Tag: Computers

No Comments from the Peanut Gallery

Howdy Doody peanut gallery circa 1940 1950s
Buffalo Bob Smith of “The Howdy Doody Show” with the Peanut Gallery

Some may remember the 1950s television program “The Howdy Doody Show” and its studio audience of children who were known as the Peanut Gallery. The show started on radio in 1943 and adopted the designation of peanut gallery for its audience from vaudeville, where it referred to the rowdy denizens of the cheap seats, who often heckled the performers and pelted them with peanuts. In adopting the peanut gallery term “The Howdy Doody Show” cleaned up the associations from earlier uses of the term to the point it became synonymous with that program, at least for that generation. As a side note, the comic strip Peanuts borrowed its name from the Howdy Doody version of the peanut gallery.

The vaudevillian archetype of a peanut gallery has never gone away, of course, as there have always been venues for the unruly mob to express themselves in anonymity. In the past, the opportunities were limited. Now, anyone with a computer and a desire to vent can post a comment online. Never before has the peanut gallery found a forum with as wide a reach as the internet. They are no longer the cute, freckled tykes of “Howdy Doody,” however; now they are known as Trolls.

Many online publications, which at first welcomed comments from their readers for various reasons, have been rethinking their policy after discovering a comments section that is not moderated eventually descends into a cesspool of vitriol largely stirred up by trolls, while moderating a comments section costs time and money. Some publications have decided to do away with their comments section altogether (the policy this website follows, by the way). There are websites which have found some success encouraging commenters to moderate each other with up or down votes on comments.

Anonymity online does a great service promoting and protecting free speech, even when the words someone chooses to use when exercising their right to free speech aren’t agreeable or important. While anonymity encourages the outspokenness of someone who has a worthwhile contribution to make, it does the same for someone who doesn’t. Who is to decide what is worthwhile? You are, for yourself, as others are, for themselves. Trolling can’t be legislated away or even moderated away entirely. It can be shut out, though unfortunately at the price of shutting out worthwhile comments as well. In the end, the best practice for many internet users is probably still the one expressed by some sage in the early days of the internet who advised “Don’t feed the trolls.” They’ve got their own peanuts, after all.

– Techly


Don't feed the trolls, Fløyen
By VS6507 (Own work) A sign saying “don’t feed the trolls” on a mountain Fløyen in Bergen, Norway

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Don’t Call Me “Stupid”

James Madison by Gilbert Stuart 1804
James Madison, portrait by Gilbert Stuart.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
― James Madison

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes in his latest book, Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White, that low information voters would do better to stay away from the polls on election day rather than cast their vote based on an inadequate understanding of the issues. This is sensible advice and in an ideal world those low information voters would heed it in order to benefit everyone. No one buys a car, after all, without at least kicking the tires and pretending some knowledge of what’s under the hood. But aside from safety considerations on the public roads, buying a car is largely a personal choice, affecting solely the owner. The effect of a person’s vote, however, amounts to a civic responsibility because it is a decision which affects everyone. This much seems obvious, yet it is amazing how much more effort some people will invest in researching a car or stereo system than in how politicians stand on the issues. In that case, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar makes a valid point.

Are low information voters stupid? Not necessarily. Some feel obligated to vote yet lack the time or desire to get up to speed on the important issues at stake. Others are deluded by questionable sources for their information, such as major media outlets which give a one-sided slant to the news and are often obsessed with sensationalism and trivia. Still others are blinded by party loyalty to information about defects in their preferred candidate. If anything, all of these attributes describe laziness rather than stupidity.

In this age of Standards of Learning testing in the public schools, it appears social studies education generally, and civics education particularly, are getting squeezed in favor of the three Rs, which are more readily documented to show results. Elementary and secondary school education in civics instills in future voters not only knowledge of the structure of government and how it works, but more importantly why that matters to them in their daily lives. That is the vital aspect of civics education which needs to remain with people throughout their lives, and which they are apt to lose sight of in the noise and confusion of earning a living and raising a family.

This is also the Age of Information, when sources of information are more widely available to the common person than they have ever been. Some sources are worthwhile and some are not. Some people view sorting through it all an engaging experience and some view it as drudgery. But it is there for people if they choose to look for it and choose to exercise a capacity for critical thinking which they ideally would have learned from their civics education. Today, for most people in a relatively affluent society, there are fewer excuses than ever for ignorance when easily the equivalent of the ancient Library at Alexandria is available to them in their computers, in their tablets and smartphones, or in the computers and book stacks at an institution usually somewhat less grand than the Alexandria Library – their local public library.

― Ed.


Ancientlibraryalex

The Great Library of Alexandria, drawing by O. Von Corven.

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Getting to Know You

 

Online Privacy and the Founding Fathers
“Online Privacy and the Founding Fathers” by Matt Shirk


The comedian George Carlin used to riff on oxymorons, phrases he found absurd such as “military intelligence” and “business ethics.” To that list we could add “online privacy.” The internet has always been a public place which gives people the illusion of private communication because of how they access it, from a handheld device or from their own computer. Recently in a ruling on a class-action lawsuit concerning Yahoo’s practice of scanning emails, a federal judge affirmed that online privacy is not for everybody.


In the lawsuit brought against Yahoo by email users who did not use Yahoo’s email service but corresponded with people who did, Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for Northern California signed off on a settlement which allows Yahoo to continue scanning the emails of non-Yahoo users without their consent. The major change from Yahoo’s previous practice is that it must do so only while the emails are on its servers, rather than while they are in transit.

That satisfies the letter of the law while doing nothing to redress the grievances of non-Yahoo email users. The four plaintiffs in the lawsuit received $5,000 each. The Judge awarded the plaintiffs’ lawyers 4 million dollars in total. A  45 page PDF of the settlement is here, and the summary starts at page 40. Google is being sued in a similar class-action which is pending before Judge Koh.

Since most people don’t fully read the terms and conditions before signing up for online services, it’s doubtful whether many users of Yahoo, Google, or similar free webmail services are aware those companies are scanning their emails for the purpose of targeted advertising, as well as scanning the other half of the exchange coming from their correspondent. Other users who are aware of the scanning are resigned to accepting it as the price of free webmail. And the “price of free” is another oxymoron Mr. Carlin himself might have gleefully noted.

– Techly 

 

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