Beach Haven

Phillips, Whitney. 2015. This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press.
 
In her ethnography focused on Internet trolling, Whitney Phillips seeks to understand motivations and tools within this group she often refers to as a subculture. Through her research journey, she comes to see the group not as a group so much as a continuum of people of all sorts with varying and changing perspectives. Working through a form of history, Phillips shows how the term ‘troll’ has evolved to mean different things to different people. Early examples included an ethic of exposing what trolls deemed as hypocrisy in any dominant culture. Some trolls’ antics gained notoriety in society outside their fellow trolls. This became a form of currency, called lulz, and was a prime motivation for many.

Over time, trolling behavior became personified in the form of a movement referred to as Anonymous. Factions within the trolling community and within Anonymous splintered, attacking each other at times. For example, Phillips describes two Anonymous groups. She calls the politically motivated faction as “Big-A Anonymous” who are also sometimes called ‘hacktivists’. The other portion of Anonymous she refers to as “little-a anonymous” who are primarily those still interested in lulz, or ‘lulz-ists’.

In terms of her ethnographic approach, Whitney Phillips lines out her process primarily in chapter 3. She defines her work as “a qualitative, mixed methods study” (Phillips 2015, 37). She describes conducting “dozens of online interviews with twenty-five trolls” and exchanging large numbers of emails and private messages with her “trolling collaborators” using the snowball approach to adding “research recruits” (Ibid.). Phillips acknowledges how during her research the platforms used by trolling communities and the community itself (its ranks and ideological stance) shifted and splintered. Perhaps her largest challenge was the insistence of anonymity by all the self-identified trolls willing to work with her. Over her time of participant observation, she could begin to identify individuals, even when their online names changed, through their messaging, language, and when conducting audio-only interviews, by their voices.
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She breaks up the chapter on methodology into each of the difficult research functions using section headings, including: Establishing Borders, Navigating Platforms, The Problem of Anonymity, Moving Targets, and Putting the “I” in Troll. In each of these sections Phillips discusses the barriers to research and how she approached overcoming them. For example, the last section is about how she needed to ‘out’ herself to a group of so-called ‘RIP trolls’. This sort of troll would seek out public online memorials for people who had recently died. They would then provoke family members and others through uploaded images or jokes about the person who died, or their family. Phillips had been invited to speak on a TV talk show about the issue. Feeling she had gained their trust, yet wondering if her public appearance would make her a troll target, she reached out to some of her collaborators. After several conversations she notes how one of them replied to her saying, “It’s not your job to defend us” (Phillips 2015, 46).

Payne, Stanley G., and Jesus Palacios. 2014. Franco: A Personal and Political Biography. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Francisco Franco rose to power just prior to World War II. He became a de facto dictator in Spain until his death in 1975. His rule was nationalist, and took on the trappings of Hitler’s Nazi party, but instead of exterminating Jews, Spain under Franco protected them. Spain did not become engaged in Hitler’s European war at any scale. Hitler sent little help to Spain, and Spain committed few troops to Hitler’s campaigns. In a way, the two nationalist governments kept out of each other’s way.
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Franco came up through the military ranks quicker than his peers. When political strife that led to the Spanish civil war intensified, his extended family were on both sides. His brother was a famous military pilot but became anti-regal or pro-socialist during the civil war. Francisco Franco remained loyal to the traditional government, then the republican leadership until it began to crumble just before the civil war began.

As the title implies, there is much of the public biographical history shared by the authors. In addition, they include many details documented by various Franco family members and associates. At times, he drives history. At other times he is driven by the greater society and events surrounding him. Like many national leaders, his ideas and actions are both enigmatic, and change over time. 

O'Brian, Patrick. 1970. Master and Commander. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
 
A friend of mine gave me this book a few Christmas seasons ago. When I saw the title, I assumed this was the book that inspired the movie starring Russell Crowe. As it turns out there is an entire series of these books by Patrick O’Brian. The movie was an adaptation of the sixth book in the series. The book I read this time is the first book in the series. The volumes are all called Master and Commander, except after this first in the series (this one I read) the rest have a subtitle. For example, the sixth book the movie was made from is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

In this first book, Jack Aubrey is made captain of a small English naval ship called the Sophie. He meets Stephen Maturin on shore. Maturin is a medical doctor. They become friends and Aubrey talks Maturin into joining him as the ship’s doctor. Most of the book depicts a series of military exploits around the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar, generally against French shipping. On a few occasions they go up against man-o-war vessels and conquer. They manage to rescue British and ally prisoners on some of these ships. They also attack a shore-based enemy fort.

Eventually the tide of war shifts for the Sophie when she is attacked by a larger, faster, and better armed French Frigate. The crew is captured, ransomed back to the British navy, and stand before a court-martial on Gibraltar for losing their ship to the enemy. The captain and crew are eventually found not to be responsible, but Aubrey and Maturin are left without a ship. While on Gibraltar they witness a definitive battle in the strait between British and French ships. England wins, and not long after, Napoleon loses in his land campaign in the first Napoleonic War. Suddenly many navy officers are shore-bound with an unsure future. That’s where this first book in the Aubrey saga ends.

My friend who made this book a gift to me gave me the second as well. She jokingly called the series a ‘man’s romance novel’ since they are written in a similar style, but focus on wartime action. To be sure there is some romancing by Captain Aubrey, but this is minimized. Aubrey has a fling with an old love who it turns out is the wife of a member of the admiralty. This indiscretion comes back to haunt him. He is not penalized in the court-martial toward the end of the story, but finding a new ship to command becomes elusive in the post-war era. Despite all the enemy ships he captures as prizes, his loss of the Sophie in battle becomes enough reason for him to become a former master and commander.

Biagioli, Mario. 1993. Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
 
Mario Biagioli spends little time in this book on the specifics of the scientific arguments of Galileo Galilei, though he does touch on a few high-level positions. Instead, Biagioli depicts how Galileo uses his scientific discoveries and invention of the telescope as means to position himself within the court culture of the Medici in Florence, and later in his life in papal Rome.

One of Biagioli’s arguments has to do with how patronage was used to maintain the power of the Medici and the Pope related through to putting ideas to the test (though testing processes might have been themselves questionable at times). It makes me think about science in the theoretical vs the practical. For example, G.E.R. Lloyd in The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World of Ancient Greece and China compared Greek and Roman ideals as differences of value around knowledge. Biagioli likens a differing of ideas to duels. He argues that the disputation was more important than the outcome in that honor is maintained in the fight itself. This perspective he describes as embedded in courtier life.

Patronage might be thought of as a sort of mentorship arrangement. As I understand it, a mentor would help a scientist in terms of collaboration of ideas, like say a more experienced scientist. The patrons as Biagioli describes them I think are more like sponsors by helping to set an agenda financially, if only indirectly. The sponsor hints at ideas they are willing to pay for through a broker, and the scientist woos a sponsor by properly framing research efforts, again through a broker. The sponsor-scientist relationship is clearly symbiotic in that the stature of each is raised by the position or ideas of the other. The greater the sponsor or broker, the greater the reputation of the scientist. The more striking the ideas of the scientist, the more prestige is implied upon the broker and sponsor. Interesting, sponsors do not directly pay a scientist so as not to seem to be buying loyalty. Instead the brokers act as go-betweens, not unlike a modern agent.

It might be argued that court patrons were more interested in gaining and flexing their power (giving titles, positions, making others do "their desires", etc). Perhaps they were less interested in only helping a client financially. Maybe the mentor role of the patron was more about mentoring the client in how to navigate the life of a courtier more than mentoring how to be a scientist. At the same time, I realize that my personal perspective on mentoring is based on how we might view the idea today. Back in Galileo's time the relationship described might have been thought of more like a mentor relationship.

One interesting perspective of Biagoli was how patronage was more stable under Florentine rule by the Medici family. Once Galileo moved to Rome to seek influence in the papal court it didn’t go so well for him. In that era popes tended to be old entering office, so they didn’t tend to last long before death caused a change in dynasty. As such, courtier influence waxed and waned quickly. In Florence, Galileo only had rivals of scientific prowess. In Rome, religious rivals tended to be as steeped in dogma as they were in power and face-saving struggles. As a result, when Galileo disagreed with a powerful Jesuit, he found himself in serious jeopardy. The arguments were in part about helio-centrism, but only in part. In his old age he was forced to recant some of his findings and lost much of his scientific authority.

​Mario Biagoli depicts an interesting picture of one scientist’s attempt at personal advancement through discovery, and the system of court patronage as a tool to raise standing of both benefactor and beneficiary. He also shows how such political and personal concerns influenced scientific findings, and argues that perhaps some similar influence happens still today. I tend to agree on this latter assertion. Science in many ways is beholden to whoever holds the purse strings. Perhaps funders don’t directly decide how science happens, but they do often determine lines of research by deciding which questions to pursue. 

Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, Inc.
 
The work creates a link between the perspectives of a given historical social milieu in France and the choices French society made (and makes) about how to conduct judicial and penal activities. Foucault makes the argument how in feudal France, judicial proceedings were largely closed to the public, and the execution of sentence was the opposite. Punishment was all about the spectacle. As French society morphed to more democratic morays, the opposite happened. In contemporary France trials are open to the public, and sentences are largely away from the public gaze.

The author asserts much of the shift is a function of accountability and power. Public display of brutal executions helped keep others in check, at least so the theory goes. Yet crime still happened so one could question the effectiveness of public executions. Foucault points to a balancing act by despots to allow enough public spectacle to instill fear without going so far as to seem unfair, inspiring general insurrection. In the days of kingship, the people were accountable to power. In more modern democratic societies, leadership is more accountable to the people. Many argue if this is really true, but Foucault makes the point of the technology of evermore specific legal codes which in many ways proscribe judges from arbitrariness.

A key point Michel Foucault makes is how punishment has shifted from the specific punishment to fit the crime, to generic punishment for any crime. For example, in feudal France, it would be common for a thief to have his hand(s) cut off. Today, all go to some form of prison and the only variation is the length of stay. The one modern exception to prison sentences is use of the death penalty, yet there are many legal ways to make actual execution a reality for most convicts. Likewise, all forms of execution are the same, not varied based on the specifics of the crime.

On last point I’ll share relates to the intent of punishment. In early France, motive was not considered. Crime x received punishment y. Punishment was to the body with the hopes of creating repentance within the assumed criminal. Because the spectacle was as much for the observers as for the convicted, it was not unusual for penalties to continue post-mortem. For example, a person may be strangled unto death, then disemboweled, drawn and quartered, and body parts put on public display. In such an example, the prisoner is dead after step one yet the punishment went on. Pre-execution torture was intended to extract a confession, but Foucault notes how it was understood such confessions could be false, so other forms of evidence were required for conviction. Confession would not lessen the punishment as it was only one form of evidence, and was more intended to help the sinner repent than it was for proof of culpability.

In modern times, intent or sanity are important parts of sentencing. Just as the old way was to help reform the sinner in the next life, in modern times we look to help heal the soul in this life. In this way we have adopted sentences that involve confinement in mental institutions for example. Foucault sees psychiatric efforts to confirm the accused mental state at the time of the crime, or their ability to stand trial as modern-day technologies of the court system.

The final section of the book focuses on the technology of a panoptic physical prison and the psychological effects such an experiment had on prisoners. I wrote a blog post early about panopticism. Here is the link:

http://bhaven.org/blog/the-modern-virtual-global-panopticon

​One final comment. Michel Foucault links many of the disciplinary processes and attitudes used in the penal system with those used in hospitals, the military, and schools. Each of these have a need for regimentation and hierarchy on a large scale. All claim their effort to be for the public good. 

Hemingway, Ernest. 1940. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
 
​It’s the Civil War, but not the one most Americans think about. Just prior to World War II the country of Spain spiraled into a civil war pitting nationalistic fascists against a republic mostly comprised of anti-monarchy socialists. The story follows a group of socialist republicans just before an attack by their armies against the city of Segovia. Among the guerillas is an American, Robert Jordan, with demolition skills. The group is assigned to blow up a bridge just as the fighting starts in order to hold off some of the fascist forces from assisting.

Along the way Jordan falls in love and has a brief affair with a young fighter, Maria, who had earlier been raped by Falangists, a faction within the nationalist movement. The small band share stories of atrocities they either suffered, witnessed, or perpetrated.

It’s clear from the story that one of the themes Ernest Hemingway is sharing is how there are no ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ in war, rather all sides feel justified in both their cause and their actions. Likewise, none of the survivors of incidents or episodes within war are unchanged. Like other works I’ve read by Hemingway, his storytelling is masterful.

Caldwell, Taylor. 1946. This Side of Innocence. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
 
On the surface this is a period romance, however there are underlying themes that relate to technology and society. The romance portion revolves around the Lindsey family. They include an aging grandfather William, a spinster daughter Dorothea, and a derelict son Jerome. As children, the siblings were joined by their cousin Alfred. Dorothea had long term designs on her cousin who became adopted by the widower patriarch. William was a banker. He retired and while Jerome was off sewing wild oats, Alfred was the steadfast bank manager. Alfred married, fathered a crippled son Phillip.

Alfred’s first wife passed away. Instead of acting on the obvious (for the time period) choice of his cousin Dorothea, Alfred used his influence and money to connect with a questionable younger lady of the area, Amalie. Jerome gets low on money and fears Alfred will step in with his betrothed and take over the family fortune so he returns to the family mansion.

Intrigue surrounds the family. Jerome and Alfred both work at the bank with rivalrous philosophies of how to manage affairs. Amalie marries Alfred, but later Jerome and she have a tryst while Alfred is away on business. Alfred assaults Jerome and nearly kills him. He then divorces Amalie and moves out of the family home along with his son. Dorothea moves away with him as well, though they never marry or even have any sort of romantic relationship. Jerome and Amalie eventually marry and have two children together. For nineteen years there is animosity between the two homes. All the stress causes the death of the patriarch William.

It is the next generation stirs up the hatred as Phillip becomes a trusted partner to Jerome. The older child to Jerome and Amalie is Mary. She and Phillip eventually fall in love and want to marry. That brings the old hatred out again. Alfred has softened from the conservative business man to a benefactor of the community. He only does so through persuasion of Phillip. Jerome has been in favor of using the bank to improve living standards in the community all along, so he and Phillip work together to make improvements to Rivers End. When he and Mary announce their desire to marry, all are supportive except Jerome who flies into a rage. On the way home from a confrontation with Alfred and Jerome he softens, then dies as the carriage he was riding in overturns in a bad winter storm.

The family journey is about greed, betrayal, remorse and eventually some reconciliation, though not complete. The technology and social aspects are interesting. In a number of places in the book there are philosophical arguments about the best way to use the finances of the bank and prominent citizens. Alfred is about investing conservatively and maintaining an agrarian society with money controlled by wealthy landholders. Jerome wants to invest in factories and housing for the workers. He wants each worker to have a small plot of land of their own to raise their own food, or created marketable crops as they see fit. Phillip agrees with Jerome and together they turn the investors locally and with Jerome’s connections in New York from his profligate past.

The technology comes from the arguments around how building factories and creating a more industrial society would take people away from the land. Acquisition of things become the pursuit as people become more materialistic. Education is also an argument in the story as to whether it would cause workers to become less satisfied, or help them improve their lives. There were also debates around who should lead society. Alfred favored the cold businessman. Phillip was more about educated social science minded people. Jerome argued for a mix of STEM and social sciences. Both Jerome and Phillip agreed that leaders should come from all walks of life and they established scholarships to help make that happen. Secretly, Alfred joined their cause with the persuasion of Phillip over years. Jerome never knew this was the case.

In chapter fifty-five Amalie argues that those building society like Jerome and Phillip were really doing it for selfish reasons. She postulates that people build walls out of fear, and creating a happy community at Rivers End was really just Jerome’s way of building a wall. By placating the people he would have a buffer around himself. She herself had married Alfred for his access to money, then began to feel more respect for him as she got to know him. Despite this, she allowed her feelings for Jerome to overcome her and they had an affair that resulted in a pregnancy. If one follows her own logic, it could be said that marrying Alfred and later Jerome for money and perhaps some form of love was her way of building a wall out of fear as well.

In general I’m not a romance fan. I got this book among a bunch of older ones from various library sales. I guess the STS (science, technology, and society) scholar in me latched on to the tech and society implications in the book. Perhaps Caldwell was trying to make social statements and used the family story as a way to contextualize her thoughts.
 

The title serves as a content descriptor. The biographies are short, typically a dozen pages. It seems to be a primer for those just starting to look at history. The subtitle states, “Twenty life stories of outstanding American men and women in the arts, sciences and public life.” Given the space, time of writing and intended audience, one should not expect anything in-depth about the number of subjects chosen or revealing anything beyond a cursory look at each of them. Despite this limited approach, the book is quite helpful at introducing some of the people I personally know little to nothing about.

Some of the chapters seem to be adapted by the various authors from large historical books they’ve published, or perhaps a periodical piece on the same topic. The editor chose different historians for each chapter. Those authors selected are clearly experts on the individual the personal biographical sketches introduce. To wet the curiosity of a potential scholar, the list of subjects include: Roger Williams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, Stephen Foster, Louis Agassiz, Emily Dickenson, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Charles Townsend Copeland, Grant Wood, Carl Sandburg, the Wright Brothers, Marian Anderson, Agnes de Mille, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Thoreau.
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If you are like me, you’ve heard of most, but all, of these. Like me, you likely have varying familiarity with either their myth or perhaps have read some of their created works. Despite that, I for one managed to pick up some insights on even those I felt quite familiar with. One potential outcome of a biographical skim like this one is the reader may become more interested in one or more of the people highlighted. That interest could lead the reader down a deeper study, but the shallow pieces in the work can also keep the exploratory investment small.

Daudet, Alphonse. 1903 & 1917. The Siege of Berlin. Vol. XIII French Fiction, in The Harvard Classics Self of Fiction, edited by William Allan Neilson and Charles W. Eliot, 431-437. New York: P F Collier & Son Company.

This story depicts a physician recounting to a friend an experience he had with a former patient. Much earlier in his career he had been called to the home of a former French colonel who was prostrate on the floor and near death. He was attended by his granddaughter. His son, her father, was away fighting the Prussians and all of France worried over the progress of the war.

Eventually the colonel regained some consciousness and in his stupor sought confirmation that the war was going well for the French. The doctor affirmed this untruth and the man improved slightly. Between the granddaughter and doctor they decided to try fabricating French victories over the Germans, and each time they did the patient improved.

As the war drug on ever more badly from French troops, they deluded the colonel of the opposite. They made up victories that were not happening, and hid the advances of the enemy. Eventually Paris was under siege. The conspiratorial caretakers instead described how Berlin was under siege by French troops. As canon fire could be heard in the distance they told him it was celebratory, and that soon their troops would be parading down the Champs Elysees through the Arc Triomphe. The patient’s apartment overlooked the likely parade route. He prepared to receive the troops by stepping out onto the balcony in his best uniform. Eventually the ‘treatment’ ended as he saw the Prussian helmets approaching with their spiked domes. He fell prostrate again on the floor, this time dead.

Daudet approaches the story with a combination of descriptive action, inner thoughts, and dialog at times hushed between the physician and granddaughter, or confident when either of them gave assurances to their patient. Daudet in some ways links the fear and despair of the French public over the actual war with the concerns he depicts in the caretakers of the colonel. 

Nye, David E. 2007. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.

As the subtitle suggests, David Nye poses a series of philosophical questions focused on ideas related to technology. Perhaps the first is the biggest; what is technology? Regardless how one approaches this question the answers are essentially ambiguous. Important arguments throughout the work confirm that humans, humanity, and technology are inextricably connected.

Here is a list of the other big questions Nye pursues, each as individual chapters. Does technology control us? Is technology predictable? How do historians understand technology? Does technology inspire cultural uniformity or diversity? Does technology contribute to sustainable abundance or ecological crisis? How does technology affect how we work (do we work more, less, better or worse)? Should ‘the market’ select technologies? Does technology bring more security or escalate danger? Through technology do we expand consciousness or encapsulate it? Will technology lead to an inevitable future, or are there many potential outcomes?

All of these questions have many-sided arguments, and all the arguments have a number of proponents offering nuanced perspectives. In this work, David Nye brings out good representation of the many camps addressing the questions. Nye offers a philosophical examination of how technology and humanity interact and influence each other. As one might guess about a philosophy-focused treatise, there are no real final answers, and plenty of opportunity for the reader to take sides.