Cyber-Cinema

Note: This is a movie-review like blog to be part of a popular films review website like Rotten Tomatoes. This is to be viewed as one in a series of compilation-reviews: reviews that look at more than one film in a review, all of which have something in common, like the “Best Of”, “Worst Of” series.

One of the most interesting repercussions of the whole world wide web and the internet revolution is the way it has infiltrated and been used in popular films. Hollywood is never too late in cashing in on any new trend or phenomena that hits the world. But what’s most peculiar is to see how the internet’s role in popular cinema varies so drastically from one film to another. It seems like filmmakers are still negotiating with the technology, its protocol, common usage and loop holes in order to use it almost like a protagonist, paramount to the central plot! What’s crucial to note that the films are not “about” the internet or telecommunication devices or technology.

Nora Ephron's You’ve Got Mail was really a re-make of Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 movie, The Shop Around the Corner, but with a modern twist. The “destiny” element that Ephron added to this routine “rivals-who-fall-for-each-other” was e-mail and chat romance: a view of "cyberManhattan". It effectively explored, rather early in the day (standard Hollywood anachronism), the estrangement factor of modern telecommunication: the idea that two people who exchange intimate e-mail, or who chat in a virtual chat-room, could pass each other unknowingly on the street, or worse still be arch business rivals! With all of the cyber affairs begun in chat rooms across the world, it was only a matter of time before a mainstream movie used on-line romance as a plot device. But like a blogger to an article, The Best and Worst Movies About the Internet, aptly put it, “To call You’ve Got Mail, a movie about the internet, is like saying Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid is a movie about horses!”

The Net was a 180 degrees the opposite of You’ve Got Mail. A Cyber-thriller, Cyber-crime, Cyber-terror story, if you’d like. What I found most fascinating about this film was how much it relied on assumed technical knowledge of its audience. The central idea in the film is about cyber security and encryption, the ramifications of which are not even completely explored and understood by IT professionals. The Mainframe computer is supposed to be the most robust, secure platform and hence is used to store highly confidential data. (The Green text on the screen that you see in this trailer of The Net is the Mainframe. It’s aptly called a Green Screen!)



Usually government, defence, immigration departments rely on the Mainframe. But is this something everyone who watches a film knows? It’s not like e-mailing or social networking!

I think Perfect Stranger was probably takes the cake when it comes to employing multiple strategies. It had everything: undercover investigative journalism, rivalry, child sexual abuse, virtual chat room, cyber sex.

Who I feel bad for? The archetypical lovelorn hacker and stalker tech-geek! What I find also very amusing while watching films like these is how the camera has to focus and show the actual screens of the various devices being used, the typing, and the screen-time that all this takes to advance the plot, like in this clip of Perfect Stranger at 1:20 minutes!



I’m still trying to give this new genre a name. Cyber-flicks, Compu-flicks, Web-centric films? Incidentally, I can’t seem to find an equivalent term definition or description in Wikipedia! I’m waiting to see James Bond grapple with it.

Tramming Melbourne

Note: This is a memoir-like travelogue blog to be part of a website that introduces aspects of Melbourne that will be easily (in terms of cost, time, effort) accessible to and of interest to prospective overseas students or overseas students who have recently come to Melbourne to undertake some form of university education. The site (like the IDP site) will be maintained by the organization that helps overseas students with the application process, etc. The site can be interactive and help students network with others for accommodation, etc. Hence the site can create a community of overseas students. Article contributions can be made by ‘veteran’ overseas students who may need to be given some form of incentive for contributing.

One of the most striking features of Melbourne, whether the CBD or in suburbia is the extended network of public transport that is primarily composed of trams, or buses on rails on the road, as I call them. It is a very unusual sight for someone who has not been exposed to extensive public transport, especially rail tracks on road. It took me a long time to get used to them. But, once you do, Yarra Trams inevitably becomes a part and parcel of your life, especially as a student. Here’s a nice little video made by Yarra Trams to commemorate a century of electric trams in Melbourne.

Tram Trivia
Melbourne is actually quite famous, world-over for its extensive tram system. The television program 20 to 1: Musical Milestones telecasted on Channel 9, listed “16. The Beatles – Performs All you need is love”, an event that marked a milestone with relation to satellite broadcasting history, Melbourne and its trams. Seems out of the blue. Here’s the story. Our World was the first live, international, satellite television production, which was broadcast on 25 June 1967. The two-and-half-hour event had 14 countries participated in the production that was transmitted to 31 countries with an estimated audience of 400 million people around the globe: the largest television audience ever up to that date. It is most famous for the segment from the UK which had the Beatles performing their song All You Need Is Love, at 8:54 p.m. GMT. The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched to the Australian contribution at 5:22 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST). The segment dealt with Trams leaving the Hanna Street Depot in Melbourne with Australian Broadcasting Commission's Brian King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter there!

Where to start?
City Circle: There is a special tourist tram called the City Circle tram which is free. It just goes around some important places in the CBD.

Metshop: The metshop is a good place to start if you are not an “online” sort of person. I picked up all the brochures, route maps of every single available tram in Melbourne. I always carry these around and they are so useful if you have to get from one point to another and are not sure about the routes, the stops, the availability of trams, etc. Another extremely handy item while travelling in Melbourne is the Melway. Do pick up your copy and have it with you always. It’s a detailed road-map like directory that has every street and suburb of Melbourne on it.

Yarra Tram: The one stop to get all the information you want online regarding routes, timetables, stops, fare, etc, is the Yarra Tram website. Today, they have this really cute quiz: “What’s your favourite public transport-inspired song?” The options are Locomotion by Kylie Minogue, Last Train to Clarksville by the Monkees, Morning Train by Sheena Easton, C’mon ‘n ride it by Quad City DJs!

Metcards: There are different types of tickets called metcards available and are based on certain eligibility criteria, your travel and cost-cutting needs. It’s worth having a look at the brochure or in the metlink site. You can purchase metcards from the vending machines in all the train stations, inside the tram (only coins are accepted), at the metshop, in news agencies, and any other store that sells them! Keep your meetcard safe and do not crush or fold it, because you will need to “validate” it once you are inside the tram and a metcard with creases usually doesn’t work.

Tram Tracker: Every tram stop has a unique Tracker Stop Id (not the same as stop number!). Using this, you can track at precisely what time you can expect a particular tram to show up at your stop. The Tram Tracker is available online on the Yarra Tram site. You can also call customer support at 131 638. You can also get them to post you the detailed timetable brochures of the trams you most frequently use. I got my timetables this way. So, I can plan my journey based on what time my tram can be expected at my stop.

Getting-on a tram
To avail the tram, all you have to do is get to the tram stop (indicated with a bright fluorescent green board) and stand there. All trams passing by, on seeing a passenger, usually stop. You don’t really have to stick your hand out or anything. Do follow a queue, if there are others waiting. You don’t have to rush and fight your way through. Trams usually wait for all passengers and are not in any rush!

Inside the tram
Once you are inside the tram, you must “validate” your ticket in the validating machines located inside the tram. What this does is, based on your ticket, it punches an expiry date. Not validating your card is an offence and you will be fined, if tram inspectors happen to check you (and they do check and they do fine; and before you ask, no you can’t validate the ticket the moment you see them, because one the moment they step into the tram, they invalidate the machine and two, many times they don’t have on their uniform and catch you by surprise!). There are special seats near against both ends of the tram. These are usually for the physically handicapped or the elderly. You can occupy them. But in case you happen to see a disabled person or an elderly person, do give up your seat.

Getting-off the tram
Getting-off the tram has another procedure. You can do one of two things. If you don’t know your stop number and only know some landmark or the street intersection name, then when you board the tram, you can request the driver (provided it’s not on auto-pilot, in which case, it stops at every stop!) to announce your stop. The drivers are usually very nice and are happy to oblige. Speak to them when they are not driving (before they start or when they stop at a signal). Their door is always closed, but there is a little opening through which you can interact with them. This is all to ensure safety. The other way is when you know your tram stop number of the stop at which you want to get-off. In this case, you have to be attentive and “pull the trigger” as I call it as soon as the tram has crossed the stop just before your stop. There is a cable running through the tram - on top. Just pull it and you will see a light glow, a buzzer sound and an indicator that says “Next Stop” in red in the digital display. Some trams also have a button located in the handlebars. You can also just press the button. When you get-off, you don’t usually have to watch your step, because there is a driving rule here in place which prohibits other vehicles to overtake a tram, especially near a tram stop. Most drivers follow this. But you can’t be too sure! Just ensure that you don’t wander off and walk on tram tracks on the road, like I did! Above all, try and make some friends on the tram, enjoy the conversations, observe others and have fun tramming through Melbourne!

What’s cooking?

Famous, cute, funny, incredibly talented men. What do they do for a living? They are all celebrity chefs! That’s the new craze it seems! At the moment I’m talking about Curtis Stone. Boy, he’s cute. Before him was Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Tetsuya Wakuda, Geoff Jansz.

Since when did we start making celebrities out of chefs?

I think with the recession, most people find it more economical to prepare gourmet delicacies at home, and use that time as family bonding time, rather than splurge away at a fancy restaurant. This also means that even children are now interested in not only helping in the kitchen but are also keenly interested in grocery shopping, price and quality of ingredients, etc.

Shows like Master Chef, Iron Chef and now Celebrity Master Chef - go a step further in glamorising even mundane dishes like omelettes and soups. It’s no longer just about fancy continental dishes, but about doing your best with the least amount of time, and the available ingredients. After all that was the main thread behind Master Chef, right? Now of course, the winner, Julie Goodwin, is a household name here in Australia and is now endorsing products (like GLAD)! You saw that coming, right?

The last time anyone thought cooking was hot (in an erotic sort of way), was perhaps after Penélope Cruz in Woman on Top. Well, it looks like it’s time the ladies take a back seat (or go down under?) and well, the men get on top!! Yikes. Pardon that!

Anyway, I can’t wait to watch Simon Katich in Celebrity Master Chef!

Think TV

Have you seen the two Think TV campaign ads (on Channel 7 I think) about advertising on Free TV? Simply amazing. They are ads that are advertising - advertising on TV (that too Free TV) versus say Pay TV, or even the Internet! Very clever marketing campaign I thought.

Both simple testimonies, first hand accounts from the head honchos of leading Australian companies - John Symond from Aussie (Australia’s mortgage broker) and Gerry Harvey from Harvey Norman (Australian retailer of electronics and household appliances).

The ads provide simple, but startling statistics:
“TV returns 4.5 times its advertising investment.”
“13 million Australians tune into Free TV every day.”

The testimonies themselves are very convincing:
“Why do we advertise on TV? Simple. It works.”
“We can reach millions of people, with our message, every day of the week.”

Finally, the catchphrase:
“For advertising that works, Think TV.”
“To reach more people, Think TV.”

Did we ever think we’d see a day when TV had to advertise itself over some other medium? When TV first came out, it was the evil child - Video Killed the Radio Star (Radio wireless supposedly had killed the newspaper reporter and caused the death of the author!). All this seems so juvenile and obsolete now, compared to the big Internet monster that’s eating up all the advertising revenues and is threatening to engulf traditional journalism with citizen journalism and what not!

What is a Browser?

This video of google’s market research into its target audience’s awareness and technical knowledge is interesting. It does reveal one thing: most people who use technology know nothing about its idiom or terminology. Yes, it is very funny.

Sarasi has discussed the new Google browser, Chrome, in her blog titled Web Wars. Steph has also discussed another variation of this in her blog titled Web 3.0.

But, really, it comes down to what we call, ‘meta’- something. Whether it is metadiscourse, metalanguage, metafiction or metacognition.

So what does this mean?

Take for example metalanguage: it is language about language. It’s what we learn in a traditional English Grammar class. The technical names of the functions and syntax of the language we use everyday.

For example, what is a relative, subordinate, adjectival, non-restrictive/non-defining clause? We use it in our speech and when we write. Take this sentence:

“Andy, who was last in line, missed out on the food.”

Simply put, the part within the commas is the relative, subordinate, adjectival, non-restrictive/ non-defining clause!

Why?

Relative - because it begins with a relative pronoun, who
Subordinate - because it is inferior to the main clause (Andy missing out on the food).
Adjectival - because it describes the noun/subject, Andy
Non-restrictive/ Non-defining - because if the clause (who was last in line) was removed from the sentence, the sentence will still make sense! The noun/subject (Andy) is not restricted by the clause (who was last in line). It is not critical to the meaning of the sentence!

But really, did we need to know all of that to be able to use that sentence while talking to someone or while writing? Do we need to know metalanguage in order to be practitioners of the language? Do we need to know how digestion takes place in order to eat? Do we need to know how the brain stores information in order to be able to think? Do we need to know how fiction works in order to write a great story? I’m not so sure.

So, why is it so important to really know the technical definitions and terms of the technology that we so heavily rely on and know how to use with great ease? Do we really have to know what a browser is or for that matter what an operating system is, in order to be able to use it effectively as a means to an end? It’s a nice to know, not a must, right?

To be or not to be-cause-less

Something I find most remarkable these days is the number of causes there are out there. Think about it. I’m going to try and list some of them. These are by no means exhaustive and all inclusive and the order has no bearing on their importance or hierarchy in my own life or otherwise.

men, women, children - handicapped, war veterans, refugees, displaced, abused, old age, victims of natural disasters
environmental issues - endangered species, scarcity of natural resources, pollution, climate change, global warming, recycling
socio-cultural-political issues - socialism, civil rights, abortion, euthanasia, breast-feeding, drug abuse, smoking, alcoholism, AIDS, cancer, poverty, prostitution, discrimination, death penalty, violence, war, health, homosexuality, genocide, ethnic cleansing, diabetes

There are tons more. They are all further divided and sub-divided. So what happens when ‘the cause’ or the ‘campaign’ reaches a positive conclusion or even worse begins to look like it will never reach a favourable end? Will it be time to take on a new, more worthy ‘cause’? What if I don’t want to be affiliated to any cause? Is it ok to be totally cause-less?

Here’s a hilarious video of the post-Obama cause!

I like the sub-text of the critique hidden in the comments accompanying the video.

Un-fashioning English

I was just reading Geoffrey Nunberg’s Blogging in the Global Lunchroom, where apart from many things he talks about the new parlance of ‘English’ that is in vogue because of activities like SMS, texting, chatting and blogging.

That informal style recalls the colloquial voice that Addison and Steele
devised when they invented the periodical essay in the early 18th century, even
if few blogs come close to that in artfulness. Then too, those essays were
written in the guise of fictive personae like Isaac Bickerstaff and Sir Roger de
Coverly, who could be the predecessors of pseudonymous bloggers like Wonkette, Atrios, or Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, not to mention the mysterious conservative
blogger who goes by the name of Edward
Boyd. 3

I thought this literary analogy was rather apt. And that’s when I realized the full circle that ‘English’ has really made. I began re-tracking the origins of the English Language.

Really, the politics of the English Language, and it was politics during its foundation years, was all about making the ‘boorish, savage-like, raw, unsophisticated native dialect’ of Angle-Land come on par and compete with other more ‘cultured, historical, fashionable’ languages of the continent like Italian, Latin, Greek and French. English being a language that originated with the Anglo-Saxon tribe was really no match for the superior elite languages of the continent. This being an impediment to England’s commercial enterprise and bargaining power in matters of overseas trade and negotiations in the colonial project, in essence forced Elizabethan court poets like Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser to ‘re-fashion’ the ‘English tongue’, to create ‘courtesy or court protocol for the English Gentlemen’ based on the knights of the roundtable and a concept of ‘Englishness’ or ‘being English’ as opposed to any other ‘European’ culture.

So how did they accomplish all this? Simple. By borrowing heavily from here, there an everywhere! English and all its literary traditions, as we have come to learn and know it, was customised and created out of the scraps and remains of various European languages. Trace the etymology of any ‘English’ word and it has its origins in Latin, French, Greek or Italian.

Anyway, all their pioneering efforts paid off and this new ‘English’ served their socio-economic-political-cultural interests very well, both within England and in international affairs. The project was a great success and the repertoire of the English vocabulary continued to grow ever since.

But today, centuries after all this effort, when English rules the roost, everyone wants to strip it down to its bare minimum! No excesses, pretence and frills. The move now is back to good ole Anglo-Saxon English and not heavy Latinate prose! With the advent of genres like Technical Writing and Web Writing, where one is specifically taught, “use end not terminate; use before not precedes”, clearly marks a move back to the days before the Norman conquest! The new English—a child of the 21 century, an offspring of SMS, blogs, emails—is bare-naked! How ironic, huh?

And just like we thought Shakespearean verse was ‘queer’ and were traumatised at how John Donne could title his poem The Sunne Rising (when MS Word clearly draws an angry red squiggly under ‘sun’ spelt ‘sunne’!), our great grand children when forced to learn the canons of ‘our century’, like Harper Lee, Joyce, Maugham, Forster, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Ayn Rand, Dan Brown, Rowling, Sonya Hartnett, will think the English very ‘queer’ and would probably be better able to identity with the cryptic Anglo-Saxon dialect in Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales! Not so hard to fathom, considering I have friends who scowl when they have to scroll endlessly to read my 850-characters-long SMS, with all words spelt out and not ‘should’ as ‘shd’!

Picturing Melbourne

Note: This is a memoir-like travelogue blog to be part of a website that introduces aspects of Melbourne that will be easily (in terms of cost, time, effort) accessible to and of interest to prospective overseas students or overseas students who have recently come to Melbourne to undertake some form of university education. The site (like the IDP site) will be maintained by the organization that helps overseas students with the application process, etc. The site can be interactive and help students network with others for accommodation, etc. Hence the site can create a community of overseas students. Article contributions can be made by ‘veteran’ overseas students who may need to be given some form of incentive for contributing.

Graffiti at St Kilda junction
(courtesy melbournegraffiti.com)

One of the most striking features while travelling through Melbourne in its extensive public transport system of trains and trams—is the amazing, innovative graffiti. Blinding colours, cryptic words, the choice of typeface and the execution of design: priceless. The artistic endeavour, immediacy, ephemeral nature and comments on political and social change shape the urban landscape of Melbourne. And to imagine that all of it is actually illegal, from an ‘underground youth writing scene’!

Who funds them? What fuels them? Where do they get the paints from? How do they form their communities? What do they paint and why? What does their art say to the world? Myriad questions.


Graffiti at Burnley railway station
(courtesy melbournegraffiti.com)

There have been some prominent books published that document and discuss this subculture:

• Stencil Graffiti Capital Melbourne by Jake Smallman and Carl Nyman (2005)
• Uncommissioned Art: An A–Z of Australian Graffiti by Christine Dew (2007)
• Kings Way: The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne 1983–93 by Duro Cubrilo, Martin Harvey and Karl Stamer (2009). Recently, the Melbourne Writers Festival 2009 had a session, ‘Old Skool Graffiti’, to discuss the “New York City hip-hop phenomenon [that] left its mark on Australian walls” elaborated in the book.

From the many websites that discuss Melbourne’s graffiti, melbournegraffiti.com is perhaps the most comprehensive and well catalogued. There are archives of almost all the stencil art in Melbourne’s suburbs. They are organized based on the area, the artist, the type of art, etc. Many of the artists have been interviewed. However, they prefer to work behind veils of secrecy, about their inspiration, motivation and techniques. The site also has links to any news article related to Melbourne’s graffiti, appearing in any news publication, recorded from the year 2001.

A cursory glance at the various headlines about Melbourne’s graffiti that made it to any newspaper provides for a very interesting study of the evolution of the journey of Melbourne’s graffiti culture from its inception to the present day. Given the nature of the debates and the topic itself, some of the headlines are rather creative:
12.08.2006 - Drawing on their talents - The Age
10.08.2006 - City lets them spray - Herald Sun
04.07.2006 - If you spray, you pay - Herald Sun
17.02.2006 - Let us spray - Herald Sun
14.02.2006 - Problem brushed aside - Waverley Leader
23.01.2006 - Ugly picture of delays - Herald Sun
12.09.2005 - Police seek powers to answer scrawl of the wild - The Age
27.07.2005 - Good Wall Hunting - Herald Sun (ET)
04.03.2005 - The writing's on the wall for city's graffiti zone - The Age

I love the way this video zooms in to place the graffiti scene in Melbourne!



The graffiti scene has attracted a lot of attention to itself from the general public, the media, politicians, law and order enforcement, policy makers of urban planning and academics of sociology, anthropology, urban culture.

The often-heard debates around this potent art form is about the nature of the art itself—is it freedom of expression through art OR is it degradation and vandalism of public (tax payers’) property in the name of art?

Most municipal councils continue to take a repressive stance towards graffiti. There are a whole range of laws to penalise graffiti artists. So, I’m curious to know the general public’s views about graffiti in Melbourne. Do they appreciate the diversity and complexity of types of graffiti, and their importance as a contemporary cultural practice? I’m still not sure which I swing. But I think I maybe inclined to just revel in the art for now... It does remind me of the graphic satires of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

References:
Old Skool Graffiti in the Melbourne Writers Festival
melbournegraffiti.com
Da’ Hub
Melbourne Stencil Festival
Melbourne Graffiti Walks
Links

Defining "Australian"

Note: An article with an Australian perspective in a series dealing with neo-realism in cinema, across the world OR as a blog comment for About “Neo-Neo Realism” in The New Yorker

I recently saw two critically acclaimed Australian films, Wake in Fright and Last Ride, at Cinema Nova, in Lygon Street, Melbourne. Just a few hours before my first ever flight to Australia, I happened to watch Wolf Creek.

In totality, these films had a profound effect on me; an effect that made me consciously think about the reasons behind why such films get made and distributed, their overall domestic and international appeal and their impact on national identity as viewed internally and by the outside world.

That's when the connection occured to me - a counter-flow of Edward Said's Orientalism. Put in a nutshell, this theory proposed that the Western world at large, particularly former occidental colonizer nations forged a specific construct of the East that benefitted the colonial project.

However, even now, years after the colonization has officially ended, the problems caused by these artificially fabricated oriental stereotypes continue to haunt and overshadow the experiences of a large number of people from the East. A fairly large number of people from the West continue to assume certain attributes of anyone from the East based on these rather archaic misguided pre-conceived notions.

When I heard accounts of this from others, I always did take it with a large grain of salt. However, having been in the occident for a few months now, I have had similar experiences. My customers where I work listen to me talk and almost immediately glance at my name badge and then look at me and realize that I’m not from "here". They are curious to know where I am "originally" from and how long I’ve been in the "here". I tell them. Upon hearing that I’ve only been "here" for 3 months, their immediate response always, always is, "Oh, but your English is very good". The first time I heard it, I was dumbfounded (I’m very rarely speechless.) It took me a few months and several repetitions of this incident to come to terms with it and now I just laugh it off with, "Thanks, so is yours!" I was not amused at all, however, when a classmate expressed the same doubts in my Publishing and Editing Masters program at University!!

But, then I did some more thinking and realized that it IS actually mutual—the creation and perpetration of cultural stereotypes. No, it’s not just the occident dishing it out to the orient. Counter-flows are plenty.

What do most people who have never been to Australia think of Australia? Sunshine, vegemite, sports, outdoors, wildlife, flora and fauna, beer, bbqs, humour and English accent that is markedly different from British or American sensibilities. That pretty much sums up Australia for the very average person from the orient and perhaps even elsewhere in the world.

These rather one-dimensional, insular ideas are also perpetrated very often by popular media and cinema. While films like Muriel’s Wedding, Crocodile Dundee, The Castle, television shows like Kath and Kim, work together to create a specific idea of the Australian experience and life, films like Wake in Fright, Last Ride and perhaps even Wolf Creek, do exactly the opposite; they create contrasts, add depth and dimension to the populist, broad generalised notion about Australia.

Surreal, neorealist cinema is perhaps the only way out; the only way to strive to achieve a semblance of balance in creating depth and adding a variety of dimensions to singular populist notions one culture has about another.

A glimpse of some of the scenes of each of these films, clearly illustrates this contrast in identity formation.

Digital Restoration of Wake in Fright



Trailer of Last Ride



Trailer of Muriel's Wedding



Scene from The Castle

e democracy

e democracy is the offspring born out of the fusion of technology and freedom of expression (one of the fundamental rights of a citizen of any democracy).

e democracy has two main goals:

• to renew interest in civic engagement and participation
• to increase transparency in the working of a democratic government

It does this via the electronic medium of the internet and the World Wide Web.

I have looked at three e democracy sites:

• e democracy site of the United Kingdom
• e democracy site of Australia
• e democracy site of India
  

I thought these three sites would be interesting because of the following reasons:

• site of a developing nation (India) vs sites of two developed nations (Australia and the UK
• newer site (Australian) vs older site (UK)
• site of a former colony (India) vs site of the former coloniser (England)

e democracy site of the UK
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance UK
e democracy UK
e governance Britain
e democracy Britain
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Search - Elaborate
Data organization - Very poor
Level of content - Seems rather technical
Style of writing - Informal, conversational, amateurish, unprofessional effort
Typography - Very poor
For example, drop down menu options are not visible and merge with the background. There is no difference between links and expanding text/ drop down menu items.
Navigation and site map accuracy - Very poor
For example, there is no way to re-trace your steps, unless through the browser.
The Header and Footer don’t appear consistently on every page. Either this should have been used or some other form navigation links in a navigation bar that appears consistently on the right or left of every page, with the entire sitemap and a clear indicator about where the reader is with regard to the entire hierarchy.
Credibility - Dubious
For example, what is the relationship between MySociety and this site? Where does the donation money go?
Links - Largely point internally
Download time - Slow
For example, the MPs and Lords tab take a very long time to load. This is because of the long list and also because of the images.
Multimedia, audio, video - Very few instances
For example, the Debates tab has a few audio/video links. But they don’t seem to work.
Interaction - Minor
For example, the site asks readers to rate the responses, provide feedback.
Recommendations - It seems like the site is created and maintained by a group of British techie volunteers with a keen interest in British politics. I think it is also aimed at similar folks - British techies interested in British politics. If it intends to reach a broader spectrum of British citizens interested in politics, then it needs to have more scope for interaction, community building, and text needs to be better managed and organized.

e democracy site of Australia
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance Australia
e democracy Australia
Home page - Fairly well done
For example, it has clearly outlined steps about the various things one can do on the site. However, since no one is required to perform them in that order, they don’t need to be numbered! Numbering automatically presupposes a hierarchy, an order. I would have preferred an introduction to the concept of e democracy and then a list of what you can do with the site.
Data organization - Very well organized into meaningful chunks
Typography - Impressive
Navigation and site map accuracy - Fairly well done
For example, the header and footer repeated across the pages tie them all together, and provide the reader with a sense of the whole, the reader’s relation to that space, and the ability to navigate to other parts.
Credibility - Most credible site of the three
For example, I like the way the Donate section provides some background about the donation aspect.
Links - Both internal and external
For example, each representative has a list of external links that provide more information. The links also have accompanying descriptions that guide the reader about where the link will go.
Download time - Very quick
Interaction - Seems to be well integrated with its target audience. However, the blog link at the bottom takes you to another site. This was confusing. I’m not sure how the two sites are related. They look very different. I think these two sites should be merged for content and presentation.
Recommendations - Although the writing style is very professional, I felt it was an Australian site only while I was on more personalized pages like the Help, About us. Otherwise, it feels like it was written by someone in the UK, for an English audience. It does have a very British feel to it.

e democracy site of India
Search engine optimization - The following keyword gets Google to list this site as second site in the Google search results list:
e governance India
Considering how poorly done this site is, I am surprised how the SEO score is so high and so accurate.
However, the following keyword does not produce this site in the Google search results list:
e democracy India
There appears to be several state-wide e governance initiatives in India! One for each state!
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Data organization - Very poor; too much colour and clutter
For example, the About page contains a list of poorly articulated points, with sloppy formatting. However, the content is very good. It needs to be re-written in web style writing and placed in the home page, with better formatting.
Typography - Very inconsistent. There also seems to be something wrong with the whole site. It appears like a document that was cut and pasted on the web browser. There seems to be a lot of grey background. The Events seem to be copy pasted from some home-made Excel spreadsheet. The tabs/ links on the header seem to dynamically change with every mouse click!
Credibility - None at all. The whole site seems to promote only the man behind it.
For example, the White Papers section seems to promote only the creator of the site. There’s only one white paper by him. How it is connected to the concept of the whole site—I have no idea.
Links - Most links are internal. Most links are broken!
Search, Interaction - Completely missing!
Recommendations - The whole site needs to be re-written, data organized in meaningful chunks, all broken links and images fixed, a forum for interaction needs to be created, more information about constituencies and MPs needs to be provided.

Clearly the winner is the Australian site. Followed by the UK site and then the Indian site.

One issue that I have observed is that there is no single definitive web portal name that pops up when I think of e democracy or e governance in - whether in India, Britain, Australia, or anywhere else in the world. For example, if I think of web mail portals, I can draw up a mental list of - Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL. If I think of ecommerce, I can think of Amazon, ebay. This one-to-one correlation between examples of a portal and the concept of e democracy or e governance, seems to be missing.

This maybe because there is a great deal of ambiguity about what to call this new concept! There is terminology confusion - because of too many terms and not any one definitive term for this new phenomenon. (e democracy, e governance, e participation, etc)

To see this at work - have a look at the See also list in the wikipedia article about e democracy and the See also list in the wikipedia article about e governance page. They are quite different and appear to be mutually exclusive.

Nature or nurture?

‘The Program Era’ - the way to go, at least a financially viable way to go, for most authors now seems to be in ‘teaching a creative writing program at University’!

So, apparently, many authors in the US, unable to grapple with all this flux and the recession, and still wishing to make more than ends meet, are now teaching ‘Creative Writing’ programs at various institutes, community colleges, and universities. Sort of Catch-22 like situation, there have also mushroomed overnight, several courses designed to meet this purpose. And you know what? There are several takers for such courses too!

Talk about potboilers! This seems like a cauldron.

And then to think about Sonya Hartnett’s views on Sally Warhaft’s question about her opinion on ‘Creative Writing courses’ and whether anyone can be taught to be a good writer...

She said, and I paraphrase - no these courses can’t create a brilliant writer who can produce a brilliant piece of work. These courses can create A writer. The writer will write. But will the book win an award? Unlikely.

She did take the extended analogy of Ian Thorpe and extended her swimming metaphor to conclude rather dramatically about how she could be taught to swim, and she’d probably swim - only to reach the end of the pool, puffing and probably bleeding. Will she swim like Thorpe? Unlikely.

Writers, swimmers, jugglers, god knows what else - all born, presumably...

You either have it or you don’t!

Re-thinking the book

Bob Stein in The Future of the Book talked about some absolutely daring and different concepts of our concept of the book! To think that we will have to re-think not only the book, as no longer being a physical object, but to re-think everything else associated with a physical book - right from the bookshelf!

The future of the book maybe a whole new process...

An author has an idea; he/she gets this idea out via a blog; gets some faithful followers; they discuss this idea; it goes back and forth; thus emerges the ‘book’. This is the creation process.

The consumption process will also sort of be the same. The ‘book’ is released; readers read it, come back and start a discussion with the author.

Total collaboration and participation.

So, the magical, mysterious author/ omniscient narrator persona will no longer exist. That dichotomy is on its way out.

To think of being able to blog with creators LIKE Van Gogh, or Bach, or Oscar Peterson, or Oscar Wilde, or Lawrence Sterne, or James Joyce, or Frank Kafka!!

I’m excited now. Really excited. Trifle apprehensive. But still excited.

And there’s more to come...since there’s no real ‘going to the press’ business, the book can continue for however long it wants to. No sequels and second editions. No out-of-print business. No second runs. No hard back, no paper back. Just an ongoing process. Literally endless.

All I could think about was - what about copyright? So who owns the ‘book’ or the ‘ideas’? The one that started the ‘blog’ or the bloggers that actually contributed to it? The publisher or the editors that compiled all the views, opinions, refereed and re-worded, filled in lacunas where needed?

I think 30 years from now, there probably won’t be a concept called ‘copyright’. We will all collaboratively own everything I think. No fences. No mending walls. Robert Frost will like that. Back to the pre-copyright era. No IP, no patents. It’s freedom of expression, after all!!

I also think we will see a major set of changes once the google book settlement case is decided. Not sure in whose favour the courts will rule! Wonder what will happen to projects like googlescholar, Project Guttenberg, etc, if the ruling is not in their favour.

If I couldn’t photocopy...

Photocopying. I take it for granted. I was born in an era where this was possible and was part of the way I did a large amount of my written work. There's nothing illegal about mass-scale photocopying. It is an expression of my appreciation. Or perhaps outcry!

Why am I talking about this?

Zoe Rodriguez in a session, Digital Rights Management, at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, talked the problems that a technological breakthrough like 'photocopying' brought with it, back in the 70s. Illegal mass distribution of almost any printed material that anyone could lay hands on and get to a photocopy machine!

I had never thought of this. I was not around in the 70s when this must have caused so much stir and panic among publishers and authors, just like digital rights and copyrights in cyberspace is now causing the same spike in anxiety levels for several stakeholders.

Back home, in India, when we (yes, my family and other strange animals) sometimes ended up in a remote ‘no cell phone range’ area, I would crib about my cell phone not working thanks to poor telecom support in rural areas, India’s developing economy status that doesn’t seem to change at all, the bleak future, etc etc.

My mother’s uncharitable, rather puritanical response would always be, ‘Stop cribbing about not being able to use your cell phone. You weren’t born with it you know. Get over it and stop being such a parasite, so reliant on something that’s so new to all of us and something you never grew up with.’

My mother and I, well, we love each other - from a distance - a huge distance of India and Australia! Suffice to say, that we don’t get really get along in any civil measure. And although I’d never admit it to her, the woman does have a point. I have never been able to counter that logic and develop rhetoric to vanquish that argument. Sigh. It is superb; flawless. Damn. Hate it. Because my mother came up with it and not I.

Besides silver spoons and other fancy china and cutlery, I was definitely not born with (and I use this metaphorically) - cell phones, the internet, itunes, iphones, Skype, ipods, Kindles, google, YouTube, googlescholar, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, etc etc.

I was born in an era where mail was only used as a noun, like airmail, the mail, and not as ‘I’m going to mail you my assignment.’! We never did say:
‘I’d Facebook you’,
‘Just Google it’,
‘Do you tweet?’,
‘Let’s Skype tonite’ (though some of us said, rather pathetically, ‘Let’s Groove Tonite’!),
‘I’ve written on your wall’ (when we said that, which we rarely did, we meant something massive - like a compound wall; yes, there was a physical, concrete, brick and motor structure! And to write on a wall - for the whole world to see - meant it was an act of defiance; a protest of gigantic proportions!)

But I was definitely born with the wheel, women’s right to suffrage, piped water, electricity, telecom, automobiles, air travel, and photocopying! Ok, not in that order!

To think of a world where I can’t photocopy? I can’t imagine that.

Now I get the feeling, that perhaps 30 years from now, the next generation will say the same thing about ubiquitous digital copies of texts!

It doesn’t seem so bad or that bleak now.


Surely there’s an answer, a set of new solutions to make everyone happy, right?

Learning to learn via ebooks

You know when the Coca Cola (I think) marketing team was rethinking their marketing strategy and looking at consumers’ demographic and consumption profile, they employed an out-of-the box sort of approach. Instead of thinking about competition in a linear way, they looked at all the various ‘drinks’ that Coke’s target audience was consuming and realized that Coke was not just competing with other ‘carbonated unhealthy’ drinks - but with ALL drinks. Yes - I mean, water, milk, coffee - all sorts of DRINKS in the non-alcoholic sub-section! And I think that’s the history behind the re-marketing strategy that Coke employed - where Coke needed to become the substitute for all DRINKS. So every time some one was thirsty and thought of drinking water or milk (yikes!) - Coke wanted them to reach for Coke! It was no longer Coke vs other similar soft drinks like Pepsi, etc. But, Coke vs ALL DRINKS! This ‘Coke is the substitute for any non-alcoholic drink’ (thirst quencher) strategy obviously got Coke a much wider market share and a lot of unhealthy folks - of ALL age groups.

This suddenly popped into my head yesterday at a seminar called Leading the E-Revolution at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. You know why? The host, Catherine Godfrey, brought a whole new angle to the actual competition for e-book applications like the Kindle! We have been actively debating Kindle vs the obvious competition - print books. But she said, from a higher education publishing point of view - the actual competition for applications like the Kindle is laptops! If the kindle had features like the laptop - which includes, taking notes, editing texts (as we do or should do, in the margins of actual textbooks!), etc - then there’s something! Interesting, huh?

Just to digress a little, I think we are predisposed to looking at all these issues of new-age digital technologies vs traditional print, etc - largely from a fiction and news production, consumption point of view. We never think of this in relation to the massive education industry - which really is the biggest stakeholder and most profitable market share, I might add, for the publishing industry as a whole. I thought it was interesting to look at an economically viable end of the spectrum, which we tend to forget to consider while debating these hot issues.

Integrating digital and traditional forms of learning - is the only way to go for this market apparently. This is not only for University level (undergrad largely), but also for high school curriculum in Australia. The mode is fast becoming an interactive, participatory sort of learning - where kids learn on the LMS, email their tutors (expect and get immediate responses), ‘read’ a book not in isolation, but together in an e-group and then discuss it via blogs. E-learning products are apparently the way to go for academics, teachers and students.

It’s interesting to keep this in mind especially when you think of an Australian National Curriculum - that is common throughout Australia - something that is being actively reviewed and looked into, besides other issues like parallel importation, emissions trading scheme, etc

You’ve Got Blog Notification?

I really liked the concepts that Prof Michael Wesch of Kansas State University (US), talks about in his anthropological study of YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

What I thought was most striking was the concept of ‘loss of communities over time’, which he draws from Robert D. Putnam. There are several reasons why massive communities of suburbia are ‘disconnected’ today (viz: the movement away from the ‘corner grocery store’ to ‘large supermarkets’, sort of like the concept explored in the film ‘You’ve Got Mail’). They seem to be connected only via physical roadways, etc. Hence the sense of general isolation, and declining community life.

Amidst this - the blogoshpere - seems to offer new forms of communities, emerging social networks. What he calls, ‘person to person connectivity’ or ‘networked individualism’ (Barry Wellman). Where everyone is increasingly networked but also very individualized! There is more desire for community, and for stronger relationships. With increasing commercialization, there is a longing for authenticity. Hence there is a whole new ‘imagined virtual social community’ that is now building itself through webcams, screens, as opposed to the 'imagined community' concept of Benedict Anderson.

Another emerging theory is that of the ‘asynchronous invisible audience phenomena’. Taking the example of vlogs that are uploaded on sites like You Tube, he explains how it’s so strange that people are now talking to a lens, a camera - not to ‘real’ people!

There’s also a ‘hyper self awareness’. Sort of an extension of psycho-analysis, introspection via recorded images of oneself and other self preoccupations. Sort of an instant replay and ‘RE-COGNITION’.

When the ‘real’ people actually see these personal videos of people they have never physically met before, they view them without any context! What he calls a ‘collapse of context’! So what appears to have no real audience also seems like everyone is watching!

Also, watching another human being through a computer - gives one the freedom to stare for as long as required. This is because of the reassurance that comes from the ‘anonymity of watching’, which is not possible in real life! You can stare at anyone, replay their videos, without making them uncomfortable or awkward. They don’t see you watching them.

All in all - there is tremendous connection, without constraint.

I loved this whole academic analysis of a contemporary, social, cutural phenomena like vlogs. I was in my own reverie and musing over all this, when I boarded my Tram outside University. Almost everyone on the tram, irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, whatever, - had ear phones plugged in (probably connected to an ipod or some such music producing micro-chip device) and/or ‘with’ a phone! That’s when I suddenly realized the intrinsic irony of our networked generation. Any guesses?

I have tons of virtual social networks spanning the globe, but I don’t know the neighbour next-door! (A very 21 c version of Robert Frost's famous 'Good Fences Make Good Neighbours' philosophy!) I think it odd to make conversation with the person sitting beside me in the train, reading the same article that I am probably reading in MX (the faithful, omnipresent companion of the late-evening Connex commuter), who probably has an interesting, maybe similar maybe opposite, but nonetheless equally arresting point of view about - the articles, the paper, or how it is read by everyone taking the late evening trains from the CBD into Melbourne’s suburbia, or how a tiny minority expresses downright disgust and refuses to be part of that ‘mass’ phenomena and will never read it, etc etc (would only be caught engrossed in The Financial Times or Finnegan's Wake). These are all issues. All debates. All great ideas for blogs, for opinions. But we’d probably blog about it, and get a million responses about it online, but probably never discuss the same thing with the person next-door!! The ironies of our lives...

Whose voice is it anyway?

After four weeks into this subject (Writing and Editing for the Digital Media), reading all the ‘readings’, participating in the class discussions, reading all the blogs and responding (after hibernating for 4 weeks!) - there is one issue that keeps popping up every time I think about this phenomena called the WWW, internet, Web 2.0, hypertext, etc. I'll admit that my approach is more of a ‘half-empty glass’ kind of approach, rather than a bright, sun-shiny one.

I do love the euphoria of this whole new virtual imagined community sans borders, surpassing time zones - blogging away, uploading home-made videos, creating virtual social networks, getting their voices heard, becoming the reason for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: You (in December 2006), etc. What I think about is - who is this ‘You’? And hence who is NOT this 'You'? I know several of them. They fall under this category, not because they are:
(a) puritanical and resist any new change (sort of prudish, wowsers)

(b) arch pessimists (the ‘Nay’ - this won’t work folks)
(c) phobic and scared to try new things (I fall under this category)

(d) just plain indolent and/or indifferent

The reason is because they are so completely excluded from everything! ‘Oral’ communities - where there is NO exposure to any form of ‘written’ language (any language, in any written medium!). What are called ‘No literacy’ societies. http://faculty.law.pitt.edu/hibbitts/or-lit.htm
There are several such societies that have never seen a newspaper in their lives. Where NGOs work with them to try and set up a library so they can see what print looks like! As you may imagine - all this also accompanies other sister concerns like no electricity, no piped drinking water, etc. And they are not in this condition because of war or because they are refugees, or anything. Just by virtue of being marginalized for centuries. Centuries of oppression and disadvantage. Then of course there are those that are probably slightly better off than them - but have no exposure to the English language! NONE of these people, and several others excluded from this phenomena because of several other reasons - comprise the ‘You’ that Time magazine hails as the Person of the Year!

So, is the WWW a truly global phenomenon that is setting the whole world free? That’s the myth. Like the Gutenberg Myth. Gutenberg Myth social theorists and anthropologists try to dispel the notion that the single technological invention of the ‘printing press’ - released the whole world from illiteracy, as SOON as it was invented. The counter theory states that there were several other social and technological phenomena (cost of paper, etc) that needed to be in place before the whole world was set free! (Scott D.N. Cook, ‘Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth’, Internet Dreams, London: MIT Press, 1997).

The internet has set some people ‘free’. Many others are still trapped exactly where they were even as far back as 50 years ago! I wonder about the ‘excluded’ just as I am happy about the ‘included’... But if you are happy to accept that those it excludes don’t matter and only those that matter are the neo-liberal, democratic voices of the heard, then yeah - it’s global! Not many seem to want to admit or even discuss the large sections that are very much in the realm of exclusion! It’s just something to bear in mind I thought, while we revel in all the great things happening with the internet and all its spiralling, snowballing, cascading effects on our lives ... (changes in news journalism formats, using bloggers’ opinions as credible sources in polemical pieces, print newspaper vs online, subscription for online news, twitter being hacked, etc etc!)

So, is the WWW a truly world-wide phenomenon that is setting the whole world free? It definitely has the potential to BE - maybe 10, 20, 100 years from now. But right now - it’s anything but ‘global’.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=zgBrXkE6p9wC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=Technological+Revolutions+and+the+Gutenberg+Myth&source=bl&ots=ru_Y4PKTKX&sig=DHB2rQlABZgmxTXI61FpNF8dWoI&hl=en&ei=p5SKSs--KMGdkAWJr6gk&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=&f=false