Of Mice and Monsters

Posted on by
1

A recent study published in Nature Methods found that laboratory-confined mice and rats experience significantly elevated stress levels in the presence of male animal experimenters.  The study was authored by Jeffrey S. Mogil the head of the Pain Genetics Lab at McGill University and experiments were led by colleague Robert E. Sorge .  Mogil described the amount of stress experienced as “massive” and compared it to what the animals might feel when they are stuffed “in a very small tube so the mouse can’t move for 15 minutes”. In an article in Nature, he described it as “shockingly stressful”.

mouse tube restraint

It is yet one more unexpected variable that experimenters have failed to capture and that likely contributes to the overall lack of reliability of animal experiments.  The study itself concludes by saying:

“stress caused by male experimenters may represent a confound of much existing animal research, extending even to nonbehavioral studies in which tissues were obtained from live rodents euthanized by either male or female personnel.”

Mogil has said that it’s:

“More than just a curiosity, this stress response can throw a curveball into study results.”

The McGill University press release announcing the study’s findings stated that:

“Scientists inability to replicate research findings using mice and rats has contributed to mounting concern over the reliability of such studies”

and specifically with respect to this particular experiment stated that the

“reaction may skew research findings.”

Douglas Wahlsten of the University of Alberta was quoted as saying:

“It’s the kind of result a lot of people wish wouldn’t happen,”

Co-author of the study Robert Sorge summarized by saying:

“Our findings suggest that one major reason for lack of replication of animal studies is the gender of the experimenter”

These quotes are not from animal advocates or committed critics of animal experimentation but are from the experimenters themselves.  At the conclusion of the New York Times article on the study, Mogil suggests that male experimenters could potentially mitigate this factor by “sit[ting] in the room with the rodents for 30 to 60 minutes before conducting experiments.” But he says “no one is going to do that” and settles for suggesting that the gender of the experimenter be included in the Methods section of future publications.

What’s (not really) amazing is that the experimenters in this case don’t even seem to be pretending to take their efforts as seriously as their rhetoric would suggest.  If the fate of humanity hinges on animal experimentation, if countless human lives hang in the balance, then spending 30 to 60 minutes allowing an animal’s stress level to subside before performing an experiment would seem worthwhile if it increased the likelihood of reliable results.  But “no one is going to do that”.

As the name of Pain Genetics Laboratory suggests, Mogil and his colleagues are no strangers to inflicting pain on animals.  Indeed, it is their speciality.

In fact, Mogil’s laboratory has developed a so-called Mouse Grimace Scale so as to better quantify the degree of pain being inflicted on the animals in their laboratory (the Mouse Grimace Scale was of use for this recent study).  In developing the Mouse Grimace Scale, experimenters injected animals with acetic acid and filmed their reactions so that video footage of painful expressions could be studied frame and frame and then categorized.

Mogil explained that:Mouse_grimace_scale__95402a

“Grimaces were most pronounced for pain that lasted for a matter of minutes or hours, and for discomfort in joints and internal organs.”

Mogil has both been an active participant in painful experiments on animals and has argued for the continued use of animals in such experiments. In 2010, Mogil co-authored a review article in the journal Pain titled “The Necessity of Animal Models in Pain Research.” This dual role of being an active experimenter as well as an advocate for continued experimentation makes Mogil a highly appropriate target for criticism by those who recognize the moral value of animal lives.

Finally, Mogil’s own experiments have provided more than adequate grounds for him to realize that inflicting pain on mice is wrong. In 2013 he gave a talk at the American Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting with the title “Mice are People Too” in which he stressed that mice have social lives.  One can only conclude that Mogil’s sees them as the kind of people that one can breed, manipulate, experiment on, and kill.

—————————–

The website for Jeffrey Mogil’s Pain Genetics Laboratory is most helpful in providing the following contact information for both the laboratory itself and for Jeffrey Mogil specifically:

MogilDepartment of Psychology
McGill University
1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Rm. N7/42
Montreal, QC  H3A 1B1
Canada

jeffrey.mogil@mcgill.ca
Tel.  514.398.6085
Fax.  514.398.4896
Lab.  514.398.2742

Speaking for Animals…or Why You’re Not the Lorax

Posted on by
1

loraxRodents despise animal experimenters and would welcome targeted property destruction aimed at securing their own freedom; a significant number would purportedly even support physical violence directed at experimenters.  Rats lean toward escalating tactics while mice are generally more concerned that such actions may provide a pretext for increased government repression.

Giraffes condemn violence in all its forms and prefer we aim to raise awareness and gradually shift paradigms.  Elephants have yet to formulate a clear opinion regarding attacks on zoo trainers and circus ringmasters; they consistently (some may say tactfully) avoid the issue but are strongly suspected to tacitly support aggressive actions such the recent trampling to death of a hunter in Zimbabwe.

Cows are evenly divided on the question of welfare campaigns versus Francione-style abolitionist campaigns.  Chickens are overwhelmingly abolitionists and loathe single-issue campaigns. Turkeys are woefully pessimistic about the prospects for change and offer no suggestions on a realistic path forward for themselves or other animals.

  1. I Am the Lorax

The Lorax famosly “speaks for the trees” but he is also “in charge of the Brown Bar-ba-loots who played in the shade in their Bar-ba loot suits” not to mention the Swomee Swans and the Humming-fish.  The Lorax speaks for the trees “for the trees have no tongues” and while Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee Swans, and Humming-fish presumably do have tongues, they seemingly have no voice and are reliant on the “shortish”, “oldish”, “brownish”, and “mossy” figure of the Lorax to speak for them.

The less whimsical animals outside the confines of Dr. Seuss’ books also lack a voice (at least a readily understandable human voice) and are consequently in the unfortunate position of relying on others to speak for them. It should be remembered that the Lorax wasn’t all that successful in defending those in his charge—even the Truffula trees were all chopped down!

So often positioning ourselves as the “voice of the voiceless”, animal rights activists regularly plead that we must put our internal squabbles and ideological differences aside and simply do what “the animals” would want.  Campaigns and tactics may be justified by suggesting that they are what animals would want.

But to assume that one has special access to the minds of animals and knows with a great level of detail and certainty what they would want is—to put it mildly—a morally precarious position. It is akin to assuming the role of a (plastic) shaman purporting to occupy the space and serving as an intermediary between animals and human beings.  Of course, it is a charade.

Just as clergy may purport to have special access to the mind of God so as to elevate their status and secure their own power, there are those in the animal rights movement who (perhaps not explicitly) purport to have special access to the minds of animals thereby gaining unquestioning support.  It is often unclear as to whether those who claim to know the desires of animals are simply deceiving others or if they are deceiving themselves as well…but very little hinges on that particular detail.

  1. So What Then?

And yet, an animal liberation movement that is not “for animals” is absurd on its face. Consequently, there is no alternative but to attempt to discern the preferences of animals and to act accordingly; to put the interests of animals at the forefront (keeping in mind that “interests” and “preferences” are not interchangeable). But it’s important to recognize that no one has special access and that pleas of “for the animals” and “what the animals would want” are insufficient.

We can, of course, be reasonably certain that social animals won’t fare well in isolation and that no one cares to have their throat cut.  We know that animals have certain basic biological needs and that denying them represents a harm.  We know that cigarettes are dangerous and consequently forcing monkeys to smoke is wrong; forcibly addicting animals to dangerous drugs is wrong.

We don’t know if dolphins would have us circulate online petitions or if zebras would cringe at any of PETA’s billboards.

We can spend time with particular animals and learn about their preferences as individuals but even this clearly has its limits; your dog cannot stand in for all canines.  We can look to the scientific work done by individuals such as Marc Bekoff, Sylvia Earle, Jane Goodall and others.  These things can inform our decisions about how to work on behalf of animals but no matter what, we cannot legitimately shift the responsibility for our decisions onto the backs of animals.

 

Without a Word for “Animal”

Posted on by
2

As previously quoted, Kathleen Jamie has written that “there was a time…when there were no wild animals because every animal was wild”.  Her point can be extended by suggesting that there have been times and places where there were no “animals” at all because all animals were individuals (or at least representatives of particular species). A koala wasn’t an animal but was simply a koala nor was a raven an animal but rather simply a raven. A koala and a raven are clearly very different individuals and haven’t always both fallen under a homogenizing term such as “animal”.

In Creatures of Empire, Viriginia DeJohn Anderson notes one such time and place when this was the case. She writes that:

“Although Europeans placed all nonhuman creatures into a genuine category of animals, Indians may instead have conceived of animals only as distinct species.”

Anderson is speaking specifically of Algonquin-speaking Indians in New England and the Chesapeke region of colonial America.

She continues explaining that:

“Colonists who compiled lists of native vocabulary recorded names for many kinds of animals, but no Indian word for “animal” itself…The absence of a clear equivalent for animal is striking, since compilers of native lexicons typically recorded words in common use and it seems unlikely that the term never came up in conversation. If this linguisitic peculiarity represented a genuine conceptual difference, it suggests that Indians did not conceive of the natural world in terms of a strict human-animal dichotomy but rather as a place characterized by a diversity of living beings.” (18)

The same point has been made on a theoretical level by Jacques Derrida.  In The Animal That Therefore I Am, he explains that humans use this “catch-all concept”:

“in spite of the infinite space that separates the lizard from the dog, the protozoon from the dolphin, the shark from the lamb, the parrot from the chimpanzee, the camel from the eagle, the squirrel from the tiger or the elephant from the cat, the ant from the silkworm or the hedgehog from the echidna”. (402)

He suggests that:

“Animal is a word that men have given themselves the right to give. ..They have given themselves the word in order to corral a large number of living beings within a single concept” (400)

And that the term is applied to:

“all living things that man does not recognize as his fellows, his neighbors, or his brothers” (402)

The “catch-all concept” is not without its consequences:

The confusion of all nonhuman living creatures within the general and common category of the animal is not simply a sin against rigorous thinking, vigilance, lucidity, or empirical authority; it is also a crime. Not a crime against animality precisely, but a crime of the first order against the animals, against animals.” (416)

Given that Derrida describes this as a crime “against animals” it is important to point out that the culprits are not limited to those we may consider to be paradigmatic knife-wielding, animal exploiters. The concept animal is (perhaps out of necessity as we are not free to create our own language from the ground up) obviously employed by those working toward animal liberation. On one level this may be deemed trivial as it is seemingly a mere choice of words which can be pragmatic; so long as we don’t forget who we are talking about there is little chance of harm.  But can we realistically avoid such forgetting when employing a term that necessarily suggests that chimpanzees and spiders belong to one category while human beings to a distinct (and more elevated?) category?  Can we avoid having our minds warped with speciesim given language that we seemingly have little alternative but to employ?

What if we do forget who we are talking about when we say “animal”? What if we forget that “animal rights” involves so many diverse beings that there is no uniform set of interests for such rights to protect? There can be no animal rights per se but, at best, species-specific rights that are more-or-less applicable to particular individuals.  Yet even this approach will mask the diversity of interests of individuals belonging to the same species. It is obvious that not all humans have the same interests and that attempts to posit rights almost inevitably end in conflict and yet the same thing is seemingly not so obvious when applied to nonhuman animals where the range of diversity is many times greater.

For example, there are some who would favor genetically eliminating carnivores so as to spare prey animals much suffering.  Would this safeguard certain rights or violate certain rights (both? neither?)? Does it benefit animals or harm animals?  How ought animal rights activists respond?

It may be impossible to simply discard the word or the concept of “animal” but at a bare minimum we would be wise to continually remind ourselves that there are no animals but only “a diversity of living beings” of which we are a part.

A World Without Domesticated Animals: Veganism’s Endpoint

Posted on by
4

“There was a time—until very recently in the scheme of things—when there were no wild animals, because every animal was wild; and humans were few.” –Kathleen Jamie, Sightlines (2012)

After my recent post on Rod Coronado, it occurred to me that part of the reason that Coronado is not universally embraced by the animal rights movement is that his efforts have largely been on behalf of wild animals and that the interests of wild animals are not given a significant amount of attention by those in the AR movement. Consequently, efforts on behalf of wild animals do not count for as much within the movement.

The fate of domesticated animals clearly dominates within the movement with anti-hunting campaigns probably being the most notable exception. Yet I would suspect that hunting is generally not the greatest threat to wild animals; I would suspect that parking lots, shopping malls, subdivisions, and agriculture represent significantly greater threats.

At first glance, this emphasis on domesticated animals (and animals raised for food even moreso) may appear to make sense.  Domesticated animals certainly appear to be the primary victims of human exploitation.  Every aspect of their lives from birth to death is dictated by human interests.  The very fact that they are domesticated means that they have been manipulated in profound ways; ways that are generally to their detriment such as by being bred to gain weight at an incredible pace or to have aesthetic features that score well in dog shows but may inhibit natural functions such as breathing. In contrast, wild animals clearly do not face the same degree of confinement, do not have their food so severely adulterated, and can seemingly live in the social arrangements natural for their species.  Furthermore, much of the harm suffered by wild animals—such as predation—does not appear to be at the hands of humans and therefore may not motivate human intervention.

But the over-emphasis on domesticated animals is problematic in part because, at least from my perspective, one goal of the animals rights movement needs to be a world without domesticated animals…that is a world with no cats, no dogs, no cows, no chickens, no mail order catalogs full of genetically manipulated mice available for purchase.  This is part of the vision that should not be shyed away from even if it is counterintuitive or unpalatable to the general population. Despite the slogans printed on t-shirts, the lives of animals are not saved by your decision to go vegan.  When somone adopts a vegan diet, there is no truck that transports a fixed number of animals from factory farm to idyllic sanctuary. The decision to go vegan, at best, saves animals from the fate of ever being born (which is no small thing given that, at present, domesticated animals are born into an “eternal Treblinka”).

Ignoring wild animals creates a situation where people participate in the movement with no long term goal other than perhaps universal veganism or an end to a particular variety of exploitation.  And the tactics adopted may be counterproductive.  Tactics need to be consistent with or at least not contrary to a world without domesticated animals.  Furthermore, an explicitly anti-domestication position also creates the possibility for much-needed alliances with radical environmentalists, green anarchists, and those engaged in indigenous struggles.

“[T]he driving back of the human species to pre-invasion boundaries,” as Ronnie Lee says, needs to be a priority.  This means that as a defensive measure, habitat preservation needs to be a priority and, as an offensive measure, human claimed terrain needs to be returned to the animals who once occupied it.  Too often, matters of habitat preservation are left  for environmentalists to address on their own as if an animal could be severed from her environment without being harmed in the process.  The current activist division of labor that puts individual animals (primarily domesticated animals) within the sphere of the animal rights movement and habitat preservation (and species level interests) within the sphere of environmentalists is dysfunctional.

As a final point, I would extend the idea of no domesticated animals even further–probably leaving the AR movement at this point–and suggest that the vision to pursue is one where even humans are no longer domesticated animals but are once again themselves wild.

 

 

 

Letter to the Editor re “Oregon Zoo Tiger…Dies”

Posted on by
1

Letter to the Editor re: “Oregon Zoo Tiger, 15, Suffers Apparent Seizures, Dies”
Submitted: March 26, 2014
News outlet: The Register-Guard

The Oregon Zoo recently announced that 15 year old tiger Nicole has died.  According to the Zoo’s announcement, Nicole was born at the John Ball Zoological Garden in Michigan in 1998 and was transferred to the Oregon Zoo in 2000 where she remained until her death.  Her brother Mikhail remains on exhibit at the Zoo.

Nicole was thus a captive her entire life and never knew that being a tiger does not necessarily mean existing merely to amuse and be gawked at by humans or that tiger habitat generally does not include coffee stands and gift shops.  She likely did not know that her experience as a tiger was incredibly unique even if she knew all too well that it was painfully, perhaps mind-numbingly, shallow.

In the death announcement Oregon Zoo officials praised her for her docile nature as she was reportedly quite compliant for procedures such as blood draws and dental work.  By a captor’s logic, docility is the highest of virtues and yet there was no possibility of her ever being released for “good behavior”.  Her zoo experience rendered her dysfunctional and dependent, unable to live a normal tiger life in the wild, unable to live free of those who confined her.

She was born into captivity and she died in captivity.  It is the least glamorous and most depressing of tragedies.

Is There No Room for Rod Coronado in the Animal Rights Movement? The Problem with Veganism as the Moral Baseline

Posted on by
95

It is almost difficult to believe that the accomplishments of Rod Coronado can all be attributed to a single person with abilities not too different than our own; in this way he has demonstrated what is possible.  It does not take superhero powers to sink a whaling ship, light a match, or set an animal free from a cage.  It does, of course, take a fair amount of bravery to put one’s beliefs into action but that is well within our abilities.

Rod Coronado has dealt serious body blows to the whaling industry, the fur industry, and the animal experimentation industry.  Animals who seemed destined to spend their lives in locked cages only to meet violent deaths were set free by a stranger who arrived in the night, risked—and ultimately—sacrificed his freedom to give them a chance to be free.  The mind reels at what an animal be must be thinking and feeling as a cage door is opened by a stranger, her torment is over, and she escapes into the night.

 Having been released from prison and now off of probation, Rod Coronado is once again defending animals.  With the profile he has created for himself and the scrutiny he will forever be operating under, his tactics, at this point, are exclusively within the confines of the law.  Coronado is currently engaged in a speaking tour aimed at building momentum amongst the grassroots to stop wolf hunting in states where it is currently legal.

But is He Vegan?

But there is a lingering question about Rod Coronado that many animal rights activists can’t help but worry about: Is Rod Coronado currently vegan?  In 2006, he told the LA Weekly that he was not vegan at that time; he was also not vegan during his time as a fugitive. On the current speaking tour, Coronado was asked  by Jon Hochschartner if he was currently vegan and Coronado said he was not. (I was not present at that talk at Skidmore College but did see Coronado speak in Eugene, Oregon where the question was not raised.) The question has also been raised and vigorously debated in various online venues. Comrade Black conducted an interview with Coronado for Profane Existence regarding the current speaking tour and was criticized for not explicitly asking if Coronado is vegan.

The question then becomes what to  make of this fact: Rod Coronado is not vegan.  One who strictly adheres to the notion of “veganism as a moral baseline” would necessarily have to condemn Coronado. [1] [2] Such condemnations run the risk of dismissing what Coronado has done, and continues to do, for animals.  It may prioritize his consumer choices over and above the fact that his actions for animals have indisputably saved lives and served as inspiration for others to perform similar actions; and it is not an abstract set of animals that Coronado has “saved” but particular individuals. 

The “veganism as a moral baseline” idea is most commonly used to demarcate “us” and “them”; it goes beyond the claim that veganism is praiseworthy or even morally obligatory and posits the veganism is the litmus test for credibility and participation within the movement.  Deviating from a vegan diet (or perhaps more accurately a vegan lifestyle) cannot be compensated for with other actions.  If Coronado is not vegan, then he can and must be dismissed; his actions on behalf of animals are essentially irrelavent in this discussion.  Theoretically he could have delivered a knock-out blow to the fur industry and we could be living a in a world free of fur farms and his non-vegan diet would nonetheless mean that he was not one of “us” (animal advocates  in good standing) but essentially still one of “them” (animal exploiters).

This not only seems bizarre to me but also depressingly self-defeating.  Is there genuinely no room in the animal rights movement for Rod Coronado?

Excommunicating Ex-Vegans?

To be clear, I would fault Coronado for consuming animal products but could not deny that he is fighting more passionately for the world I want to see than I am.  The animal rights movement need not excommunicate someone for deviating from veganism; at some point we came to feel as though we must but we really do not have turn people away like this.  At the same time, letting go of the “veganism as the moral baseline” idea does not mean we should stop promoting veganism.  Veganism can be zealously promoted while simultaneously accepting the support and the participation of nonvegans and ex-vegans in an animal rights movement.  We may see wider acceptable of veganism if people are allowed to participate and share what is in their heart before they have radically altered their diet.

“Veganism as the moral baseline” may simply create an unnecessarily high barrier to entry into the animal rights movement.  As Dylan Powell recently wrote “An issue…that should have a broad focus gets presented through a very specific and normative lens and typically one that is very demanding”.  The demandingness likel y satisfies our ego but may do so at the expense of the overall movement.  Furthermore, it is an idiosyncratic demandingness: foregoing dairy creamer is perhaps demanding in some sense but liberating animals from cages and risking imprisonment is demanding in a whole different way.  Perhaps both are morally obligatory but the former is expected according to the “veganism is the moral baseline” catechism while literal liberation is not even consistently lauded (as it happens, many of “veganism as the moral baseline” adherents would would likely condemn such an act as violence).

A Movement Without Allies

The full threat that Rod Coronado has represented is his commitment to earth liberation, animal liberation, and indigenous resistance.   The ability of someone like Rod Coronado to unite these movements is a real danger to industries that exploit the earth and its animal constituents.  As he explained in the Profane Existence interview, “animals and nature…are ground up by the same machines” and so opportunities for solidarity between these movements are everywhere.

Yet “veganism as the moral baseline” dogma effectively eliminates the possibility of the animal rights movement building meaningful alliances with other social justice movements even ones as closely related to its aims as earth liberation and indigenous resistance. 

The animal liberation movement has proven itself quite skilled in finding enemies but given the industrial scale of the atrocities compared with the meagerness of our resources, we would be wise to start looking for friends.

Conclusion: Rod as Reductio

In the end, it is my claim that any movement dedicated to animal rights and/or animal liberation, that does not have room for someone like Rod Coronado is seriously flawed to the point of being almost incoherent and self-defeatingly insular. The example of Rod Coronado serves as a reductio ad absurdum argument against the “veganism as the moral basline” position.  If Rod Coronado is not for animal liberation, then no one is.

——————-

NOTE: Future dates on Rod Coronado’s speaking tour include:

  • Thursday March 20th Oakland CA. 7PM at The Holdout: 2313 San Pablo Avenue, near 23rd ST.
  • Friday March 21st San Francisco CA. 7pm at The Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics: 518 Valencia Street, near 16th Street BART.
  • Saturday March 22nd Animal Liberation Forum in Long Beach CA at 12pm.
  • Sunday March 23rd Animal Advocacy Museum in Pasadena CA. at 6pm.
  • Monday March 24th Fresno State University at 6pm, building TBA. 
  • Thursday March 27th Humboldt State University.
Rod Coronado at Strong Hearts Cafe in Syracuse, NY (www.strongheartscafe.com)

Rod Coronado at Strong Hearts Cafe in Syracuse, NY (www.strongheartscafe.com)

WIRED Advises We Submit to Tech’s Embrace

Posted on by
2

In two recent opinion pieces appearing in WIRED (March 10, 2014), the publication’s tech enthusiasts have seemingly taken on the tone of rape apologists or perhaps the tone of rapists and abusers themselves. The articles are titled: 

“Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It” 

“Tech That Tracks Your Every Move Can Be Convenient, Not Creepy” 

Kevin Kelly, author of the first article mentioned above as well as the book What Technology Wants, explains that “ubiquitous monitoring and surveillance will be the norm” and “there’s no stopping it”. There’s no stopping it so we might as well try to relax and enjoy it?

He assures the reader that “a massively surveilled world is not a world [he] would design” but also that “mass surveillance is coming either way.”  It’s coming either way, resisting would simply make things worse for us.

In a surprisingly honest assessment, Kelly explains that mass surveillance is inevitable because it “is the bias of digital technology”. This is a departure from the usual line offered by tech enthusiasts/apologists that technology is neutral and that its consequences—good or bad—hinge entirely on how people choose to use it. So for Kelly to explain that digital technology is biased toward mass surveillance and not really humor the idea that a free choice is being made therefore has the sound of an admission or confession.

Kelly argues that such mass surveillance would be preferable if it was reshaped into what he calls coveilance: a situation where everyone is watching everyone else as opposed to surveillance where one group monitors another.  Coveillance is mutual (but presumably not consensual) and consequently less onerous; it means we all keep each other in check.  Without trying to write satire, he defends coveillance by pointing out that “for eons humans have lived in tribes and clans where every act was open and visible and there were no secrets” and so consequently “there wouldn’t be a backlash against a circular world where we constantly spy on each other because we lived like this for a million years”. Mass surveillance is apparently just like band society!  And so if it’s done properly “it can feel comfortable.”

Moving on to Sean Madden’s article “Tech That Tracks Your Every Move Can Be Convenient, Not Creepy”.  Madden may indeed be less outwardly creepy than Kevin Kelly.  His article, on the surface, encourages tech designers to pay greater attention to consumer desires; there is less emphasis on the fact that we lack choices.  It’s a softer, savvier approach toward a similar end.

Madden rightly points out that in many contexts a high level of control can be perceived as creepy and thus alienating; the danger being that this might potentially cause consumers to withdraw.  In his example, current technology allows visitors to Disney World to share information so that costumed characters can greet children by name. But at least for the moment, this level of pseudo-familiarity may not be welcomed on city streets. What’s magical at Disney World is creepy elsewhere.

But Madden tips his hand when explaining that this is “just as much a design problem as it is an ethical one”.  I can’t help but read that as an attempt to reduce an ethical problem to a design problem; the technoculture consistently seeks technical answers to what are fundamentally not technical problems.

If this sounds like a less than charitable interpretation of Madden’s perspective, there is additional support for such an interpretation later in his article as he explains that “designers will have to make opt-in the norm, rather than opt-out. Designing to nudge patrons towards a behavior means demonstrating its value, not removing or stripping away alternatives.”

Designers therefore need to create an environment, set the mood, and cue the music in just the right way so as to “nudge patrons towards a [desired] behavior”.  The sophisticated Madden realizes that to get a “Yes” it is most important to give the impression that one is free to say “No” and that this is to be done “not just in words, but in visual elements, user experience, and more.”

Stanley Diamond on Telephones (1974)

Posted on by
Reply

Diamond on Phones 1974

“The imperious ring of the telephone…interrupts all other activities. Its trivial, dissociated and obsessive use reflects both the alienating character of the society that prizes it so highly , and the transnational corporations that profit from it. Thus the telephone as ordinarily used becomes a sign, not of communication, but of the lack of communication, and of the consequent compelling desire to relate to others, but to relate at a distance–and in the mode of frustrated orality. The telephone is not an abstractly or inherently “rational” instrument, but an integrated aspect of the repressive culture of monopoly capitalism. In our society, the machine becomes the mediator , and finally the locus of dissociated personal impulses.” 

Stanley Diamond
In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization (1974)
p. 44

In Search of the Primitive book cover

 

The Infrastructure of Totalitarianism

Posted on by
1

“People like [Anthony] Levandowski are gentrifying neighborhoods, flooding the market with noxious commodotities, and creating the infrastructure for an unimaginable totalitarianism.”
–The Counterforce [1,2]

A group referring to themselves as The Counterforce has escalated tactics by staging a home demo at the Berkeley home of Google employee Anthony Levandowski and leafletting his neighborhood.  Initially the dispute that Counterforce has dramatically entered focused on two things: (1) private luxury buses operated by Google and other tech companies are making illegal use of public bus stops, effectively appropriating a public good; and (2) the gentrifying effect that the tech industry’s workforce has on the city of San Francisco.  Activists have been physically blocking Google buses at public bus stops as a means of registering their complaint.

While still pressing these grievances, Counterforce has added a third, more ambitious, objection.  It is Google’s vision of the future—exemplified in the work of Anthony Levandowski—and the company’s collaboration with the government’s military and surveillance efforts.  They have shifted from the micro to the macro.  The conversation is deliberately being shifted from whether to Google should pay a small fee for use of public infrastructure to their role in “creating the infrastructure for an unimaginable totalitarianism.”

Why Levandowski?

Critics of the Counterforce action have correctly pointed out that Google’s future prospects do not hinge in any real way on Levandowski.  He is a high level employee who has played the lead role in the company’s driverless car program but is certainly not critical in any sense.  He is not the CEO and even if he was the same criticism would apply: CEOs are no less disposable.

A fine grade division of labor and the notion of corporate personhood serves to dilute personal responsibility to its vanishing point.  In some sense, no one at Google is responsible for what Google does.  Activists are therefore confronted with a rigged shell game.  To pick someone out of the crowd may seem unfair and yet this particular crowd is a real danger.  Hannah Arendt explains that “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him…terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Consequently one might be tempted to ask: “Why Eichmann?”

Levandowski may have appeared on Counterforce’s radar due to a lengthy profile that appeared in The New Yorker last November detailing his efforts to bring Google’s driver-less car to market.  Indeed, the flyer Counterforce distributed in Levandowski’s neighborhood is prefaced with a quote from Levandowski that appears in The New Yorker article: “My fiancee is a dancer in her soul. I am a robot.”

The generally praiseworthy article describes Levandowski as “equal parts idealist and venture capitalist.  He wants to fix the world and make a fortune doing it”.  He is described as someone who “just has more faith in robots than most of us do” with a “gift for seeing through a machine’s eyes”

It is not likely that Levandowski was targeted because he is unique amongst his Google colleagues; on the contrary, he was likely targeted because he is emblematic.  Many of his colleagues will not be able to help but realize that they could have just as easily been selected and exposed and shamed.  For activists to pick somebody out of the crowd and detail their role, connect that particular set of dots, is effectively to indict every person in a similar role.

As an added incentive for selecting Levandowski is the fact that he has ambitions to build luxury condos and therefore contributes to the gentrification of San Francisco in a significant way.  This makes Counterforce’s choice relevant to all three grievances currently being fought over.

Furthermore, Levandowski has been financially rewarded for his contributions to realizing a fully-automated future; there is no reason why he should not also experience some negative social feedback from those who disapprove of his Google endorsed worldview.

Why Home Demos?

Home demos have been employed by activists committed to various causes including animal liberation as well as anti-abortion efforts.  They are disparaged by many but have often produced results.

A 2011 article in Society & Animals quotes an activist with experience participating in home demos who explains that not only is it an effective tactic but “it doesn’t take a lot of resources and it doesn’t take a lot of people”.   Reports are not entirely clear but the demo at Levandowski’s residence may have been carried out by as few as ten people and lasted less than an hour in duration yet it has already garnered media attention in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside and a host of publications that specifically cover the tech industry.  Silicon Beat wrote that “[a]ll this controversy couldn’t have come at a worse time for tech” which is another way of saying it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Ironically, one of Levandowski’s neighbors complained about the demo saying that “homes are supposed to be a safe place.”  Ironic because part of the impetus for the demo was the gentrification of San Francisco caused by people like Levandowski which will result in many less financially well off individuals being displaced from the homes altogether.  In fact, for those without money, homes have never been such a safe space.  Failing to pay one’s rent or mortgage means that a person may be evicted as gunpoint if need be.  If the state finds one guilty of committing a crime, home is not a safe space, again a person will be dragged out.

It would be more accurate to say that those with money such as Levandowski are able to use private property—be it their homes or other property—to maintain a buffer between them and the consequences of their actions.  Activists staging home demos are working to breach that buffer and bring the harm of their actions to their neighborhood.

In the meanwhile, the future is already taking hold.  Levandowski says that to his three year old child, Adam, “everything’s a robot”.

From the flyer distributed by Counterforce in the neighborhood of Anthony Levandowski.

From the flyer distributed by Counterforce in the neighborhood of Anthony Levandowski.

Cities Are a Failed Experiment

Posted on by
1

“Urban growth involves one of the most extreme forms of ecological stress and land alteration.”

A recent study published in Nature’s open access journal Scientific Reports “questions the long held belief of a ‘golden age’ of sustainable early urban development.”  Researchers examined the past 6000 years of ecological history of the city of Akko, Israel.  Akko (or Acre) was selected in part because it is one of the longest continuously inhabited sites on earth—having being settled in the Early Bronze Age about 3000 BCE—and has a well-documented ecological history.

Researchers were able to juxtapose the city’s ecological history with the history of human settlement and draw conclusions regarding the sustainability of urban development.

Researchers found that Mediterranean forest quickly gave way to a shrub-steppe landscape very shortly after the appearance of the large urban structures of the Middle Bronze Age.  Other possible explanations such as non-anthropogenic climatic changes were examined but could not account for the changed landscape and the lost forest.

Increased agricultural production, commercial activity, and industrial activity “led to increased demands on local ecosystems…and to an encroachment on and a loss of natural biotopes” which necessarily means a loss of wildlife; the dead cityscape replaced the living landscape.

As population and population density grew, demands for water naturally increased.  Drawing increased amounts of water from natural reservoirs prevented those reservoirs from mitigating the harm caused by human activity as they otherwise would have.

In short:

The same mechanisms that degrade or overexploit the ecosystems nowadays were already at work, even if technologies and agro-innovations were markedly different during the pre-industrial era.

And:

Accepting large urban concentrations might need to concede an intrinsic impossibility to produce locally sustainable development.”

Human beings are a part of nature but the alien and artificial habitat of the city is not.

Cities are a failed experiment.

Akko Tower