NetSherpa Journal

I’ve never written a state representative or even actually talked to one in person for that matter. In second grade I mailed Bill Clinton a picture I drew of him in school, and he mailed me back an actual picture of him and Hilldog (long before she would be granted such a name) and a thank you letter. At the time I thought it was pretty cool, but at this point I realize it was probably just a secretarial job. The shroud of the television is one that cannot be looked at as transparent. I’ve been taught over time to understand that the point of the news is not to bring the news to you, but to bring you to their advertisers; and that misery, destruction and greed sell. I don’t want to deny it or pretend it’s not the case, but it’s also undeniable that between the option of drowning one’s self in-between some iPod headphones or to drown one’s self in the river of deception and mis-information, it’s understandable why most people choose the route they do. This is why we elect people into office in the first place, because we the lowly, apathetic and shallow-minded citizens, don’t have the time or the resources to hold those at the top of the chain of command responsible for their actions.

Free Culture,
Lawrence Lessig

I highly doubt I’ll be voting for McCain, but I did like him in 2000 and I respect what his top economic policy adviser, Phil Gramm, said recently, that our leaders needed to “Stop whining and start leading.” This comment was in response to the media’s uproar over his statement that we as a country are in a “mental recession”. My generation, the echo boomers, is known for hating reading, we’ve almost all been branded as felons since the MPAA/RIAA passed (with a little help from congress) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Discussing the DMCA, Lawrence Lessig in his book “Free Culture,” describes how through this enforcement, code, in effect, becomes an extension of the law; as subverting whatever code the distributors choose to use — regardless or what format the end user requires — is illegal. Unlike television and radio, when data is transmitted over the internet, a copy of the data is made to be transmitted that ends up with the audience. This, being a rapidly increasing technology, threatens and dwarfs prior mediums in terms of impression potential (how many people see it) and bandwidth (potential direct quality). This in the past has always caused the government to step in for the people and say listen, this is new and we need to approach it in a new way, rather than bowing to the dinosaurs of the old, because it causes a stranglehold on the market of culture to the many creative artists who have the tools at hand to create and display on the internet.

Phil Gramm, Credit to UPI.com

If you tell someone they’re living incorrectly for long enough they’ll stop listening to you. This is where we are as a generation. We’ve stopped listening, we download whatever media we want and we don’t look into current events or politics. A discussion like that is either going to spark an argument or the news will likely become clarified as a mistake or lie. Most importantly, we feel a major lack of control over government, as our leaders haven’t done anything except utilize technology to peer into the lives of every citizen. This is a very one way system that way system that we have come to, and it is far from the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as Abe Lincoln put it not so long ago.

Are we in a mental recession? Not in the sense that we’re not also in an economic recession, but as a separate system all it’s own. Who’s to say. There’s really no quantitative way to come to such a conclusion, but we, as a nation, are truly in a position that requires a new approach. Some legal and economic analysts suggest that an international entity may need to step in to force those in power to be accountable for their actions, and only time will tell whether or not their voices are heard.

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