In a written addendum in the Congressional Record, Mr. Hare said the bill would also create high-paying jobs. Timothy Schlittner, a spokesman for Mr. Hare, said: “That part of his statement was drafted for us by Roche pharmaceutical company. It is something he agrees with.”

and

[Congressman] Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech’s parent company, Roche.

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,” Mr. White said. “I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”

Larry Lessig has made waves recently, arguing that transparency in itself isn’t necessarily good for democracy.  If citizens are exposed to the rampant corruption intrinsic in the system they may just give up hope and disengage from the process altogether.  There’ll be no shock value, as there clearly isn’t in Washington these days, judging by the reaction of the members of congress and their staffs.  I agree with Lessig, which is why I declare in my statement of purpose (is that like a mission statement?) that we need to match transparency with real journalism (not punditism) and media literacy training so that citizens have avenues to feed back into the process.

For now, I’ll just give props to the New York Times for actually doing some reporting that holds decision makers accountable.   Now if they just didn’t have that whole “profit” thing to worry about….

Me: Ummm, I live in Cambridge?

Stranger: No, I mean, originally.

Me: Well, I grew up in Michigan

[awkward pause]

Stranger: But where are your parents from?

Me: My dad’s from Chicago and my mom’s from upstate New York

[another awkward pause]

Stranger: yes, but what is your nationality

Me: Uhh, I’m American

At this point, depending on my mood, I’ll either break the news that my mom’s white and my dad’s black (which always disappoints the inquisitor, who’s expecting something much more interesting), or I’ll ask them where they think I’m from (I’ve heard everything from India to Sicily), or I’ll just let the awkward silence hang.

If only I had a dollar for every time I had this conversation. Or for every time an immigrant spoke Spanish to me conspiratorially when we were alone together in an elevator. Or when a white woman told me what a nice tan I had. Or when a black playmate wanted to run her fingers through my hair.

I was bi-racial before it was cool. Middle school was especially hard, with indifferent white kids and openly hostile blacks. Neither one of my parents’ families was accepting of their marriage, and so we grew up without really close ties to our extended family. I’ve only just recently begun to feel like I fit. And yet, despite not knowing how to articulate why, I’ve always felt deeply American. My roots here run deep, going back generations before the civil war. My family’s story has been personally and viscerally intertwined with just about every defining moment of this country’s history—slavery, the black migration north, the labor movement in industrial northern cities, World War II, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, Vietnam.

The Obama candidacy, and the white populist backlash against it, has had a big impact on me. I remember telling my extremely skeptical brother and sister, in July 2007, that Barack Obama was going to be the next president. They thought I’d been living in Massachusetts for too long. I thought they’d been too crippled by their experience in the South. As per usual, I was right. But their warnings about the deeply entrenched racial animosity that’s alive and well were also justified. Recently, Pat Buchanan (one of my all-time favorite bigots) tried to articulate the sense of why working-class whites felt like they were losing “their” country, as if people like me have no claim to the idea of America. Andrew Sullivan’s response to Buchanan said it better than I could, as he describes his immigrant experience here:

It struck me almost at once, if only in the music I heard all around me – and then in so many other linguistic, cultural, rhetorical, spiritual ways: white Americans do not realize how black they are. Even their whiteness is partly scavenged from the fear of – and attraction to – its opposite. Even something as stereotypically white as American Catholicism, I discovered to my amazement, was also black from the very start. (Yes, those Maryland slaves. If you’ve never been to a Gospel Mass in an ancient black Catholic parish, try it some time.)

From the beginning, in its very marrow, this country was forged out of that racial and cultural interaction. It fought a brutalizing, bloody, defining civil war over that interaction. Any European student of Tocqueville swiftly opens his eyes at the three races that defined America in the classic text. Has Buchanan read Tocqueville? And that’s why it seems so odd to me that the election of the son of a white mother and a black father is seen as somehow a threat to American identity for some, when, in fact, Obama is the final iteration of the American identity – the oldest one and the deepest one. This newness is, in fact, ancient – or as ancient as America can be. The very names – Ann Dunham and Barack Obama. Is not their union in some ways a faint echo of the union that actually made this country what it is?

That’s what’s so offensive about Buchanan’s position. Not that he recognizes the loss of influence of some white Americans, but that he deems irrelevant the contributions and American-ness of people like me.

I was always hard-pressed to articulate my patriotism in a way that didn’t sound like I was channeling Sarah Palin. It’s definitely not cool to admit that you get teary-eyed on the Fourth of July or that you have a crush on Alexander Hamilton. But Sullivan’s characterization puts a finger on what I had yet to figure out—my identity is tied to this country’s history. I am here because of it, and my family has both benefited from its opportunity, thriving as a result, and been savagely oppressed by its demons.

When I travel to foreign countries, I always expect to be able to blend in. After all, everywhere I go in the US I’m mistaken for whatever ethnic fetish happens to strike someone’s fancy. But for some reason, before I even open my mouth, people tend to know I’m American. Maybe it’s just my American eyes and wide smile, but I tend to think it’s more than that, that I embody the character of this country, all of its good and bad, promise and shortcomings. And the last time someone told me I had a nice tan, I put on my American smile, looked them in the eye, and said thank you.

Zeitoun is Dave Eggers’ latest about a unique family from New Orleans and their Katrina experience.  Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian immigrant who settles in New Orleans in the mid-80s and builds his own painting and contracting business from the ground up.  He marries a Louisianan divorcee, Kathy, who has previously converted to Islam along with her Japanese best friend (only in New Orleans) and they have four kids together (in addition to Kathy’s son from her first marriage).

In late August of 2005, as Katrina is bee-lining for New Orleans, Kathy packs up her family and heads out of town.  Her husband (Zeitoun, as he’s known) decides to stay to watch over their house, business, and rental properties.

(Side note: it’s easy to second guess this decision now, especially for people not accustomed to living in hurricane zones, but evacuating is a really expensive, time-consuming pain in the ass, and when you have assets at stake, the urge is to stick around.  Besides, most of these storms end up passing without too much damage, and the cry-wolf aspect played a big role in keeping ppl around for Katrina).

The book tells the story of how he ends up embroiled in a Kafka-esque nightmare that highlights everything that was wrong with the W. Bush era, and which was so poignantly exposed during the Katrina response.  I won’t ruin it for you, but as you may have guessed, his Syrian background plays a role.

I’ve read a few books about the disaster that was the W era, and I find that most of them have a hard time distilling the vastness of the given debacle (torture, Katrina, WMD, etc.) into something that strikes us viscerally.  These authors have run up against the problem of trying to describe something mammoth that’s still looming—we’re just too close and the truth of it is just too obvious.

By taking one family’s experience and telling the story with an almost child-like simplicity, Eggers has gotten as close as I’ve read to translating the mammoth into something we can understand.  At first, I was really annoyed with the inanity of the tone of the book.  Eggers spends a lot of time discussing the daily ins and outs of the Zeitoun family.  There are several syrupy anecdotes from Zeitoun’s childhood in coastal Syria (the comparisons to the champion swimmer brother are especially gag-worthy).  But when the story turns to the storm and its aftermath, that tone that has so disarmed us serves to deliver us the news without bashing us over the head.  It’s almost chilling to have the facts delivered this way, simply and straight up, leaving us to see how out of line it is with the averageness of this family.

I have a strong affinity for New Orleans because my family lives there (I grew up in Michigan, but my parents lived there with my sister for a few years in the early ‘70s before moving north, and my brother, sister, niece and nephew live there now) and I spend most major holidays and a week in the summer there pretty much every year.

When Katrina hit, I mourned.  My nephew (who lives mostly with his father) lost his house and had to move to Houston for several months.  My sister, a reporter for a local TV station, evacuated to my apartment in Boston for a few days before returning to Louisiana to continue working and became the de facto New Orleans bureau chief (because she lived in the French Quarter on high ground, she was one of the only people at her station who had a place to go home to every night; the rest of them operated out of a sister studio in Mobile, AL, sleeping in a motel).  A few weeks after the storm, I caught her on the phone while she was at a strip club—the only people in town, she explained, were National Guardsmen and reporters, so the only places open were strip joints.

Since 2005, we’ve had more evacuation scares, and my sister has had another child, which makes the evacuation logistics even more fraught.  We basically hold our breath from June through November.  Four years later, New Orleans is much as I remember it, but for people who live there life isn’t yet completely back to normal.  It takes a really long time for the cable guy to come, for example.  Many people are still battling red tape in order to rebuild their homes.  Thousands are not coming back, and as much as I love the city I can’t really blame them.

Through Zeitoun, Eggers has managed to tell the story of the tribulations these normal Americans face(d).  At the same time, he holds accountable in a way no one has really been able to do before—without bluster or a heavy hand—the people who caused this human disaster.

The weather finally changed, and it’s been absolutely idyllic as a result. Karst is beautiful, and reminds a lot of the area of Portugal we visited in July, but somehow more remote (maybe it’s the more significant language barrier). One funny footnote is that David has three times as many Facebook friends as people who live in this village. Sad for him.

Because of the rurality, the drive here was a little fraught. Let’s just say our teamwork broke down right around Nova Gorica and didn’t re-establish itself until we’d finally made it to the farm. This place, Kmetija Skerlj, is a different type of farm than Pri Plajerju. The owners are much more businesslike (the husband works all day tending to the honey and grapes, and is trained as a butcher; the wife and daughters seem to run the tourist part of things). The stench is definitely authentic, as are the bugs, and the shower is a bit hard to navigate. Other than that, the place is magical. If this is possible, it’s more remote than Marvao in Portugal. There are rolling vineyards and gardens as far as the eye can see. The buildings are all stone, brick and stucco. There are about three times as many churches as gas stations.

Kmetija Sklerj, the second farm of the trip

View of the Farm

We were about 20 minutes away from Trieste so we decided to spend a day there. The city was unremarkable, I thought (looked like every other European city), but the port was pretty picturesque. We ventured out to bordering town, Muggia, which was much more charming, before heading back to Slovenia.

We took refuge in a Trieste cafe during this freak downpour; this guy wasn't so lucky, and was selling umbrellas ironically enough!

Trieste coastline

The food at the farm was better than the first. We had beef and pork, no surprise, but the side dishes were so so good and we got a garden fresh salad every night with the best tomatoes I’ve ever had. Every morning, we had grapes right off the vine. Once I figured out how to get around the seeds, I was downing them like candy. They bottle their own wine at this farm, and the sauvignon blanc and honey liqueur were amazing. Their reds were…undrinkable. I’ll just leave it at that.

One our last full day, we checked out the Skocjan caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site. They were pretty cool, but I didn’t realize they’d be such a tourist trap. You’re forced to take the guided tour for the first 30 minutes, then they let you find your way out at your own pace. They also don’t allow pictures, which is annoying (but I found a way to sneak a few). Once you’re back to daylight, there’s a half hour hike to get back to the parking lot. That part reminded me a lot of Ithaca.

Skocjan Caves

The next day, we headed to Ljubljana for a night. It’s such a cool little city, with a river running through it and really unassuming medieval streets. There’s a really nice, big park on the outskirts of downtown, and it’s so small that everything is within walking distance. For dinner, we got a local suggestion and went to one of the best meals I’ve ever had (yes, it’s a theme) at a place called Valvas’or. The pretentiousness was a little over the top, but the food justified the attitude.

Ljubljana

On the way back to our hotel, we discovered that Slovenia was playing Serbia in the semi-finals of the European basketball championships. There was a huge TV set up in the main plaza, and there were tons of people riveted to the game. We could hear them cheering late. (Unfortunately, Serbia beat Bosnia in overtime).

Our last stop was Vienna, where we met up with Curt and Ann who were passing through on their way to Oktoberfest. By that point, we were feeling lazy and Vienna looked too overwhelming to do justice in a day. So we checked into our hotel (the Hollmann Beletage, highly highly recommended) and drank beers from the BP station (only place selling booze on Sunday) in the hotel courtyard. At dinner, I finally had wiener schnitzel and got to sample some good Austrian gruner veltliner and Reisling.

The happy couple, over Weisbier (weisbier makes everything happier)

As I type, I’m on Lufthansa 424 from Munich to Boston, with an irritated toddler behind me to reinstate me to reality. My summer of 1,000 adventures is officially over, now it’s time to return to the inbox of 1,000 unread messages.

There’s one significant plus to having a nomadic boyfriend, and that’s that I have a really great excuse to visit some very cool places that I’d otherwise never see. In July, we spent a week in rural Eastern Portugal, just a few minutes from the Spanish border. I regret not blogging about our time there b/c it was magical and it’d be nice to have a record, but we were operating under a pretty strict “no internet” policy that week.

Come September, that whole offline thing is not really an option, so I figure I might as well make some notes about the place while we’re here and online!

I flew into Linz, Austria where David had just finished curating the Ars Electronica Symposium (very proud!). We spent three uneventful days there before heading down to Slovenia.

Our destination was Trenta, Slovenia which is in the middle of Triglav National Park. Google Maps, my new arch nemesis, told us it would take us just under four hours. Well, they must not have accounted for the fact that a Fiat Panda doesn’t do so well on the hairpin S-curve turns of the Vrsic Pass. Not to mention, road names/numbers are not helpful when they’re not marked as such. Luckily, there weren’t many options to take a wrong turn (unless you wanted to plunge to your death off the side of an Alpine peak) so we made it to the farm where we are staying (a “kemetija” or “tourist farm” as they call it here) and met our hosts, Stanka and Marko.

Pri Plajerju, the first farm of the trip

The farm is…pretty farmy. It’s a completely organic farm with all the food served here (we’re doing breakfast and dinner) either homemade (and when I say homemade, I mean bread made from hand-milled flour) or local. My friends at La Vida Locavore would be very proud. Our apartment is literally in the hay loft, which we think is funny. There’s a huge living/dining/kitchen area, and immaculate bathroom with a killer shower, and a gabled bedroom. The silence and darkness has been utterly blissful. We’ve also made friends with the resident donkey, who we lovingly call (b/c we can’t pronounce his Slovenian name) Mr. Donkey.

Mr. Donkey

Our first night here, we ate at the local restaurant, which was decorated with, among other weird kitchscy things, a stuffed beaver with some pretty scary teeth. Brings new meaning to the phrase “stuffed animal.” David had the deer goulash and I had the meat stew. Both were amazing. We traced a path home through the rain lit by David’s iPhone display (I promise I’ll never disparage the thing again) and tucked in for the night, only to be awakened every few hours by booming thunder echoing off the surrounding mountains. So much for that blissful silence, though somehow it’s more peaceful when it’s not your upstairs neighbors doing the booming.

Day two was a complete rainout, but it gave us a chance to see the WW I museum in Kobarid (more on that in a separate post). Stanka cooked us dinner at the farm, which consisted of zucchini soup, the first meatloaf I’ve had in 20 years, a zucchini cream thingamajig (UNBELIEVABLE) and buckwheat/rice pilaf. It was excellent. Because it was my birthday, Marko gave us a few swigs of the homemade cherry brandy (called “the red line” because it makes a direct line from your throat to your tummy).

"The Red Line" homemade cherry brandy

On day three, I woke up at 7am to find the sun shining brilliantly (yes!), so excited that our chances for a hike weren’t ruined. The Triglav Park is so well marked, with such a great diversity of paths. Luckily, we met some German friends who let us borrow their trail map. We decided on a 5-hour trip with ~1500 meters of elevation gain. It was all fun and games until that last climb to the peak. The trail was really rocky and I just had my running shoes. As we speak, my knees are letting me hear it. We crossed a bunch of waterfalls and had some spectacular views of the valley and Soca River. We ate cookies at the lake at the top before heading back down.

View from our Hike

Dinner tonight was prepared by the guys, Marko and Stanka’s cousin. Let’s just say it wasn’t up to the preparation of the night before (a whole pear on a plate as dessert?), though they were much more lenient with the wine. We also met a couple from Brooklyn who are here on their honeymoon and just came from the place we’re headed tomorrow.

After another fabulous breakfast, we’re off to the Karst region, just across the border from Italy. There will be spelunking and lots of winetasting to be done. More soon!

I found it utterly fascinating, especially with Dexter Filkins’ Forever War still rolling around in my head. Ironically, he’s had pretty good internet access lately so I’ve been emailing with him and he’s agreed to let me re-post some of his thoughts here, on condition that I don’t identify him or give away any identifying information.

Of the 28 pages, the parts I found most interesting were his personal thoughts on the war effort at large:

Afghanistan is a new arena for the preponderance of the Marines deployed with the MEB. There are an extraordinarily high number of combat veterans in our ranks who bring with them valuable experience, mostly from Iraq. It is apparent that, as a military force, we have greatly improved our ability to engage in counterinsurgency operations. The men and the leadership have a much better awareness now than they did in 2001 in Afghanistan or in Iraq in 2003 of the importance of having an understanding of the culture, language, history, and politics of the region. We have acknowledged and, for the most part, taken to heart the moral and practical imperative of protecting, and not alienating, the population as we work to route the enemy from the country and bring political and economic stability to this land and its people.

I am convinced that our work and presence here is important, for reasons ranging from fulfilling our obligations to the Afghan people after having abandoned them in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse and providing access to oil and gas reserves in Central Asia to ridding the country of religious extremists bent on exporting violence and protecting nuclear-armed Pakistan from Taliban take over. I am, however, uncertain of our overall objectives. The ones that have been stated are vague at best. What the US military and government hope to achieve here should be articulated in precise terms and we should be honest with our servicemen and women – with all of our citizens, in fact – about what the cost of our commitment and the duration of our stay here is likely to be.

The Marines here are happy and proud to serve. Most, if asked, would tell you that they feel indebted to our Nation and that they view their service as an obligation, a view they probably wish more people shared. They would also tell you that they are pleased to be out of Iraq and glad to be in a different environment with novel sights, new people, and the presence of a formidable foe willing to engage in more traditional forms of combat. What the Marines ask is that their guidance and orders be clear and consistent, their support on the home front be unwavering, and their time here – some of the best years of their lives – be spent in a worthwhile fashion. They desire to contribute to our efforts here in a significant, rational manner.

The thought that is sometimes expressed, usually in hushed tones and in private quarters, is that we have a solid understanding of what we should be doing on the tactical level, but our operational and strategic objectives have not been clearly outlined. The MEB is not doing anything disastrous, but we do not seem to be gaining any real traction either. Maybe it is too soon to expect significant forward movement. I also realize that at our relatively low level, we junior officers do not see everything that our senior leadership does and we are not privy to conversations between the general and his staff. I hope that the reasons behind what we are seeing – or not seeing – are that the force is new to the environment and, as such, is taking its time, developing an understanding of the region and working to ensure that a solid foundation has been laid before endeavoring to spread its influence and engage in more distributed, aggressive operations.

Another criticism is that the organization dedicates an inordinate amount of time, money, equipment, and personnel to tackling symptoms of problems when they could be focusing their efforts on the major, underlying issues. The counter IED fight is an example of this. In our efforts at defeating these devices and keeping our personnel safe as they travel, we sometimes loose sight of the basic questions at the root of matters: why are we seeing these devices and what can we do to alter the environment in such a way as to make them disappear?

I also really enjoyed his descriptions of the relationship between the Marines and other NATO forces:

I dined at the British mess hall where some fried potato product was served at every meal and curry was a staple. The food was actually quite good and it was entertaining to watch the mix of people, English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, and Estonian, who wandered in and out of the facility. The British were friendly, the Dutch all seemed to speak surprisingly good English, and the Gurkas were always willing to barter for some US uniform item — one day, I even saw them exchange their signature knives for pairs of Oakley ballistic sunglasses. The British were fond of – and allowed to – wear shorts. The Danes wore very short shorts.

I was amused to discover that the British soldiers, like their American counterparts, have an affinity for port-a-john graffiti. On the British part of the camp, the Army vs. Marine Corps bathroom scrawl that characterized the walls of private places in Baghdad, Al Asad, and Fallujah was replaced by banter aimed at disparaging the US and Britain. There were plenty of comments about the 4^th of July and the perceived need for the US to bailout the UK in Helmand, as well as the occasional mention of the fact that our current allies managed to torch the White House and much of DC during the early part of the nineteenth century. It was also refreshing to see that, despite our difference and competition, the young British and American servicemen were able to find some common ground: their antipathy for the French. These feelings were made manifest shortly after the arrival of a small, French airborne contingent. After a while, more and more entries along the lines of “Q: What’s worse than a US Marine? A: A French Para” and “Why don’t you try to defend Paris for once?” started to appear and fewer anti-US or British remarks were made.

I guess I don’t really have much to add. We at home have been focused so much on the health care debate that not much attention has been paid to Afghanistan. (It seems like there’s always something to divert our attention from that country doesn’t it?) My own feelings about our renewed commitment to the military campaign there are ambivalent. I’m not sure there’s much we can do, and I’m not sure anymore what the purpose is. Is it to prevent the creation of a safe haven for terrorists plotting attacks against us? Well, aren’t they already doing that in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? Is it to fulfill a commitment to a population that we’ve abandoned in the past? If so, I’m not sure a military incursion is the best solution to that problem. On the other hand, I have some sense that we have an obligation to at least give the mission a fair shot. It got shortchanged once we decided to engage in the folly that was Iraq. Who knows what could have been if due attention was paid to Afghanistan in 2002 onwards? It’s probably too late to try and turn back the clock and make up for lost time, but I guess I feel like we can’t really pull out until we’ve done what we can.

In any event, I hope he knows that I’m (we’re) praying that he makes it home safe, so we can keep up with him on Facebook like normal people are supposed to do.

Caster Semenya

So now they’re testing her gender.  For anyone who’s read Middlesex, this raises some interesting questions.  How exactly do you test someone’s gender?  If you find that someone has some male genetic components, does that mean they’re a man?  And then what does THAT mean?  In everyday life, ironically, these issues might not be such a big deal.  When it comes to sports, especially sports in which men and women compete in the same, yet segregated, events, it’s a little more complicated.

This article from the NYT does a good job of outlining why this testing is so complex.  I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that she has both male and female genetic characteristics.  What does this mean for her future competition?  Would she be banned from both men’s and women’s events?  How isn’t that discriminatory?  And furthermore, aren’t all world-class athletes genetically gifted or extraordinary in some way?  If someone has a gene that gives them better lung capacity, shouldn’t they be banned for having an unfair advantage?

It’s been determined that Semenya wasn’t doping.  She was raised as a  girl.  It seems profoundly unfair to me to treat her as if she cheated.  On the other hand, if she’s determined to be more male than female (again, lord knows how they’re going to figure that out, or what standard they’re going to use), it seems profoundly unfair to the other women who are running to let her compete.  The results will take weeks to come in.  I’ll be interested to see how the IAAF handles this one.

Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese were the premier painters in Venice during the Renaissance. Titian and Tintoretto hated each other (and Tintoretto seemed to be quite the asshole), and Veronese, who was a few years younger, sided with Titian whom he considered a mentor. The rivalry seemed to motivate all three painters as they competed for patrons and referred to each other’s works.

The paintings in the exhibit were grouped by theme which gave the viewer a sense of how the three artists played off each other. It was a much more interesting way to view the exhibit than it would have been if they were grouped by artist or chronologically.

Check out Tintoretto’s version of The Baptism of Christ:

Baptism of Christ, Tintoretto

And now Veronese’s:

I left thinking Veronese was my favorite–his use of color, and his attention to the human form were more my style than Titian or Tintoretto–but Tintoretto, tortured genius that he was, had some breathtaking works.

Besides being so visually pleasing, it was a crazy trip through the Renaissance era.  Isn’t it so crazy that people paid massive amounts of money to have people paint pictures of them?  It seems like everyone did it.  Can you imagine anything tackier nowadays than to enter someone’s house only to find a 12-foot tall painting of them?  And yet, without that patronage, these artists never would have flourished and museums wouldn’t be able to charge $25 to see their works.  Anyway, I would highly recommend everyone go see it, but it ends today.

For me, the most interesting part of the talk/Q&A revolved around these various issues. Namely:

*Are there any implications for labor policy here? When you’re paying someone 2 cents for 5 minutes of work, that’s a steep devaluation of people’s time. If sites like AMT take off and become a real labor force, will we see government getting involved? Legislation/law suits? Labor organizing?

*How does this differ from volunteer work? I’ve heard from a lot of people who work on various crowdsourced projects that most people would rather work for free and see themselves as volunteering their time to a cause than get paid less than market value for their skills, which is insulting. There’s something about inserting money into the equation, even if the difference is only a penny, that changes the motivation. I know people have done a lot of thinking and writing about this and I’m just really ignorant to it (Wikinomics and whatnot), but I find that dynamic really interesting. I was curious to know whether there are any examples of sites that “pay” people in some non-monetary but still tangible form. Like rewards points or something similar. Aaron didn’t know of any, but I wonder how that would change the dynamic? You’re still getting paid for your labor, it’s not an altruistic act, but is there something about taking the actual cash payment out of the equation that makes a difference in motivations?

*What’s the impact of disassociating a task from the project? This one was covered mostly in an off-the-record meeting of the Berkman Fellows directly after the lunch, so there isn’t much on the video. Jonathan Zittrain attended that meeting and pushed back with a much less rosy view of distributed labor. His critiques centered around what happens when a task is broken down into such small pieces that all meaning is lost. The laborer has no view into what he or she is building or contributing to? What impact does that have? He pondered the spectrum of that impact from the loss of craftsmanship to the potential for bad guys to engage a mass labor market to help build towards some nefarious cause (ie: having people circle all the hospitals in a satellite photo in order to identify bomb targets). The discussion touched on potential barriers to bad guys, like putting more of an onus (normative or legal) on sites like AMT to police their job requesters.

I’d say that JZ’s fears are probably several years, if not decades, out. At this point, AMT is a really small site and it’d have to get much bigger and competitors would have to join the game for the threats to become really relevant. And who knows what can happen in the meantime? As for the uneasiness of the devaluation of workers’ time and what this means for the labor market, I find it hard to get too worked up on that front. All of these people are joining AMT voluntarily, and, as one luncheon guest pointed out, they’re probably performing tasks while they’re at work making a real wage. If they’re offended at the going rate, they don’t have to participate. i do think it’s fascinating to think about how this might change labor markets or be reflected in union organizing, but I’m skeptical that these sites will get big enough to make a difference in the real market. In the end, as afraid as we are of robots taking over the world, I really don’t think there’s any replacement for human labor. There are only so many projects you can break down into miniscule tasks; it doesn’t seem to me that AMT is going to save us from our desk jobs any time soon.

UPDATE: Please Note: This talk incorporates research-in-progress from the Berkman Center’s Online Cooperation Research in collaboration with Daniel Chen and John Horton. After the event was over, Aaron realized that he neglected to explicitly acknowledge Chen and Horton’s invaluable role in the project during the presentation. Aaron feels terrible about this and sincerely apologizes. He also hopes that you’ll visit their websites (links above) and read at least one of their papers. Daniel and John’s contributions to the field of experimental research on online labor markets include (a) recognizing that AMT could serve as a venue for experimental studies; (b) conducting the earliest labor market experiments on AMT; (c) solving a bunch of difficult problems so that they could make valid causal inference based on the results of these experiments.