancers to pour something into whatever information container we chose. We have the tools to make nothing look like something, to make form so good we easily mistake it for solid value.

And, sometimes, it rubs us the wrong way. We know it looks like information but it’s not. Maybe it’s easier to understand people enraged over Dada, tricked by form. We’re in the Uncanny Valley of Communication just like they were.

This is why the history of art and media matter and why I treasure these rabbit holes I go down. The past has many lessons for the present. Come to think of it, maybe if we pay more attention to the past we’ll have a better present . . . one with not just form but form delivering real meaning and valuable information.

Steven Savage