Technology+Culture+People // テクノロジーとか、人とか、文化とか。

»English Article (via: TechCrunch) || »日本語の記事 (via: TechCrunch)

A list of characteristics of the internet drafted by top German bloggers, created under the intent to depict how and why the internet is different from traditional media.

The compiled list of 17 “doctrines” seem very true and sound.

…So what’s next? To be very honest, I think there are many people in the newspaper industry who still have not given into the idea that their business model is obsolete. They “know” that and I know that they cannot deny that. This is simply coming from the numbers. So when “admitting” is done, then they can seek for help in searching and creating a new business model.

Nothing will happen until one admits their problem, because the motivation for improvement (change) will otherwise never come from within.

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マニフェストは17の項目から成り、それぞれ、“インターネットはここが違う”、“インターネットはジャーナリズムを良くする”などと題されている。“伝 統はビジネスモデルではない”、“Webは人間の社会活動のインフラとして20世紀のマスメディアより優れている”といった旧体制に対する辛辣な攻撃もあ る。このマニフェストは大きな反響を呼び、混雑のためにサイトが一時的にダウンした。

古い体制への批判はとても大事な事だと思う。特にその古い体制が、今の体制にしがみついている故に崩れようとしているのなら、それは「批判」ではなく「助言」と言う方が正しいだろう。良い方向への変化は、まず問題を真摯に受け止める事から始まると思う。

Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

This is an article by the Huffington Post, and all online news source. There is also a Twitter network of journalists who are in Iran reporting the situation. This is a truly fascinating attempt, and start of a new era of journalism. Information arrives in almost realtime, the facts are reinforcing of the urgent situation, and such information can no longer be suppressed by violence, canceling press pass of major news sources, and immobilizing journalists in hotels. What’s even more fascinating is that the Iranian security forces are trying to crackdown on the internet access of active journalists, but new proxy servers are being continuously provided from elsewhere; the boarder-less and cloud-sourcing nature of the Internet is overwhelming the attempt to censor information.

I guess the next question is, how can we let more people be aware of this? I’ve seen numerous blog articles and notes written on facebook and other SNS, but thats probably not enough; at least to what I’m aware of, my parents, sister, friends do not know about this live blogging deal. Should CNN and BBC start live blogging and tweeting too? And the question following that is “how much control journalists truly have in changing the situation?” At some point action these people must stop protesting, authorities must stop relying on violence, and Iran has to change. And they all have to happen very soon.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html

This is a very interesting article written by Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Sweden’s Jonkoping University. If I read correctly, he basically stated the following points:

1. There are too much information that can be gained with little if not no burden.
2. Most “news” all end up looking all the same.
3. Since hardly any of them provide purely unique information, none of them have economical value, therefore all journalists deserve less pay.

To resolve this, Picard suggested that news sources specialize in certain fields such as agriculture, oil and energy, and aircraft technology. This will ensure that all news sources and journalists provide unique information, and therefore produce distinct economical value.

Although I agree with Picards points,  there is also an inherent problem to his argument: given that we are in a free-market capitalistic society, producers of goods can be relatively flexible in what they produce, and this decision is based most usually on how much those goods can be sold for. If one field of specialization, say agricultural news, ends up producing more profit than, say oil and energy news, it is likely that there will be increased competition in the profitable market. Because there is no fixed cost in producing “information,” when competitors move from market to market depending on its saturation and profitability, I think eventually all news sources will provide the same information in the same quantity. In fact, isn’t this why our newspapers today have 800 different “sections?”

So the problem is that, after all, information is all the same. So how could we make individual news source provide unique economical value, at least more so than it does today? The key to this answer is “contextualization.” The role of Journalism is to add context and relevance in the occurrences that are happening in this world. In the modern time where information is abundant and free, journalists and news source must shift their focus in not just supplying information, but to organize, display, and connect information, and therefore by contextualizing information. To do this, journalists and news sources are required to think and analyze critically about the situation that surrounds the problem (news) and not just the news itself. These unique opinions and point of views will be the economical value of journalism in the 21st century, I believe.

Information are just the individual pieces of the puzzle. Journalists, by adding context, must put together the puzzle to provide a larger, clearer, picture of what the world is like. I think.

http://www.ireport.com/

I just found out that CNN has a user-generated news website where users can upload their own news stories on the web. Each registered user can have their own account to share their “news” either by text or video. Anyone, by theory, can become a journalist.

Unfortunately, as of now, I feel like this website is no different than YouTube in the sense of the structure of service and content quality. The structure of service is in the form of a typical user generated media where the service provider, CNN for this case, only provides a space for the contents to be uploaded. Although “iReport.com” does provide a bigger user motivation compared to YouTube, by giving air time to note-worthy videos, majority of the uploaded videos are neither journalistic or interesting. By definition I guess these videos do provide report of current events, and therefore could qualify as “news,” but it is truly hard to distinguish the videos on Youtube and that of iReport, at least as of now.

What is missing? Whatever iReport is, in order for it to stand out it must provide a service that only it can provide. I’m sure civilian journalists are able to give great insight on, say riots, domestic conflicts, the reality of child abuse, name any event that a typical mass media cannot fully disclose. iReport must provide a framework and infrastructure that encourages its users to post unique videos and stories that mass media cannot cover.

I do feel great potential in user generated media, especially because its content structure is not directly affected by its service provider. TV stations can directly affect the content of its shows by funding decisions, etc, whereas it is extremely difficult for YouTube to control their content prior to the upload (the best they could do is to delete videos that have already been posted). Simply speaking, there will be more “unfiltered” channels for people to make a statement, and to read stories that are told in others’ perspectives. Yes, there are chances that there would be more biased or incorrect information, but such environment will at least require us to be smart about the information that we take in. We as consumers and viewers will be forced to change our blindly receptive attitude towards information, and take a responsible role in the process of journalism.

On a final note, my only concern for civilian journalism is the dilemma of user motivation and ethical decision making. Let’s say, for example, that there are two people on the street, one pointing a gun at the other and threatening to kill that person. A responsible civilian journalist has the following choices: to take a picture and post it on iReport with a short comment on the incident using their cell phone, or go ahead and call the cops. I feel like if more people label themselves as journalists, more people will make the decision in the former. As a matter of fact, an extremely similar case happened in the Akihabara Massacre, where some civilians became more caught up in taking photos of the scene than helping those who were injured.

Come to think of it, I guess the phrase “civilian journalist” is an awkward phrase in itself. I believe that, before anything else, we are all humans and therefore must base our decisions on humanistic and communal values. That’s just my thought though. If you disagree or want to know what I really mean by the world’s vaguest phrase “humanistic and communal values,” go ahead and shoot me an email or something.

死刑囚獄中ブログ || 産經新聞によるまとめ記事

こんなブログが今一部で話題を集めています。

興味深いブログが出てきたな、と率直に感じました。

「ブログ」というメディアは新聞やテレビと比較して一般消費者に「近い位置」にあるから、なおさら物議をかもしているのだと思う。僕は、この「物議」が大事だと思う。ある程度編集者の意図で抜粋されたりフォントが強調されているからバイアスは当然かかっているけど、今まで多く語られなかった死刑囚の実態と死刑制度そのものに関して、記事とコメント欄を通じて多くの人が意見を交換できるこのブログは、ジャーナリズムの観点からするととても大きな価値を秘めていると思う。

死刑賛成・反対に限らず、中には憎悪と偏見に満ちた意見もあるけど、的を得ている意見もある。確固たる「正解」が存在する問題は皆無に等しい。だからこそ、僕たちは様々な意見に触れ、自分一人の価値観が正しいと決めつけず、常に柔軟に「考え続ける」事が大事だと思う。

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さて、蛇足だけど、死刑そのものに関して僕の意見を少しだけ。。

僕の中には大きく二つの前提がある。一つは、死刑囚も一人間だと思っている事（これについては後述します）。もう一つは、少なくとも日本の刑罰の目的上死刑が必要不可欠ではない事である。前近代的社会での刑罰の目的は、大きく分けて次の３つがある：（１）犯罪の未然なる抑止と再犯の防止、（２）社会的規範の維持と表出、（３）被害者の感情的修復。これを見て分かるように、大前提として「死刑は必要不可欠な刑ではない」ことが明らかになる。（１）に関しては統計学的にそもそも証明できず、（２）は終身刑制度を本当の意味での「終身刑」にすれば解決するし、（３）は誰かが殺された時点で被害者家族やその周辺の人達の気持ちが元通りに戻る事は決して無く、加害者を死刑にして多少ましになる事さえ疑わしい。

以上を踏まえると、僕は死刑制度に完璧に賛成ができない。

ただ、反対かと言われれば、それも分からない。なぜなら僕は当事者ではないからだ。なぜ当事者でないとその判断ができないと考えるかというと、事件と関係ない第三者が何を言った所で、それは感情的な判断でしかなく、裁判員制度の導入で一般市民でも一人の人間の生死を左右できる今、僕らは感情だけでそれを判断するべきではないと考えるからだ。

例えば

凶悪殺人事件のニュースを見る　⇒　『酷い事件だ。犯人が憎い。死刑だ』

という思考の流れは、「あいつは嫌いだから殺していい」と本質的には同じで、それはとても自然だが、同時に野蛮な事だと思う。僕の最初の前提に帰結する事だが、「あいつは人殺しだから命を断てれてもよいはずだ」は単なる自己満足的差別意識であって、犯罪者が生物学的に人間である限りその人権は誰にも否定できないものであると僕は考える。

現代社会で、「死に値する行い」とはなんなのであろうか。

The Prisoner Blog (Japanese) ||  News Article (English)

This blog is currently causing a small issue in Japan.

» B A C K G O U N D

The entries are written by a Testuo Odajima who murdered four people in 2002. After several trials he was condemned death penalty three years ago, the same year that this blog started. The blog entries are excepts from Odajima’s diary, which are sent to, uploaded, and managed by Mitsunori Saito, a non-fiction writer. Saito, after receiving the diaries from Odajima, choose portions that seem relevant and uploads them online. Saito approached Odajima after his arrest to ask him to send diaries and letters so that those could later be compiled and published.  Odajima, in exchange for the letters, receives 20,000 Yen (about $200) each month as a “prepayment of publish royalty fee.” Odajima sends majority of the money to his wife and sons in the Philippines. Just to add on to this, there is no law in Japan that regulates the actions of the receiver of letters written by a prisoner.

» I S S U E

The core of the controversy resides in the fact that a prisoner who was condemned capital punishment is given a “voice” through a blog. In Japan majority of the public still supports death penalty, mainly because we Japanese have a victim-oriented perspective in viewing criminal cases (read this PDF document if you are interested in the cultural background). Seeing the comments on this blog, there are many people who consider murders as those who do not deserve the basic human rights;  who deserve to have their lives taken for the lives that they took (I do not completely agree with this).

Another issue is tied with the implementation of the “System of Lay Judges,” similar to the Jury System in the US, starting this year. Some specialists concern that these blogs could affect the Lay Judges’ preconception of murders in general, and therefore skewing their judgment.

» M Y  R E A C T I O N

I was very surprised, and perhaps glad to see this blog gathering the public attention mainly because of three reasons. First, it simply stirs discussion. Majority of the blog entries are consisted of diaries of Odajima, who seems to live and think “normally” just like any one of us. I think this has especially impacted the Japanese public. Some people reacted with anger, scolding Odajima for living normally “as though nothing had happened,” and others mentioned that criminals too are human beings who deserve to fulfill the remainder of their lives with serenity. Second, Odajima serves as a good example of a criminal that does not fit the stereotype of a mass murderer. Many of his entries are in fact written in a very solemn tone, and once in a while he metions his concerns about  his wife and two sons. Here again, the readers see that Odajima may not be so different from them. Through blogs, a media that is very public and closely distanced to the users, Odajima provides an opportunity for many of us to become freed from stereotypes and preconceptions of murderers who are, in many cases, underrepresented. We can see and discuss the issue in a new perspective. Third, through revealing the daily lives of Odajima, this blog gives context to what was only told through news paper and TV news. These media usually deliver the story from the consequence, which inevitably does not tell the whole story and therefore forces the viewers to form a skewed impression of the perpetrator. This blog seems like a wake-up call for those who justified capital punishment simply because of their preconceptions telling them that “all murders are evil.”

I am by no means justifying or defending the wrongdoings of a criminal or a murderer. To be honest, raised in a culture that has supported capital punishment for a long time, I am still mixed about my opinions regarding capital punishment. However, I still cannot deny the fact that prisoners who were condemned capital punishment too are humans, and that there is nothing gained by taking their lives.

To reach a better quality of decision making, we all have to free ourselves from stereotypes and preconceptions, rather than seeking avoidance to it.