Channel 84

So here's the result of my recent customer discussions with Verizon. As this is of interest to few, cut to the chase if you wish - it's at the bottom.

Some background: I watch almost no TV, and am old enough to remember when it was free. Thus the idea of paying for it has always seemed foreign. For a time when I worked for a cable co. (as Internet editor), I got full cable for free. I watched The Sopranos, loved it, and basically nothing else. When I left that company, I figured someone would step up and offer the choice of just getting HBO, and nothing else. Or just one show from HBO. Sort of like the Internet. Until that time came, I'd never actually pay for TV.

I now pay for Verizon FIOS. Why? I had a two-year contract with them for FIOS internet, and when it was up, I was told my monthly price would increase by some not insignificant amount. BUT,  if I took the "Triple Play" option - adding TV to the existing bundle of Net and home phone - with current promos I'd actually pay less than if I were to just renew Net and home phone.

An offer I could not refuse. I accepted the TV, and -- apart from a few biggies, like the World Series and the presidential debates, SOTU, etc. -- used it barely at all. My kid briefly got into some of the "rustic" entertainment including "Call of the Wildman," but we soon tired of the passive tedium of the medium.

Anyway, I have this excellent friend Dan who keeps talking about FIFA and Manchester United and Rooney and Rinaldo of Madrid and Balotelli and frankly he managed to make it sound interesting enough that I began to think it would be nice to have channel 84. In my market, that's Fox Soccer. Not Soccer Plus, just Soccer. My humble Verizon service - the low end, of course - blocks the channel, but offered me the option to subscribe, though it didn't say what it costs. I figured I'd call to find out, and from that call came this conversation.

That conversation, blogged, turned into a Tweetfest with Verizon, further morphing into 1.5 hours of phone time with two very pleasant Verizon support people, Michael and Bernardine.

Michael tried very hard, once he understood my request, to find a way to help. The problem as I saw it was, all I want is this one channel, why can't they add it, and it alone, and bill me a buck a month and bob's yr uncle?

The problem apparently is that in the corporate universe, no customer shall be so gratified. I could only choose to move up to the next package, called "Extreme" - in which case my TV would not only receive Channel 84 but also a buttload more channels I had no interest in, for a mere $15 (before tax) upgrade to my monthly bill.

I explained to Michael how it is. How I do not use TV, but might enjoy some Soccer if it didn't cost me over $100 a year for the privilege of watching. He proceeded in the most engaging manner to attempt a series of elaborate maneuvers worthy of Olympic diving competition -- Backflips, Inward Dive 3.5 somersault in the Tuck position, Armstand Back 2 Somersaults, 1.5 twists in the Free Position, and more. At one point, he thought he had it. He thought he'd managed to give me Extreme with no change to my contractual obligation -- there was nearly a whoop of joy from this enthusiastic and friendly young man, until, at the very last moment, the agony of defeat emanating from the massive corporate computational network told him in no uncertain terms that the customer was going to have to pay $15 more a month or nada.



I felt sorrier for Michael than one might imagine. I tried to comfort him, to assure him that I really don't watch TV, have no use for TV, am probably better off without access to Channel 84, as it would just consume more of the short life left to me (I'm no spring chicken) than I can afford. But Michael was not down for the count. He thought there still could be a way to do this, but it would take a higher power. I said fine, and was soon speaking with Bernardine in California. Bernardine sounded completely pleasant, nothing like any formidable Higher Power.

I explained to her how it came about that I simply wanted to know what it cost to sub to Channel 84, but after an hour was still discovering that her giant corporation could not, in fact, either give me an answer, nor satisfy the request, but was -- at least Michael was -- heartbroken at its lack of success.

Bernardine asked if she could look at the matter, and in short order she returned to say she could offer me Extreme, the package, for $6.72 a month. This was managed under some complex 12-month discount by which my bill is actually $15 + tax but I get some sort of $10 off deal that ends next March.

At this point I told her that I might consider it, even though I only wanted the one channel, but I'd only do so if she annotated the account to indicate that in 12 months I can go back to my non-Extreme status and to my current monthly bill, minus the $6.72, no questions asked. She agreed, and I agreed. I am now Extreme. Talk about Power. The new package was available on my TV nearly immediately. Bernardine offered to call me in a week, and I said that would be fine. We wished each other a Happy Valentine's Day. For one with such Power, she seemed quite sweet.

Yet I wonder: if Verizon can implement entire packages in the blink of a remote eye, why not one single channel? I still do not have an answer. The system is telling me I can subscribe to a channel, but when I ask how much, I get baited and switched. "Nooooooooooooo," it tells me, "you can't have one little teensie-weensie channel, but you can have a whole bunch of them!"

Why?

If it's a technical issue, then put it in layman's terms. End users will get it. Something too small for the giant to handle? That would be of interest. If none of the above, then it might, just might, be a greed issue. If so, well, buy some gumption and own up to that. Consumers are bent to consume the redirection of their substance at the expense of their wiser discretion.

Can Marketing ever get real? If a customer wants to buy something, and you won't sell it to them, why not tell them why not? Why do you always need to convince them they want something much bigger, far in excess of what they in fact want? Is it Un-USian to ask for something small? Is it demeaning to gratify small wishes? Must American Consumers always be presumed to live in hells of infinite desire?

Eventually the Corporates will discover that the fulcrum has shifted. What we desire, no matter how humble, can be within our grasp, without their help.

So I'm grateful to Bernardine, and to Michael and the Verizon Tweeters, and to Agent Marilyn whose robotics kicked this into high gear. Grateful less for Channel 84 than for the glimpse into the wide world of scripts, pitches, elaborate gestures and figurative maneuvers of corporate theater. It's a jungle in there. I'm in it up to my $6.72, and I mean to get out. But Bernardine told me to check: a better promo might await in March 2014.

US figures out how to have a General Strike

Corporate USia thought it had rendered the General Strike harmless, moot, because instead of unions enabling workers to own their labor, corporations figured out how to own their workers. ows is the only way corporate USia could have a general strike.

Inverted Totalitarianism

Chris Hedges

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

I relate.

Were you thinking newspaper folks were starting to wise up?

Narrative Science automates the creation of editorial narratives across a wide range of content verticals. Their technology application requires no human authoring or editing and can be used to generate narratives about any event that produces significant quantitative data (think sports, financial, health, community data).  Saridakis saying kthxbye to Gannett

Content automated like your ILECs and ISPs always imagined it: Are Sportswriters Really Necessary?
 

From the much neglected blogroll

“White-collar area cases, I think, are distinguishable from terrorism or drug crimes, for the primary reason that, often, people are plotting their defense at the same time they're committing their crime. They are smart people who understand that they are crossing the line, and so they are papering the record or having veiled or coded conversations that make it difficult to establish a wrongdoing.” Ted "Taibbi" Kaufman via pas

"It's our democracy: we bought it, we paid for it, and we're going to keep it."

text via Lohmann

The corporate form

The corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good.

Dub Incorporation

more

Speech is money

"The ads will get more honest," said Keating, director of the Club for Growth, (@#$@) a group supports candidates who call for lower taxes and smaller government. "Instead of having all this nonsense about 'Call him,' they'll tell you what to do: Go vote."

But honest ads were only a collateral issue on the court's agenda. The objective of the five-justice majority was to free up the speech rights of corporations, overturning statutes and previous court rulings dating back as far as 1947. Corporations, legally considered persons under a Supreme Court cases from the 19th Century, have more limited First Amendment rights than what are known as "natural persons." National Potlach Radiation

Wouldn't an inquiry into the history and nuance and logic of "speech rights" be more relevant than asshat speculation of possible effects?

Except of course sensible speculations:

I congratulate Wealth Bondage on their Supreme Court Victory. Democracy is Game over, I guess. But maybe the polictical ads will be of higher quality now that they can be financed to infinity. I don't mind being ruled by propagandists, but I do prefer high production values, and star power. Gifthub

NPR's Ken Rudin cites Chris Good, blogging at The Atlantic:

...the accounting firewall is gone, and Wal-Mart or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate money directly on candidates.

Again, the shiftless refusal to examine the basic components irks. Prompting this National Potlach contribution from me:

What is "corporate money"? The whole fictional realm of corporate citizenship, personhood deserving of constitutional protection and rights, etc. needs insight, critique, common sense. Who owns corporate money anyway? The shareholders? If so, why would a shareholder wish to bestow his money on a politician unless s/he believes the politician will work to advance the corporate interests? And what are those interests other than to make money? Therefore what we are talking about, it seems, is the legitimization of a new kind of investment - buy a politician and see your ROI skyrocket. Beats the pants off sub-primes and derivatives.

factory of putative play

The Internet as Playground and Factory - Students from Trebor Scholz on Vimeo.

In blindness we trust

Robert W. McChesney on The Death and Life of American Journalism (book due in Jan.)

The problem, in short, is rooted in the longstanding tension between advertising-supported, profit-making media and democracy-sustaining journalism. . . .

the Internet will no more spawn sufficient journalism than will the old media. . . .

Jefferson and Madison and our other founders did not roll the dice and hope rich people could make profits doing journalism so we could have a Republic. Instead, in the first several generations they instituted massive postal and printing subsidies that created the independent newspaper system in the United States. The value of the federal subsidy of the 1840s, for example, in contemporary terms would be roughly $30 billion annually. That is roughly 75 times greater than the current federal subsidy for public broadcasting. . . .

These were brilliant democratic subsidies that gave us quality journalism but also a competitive and uncensored press. We need to do the same today. We need to revamp daily newspapers into independent post- corporate entities, vastly expand funding to public media and find ways to subsidized nonprofit journalism online.

All of which, yes, fine. But why look solely to private citizens for subsidy, and not to corporate citizens as well?

McChesney makes a case for the need within a capitalism run amok to support honest journalism. Still, something is blocking our thinking -- preventing us from seeing how the profits of Big Pipes can be put into a blind trust to help support Net Content.

Corporations work on multiple levels in the service of unending profit. One of the layers is human freedom. That unendingness is the infinity that perforates any usable form of balanced economic system. There is justice in redressing the imbalance.

via Humorzo:

The phrase “golden age of capitalism” might itself be challenged. The period can more accurately be called “state capitalism.”

...

It is also important to remind ourselves that the notion of workers’ control is as American as apple pie. In the early days of the industrial revolution in New England, working people took it for granted that “those who work in the mills should own them.” They also regarded wage labor as different from slavery only in that it was temporary; Abraham Lincoln held the same view.

...

There have been immense efforts to drive these thoughts out of people’s heads—to win what the business world called “the everlasting battle for the minds of men.” On the surface, corporate interests may appear to have succeeded, but one need not dig too deeply to find latent resistance that can be revived. There have been some important efforts.

...

It is a propitious time to revive such efforts - Crisis and Hope.

The magical mirror of consumer pricing, commodity enslavement, and unprepossessing fecklessness

A lot of recent books, films and other media commodities have lambasted corporations, often with eloquence and holy rage. (I'll append some later to this post-in-progress, but I should mention I've not read most of them).

Let's start with, there's something to be said for devices dedicated to accumulating wealth. And that is my definition of "corporation," for now. A corporation in USia is merely a mechanism whose entire function is to accumulate wealth, an enterprise that takes many enterprising forms.

I realize the definition is under-developed, but it has the virtue at least of ruling out the possibility of confusing such wealth attracting mechanisms with those entities who are envisioned, under the Constitution, as "men."

We USians have been very good at figuring out how to build these giant machines, how to manipulate them, and at discovering how they can further manipulate their environments to expand power, "brand," and control. They have made possible economic effects unimaginable in earlier ages (except perhaps at times of moments of massive slave labor) or within other, more regulated, national platforms. Without corporations, we'd still be pissing in the wind hoping it'll bring rain.

We have been rather less good at understanding that simply because something is good at something, that does not mean it's good at everything. Instead of seeing that there's a lot about corporations that, left to their own devices, will be destructive to life, liberty and the pursuit of whatever happiness money can't buy, we have caved to the gods of unregulated motion, and only now are beginning to glimpse some of the rewards of our craven largess. Many of the recent studies of the evils of corporations appear to make this argument in one form or another.

Someone recently said the USian economy is 70% consumer-driven. Let's just accept that for now. As we witness the debacle involving thousands of retailers throwing good merchandise at us at ludicrously low prices, pleading that we take their giant TVs, SUVs, Home Entertainment Centers, indoor dog restrooms and the like for next to nothing, (it's like an engine screaming millions of RPMs and getting no traction, like some sort of behaviorist experiment gone seriously awry "come on, little chinchilla, you liked your dopamine + testosterone + meth shot before, have your 5 millionth dose of pleasure" [vide supra]), we, lacking money, jobs, healthcare, communally centered systems of value, practice and security, grow pale, bloodless, and dumb.

I want to look at an aspect of the "consumer-driven economy" that I, haven't seen explored (perhaps because I'm an entirely unlettered non-student of economics).

The thought occurred to me today as I listened to a tape of the late Ted Kennedy, in a radio interview, talking about the out-of-control way in which corporate interests use money to influence elections:

...at this present time people say, look, I don't want my tax money used into politics. They just don't want it, but at the end of the day they're getting it because they're paying for it with these lobbying activities. And it's something that, as I have said too often, we're getting the best Congress that money can buy, and I think it's a real disgrace. link

Kennedy is noting something that we all know, but that we resist acknowledging at too intelligent a level: When we avoid using money directly for public purposes, our money gets used indirectly to subvert public purposes.



The particular transaction of interest here is the consumer's purchase of a product. When a new product hits the market, its price is a compound reflection of the costs that put it there - materials, labor, marketing, transport, etc. When we buy products, we make them whole -- we pay for the recovery of those costs. The price re-presents a stacked set of various kinds of purposively organized activities, energies and materials laid out with the promise of redemption upon the consuming of the commodity.

It's naive to assume a simple or direct relation of price to costs in a capitalist system. Let's face it, the sellers (vendors, supply chain, point of sale etc) all have to take their piece, it's what justifies -- or at least enables -- their being there at all. Like a magical mirror, price "reflects" certain costs, and it conceals certain surpluses. The same number is both an indicator of certain actual cost values and a misdirecting gesture hiding an uncertain quintessence of value.

What specifically interests me is the engagement of this quintessence in the logistics of brand power. Because it's clear that in the end, a brand becomes Huge Brand by exerting power over the marketplace and the "consumers." How does it acquire that dominance?

In part through marketing. In part, as well, through rear-guard actions that do everything possible to defeat litigation, defuse interest in competitors, and defeat any contenders to brand supremacy. Or maybe that's still marketing?

Now, the dollars for marketing come from the consumer. They're built into the price structure. So when we "buy a product," we're not simply buying a product. We are entering into a complex campaign, a campaign which may not be in our best interest, particularly when, for example, it uses our dollars to pay certain officials to look the other way in certain unfortunate product liability situations.

This suggests that in typical commodity transactions, "price" isn't a simple compound of representation and concealment. It's a conflicted engagement of the interests of "the consumer." We are paying in part for the power of the seller to deceive us as to the value, or liability, of the thing we're buying. An enforced collusion, resulting from a delusion of innocence. Of course we're innocent -- how could we possibly know?

The purchase of a commodity then is itself a battleground that comes complete with its own potential conflict of interest. We are investing in the power of the corporate seller to gain ascendance over the market. As the corporation's power increases, we are left with less market command: less reliable information and fewer choices -- products that tend to cost more, and are probably less well made.

Or could it actually be worse than a conflict of interest? Because as we continue to buy what we are sold, we should try not to forget that corporations, according to our current world view, are also citizens.(1) These civic actors network with elected representatives, trade groups, and regulators to assume more power over the market, over the range of choices, over the regulatory system, over who gets elected to rule.

Thus their costs include large expenditures for contributions to media campaigns, for lobbying efforts, and presumably for all sorts of less visible effects.

In order to have the wherewithall to spend on buying houses of congress, corporations need to generate ever larger surpluses. Pricing has to include costs to the end user that pay for the agents charged with diverting lawmakers from the Public Interest to private interests, in order to guarantee that prices can be set to incorporate larger "citizenly costs" with impunity.

This is known as "building brand."

As we (consumers) buy commodities, we lose freedom, cede power. Markets narrow, monopolies grow stronger, brands appear on shirts, skin, and soon, doubtless, on DNA.



Put another way: built into the pricing of the commodities that corporate citizens sell is a component which is allocated to the abridgment of our rights as citizens. Brands build in part by deforming marketplaces, depreciating the quality of your engagement while appreciating theirs.

I suspect it's this claustrophobic predicament that causes USians to feel helpless, dull, powerless. Every day in every way, we pay. For the privilege of our own expropriation.

The economy is indeed consumer-driven, only the consumers are posing as corporate citizens. We who were supposed to be the citizens are merely the consumed.




(1) A corporation is legally a citizen of the state (or other jurisdiction) in which it is incorporated. #

words to run important things by

However, it is his intellectual generosity that I value above all. Cage didn't have any "students" in the strict sense, just people who worked with him. It is a measure of his greatness that those who are now composers never end up sounding like him. He gave you permission to be yourself. Anything goes, provided - as he would always say - that you take "nothing" as the base. #

dumb q.

Tears welled in the lifelong reporter’s eyes as he discussed the dwindling number of war correspondents. #

How to trust a journalistic culture that fails to question why corporations, which are essentially wealth accumulation mechanisms, are granted human status in the United States.

The bogus analogy that will never go away.

Paeon to HOO MO

When you come across a news story that really interests you, you begin to appreciate the completeness of vacuity of the mainstream news product. I mean, this is a story to die for:

Missouri man, 

angered over DTV switch,

 shoots his TV set

Who would not want to know every last detail? Next to the guy who threw his shoes at the asshatavistic exprez, this guy - WALTER HOOVER - deserves veneration. But do we get a picture of his noble countenance, of his austere home, proud wife and family, his humble, now lifeless, tube, his weapon of choice? Do we know how he spent his last moments before going for his _____________? Where is contact info for the pilgrimage site his fellow Joplinians are doubtless constructing even as we ask?

How I long to know what sort of gun -- a double-barreled shotgun would have been ideal, blasting the screen, the useless converter widget, the cable powers that agreed that the change should take place, the walls, perhaps a cat, the regulators who gave their 'yeas."

Instead, we get "a firearm." Best story I've seen in months, perhaps years, and this is the best we can do?

To you, WALTER HOOVER, we lift our bronzed goblets in the florid state with only the finest Falernian or Cacuban. Of you shall our garden gods murmur, in you our shall our bees delight with jocund hum.

I have a nightmare

He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. King 4.03.1968

What if corporations are the slaves?

De-corporatizing the panhandling panjandrums

(Hokey newspaper headline free of charge)

Just a passing thought, listening to lawmakers' skepticism toward Eminem's neighbors' pleas for moolah: It seems to me that these companies are doomed by virtue of their coming to Congress as corporations. Their arguments reek of corporate interests. If they came as wounded communities (which is in fact what they are) - not just CEO's but workers and families and localities - and if they made the case that this is not about antiquated industries surviving, but about a malleable pile of capital and a group of people in transition, and here's an opportunity to help them out while reshaping GM, Chrysler, and Ford into entities that will genuinely become something else -- hybrid entities involved with life, health, finance, education, infrastructure, optimal safety and resource deployment -- i.e., if they were humble and open enough to consider inviting investors out and bringing people, a broader vision of agencies, and human values in -- they might have a shot at hearts and minds and the big bucks.

Clean Head, Clean Machine

HI-Y CLUB
The HI-Y CLUB is one of the finest organization of the school with its purpose of maintaining and spreading clean speech, clean athletics, clean living, and clean scholarship.

Microsoft patents web moderator robots

Microsoft has just been awarded a patent for technology designed to automatically detect and remove “undesired words or phrases” from all manner of digital communications, ranging from YouTube broadcasts to internet chat and songs.

The patent describes a system that listens out for phonemes (word fragments) likely to be part of a swearword. If it thinks it hears a forbidden phrase, the software either fades out the offending syllables or simply replaces the rude word with a similar-sounding but clean alternative lifted from earlier speech without a second’s delay. M$

the poo of homogenized discourse

Jeremiah Owyang (friend of Dave Winer) posted a message [on friendfeed]:

Despite all the hubbub about Blogs 'killing' mainstream media in 2005-2006, most of today's top blogs resemble mainstream media or star columnists.

A hubbub of comments ensued.


kiwi light:

The room is painted a "poo" brown. - not very nice. When you buy telepresence you buy the room including all the furnishings etc. this means that every telepresence room looks the same so even if you are using telepresence with other companies you still get the feeling that you are around the same table

trompe l'oeil images.

In both instances, a corporate illusion is introduced to create perspectival effects of continuity, simultaneity, likeness. A necessary part of incorporation?

Random streamitis

Not to entirely be confused with stromateis:

Can you tell that this:



is this:



If you are in Tallahassee, FL, or select other locales, Wal-Mart can look like this. Still the same inside, as far as I know (didn't enter the one pictured above). Wal-Mart will adapt.


It is good to find the all too, too scrotechafed WonderChicken returning. Who, by the way, is so right about geekcons as to be almost Scriptural. Geeks need to find humans other than viral clones of their geekly pale selves to appreciate.


New oldmedia news: (for the NYT and all media, but especially the NYT, since you there are so high on interactivity) - put a little polling device next to every story you run, inviting your readers to respond to the question, "Is this news?"


Corporations: don't survey or poll anyone over 50 about anything, ever. Life is too short for your shite.

[Add]: Gathering of silence