Innovation that’s not Evil: getting water to New Orleans. by risa
Is the corporation inherently, unavoidably psychotic? Does it’s desire for profit always lead the corporation quickly beyond moral, environmental restraints to the quickest buck? And if so, how to fight this tendancy?
Centralized regulation might be one response, but is, generally speaking, an equally dangerous formation of power- one just as prone to bias and eye-on-the-dough distortion. Current anger about the response to the tragedy in New Orleans have raised this criticism against the American federal government. With it’s eyes focused on Iraq, and on their Vacation time, the federal component of rescue efforts have been slow and disorganized. Maybe this centralized government has an inherent, blinkered flaw? Certainly in other venues, for example the build up to the war in Iraq, they’ve demonstrated a desire for their own ideas and adgendas to be right. (Check out this essay from MIT’s International Security Journal on Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas under the Bush Administration)
But what about more subtle forms of distributed regulation? Can information that is more widely disseminated and discussed overcome the failures of the marketplace of ideas to find the truth, no matter how complex and ugly, and the pragmatic good idea, no matter how unsuspected? “Voting with your dollars” is a remarkably effective means of affecting change, but it’s vulnerable to rhetortic, and by the time the truth comes out it can be too late.
“The only protection we have against communication fraud is the propaganda of the deed” quotes JD Peters at the end of his History of the Idea of Communication. As recent devlopments suggest, the Internet and the accumulated force of exposure to other people’s experiences of “the deed” can be effective at drawing innovation away from half-assed formulations hoping to profit and toward pragmatic good ideas.
One good example:
“Water quality generally isn’t something most people in western nations think about until it’s too late. The topic, however, has begun to percolate inside the tech community as part of the push into using clean technologies such as solar power and alternative energy.
A plastic tube and a fluorescent light could turn out to be two crucial components for getting drinking water back in New Orleans.
The UV-Tube, a low-cost water disinfecting system, is the sort of technology that disaster relief agencies may begin to turn to in the arduous cleanup in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Other ideas include cheaper systems to test water and, further in the future, new styles of chemical purifiers.
The UV-Tube–which kills germs in water with an ultraviolet light bulb–costs about $70 to put together, can be assembled from components that are fairly easy to find, and can be run off of a solar panel, key in an area where the electrical grid has crumbled.”
So there’s a good idea. But: ” So far, there are no plans to take the tube to the Gulf Coast”
sigh. More intense accessibilty to ideas and needs and desires, as in the open source devlopment process, can bring about positive innovation, but there’s some next level of commitment on the part of the organizations and bureaucracies involved that’s needed to get those good ideas out to where they need to go.
http://news.com.com/Technology+may+quench+thirst+for+drinking+water/2100-1008_3-5847384.html
September 4th, 2005 at 12:15 am
more on new orleans
i recently gave a paper at a conference regarding the disaster and the circulation of its photographic writing after the fact.
people in south asia had social, health, political, and environmental problems well before the limit events of the tsumnami; it was simply the ensuing process that tipped the accumulation of things to ensure south asia was adequately prioritized to accomodate disaster and the fall-out.
as both the social and political divisions of the city become apparent, and the concurrent approach to the governance of certain populations becomes, well, clearer, new orleans relays the same sorts of marks and signs. i’ve heard that this scenario–a hurricane in new orleans–was ranked third interms of national security issues/threats. its also hard to miss the amry corp of engineers’ call last year for massive funding to make adequate the water-management system in the city.
anyway, i submit a portion of a shotgun email sent today from me to my wife regarding some of cnn’s theatrical fare. yes, like shooting fish in a fish bowl but it is amazing to see the mechanisms as they spring into action…
“i’ve been watching ccn coverage of new orleans with the guys (at a youth shelter i work at)…it’s riotous to see the “correspondents” dance around remarks by the citizenry in relation to the lack of response, the failure, abjection, total
chaos–basically, members of the public are belittling and indicting the authorities and the cnner’s are visibly struggling with the notion of agreeing or affirming or acknowledging anything more than the spectacle of the disaster and the “human” story. the reporters’ facial ticks are astounding…the citizens are connecting the dots and ‘ol cnn dare not openly demonstrate dissent or any anti-government stance. they can’t even problematize things. they greet remarks with “ooooooh….uuuuuhhh….yes, right.”
yet, lest we forget the ever-handy rhetorical recourse to the terror frame as a way of shifting discourse and closing down dissent. one sequence had a comentator interviewing, listening to one of the down-trodden on the ground, nervously listening to candid and fearless speech, wishing she could probably edit rather than proceed with the live feed. anyway, the person interviewed was gesturing to the crowd of people at this depot-place, saying how brutal the situation is and whatnot. what does the interviewer come up with? “yes, and what if there was a terrorist attack right now? people are very vulnerable…,” as if their vulnerability prior to a terro attack was not an issue? as if there social vulnerability before the hurricane even showed up on the radar? then, she cuts away with a question to some FEMA dude who responds with a heads-up, brow-furrowed “yes”, and who then expounded on the necessity of security and such…fucking ridiculous, the leap from suffering and compassion to activating the terror potential, as if this disaster wasn’t terrible enough, as if she was gaining points by putting the terror discourse back into circulation after losing control of the interview moments before…hurts my head. edward soja, along with baudrillard, was correct: these dominant conservative media pundits are the best of the radical postmodernists: they can change this into this and make things mean something else entirely. presto magic.”
neil
September 4th, 2005 at 9:45 am
Another interesting commentator on the mediation of the disasterwas, of course, Kanye West:
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=246286&rel_no=1
“”I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food.” (This is a reference to a pair of AP photos with opposite captions for a black victim treading through water with a bag and a white victim doing the same.)
After crediting the Red Cross with doing all they could to help the victims, West added that the national guard are “given permission to go down and shoot us.”"
He’s riled up and angry but bang on with his facts here, and he’s the only one who broke through the safely scripted fare dolled out for that telethon performance.
It reminds me of the article in this month’s Harper’s by Jonathan Kozol “Still Separate, Still Unequal America’s educational apartheid”.
Rascism is embedded in all kinds of city structures and bureaucractic institutions, and nestles behind all kinds of blank, polite responses in the media and elsewhere.
I stumbled upon this classic piece of twisty logic (candian-style) yesterday. It’s a brief by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that begins with: “A moderate improvement in affordable housing conditions in Canada between 1996 and 2001 was announced (CMHC) today.” which is great (and the improvement was hgihest in quebec, so yay) but then it ends with the frustrating and tragic acknowledgement that results have been skewed by excluding the native population (wtf!!!)
“The incidence of core housing need amongst certain groups such as Aboriginal people living off-reserve (25 per cent) and recent immigrants (33 per cent) remains considerably higher than for the general population. Housing needs tend to be most acute in Canada’s largest cities and in the far north.
The core housing need data excludes Indian Reserves where the need for housing to reduce overcrowding, replace substandard housing and meet the needs of a growing population is well-documented. Households are considered to be in core housing need if they live in housing which is crowded or needs major repairs or costs 30 per cent or more of before-tax household income, and if they are unable to find acceptable housing locally for less than 30 per cent of income.”
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/News/nere/2004/2004-05-21-0800.cfm
September 4th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Also- oh god…multiple confirmations of this now…
“There was a striking discrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president’s visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of ‘news people’ had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time. The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.”
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/22494/85287
September 5th, 2005 at 2:47 am
some more of the same fare…
mainstream commercial media actually finding their backbone?
http://rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=b91dbb3cf84ea6be8e399e20a2683063&rXn=1&
September 5th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Even more:
“Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.
National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.
They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.
Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.
It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.
But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4214516.stm
September 6th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Communication Fraud from the Top:
“the Washington Post got burned today by a “senior Bush official” who told them that Gov. Blanco of Louisiana had never declared a state of emergency in the site — a claim the Post printed as fact. Yet the claim was demonstrably false and by late afternoon the Post had been compelled to print a correction.
This week’s Newsweek contains the same false claim — and though their recital of the anecdote is unsourced, common sense suggests that someone or some operation fed them both the same line, which neither organization checked out before running.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/14510/32902
Monday’s Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.”