Trevor Cook

The Internet Intellectual

Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live  By Jeff Jarvis  (Simon & Schuster, 263 pp., $26.99)

via www.tnr.com

This is a scathing critique and highly relevant antidote to much of the bullshit that poses as thought on the Internet. One characteristic that doesn't get much attention here but which I have encountered in many of these "Internet intellectuals", some of which are listed in the article, is the absolute derision they have for anyone who challenges their bland everything has changed pronouncements. Some years ago I was roundly smacked down by a few of these internet intellectuals for my view that the Internet would not lead to the death of public relations, but in fact would mean a strong growth in the PR industry. Apparently, I didn't understand that the Internet would make spin unsustainable. All was now openness and collaboration and, well, you get the drift.Read the review.

I wander, however, whether this internet intellectual literature is not just a genre simialr to the business and self-help generes which exhibit the same characteristics. Particularly, the tendency to claim the bleeding obvious as an unprecedented insight (happy customers drive revenue growth, exercise promotes fitness etc), usually embodied in some faddish formulation and boosted by grabs from research taken out of context and stitched together to give a sort of scholarly glow. It might be unfair to compare the work of Jarvis, Shirky, Rosen, Scoble et al with real scholarly work - this stuff is more a bit of middle-brow, airport lounge stimulation for the jaded corporate traveller then the work of Habermas, Sennett, Arendt et al. with which the reviewer compares Jarvis. How seriously should we take it all? And perhaps the work of the internet gurus is no more harmful than the books that tell you to eat less fat and walk more, or to set goals and focus on achieving them. 

Perhaps, we should just not take internet intellectulaism too seriously. 

At last, a half-way decent asylum seeker policy

THE Gillard government has shelved plans for offshore processing of asylum-seekers, announcing it will allow boat people to live and work in the community as detention centres overflow.

Under a plan announced by the Prime Minister today, all asylum-seekers will be processed on Australian soil with community detention and bridging visas provided to those unable to be processed within the existing detention centre network.

via www.theaustralian.com.au

Let's hope the Government and Opposition keep on squabbling and give onshore processing a chance to work.

A presidential race you don't want to miss

The Republican primaries are providing some fun, but they've got nothing on Ireland's current presidential race. Polling day is on 27 October and so far seven candidates are in the race for what is an apparently (mostly) ceremonial post. Here are some of the fun candidates.

First, there is David Norris. The first openly gay person to hold office in Ireland. If he wins later this month he would apparently be the world's first openly gay head of state. He also did a lot to rehabilitate James Joyce's reputation in Dublin (including through one of the first guides to Joyce's Dublin, a copy of which I got from Gould's bookshop). Norris has had some hurdles to overcome in his quest for the Presidency. There was a letter he wrote (while an Irish Senator) seeking clemency for a former boyfriend who had been convicted of illegal sexual activity with a 15 year old boy in Israel. Then there was his controversial views on an appropriate age of consent. Now there are the revelations that he was being paid a disability allowance (for 16 years) after stepping down as a lecturer at Trinity College, at the same time he was a Trinity representative (elected by alumni) in the Irish Senate (Seanad). And, of course, will he have a partner living with him in the President's official residence. Norris has gone from frontrunner to also ran in the opinion polls after these episodes.

Second, there is Martin McGuiness. It's not immediately obvious why McGuiness, a deputy first minister in Northern Ireland, and former IRA chief of staff during the Troubles, would want to opt to run for the ceremonial post in the southern republic. Most speculation seems to be around capitalising on, and boosting, Sinn Fein's good performance in this year's Irish election (9% of the national vote), or a desire to be President when the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising comes around. Irish Presidents hold office for 7 years. The latter is unlikely as he has little chance of winning. Nevertheless, he is running third out of seven candidates in recent opinion polls behind Labour's Michael D. Higgins and independent Sean Gallagher. And this despite some savage attacks on McGuiness because of his IRA background. 

Then there is Dana Rosemary Scallon. Dana won the Eurovision song contest in 1970. She has had a successful musical and political career (as a Member of the European Parliament). In 1991 she re-located with her family to Birmingham Alabama. Sometime thereafter, the exact timing is a matter of intense controversy, Dana became a US citizen, a fact that has become just one more controversial turn in this remarkable campaign. Scallon sees her dual citizenship as an advantage, helping to build links between the two countries, though she is also willing to relinquish her US citizenship if the people of Ireland want her to. 

Other candidates have also been touched by controversies, Labour's MIchael D. Higgins, the frontrunner, lost his closest adviser perhaps over concerns about his past as a tobacco industry lobbyist. Fine Gael, the party of current PM Enda Kenny, and senior partner with Labour in the governing coalition, has a candidate Gay Mitchell who is now described by the media as "embattled".

The amazing thing about all this is that it is supposed to be a ribbon-cutting role. Still it's bloody great entetainment if you like electoral politics.

Federal Labor needs more than a leadership change

Sure, Gillard is a hopeless prime minister. Everything she does seems to go pear shape. And quickly.

It may not be her fault, not in the sense that she is a bad leader, a horrible person, a twit.

Though she does have some form when it comes to plain, straight out stupidity.

Gillard came up with the 2004 election clanger - Medicare Gold - a true shocker.

She devised the ALP's infamous immigration policy as Opposition spokesperson - it's ironic that she is wearing the blowback from this crazy tougher but kinder approach.

No, Gillard's real problem is desperation.

A smart (i.e.in the Machiavelllian, Mario Puzo sense) politician would have insisted on Kevin leading the party to the 2010 election. 

She should have told the conspirators that it was too late for a change so close to the election.

If Kevin won (almost certainly with a reduced majority) the party could have told him to move on sometime in 2011. Presumably, the colleagues would still have despised him just as much.

If Kevin lost, well she would have been Opposition leader and had to do what every great PM has done and that is win from Opposition (except Curtin who became PM after a vote of no-confidence).

I think coming from Opposition would have given her much greater authority with the electorate - it always seems to.

But she couldn't wait.

And then when the election result was inconclusive, she couldn't say no either.

The Greens got a carbon tax, Wilkie got pokie reform, Oakeshott got a tax forum.

And the ALP got back into the Lodge with enough saddle bag lead to defeat Black Caviar.

Where's Labor's issue, what's happening with Education. Crean seems to have put that particular revolution to sleep - or was Gillard's performance in that portfolio so bad that the ALP has decided that the less said in that area the better.

Desperation for office is a poor substitute for cold, hard political calculation.

Kevin is probably desperate too. Desperate for a second chance to prove the detractors wrong.

But, if Kevin comes back, he'll inherit Julia's leaden deals. Pretty soon he'll be looking as dopey as she does at the moment.

If the ALP is going to win in 2013 (yes I realise how stupid that sounds) it will have to come up with an issue that can turn the election into a referendum. 

Something that makes the mob want to vote ALP. Something about which Abbott can't say 'me too'. Something that can unite the ALP's blue collar and green-leaning constituencies. 

A Labor version of Howard's "who do you trust on interest rates".

They hope that Abbott himself could be that issue, but the electorate seems to be getting used to the idea of Abbott PM.

In any event, the Abbott bogey isn't good enough to turn this doomed ship around.

If Kevin's got that issue in his knapsack, then he might succeed.

God knows what it would be.

If he hasn't got the silver bullet issue, it will be a sad reprise to his roman candle like political career.