Law School Blog

The course has simultaneously been going on as an extension school course and a project for the internet community at large. Many of the meetings have been taking place in Second Life, a virtual community. In the beginning of the course, we were instructed to download the program and create an avatar. We were later paired up for tours of Second Life (but of course by then I had begun exploring on my own).

I was a beta tester for the Sims Online. In college, Sim City was about the best way to waste time; a shared addiction to that game united me with another young dormer who is now (11 years later) my husband. When the Sims was released I was nearly as enthusiastic, and would spend way too much time teaching my Sims to cook, making sure they slept. The Sims Online was a place to unite with others playing the game. You could join up and make pizza for profit, combine your profits to buy land and build a house.

When the beta test was up, I was offered the chance to stay on, keep my character and her money and all she had accomplish. Perhaps at the cost of all I had accomplished. A monthly fee plus my spare time was too high a cost . . .

Second Life, on the other hand, is free and far less addictive. Instead of doing repetitive tasks to earn money, you can create and share items, which people do, freely. Since an item can be replicated, it is far more of a collaborative environment. You can earn money in-game, and I’m sure people do, but many people are just there to learn, to create, and to share.

It does have a strong connection to many other things in the course, such as Creative Commons, Copy Left, the GNU Software License, and Wikis, especially Wikipedia. People operate by something other than market forces, in a decentralized way to build upon what each other has created and improve it. This is more than just technology, this is a change in culture itself fostered by that technology. Perhaps those of us who marvel at the technological age we are living in will not see it until the future, but we might be living though changes larger than we realize. . .

The video of my presentation to the class is posted here. I presented starting at 1:38 Tuesday.

Our class uses the question tool – a means by which the students in the class submit and vote on questions to the presenter. I didn’t get to address all the questions during my presentation, but posted the discussion here.

So much of the work I have been putting into this is invisible. Since I have already been in the childfree internet community for some time, I am generally aware of what is out there on the internet. Mostly, it is a lot of discussion boards and a few personal blogs. However, a few sites have stood out (as mentioned below) and I asked their creators to participate.

Originally, this request was aimed at getting better content on my website. There have been unexpected, but happy results.

1. Disagreement. I knew that a lot of parents would be opposed to the idea of extending additional benefits to childfree people, feeling that since they are working very hard and making a contribution to society, they deserve extra help. What I did not anticipate is that childfree people would also be opposed to the project. Therefore, I could not possibly have expected and addressed heir concerns. The first participant, the creator of Purple Women, submitted an opposition essay, which I promptly placed above my own essay written from the perspective of the other side for the earlier class assignment.

I was then able to counter or address (and concede) her points – therefore strengthening my own position. Learning the perspective of your opponents does more than allow you to seem sympathetic and to get their attention, it cal also help you see what in your own side may be going unsaid. It made it clear to me that I need to narrow my aim a bit. I redid the entire project with an eye toward emphasising the voluntary aspect of the project. Specifically, the idea that it might make childfree employees less attractive necessitates this approach. A voluntary plan (rather than putting heavy pressure on companies) would mean the only companies affected were those who are already actively trying to recruit childless employees.

2. Promotion. The creator of the childfree podcast asked if she wanted me to do her show next week on the topic! Getting collaborators means that more people will have a more personal investment in the project, and therefore are more likely to promote it. By targeting those who run popular sites, the people promoting my project are now the people who have the ability to drive more traffic to it.

3. Editing. A third collaborator is an editor and writer- a published one! I failed to anticipate that it was her editing skills that would be brought to bear, but indeed they have.

4. A Different Focus. Lastly, i asked the founder of No Kidding! to contribute. He was able to write a piece incorporating the experiences of many different people, since he has spent 25 years getting e-mails from childfree people about their experiences. His focus was less on benefits and more on the workplace generally, which was just great. I hadn’t thought to include a portion about it, but it is a great companion to the project, especially since I am often mentioning that hard-to-change cultural differences make even official benefits all the more important.

I have a week left, and am still waiting to see what others might do to contribute. I am starting to use my other media – my blog and website – to drive traffic to the project. Hopefully, comments will star building on the blog and the project – both the immediate benefits project and the larger advocacy project – will grow.

My project is beginning to take shape. I am sending out a plea to various leaders in the childfree community and asking them to contribute. Although I still have a ways to go, the prototype for the website is here. The plan is to make the website a collection of information and opinions on cafeteria plans – including sample letters to employers and letters to the editor, arguments on both sides (and responses), the podcast series posted below, and hopefully a discussion via its companion blog.

The blog, Childfree Issues, will hopefully have a mandate to carry on after it serves as the launching place and forum for this one. The idea is to collect discussion on advocacy issues in a single area. While there are great social organizations such as No Kidding already out there, and much discussion on these issues on various childfree discussion board, hopefully this can create a centralized launching pad for more advocacy. In this vein, I have asked various leaders of No Kidding to participate – including those in Canada who might add an international perspective to what is now a domestic project. Hopefully we will be able to craft this separately, so as not to create a conflict of interest with the group’s purely social mandate.

I have also sought, and received assistance from the creators of what I see as the best childfree-related internet projects. This includes Adult Spaces – a podcast that addresses all sorts of childfree issues, UnScripted – the Childfree Life, a high-quality zine with articles about all sorts of topics of interest to the childfree, Purple Women – a team blog with contributions from a range of childfree women and their friends, and the Childless By Choice Project – a massive research project leading to a documentary and a book. I lost a week due to a death in the family, and was forced to tighten up – I had originally planned to ‘play’ with different media and create a compilation of different media for the final project. The fact that collaboration is encouraged makes this much easier, and more fun.

I should also add a link to the class podcast blog:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberonepodcast/

Which includes the podcasts of the student participants, including the extension school students. It seems a lot of people have chosen issues within cyberlife to advocate – which I suppose makes sense – the cyber medium of presentation will be especially apt. However, I am having trouble getting invested in these issues as a listener. I suppose I just find real-world issues more compelling. Is this evidence of a problem we discussed earlier – the inability to perceive it as real?

Maybe so, but the fact that I have been through these discussions and thought about these issues may indicate that I have considered them, then made up my mind about where my values lie.

It appears that the later option – hosting it here – isn’t a realistic option. Each harvartd.edu address is permitted one blog. Which means that when this course is over – I’ll either have to erase it, forego another opportunity to use it, or attempt to gracelessly transition it to another blog. I’ll probably do the last one.

But while I am waiting, I might as well upload the files I have created for the new podcast:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4 – class project

Episode 5

Our projects are starting to take shape. I am rehashing the assignment from before in order to tailor it better to the goal of empathetic argument. This is especially apt for my project, since empathy with the other side is all around. What argument requires more empathy than one that is – ostensibly – anti-child? Although I am choosing a moderate position and topic – equal benefits for childless workers – the opposition is still essentially the pro-parent pro-child lobby.

To that end, I have created this week’s podcast – what I believe is the 11th and final take. Download it here.

I do like the idea of podcast as a medium. I would be happy to start a blog for my project, but I’ve been running one for over a year now to a similar end – involving the childfree community in an aggregation of information and commentary. I don’t think that my single issue would make for a distinct blog, nor for that matter, a distinct podcast.

The trouble with creating a podcast instead is that it has been done – and done well. The childfree community is nascent, and still only has a few major organizations behind it. However, it has a great zine and a fantastic podcast. I would not want to duplicate their efforts.

However, as Adult Spaces addresses news (as does my blog) I could create a complimentary podcast to focus just on issues. There is still zero organization toward that end – just disjointed commentary on various discussion boards, and one very well-written book. (Burkett – the Baby Boon)

Right now I’m just running into some technical difficulties. The obvious choice for hosts would be Harvard – but does my blog access expire when I graduate? I would not want this to be a project with an expiration date. I attempted to host it on the same account as my main blog, but I currently can’t find a way to upload mp3 files. Hopefully as I sort out these issues, my plan will be refined.

This week, one of our guests was Nick Sylvester, who talked about his experiences being the center of controversy. He wrote for notable publications, including the Village Voice, and it was revealed that some of the interviews he had published were in fact made up. Although they were indeed satirical to the astute eye, this fact was not as apparent as it is on, say teh Colbert Report or the Daily Show, and people got quite angry. The Gawker apparently developed quite a fixation on him.

The discussion about the controvers leapt from the wiki’s single page for that week’s video and notes, and launched into a seperate discussion page. I will admit, I have no burning desire to rehash that conversation, nor do I have any particularly unique thoughts about it. However, I did discover a similar, but distinguishable controversy, posted on that same page:

Wal-Marting Across America

LT: Let’s change the context a little, and see how it affects our analysis.

This couple ran a popular blog about their travels across America in an RV; staying in Wal-Mart parking lots. When it was discovered that Wal-Mart was the actual impetus (and funding) behind their trip, controversy erupted.

• What is the “moral weight” of their failure to disclose the true nature of their trip? Does the fact that it was being done for profit, for commercial reasons, make that situation somehow more offensive – or for those who saw no problem with the above – does it make the behavior cross some line into offensive?

Of course, the situation is distinct in other ways. The blog was not per se fabricated – the couple alleges that they were entirely truthful. However, this assertion is undermined by the fact that the blog was unfailingly positive – and had frequent citations of how wonderful all the Wal-Mart employees were.

Keep in mind that Wal-Mart took down the blog after the information got out that it was their doing – now all that remains are two defensive posts.

• Is this otherwise offensive because it was an attempt at “GoogleWashing” the pejorative use of the new verb Walmarting?

• Is it offensive because it is Wal-Mart – because it is being done b a company that is already known for using its bulk to conform the world around it to its wishes?

This I find even more intriguing. Since noone has taken the bait and added their comments, and since I’m not about to reply to my own questions on the discussion site, I thought this might be a more appropriate place to hash them out. However since 1. it is now past midnight and 2. I have not yet formulated actual opinions, I will save this discussion for a later post. I just wanted to invite comments rom nyone reading, and honestly to set this up as a spur and reminder to myself to revisit the subject.

Links

Business Week Article

Blog’s Remnants

Consumerist posts Banned Pics

In my own news blog, I collect and comment on news on a particular subject (so not in the category of citizen media). The topic of this week’s class so got in my head, I almost subconsciously changed my strategy for selecting posting material. I found that in the past week, I had departed from my exclusive focus on professional media stories and indeed posted two stories derived from other blogs:

Do We Count? and Revisiting the Ann Landers Survey

In today’s blog on the site, I depart entirely from my quote-and-comment format and explore why I had made this shift. I discuss this class (indeed, I very rarely mention aspects of my personal life there) and the impact it has has, as well as the topic of this week’s class:

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Answering the Question You Never Asked

In case anyone was wondering why I am posting to other blogs rather than solely to media articles. . . .I am enrolled in a course entitled “Cyber One“, which explores argument and the ‘court of public opinion’ through new technologies. This week my project was on blogs and journalism. We explored how the internet, especially blogs, has changed the nature f journalism in some respects. Personal blogs can gain wide attention without the need for working capitol and a corporate structure present in most professional media outlets. Does this change the nature of journalism? Are personal bloggers somehow less qualified – or indeed more objective than professionals? Are the channels of popularity that allow something to gain attention on the internet a valid replacement for professional training and editing?

It could very well be that the kinds of stories we need to see – about corporate complicity with censorship in China or waterboarding - are the kinds that the main media outlets will not present.

This has made me rethink my strategy on posting only stories published by professional news outlets. Not everything I post has been, strictly speaking, “news”. Many of the stories I quote are largely the opinions and experiences of the journalist in question. The experiences and thoughts of those in the blogosphere are not per se less valid. Therefore, when one is particularly topical, thought-provoking, or well-written, I will be including it.

I will continue to focus primarily on professional outlets, because the object of this blog is not just to collect newsworthy and topical pieces. It is also to keep tabs on the amount of media attention that the childfree are receiving. Therefore, I may well include articles that are no better than blog entries I exclude.

I apologize for the off-topic posting, and I certainly will not allow this post to live indefinitely in the archives of this site. However, I would like to give any of our regular readers a chance to respond. After all, if you are only coming here to gauge media attention or to keep abreast of actual news, this shift in policy might well be something that detracts from our usefulness. If this is the case for many of you, I am amenable to rethinking it. However, it is also likely that you all saw that this was not a posting of groundbreaking news, and already moved on.

My aim is certainly to remain unique, and not to become another blog that simply reflects my own thoughts – there are many quality sites out there already doing that. Of the times I do depart from posting media stories, it will only be to refer to posts that in some way deal with wider national and international issues facing the childfree. After all, the lack of such a site is what inspired a busy law student to take on such a project in the first place.

I think this is notable (as well as repostable, since I do discuss the class!) since I never expected the class to start affecting my perspective quite so much. Indeed, I never expected it to have an impact outside of the class itself, letalone outside of law school. But it has. That’s what happens when you strip down assumptions and start thinking philosophically about things.

I am getting my “Doctorate of Jurisprudence” and jurisprudence is actually the philosophy of law. Studying philosophy that is both useful and marketable. It’s like I found the largest loophole in academia.

By no means have my other classes lacked this component – indeed much of my property reading was philosophy-based and got me rethinking the way I think about property itself. Almost all my classes have reshaped my perception of law – or at least gotten me to think about it on a very deep level. Perhaps it is because the subject of this class is not confined to such narrow topics, or perhaps it is because it encompasses subjects that I take part in every day life (such as blogs and wikis), but this is somehow different.

Our latest assignment is to choose an issue we are passionate about, and then write 1500 words presenting the view of he opposition. My original plan for the project (making an argument in a cyber medium) was to attempt to create a ‘grassroots internet’ activism for Spyware – for example, boycotting Vonage as a frequent advertiser on such programs, and starting a ‘click-cott’ on MySpace until they remove the Zwinky/ SmileyCentral ads that download MyWebSearch. MyWebSearch is a program that comes bundles with free software, and inserts a toolbar onto your web browser, serving pop-up ads. It does not disclose that it is a toolbar, and uses vague wording in its EULA to disguise its true purpose. For example, on its website it states:

Bonus: Also includes Smiley Central™, Cursor Mania™, Popular Screensavers™, the MyWebSearch® search box and Search Assistant – relevant search results in response to incorrectly formatted browser address requests.

I did not know that ‘relevant’ was the new euphemism for ‘paid advertisements’.

I was hoping to integrate it into a new project that would tie into my work on Spyware at the FTC last summer, and perhaps my upcoming clinical at the Berkman Center. However, I found that the first stage would be very difficult for this topic. Although there are various arguments on the other side – such as simply standing by the contention that internet users are responsible for thoroughly reading the EULAs, no matter how obscurely they are presented and how vaguely they are worded. One could also make the argument that these adware programs help fund free software that would otherwise cost money. However, one could not spend 1500 words making such arguments. Well, I couldn’t.

I chose instead something from my other life – my job as Spokesperson for No Kidding! which essentially makes me a prominent spokesperson for the childfree (although NK is open to all, regardless of why they don’t have kids, many of its members are childfree and it is, in essence, the largest childfree org in the world.)

Some issues might be just a little too outside the mainstream – such as advocating Stork spots be replaced with elderly parking, since pregnant women benefit from the walk while the arthritic don’t (and those with pregnancy complications can get handicap permits) or advocating that movie theatres have childfree showing, restaurants childfree sections – I took on a budding, yet less controversial topic – employee benefits. Currently, most parents are effectively paid more since the extra benefits employees provide to children have large monetary values. 1500 words on the opposite side was pretty easy – economic efficiency + corporate responsibility to the community. Here’s the result.