Why do we tweet? (ie use Twitter)

Well according to this NYT article, Virginia Heffman reports that Bruce Sterling suggests it's because we're poor. "Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections. Anyone with a strong soul or a fat wallet turns his ringer off for good and cultivates private gardens that keep the hectic Web far away. The man of leisure, Sterling suggested, savors solitude, or intimacy with friends, presumably surrounded by books and film and paintings and wine and vinyl — original things that stay where they are and cannot be copied and corrupted and shot around the globe with a few clicks of a keyboard."
Heffman questions the constant tallying of friends on Facebook. Are we substituting our official lack of wealth with a wealth of friends, who as Heffman points out are more liabilities than assets? What are 586 friends? How many of those can be counted on in an emergency situation?
-to be continued-

Ghost-in-the-shell-induced musing

The Ghost in the Shell films based on the manga created by Masamune Shirow, is a futurist police thriller centered around the exploits of covert security forces unit Section 9. The events which occur circa 2030 revolve around "Major" Kusanagi, Batou and a few other members of the division, who are part cyborg, to varying degrees. The Major in particular has only parts of her brain, and a segment of her spinal chord which are still organic (real). The films and subsequent series have all dealt with the dilemnas of the characters as they try to figure out their exact nature. What is real? What makes a person real? Where does the essence of a human being reside? What happens to a mind without a body? Can the identity/individuality be maintained whole if only alive in the network? If we consider Marshall McLuhan's view of media as an extension of man, this movie (and the subsequent sequels and series) offer an interesting illustration of the the current modern world, where our increased connectivity renders us practically cyborg. The networking/information distribution is the key component of Ghost in the Shell, along with the issues of identity/individuality. The ultimate power is wielded by the Hacker, not the military. Who is now in control? The army on the ground? Or the people who control satellites and can scan/document/distribute information from a secure location, not necessarily anywhere the ground in question? The concept of "stealing" is also redefined. When previously, a theft took an object from one place to another, a hole was created, something would be missing. It would be easier to spot, and easier to find. The stealing of data/information/identity in modern times is interestingly never "stealing". The information does not disappear. Instead of an absence of information, there is a multiplication of information. (Brings back Benjamin's copy vs original to mind, but we're also beyond mechanical reproduction). The nature of that theft makes it harder to spot. How do you find stolen information, when everything remains in place? The focus then shifts from content to control, and access again.

This is the world according to a Chuck Norris movie.

That's what a NYT article called the world of 24. Watching Jack Bauer perform his always-world-saving stunts for the past 7 seasons has been fun. Who doesn't love a tough guy? Action? And happy endings? The series which debuted after 9/11, capitalized on the buzzword of the time: Terrorism. Indeed, Jack Bauer was head of a government agency called CTU, short for Counter Terrorism Unit. Oddly CTU headquarters were located in Los Angeles, which I suppose was one way of separating it from the more rigid CIA and FBI agencies. As the same NYT article whose words I take my title from posits, this last season (the seventh) which starts off in Africa, then moves to DC - a more logical target of terrorist activity. Throughout its 6 seasons, Jack Bauer, CTU, California and America have fought off threats which emanated from various terrorist countries. Some of the appeal of 24 may have to do with its "progressive" thinking: It has so far had 2 African American presidents (brothers David and Wayne Palmer, with as much charm as the Kennedys) and now in its last season has broken new grounds with a woman occupying the White House. Now that Obama is president, the Palmers are even more believable in retrospect. Will Hillary be next? (Heroes another popular television series now in its 3rd season has followed suite with a black president.) I remember fearing for Obama's life, wondering if he had not watched 24...

The show's premise is that it works in real time. 24 are the number of hours in a day, and each episode of the season represents one hour of that day. Apparently, all plots can be subverted in less than 24 hours, criminals can be found out within 2 hours, even if apprehending them (or killing them) takes longer. So real time. Real time placing it in a more "real" experience.
But of course some things are not real: Integrated software and networks that can access any and all cameras world-wide, connections to satellite links and incredible upload/download speeds, and the fact that there is always a mole at CTU (one would think a government agency would have a better screening process). And Jack says: secure the perimeter, he's gone dark, trust me on this one (not unlike the Bush administration, I might add. WMD in Iraq, links to Al Qaeda - trust us on this one!).

Out of the 6 seasons, 3 included threats from Arab or Muslim countries, often abetted by terrorists from other parts of the world. [The other seasons included terrorists from Yugoslavia, Mexico, Russia, China and [evil] American corporations.] This has not stopped the show from being successful in the Middle East. A few friends, my brother and I are total Jack Bauer fans. We watch each episode en groupe, cheering and jumping around and hissing and booing as if we were watching a soccer game. It's fun. I even bought a fliptop phone (after my older one died) because everybody on 24 had a fliptop phone. My phone ring is the CTU phone ring. Pathetic, yes. But not quite. Part of the fun in watching 24 is not (just) the action, as much as it is the active commentary on our part about what is shown on screen.

For one thing, a lot of the Arabs characters portrayed on the show are not played by Arabs. This makes for hilarious moments of 'almost Arabic' dialogue. Most of the non-Arab actors don't know what they are saying although they know the gist of it. They don't know which word holds more meaning. Often they stress the wrong word or wrong syllable. A favorite scene: Kal Penn in season 5, yelling at his American friend about the correct way to pronounce his name: My name is not Aaah-mad, he shouts, my name is Akhmed! Except he doesn't pronounce it right either. It's not Akhmed, it's Ahmed. And we laugh.

However, the producers and casting directors have tried to get more Arab actors performing smaller parts: There have been more scenes with real Arabs, except again here the problem is in the accents. Brothers and cousins have accents that are as different as day from night. Of course, we Arabs can discern them. It's not quite as funny as the language schizophrenia of Syriana, Rendition and Body of Lies (and Leonardo diCaprio does a better job than Clooney in Arabic, Clooney was actually unintelligible), where citizens don't seem to speak the language of the country. [sidenote: imagine a film that starts out with a visual of the map of the USA, it then zooms in on Texas, and everybody there speaks Australian English, Cockney, Jamaican English, haughty aristocratic English, anything but the typical southern drawl... but I digress]

So brothers in jail, or citizens of the same country speak differently.
Furthermore, plots are hatched by Ali and Omar together. What are the odds of that? Ali conspiring with Omar? Ali is a typical Shiite name, while Omar is a typical Sunni name. Rarely are they observed in families of the opposite sect. It's unlikely that Ali and Omar be on the same side politically. Even when they are fighting "a same enemy", they would not enlist someone from the other sect. So Ali and Omar, says the agent, are hiding in a basement somewhere. And we laugh. In one season, the White House kept identifying the threat as coming from "three Middle Eastern countries". The map on the screen in the White House showed the coast of Bermuda for all I could tell, it definitely did not show the Mediterranean or the Gulf. Back then, my brother and I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out which 3 countries the scriptwriters were hinting to. Did they include Turkey? Israel? Why had they not said "Arab" countries? Another season alluded more directly to Saudi Arabia. It was an oil-rich monarchy, with strong terrorist activity (remember the majority of 9/11 attackers were Saudi). There was a prince who wanted peace, who had turned away from terrorism, and he had clout enough to convince terrorists to abort their mission. Of course, he was the educated-in-Britain soft spoken Western friendly prince. He was killed. We laugh. We joke that we would like to have Jack Bauer handle the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafik el Hariri. It would have been over within 24 hours instead of the International Tribunal Hearing, which will probably drag on for years.

Criticism of the show's depiction of Muslims began in its fourth season, in which the main antagonists were Muslims affiliated with the fictional terrorist group Turkish Crimson Jihad. In the first episode, a Muslim-American family is depicted to be among these, in which parents and their teenage son actively engage in a plot to kill Americans (although the son, and in later episodes, the mother, are portrayed sympathetically). Criticism began early on in the season, including a complaint made by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that depicting Muslims as terrorists could "contribute to an atmosphere that it’s OK to harm and discriminate against Muslims. This could actually hurt real-life people." Following this complaint, representatives from the Council and FOX met to discuss the matter, and an episode of the season began with a public service announcement by Kiefer Sutherland addressing these concerns, in which he stated that "the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching ‘24,' please bear that in mind.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_reaction_to_24_(TV_series)

Is that criticism the reason why scriptwriters of 24 decided to base the plot of 24 Redemption (the 24 two hour trailer to season 7) in the fictitious African country of Sangala? Why would they feel the need to create a new country? Whose pressure stopped them from saying Congo, or Uganda, or (closer to the narrative) Rwanda? Why if we work in real-time, do we not have real-world countries? After we've managed to suspend disbelief for so long, we are now asked to move away from the (un)real world to a completely fictitious one. What a disappointment.

Of course my take on it is if Senegal+Angola=Sangala, then General Juma is modeled after Zuma (or at least his name is), who might soon become South Africa's new president, after corruption charges involving weapons deals were dropped. I just wonder how many people get their information from television these days. If Palin thinks Africa is a country, then why should not Sangala be a real one too? And apparently, 24 is vice-president Biden's favorite show, which is slightly worrisome, but might explain why he went and said the following during the vice-presidential debate with Palin: When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." When was Hezbollah ever kicked out of Lebanon? Probably in some Chuck Norris movie.