Fungible Convictions

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. Osama bin Laden is in hiding. Saddam Hussein is on trial.

This is a list of American military successes, sure. But it’s also an indication of another way the “War on Terror” is unique: it is the first war in which the enemies are personalities.

And not just the enemies—it’s all the players. Iraq is “Rumsfeld’s War,” or Bush’s war of choice, but never quite described as America’s decision. The case for war is inextricably tied to Colin Powell and his presentation to the U.N. in 2003. The “Blair government” raised questions about the Nigerien-Iraqi uranium connection, but not the British.

This is how the War on Terror will be waged, using not just bold imagery (as all modern wars have been) but also the creation of bold, indelible personalities. The death of Zarqawi has been hailed as a turning point in the battle for Iraq, the death of an egotistical, publicly disliked goof who didn’t know how to fire an automatic weapon who was nevertheless described by the U.S. government through the press as some sort of inspirational mastermind.

President Bush described him today as the “operational commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Bin Laden described him as the “prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq.” He planned the massive bombing of the U.N. headquarters that launched the ultraviolent phase Iraq now lives and dies through. He is thought to have planned the bombing of the holiest Shiite mosque and to have personally beheaded American contractor Nicolas Berg.

In what other war has there ever been such a strong connection between the war itself and individuals? Patton, Rommel, Ho Chi Minh, Jackson, Hirohito—there is an endless list of famous and infamous characters in war, but never before has a nation’s military been mobilized to attack lone personalities.

The irony obviously is that with Zarqawi’s death, as with Hussein’s sons’ deaths, the strategic gain, though significant, falls far short of the artificial enormity of the character. Should the American or Afghani or Pakistani army capture Osama bin Laden, the experience will be the same: extraordinary catharsis followed by little essential change in the position of the “front” in the War on Terror.

So the question is, how responsible is it for leaders and the rest of us to frame this terribly complex war in terms of individuals? We have no armies to fight our army. We have faceless cells, some of which are home-grown, and ad hoc militias. What good does it do to pour responsibility for a widespread militant Islamist ideology into the mold of the individual militant Islamist?

In the same way that modern governments live by the image and die by the image, doesn’t living by the manufactured personality mean we die by it too, that for every charismatic personality we elevate to icon—by ignoring the complexities of a movement—we just ordain another martyr?

It was such a relief to turn on the TV this morning and see the news that reporter Jill Carroll is on her way home after nearly three months of captivity in Iraq!

On Boylston Street here in Boston, a photographer—maybe of the Christian Science Monitor?—was stopping everyone she passed simply to smile and ask, “Have you heard the news that Jill Carroll is free?”

Such joy that she’s going home safe!

Tonight Brookline Booksmith held a talk/reading in honor of small Boston publishers. But not really. Speakers included representatives of Ploughshares, Post Road, Redivider, Salamander, and Quick Fiction, but no one from a press, per se.

As such, the audience was drawn from the unpublished masses—I know that sounds perjorative, but everyone there really did seem to want to know the answers to the most basic lit mag questions: what info should my cover letter include, what about simultaneous submissions, etc.

It also served as an impromptu visual reunion for my Emerson College classmates—none of us had the chance to talk, as Brookline Booksmith is an incredibly cramped, face-forward-or-die kind of venue, nothing like the friendly environment of the Enormous Room during the most recent Four Stories reading.

To have a “small press night” and not have any actual presses says a lot about the Boston literary scene. The scene is very writer-centric, first of all. The ratio of magazines submitted to to magazines subscribed to is probably 10-to-1. And second of all, writers here don’t think in terms of books. Boston writers want to publish poems, stories, and collections. Are we lazy? Are our sights set too low? Whatever it is, it means writers here a) ignore small book publishers, even though it’s easier to turn a small profit in your spare time with a small book press than a small literary magazine and b) forget their role as reader and financial supporter of other writers.

Tomorrow night I’m heading to the Somerville BBQ joint Red Bones (which will be hell during the fast) with Bill to celebrate the paperback release of The Legends of Winter Hill. I don’t know if I’ll know anyone but Bill there, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the more down-to-earth audience. If you’re a local reader of Fungible Convictions, be sure to make your way to Red Bones at 7:00pm.

Between 2001 and 2004, Americans under 44 saw their wages drop 8-9 percent. This according to the Christian Science Monitor in its article “America’s younger workers losing ground on income. ” Even more frustrating for my generation, wages increased for those older than 44.

Additionally, Americans spent more than they earned in January, the eighth month we’ve outspent our earnings in the last ten.

Let’s add onto that that my generation necessarily carries more debt than any generation before it, largely due to the cost of higher education. Let’s also throw in the fact that a higher percentage of people worldwide are receiving degrees than ever before, making the job market more competitive than ever.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to provide the same quality of life for my kids than my parents gave mine. I’ll be paying my own student loans for years, I have a mortgage that in adjusted dollars buys me less space than it would have ten years ago, I’m paid less than many of my peers by virtue of being in the book industry, my generation will have to pay for the retirement (and health costs) of baby boomers at a moment in history that we’re a few breakthroughs away from extending life another ten or twenty years.

But right now, as in, the present, we can’t complain too much. Even on my pitance of a salary, I have good benefits, enjoy Netflix, get dependable heating in the winter, and can travel a bit. And I think other yuppies my age could say the same.

But, man, those numbers are still worrying. I knew hourly wages had been dropping over the last decade, but really—the average American isn’t saving any money month to month? And my parents’ pay is going up while mine is going down? Is it because they are, in a sense, “rarer” because of their experience or unoutsourceablity? Or are there so many boomers in leadership positions now that they’re effectively funneling an increasing amount of money to them at the expense of me and my peers?

Oy. Is this what the 1970′s felt like? Economic insecurity. Constant bad news from around the world. Cynicism. A feeling that we’ve abdicated the throne of exceptionalism—Nixon then, Abu Ghraib now.

What’s going to be our Lake Placid Olympics? Who will perform our Miracle on Ice? Where’s my Mike Eruzione?

I watched a lot of Olympics coverage in Canada last weekend. It was the first time I’d watched non-U.S. coverage, and it’s good to see other countries are so unashamedly patriotic. I get into it even when I’m not watching my own countrymen.

But it means you miss out on the awesome backstories of so many awesome athletes from around the world. I’ve got a Fungible Conviction coming up called “Think Global; Act Global” that discusses the issue of branding a lit mag as a geographically specific product—it deals with the idea of ignoring the Internet’s inherent arc toward universality—but for now, about these Olympians who make me so happy, I’ll give this axiom:

They offer up their past to be consumed by the flame of their performance. That’s what makes perfection so exhilarating.

Richard Cravatts, you’ve going to have a lot of explaining to do after insulting some of the brightest—and increasing influential—professionals in the country: library scientists. Your Boston Globe op-ed today “When Librarians Protect Terrorists” is the #1 e-mailed story of the day. You take a controversial stand on the legality of investigative seizure of library records, and you make a good point, that records aren’t private because a library itself is public, at least in the recent case of a Waltham Newton, MA, librarian who denied the FBI access to a library computer after a bomb threat against Brandeis University was traced back there.

But then you write:

More to the point, why are librarians, whose professional training concentrates on mastering the use of the Dewey Decimal System, making any decisions that affect law enforcement?

How can someone be so naive? You’re just asking for letters to pour in from around North America—some probably addressed to the Globe and to Boston University—pointing out the mind-boggling rigor of a librarian’s education and the importance librarians now hold in the fields of computer science, corporate archiving, curating, records restoration, and—above all—law. Let’s look at a sample of coursework from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Science, which along with Michigan and UNC is probably the best program on the continent:

FIS1210H Information and its Social Contexts

An introduction to the economic, political and sociological dimensions of an information-rich environment, including the historical development of information studies, knowledge production, issues of control versus free flow of information (such as intellectual freedom, intellectual property rights, and public policy), the social organization and distribution of knowledge, and ethical and legal aspects of information services. (Caidi)

FIS1342H Designing Information Systems

Designing information systems in the face of competing goals from multiple stakeholders, e.g., efficiency, cost, reliability, security, privacy, usability, adaptability, reusability, time-to-market. Systematic techniques and models for identifying and evaluating alternatives. Non-functional requirements and architectural design. Organizing design knowledge for reuse. (Yu)

FIS2158H Management of Corporate and other Special Information
Centres

Critical survey of theory and current practice pertaining to information services in special libraries. A major component of the course is a professionally supervised practicum which provides students with opportunities to apply management and information practices and skills.

FIS2165H Social Issues in Information and Communication Technologies

Examination of major social issues related to the computerization of society. A unifying theme is the view of information technology as providing the means for social as well as technical control, with the various advantages and drawbacks this can mean. The social issues that are explored in greatest depth are those related to the computerization of work (displacement, skill, control, monitoring) and access to information (privacy, surveillance and freedom of information). Additional topics may include: information infrastructure development, social vulnerability and risk, militarization, social choices in design and the ethical responsibilities of information professionals. (Clement)

FIS2181H Information Policy

Introduction to policymaking and the players and stakes involved in information creation, access and use. Emphasis on the political, economic, legal and social issues affecting information and its institutions, including relevant social theory and analytical methods. The focal policy issues considered in depth will vary from year to year: e.g. government information, intellectual property, intellectual freedom, (universal) access, cultural content, community networking, and privacy. (Caidi)

As if that weren’t enough, check out the requirements for Toronto’s combo J.D./M.A.I.S. program. And so you know the kind of people who will be writing those letters, you might want to look at these biographical sketches of graduated FIS students.

Librarians, archivists, and the like are some of the most important behind-the-scenes actors in our society. They’re the keepers of our collective memory and take their jobs—and the law—very seriously. Librarian Kathy Glick-Weil’s intransigence was nothing short of noble civil disobedience: there’s a bad law on the books, it allows for undue collection of information on peaceful persons, and she took a stand. She deserves our admiration, not a derision of her education, intelligence, or calling.

Cravatts bio

Write to Richard!: cravatts@bu.edu

Or better yet, write to the Globe!: letter@globe.com

Update: The anti-privacy trend continues . . . as of today, by law, all job sites, even ones run by private universities, are required to keep a copy of your resume—that is, a copy of your whereabouts from one year to the next. BoingBoing: “Feds require job sites to keep copies of resumes”. Just like telecom companies allowing the feds to wiretap you because “senior government officials” asked them to, job sites are now making resumes permanently available to the government without first informing their users. USA Today “Telecoms let NSA spy on calls”

Design Observer: Freedom of Speech or Filching of Style? The New Law of Eminent Lo-Mein

Fadtastic: When Less Isn’t Less

A List Apart: Home Page Goals

Valleywag launches, bring Gawker Media to Silicon Valley

New comic book to explain copyright and public domain law. Due out in March.

The rollout of digital rights management (DRM) software has been an unmitigated disaster for media companies. Whether or not companies find a negotiated line with customers between protecting rights and protecting fuctionality is to be seen, but the cacophonous backlash to rights management of CDs has ruined whatever credibility music companies may have had left.

This week introduced another irony to the DRM debacle: the BBC reports that rights-managed eBooks don’t ever stop their rights management, even after the copyright has expired and allowed the book to be in the public domain. So in addition to crippling individual computers with unsafe software, media publishers flaunt copyright law on fair-use in favor of defending copyright law pre-expiry.

What’s worse:

“It is probable that no key would still exist to unlock the DRMs,” Laca said. “For libraries this is serious.”

“As custodians of human memory, a number would keep digital works in perpetuity and may need to be able to transfer them to other formats in order to preserve them and make the content fully accessible and usable once out of copyright.”

In other words, DRM for digital books completely undermines the mission of libraries and archives. Works can’t be kept, salvaged, or shared. And under laws being considered in certain jurisdictions, it would be illegal to attempt to hack the DRM software.

Seems like a great time to get a degree in copyright law!

My high school was the preparatory school formerly synonymous with Georgetown University. We still share our Jesuit heritage and even a mascot, the murkily-defined “Hoya”. While my connection to G’town ends there, I’m very proud to see that ballsy, rhetorically dead-on questioning of authority wasn’t limited to my brash high school classmates in the safe confines of AP Government.

Georgetown Law Students protest Attorney General’s speech.

Publishing and reading literature in America is a luxury. The vast majority of it is produced and consumed by people certain in their safety, with adventurous travel writers perhaps being the only consistent exception. Writing literature is a leisure-activity and a priviledge.

American journalism is different. It is written and produced by people under enormous pressures from their colleagues, financial backers, and governments at home and abroad.

The fate of freelance journalist Jill Carroll at this hour is unknown. Her captors in Iraq have been silent since threatening to kill Carroll two days ago if all female Iraqi prisoners were not released.

Carroll by all reports was a journalistic true-believer. She insisted on interviewing everyday Iraqis in the neighborhoods of Baghdad, which meant placing herself in extraordinary danger, simply to tell a story.

The finest people you’ll ever meet are those with faith. While Carroll is a stranger to all of us, her faith is familiar. It’s the faith that your actions—like it getting a story—can help others, even if it means sacrificing your own safety or peace of mind.

Beyond prayer, we may often feel helpless in hostage situations. Jill Carroll’s friends are mobilized, as are influential clerics in Iraq. But if you’d like to do more to make journalists safer while they do their jobs, please support the Committee to Protect Journalists. Donate today.

If you would like to learn more about the physical and emotional sacrifices wartime journalists willingly make, I highly recommend the following books:

American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning