Reading Twitter in Tehran

Dr. Melissa Hathaway’s title is Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace, National Security and Homeland Security Councils, The National Security Council. That makes her the Acting Cyber Czar in the Obama Administration. Her resume seems geeky and competent. We have not met.


Melissa, may I speak frankly?

I’m not really sure what your role in the administration is – or what it will become. We’ve never had a Cyber Czar before. This whole czar thing is new. I just wanted to bend your ear a bit about the people side of cyber. Too often we think that cyberspace is all about codes and infrastructure. And in a way that’s right. Technology has no ideology. A hammer, a plough, a satellite, a smartphone – it makes no difference. They are just tools. But we employ those tools in the service of humanity and of ideology. I’m hoping you’ll give that side of the equation serious consideration.

Much has been made of the role of Twitter in the recent Iranian elections. I’m sure you kept a close eye on it. Some have cast those events as harbingers of a more amenable Iran, of an Iran more inclined to moderation and dialogue. Still, it seemed to me that the use of Twitter by the urban, reform-minded youth of Iran became so co-mingled with the political agenda of the opposition that Twitter itself came to be seen as a window on a “real Iran” denied by the state-controlled media. The implication was that “new media” were somehow inherently democratic, immune to the distortions that beset mainstream media. That perception is at best incomplete, if not completely erroneous.

Here in the West, our own immersive communication environment lends a feeling of normalcy to a pervasive digital world that is still much the exception. Because we can access the electronic world so easily, it is easy to believe that our reality is the dominant reality. It was equally tempting to read the twittered reality flowing from Tehran as the will of the Iranian people. And it reflected, no doubt, the will of some of the Iranian people. And, perhaps most importantly, it was the reality we preferred. But think for a moment. A few weeks ago, supporters of Adam Lambert were accusing AT&T of swinging the American Idol vote to Kris Allen by providing phones for free text-messaging to Allen’s fans. The trivial may inform us here.

The message in this Idol accusation is that a minority view funneled through a restricted communication channel can masquerade as the majority. I have no doubt that Twitter-journalism reflected the strongly held views of one segment of the Iranian public. We probably did get a unique glimpse at the dreams and aspiration of the young professionals and intellectuals of Tehran. But there is also the real possibility that we saw a minority view artificially magnified by a restricted communication channel. That possibility prompts a consideration of the relationship between contemporary communication technology and ideology.

If you see the world through democratic eyes, the Internet appears the ideal political forum. Majority views can be ascertained while minority perspectives retain a seat at the table. If you see the world from an authoritarian perspective, the Internet is a powerful communication tool that can assure that the dominant perspective remains dominant as long as those pesky “flaws” get “patched.” Simultaneous with the Twitter Revolution in Iran, China launched Green Dam Youth Escort. This initiative includes a demand that every PC sold in China after July 1st have the Green Dam software installed, software that would allow the government to block user access to any “questionable” website.

The point is that we see technology through the eyes of our ideology. Here in America, the Internet is seen as a tool for democracy. The political powers that be in China see it as a tool to maintain the state. We would like to see the Iranian Twitter Revolution as the birth pangs of a western-style democracy. It may be that we just caught a brief, deceptive gleam from the lonely tower of a theocracy.

Give it a thought, Melissa, OK? Thanks.

About Con-Temporary Art?

Simone Lalongo is a young Italian artist whose work was featured at a show titled Emerging Talents: New Italian Artists that I attended this past April at Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina in Florence, Italy. He may have been among the young very hip people drifting through the gallery, but if so, we were not introduced.

Simone, may I speak frankly? Thank you.


Simone, I suppose you are too young to have read Marshall McLuhan. Canadian media theorist – very big in America in the 1960s? Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter. Trust me, you guys are cut from the same bolt of cloth. Huh? Oh, it’s an American idiom – it means you see the world in the same way. You see it was McLuhan who said, “Art is anything you can get away with.” Seriously, Simone, when I saw your – ah, exhibit? That tiny glass bottle filled with some water and your fingernail clippings? The plexiglass box with the stark lighting? Amazing, amazing, bella, bella bellissimo! I could not believe that you got away with it!


But then, of course, I read the display card, and bada bing, it all made sense! Bada bing? Oh, there is this TV show, The Sopranos, about these Italian-American mafia types . . . ah, it’s not important. Your card though, that was brilliant. No, no really. “The artist’s work becomes an angst filled vortex spinning in on it- and him-self searching for a potential solution, or what we might even call a cure.” I thought I would die! Hilarious! They’re fingernail clippings for god’s sake. You prankster you, I can’t believe they bought it! But wait, there is one part here I don’t understand. Where is it? Oh, yeah here: “His gramme of anxiety is the gramme that each of us consumes every day . . .” The Oxford English Dictionary defines gramme as “a unit of mass equal to 1/1000 of a kilogram.” Are you saying we eat that much in fingernails everyday!? Kinda gross. Simone, hey, Simone, where ya goin’ kid? Come on back! Was it something I said? Gee, kinda touchy. . .


We could, I suppose, blame it all on photography. Before photography art was all about realism. You tried to paint a realistic bison on the cave wall. Maybe you were going to feed a young hunter some mushrooms, spin him around a few times and flash a torch up on the painting so the kid would freak out there and not when the bison was actually charging you. Maybe you wanted to show the god of the hunt what you were after – sort of a magical “call ahead for faster service.” Who knows, but you wanted a real looking bison. Back in the 16th or 17th century you got hired to paint the Burgermeister’s daughter. That’s a little tougher. The idea was not so much to paint exactly what the Burgermeister’s daughter looked like, as it was to paint what the Burgermeister thought his daughter looked like. But it was all about shades of reality. Then in the mid-1800s photography made it’s debut. Point a camera, push a button. There was the Burgermeister’s daughter – as she really looked. Which created other problems that are part of another story.


The point is this; the best artist was no longer simply the person who captured reality most accurately with a brush. The camera did that. The best artist slowly became the one who captured the essence of the moment – the purest impression of the moment. Bada Bing – Monet, Manet and every other way. Now what is on the canvas is only part of art. What is said about the canvas, what is written about the canvas, how the artist explains the canvas – these become increasingly important issues. Which eventually lead to McLuhan’s observation and Simone’s fingernails in a bottle.


So is that such a big deal? A kid cons his way into a temporary exhibit? It may well be. I have two problems. Simone’s exhibit wasn’t the only simplistic construction at that show masquerading as art. Nor is the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina the only gallery playing along. I remember being at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago a few years ago, a show featuring the “best young artists in America.” It was equally unimpressive. Large photos mostly out of focus. Rambling erotic journals “framed” as art.


I have no problem with young people taking their adolescent works seriously. I certainly did. When I was a sophomore a buddy of mine and I presented a one-act play in the coffeehouse at college. The first line was “Name names now Norris, near Nancy’s nice nifty new newly named nuisance.” We thought it was deep, meaningful. Go figure. Then after graduation I applied for a job as a photographer with National Geographic magazine – without benefit of portfolio. They gently suggested more experience. Every young artist should take his or her work seriously. That doesn’t mean that major galleries should aid and abet them. There should be more of a leap between the refrigerator door and national venues. It seems however that a generation of indulgent parents now doubles as the art establishment and feels compelled to gush over the works of their real and surrogate children.


Equally problematic is this love affair with the banal. Simone’s fingernails partner easily with a work I saw at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. several years ago. Three blank white canvases in a corner – each, oh, maybe two feet square. One lay flat on the floor, snugged into the corner. The other two completed the walls so that the three canvases essentially replicated the floor and the two walls behind and beneath them. The title: Exploded Box. Being a Philistine, the inner meaning escaped me. Are we really so blind to the tiny doors on the fascinating that open around us everyday that someone needs to haul them into a gallery?


I walk down the street during a downpour. Flash flood in the gutter. A huge drain at the corner swallows it up and flings it off toward the ocean. Sweet. But should I head out to the junkyard, score a surplus drain and enter it in a major show? Title: Urban Seascape. Maybe. Maybe contemporary art is anything you can get away with.

About Health Care Reform?

Nancy-Ann DeParle is Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Some call her the Health Reform Czar. We have never met.

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Nancy-Ann, may I speak frankly? Thank you.

You just have to realize that there will never be meaningful health care reform in America as long as we see disease as a profit center. It would be nice to think that the whole AIG disaster was an isolated incident. And I realize that their Accident and Health division was small potatoes when compared to the biggies like WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the business model of any insurance company – medical, car, home; they are all the same: revenue comes in when subscribers pay premiums. Money leaves when the company pays out on claims – those are expenses. You increase profits by reducing expenses – by denying claims.

Now, Nancy-Ann, we don’t know each other. And I certainly don’t know your medical history or experiences, but if you are still clinging to the notion that insurances companies place subscriber's well-being above profits . . . Well, I’ve got this bridge up in Brooklyn you might be interested in. Nifty new infrastructure project. More coffee?

Anyhow, let me tell you a story. A few years ago I had some problems with my back. All of my doctors agreed that a kytoplasty was the ideal treatment for me, and BCBS routinely approved the procedure in cases like mine. Only this time they didn’t. Thereafter followed a few months of medical mumbo-jumbo while BCBS tried to explain why a previously excellent procedure was now questionable. I tried to involve both my senators, Dole and Burr, in the dialogue. Their offices sent me nice little notes saying that this wasn’t their job. Finally, my congressional representative, David Price, intervened and miraculously my case was reassessed and the procedure approved. Unfortunately, my back had deteriorated further and a more invasive vertebroplasty had to be done.

I’m assuming you see the irony, Nancy-Ann. The tipping point was political, not medical. BCBS had obviously decided that this very effective procedure was simply too expensive so they made the business decision to deny the claims calling for the procedure despite its medical efficacy. My doc was able to place the time fairly precisely when kytoplasty went from a routine "yes" to a routine "no." I just raised such a fuss that they gave in – in one case. No doubt they still routinely deny the procedure increasing the pain and suffering of subscribers whose health they are supposedly guarding.

So the way I see it is that we are caught between endemic corporate greed and a past history of governmental incompetence. Even I am not wild about putting my health care in the hands of the folks who spend 800.00 dollars for toilet seats, build multi-million dollar bridges to nowhere, and spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives purging the Middle East of “highly illusive” weapons of mass destruction.

A solution? Would that I had one, dear lady. But I can suggest a few starting points. Any system needs to put medical decisions back into the hands of doctors and patients engaged in dialogue. I am blessed with a doctor who is also a friend. We talk about my issues. He then becomes my advocate to the increasingly complex network of providers necessary to affect my care. All my docs spent a lot of effort trying to turn BCBS on my back issue. The fact that only political pressure moved BCBS demonstrates why an insurance company, whose entire profit structure rests on withholding care, should never determine a patient’s course of treatment.

Balancing that rational decision-making process needs to be a method for controlling costs. I’m sure Big Pharma can explain in great detail why two identical pills separated by an imaginary line – let’s call it the US /Canadian border – vary vastly in price. The same “imaginary line phenomenon” can be observed between a bottle of aspirin purchased at WalMart and two aspirin dispensed at a hospital emergency room. Until the smoke and mirrors surrounding cost are banished, consumers will always assumed they are being gouged – even when they aren’t.

Finally, you need to put a plan in place that is user-friendly. Details are admittedly not my strong suit. But I do have a Ph.D and spend much of my life reading and writing with an eye toward clarity. Still, I probably spend 20 to 30 hours a month engaged in filing paperwork directly related to insurance companies. The stress and irritation is incredible as I fax a copy of a doctor’s bill to the administrators of my flexible medical spending account to prove to them that I am not stealing my money from me for purchases that my doctor says I need but are not covered by BCBS. Free Americans from the unpaid drudgery of that mandatory second job and we might well see domestic productivity skyrocket!

So that’s where I am on health care reform, Nancy-Ann. Thanks for listening. Oh, by the way, I love what you’ve done with the place.