Happy New Year! Welcome to 1984!

    This television commercial, directed by Ridley Scott is widely considered to be the best ever made. It introduces the MacIntosh computer as the first personal computer with a graphical interface. This ad depicts a woman destroying the iconic "Big Brother" from George Orwell's iconic novel 1984, which is a criticism of government intrusions upon personal privacy. The woman in this ad represents Apple's new computer. The implication is that Apple and their computer are cool because it stands against conforming to "the man". Since then Apple has come along way, making some very ingenious products and literally creating whole new styles of life. They have also become a company that assists in the very thing they were attacking in this ad.

     Based upon the recommendation from the This Week in Google podcast (HODOR! #253) I recently viewed the episode of Frontline entitled The United States of Secrets on YouTube. I have included l both episodes at the bottom of the page. While this is not the documentary that Hannah and I chose this week it was very informational and highly recommended. It also informed the documentary that we did choose, which was called Terms and Conditions May Apply. This film was very good and serves as a supplemental to what we have already learned from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
   Terms and Conditions May Apply was written and directed by Cullen Hoback and discusses two major points; First, we often do not know what we are signing when we agree to the Terms of Service put out by major media companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and AT&T among many others. The second point is that while we might trust that these corporations might not have malicious intent, the government likely also has access to this information.

    Let's consider Google as an example of what this is documentary is trying to say. Google is arguably the most useful of these companies that we come into contact with on a daily basis and it is 99% free of charge. Google Search is free. Google Maps are free. The personal assistant mobile app Google Now is free. So is Google Drive, Gmail, Google Scholar, Google Calendar, Google Translate, Google News, Google Wallet and YouTube. If you use Google Plus you get excellent and yet still free automatic photo editing. You are reading this blog thanks to a free Google service.  This is not even scratching the surface of the the Android ecosystem which is a major component in the growing economies of the third world. In return, we hand over a truly frightening amount of information to Google that they then use to tailor make ads for us. For instance, if you use a smartphone, Google most likely knows where you are 24 hours a day. They know where you live and how much money you make. They know your phone number and who your best friends are and what their phone numbers are. It is estimated that the amount of data we give to Google is worth (to them) somewhere between $500 and $5000 depending on your usage. Most of this is common knowledge because Google has generally been very upfront about gathering and storing information about us.  What many people do not know however is that almost all internet companies are doing the exact same things and are not being nearly as upfront as Google has been.

      For instance, Apple also tracks locations in every iPhone ever made. Facebook knows where you live and quite literally knows everything about your friends. Yahoo Mail also "reads" or electronically scans your email in ways identical to the way Google does so. 

     What is much more frightening (at least to me) is that the government also has access to this information. This documentary was released a month after Edward Snowden made his disclosures about the National Security Agency and therefore did not make any mention of him. The Frontline documentary went into much more detail about Mr. Snowden and the links between internet companies and the NSA. Terms and Conditions May Apply did assert many of the same things that were later proven by Mr. Snowden. Specifically it asserted that the NSA had backdoors into major internet providers like AT&T and Verizon and that they were actually copying information as it passed through their internet hubs. This film also discussed the now infamous National Security Letters that forced companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo disclose user information without a warrant and without the knowledge of the user.

      Whatever you might think of Google, Facebook and Apple they have now become necessary. If Google were to have a worldwide failure across all its services for even one day we would see a major economic impact. We can literally no longer live without these companies. The National Security Agency wiretapping is another matter. Whatever you might think of this, one thing is clear; we no longer have any sort of privacy. Happy New Year, welcome to 1984. We must now assume that all our digital traffic is being tracked and stored, we must assume that our phone calls are being listened in on. Both Terms and Conditions May Apply and the Frontline United States of Secrets are recommended viewing and I hope we will take these issues under consideration the next time we have an opportunity to vote.

Would Anyone Consider you a Hero?

 

    This week Hannah and I watched the HBO documentary Superheroes on Netflix. On the surface this film was exactly what you might expect; a collection of people who many might consider unbalanced, running around the city streets, in the middle of the night, in costume, on the off chance that they might be able to prevent a crime or help someone in distress. However, I believe there is something deeper that we might be able to learn from this film.

Nyx

    The documentary follows several self proclaimed "superheroes" some of whom have even started groups of costumed crusaders who monitor crime and attempt to help people around the clock. They call themselves Real Life Superheroes and use the acronym RLSH.  Each of these people have a costume, most carry weapons, train quite a bit and some even believe that they have super powers. To protect their hidden identities they make up their own names such as Dark Guardian, Amazonia, Master Legend, Mr. Xtreme, and my personal favorite Apocalypse Meow. We see these heroes training in combat, and patrolling the streets of their cities doing their best to help people. Stereotypically, the documentary also shows the police trying to politely discourage this behavior.

The Statesman

   One thing this documentary did not well show is how well these RLSHs are at helping people and preventing crime. There was some footage showing one of the heroes helping a homeless man who had just had his foot run over by a car. The same group of heroes later witnessed a hit and run by a drunk driver and were able to take his keys away from him for the night. They also called the police, who simply drove on by for some unknown reason. There was also one short anecdote at the beginning about a crime that was prevented but it lacked enough detail to determine if it was a true story.

       With the efficacy of these superheroes in question many people would consider this behavior at least strange and at most dangerous and psychotic. I would like to suggest that these people are simply expressing their individuality and hoping to change the world into a place where the evil are punished and the good are glorified. These RLSHs often actually have a very real and positive impact on the homeless with whom they interact on a daily basis. Many of them raise money for homeless charities or hand out care bags purchased from their own money.

Life

Just like about everyone else, these people want to be seen as a force for good in the world rather than just an onlooker. I would dare to say that many of us do not even try to be an active force for good. We all have heard of the bystander effect, and the story of Kitty Genovese who was murdered in Queens, New York in front of over 30 people who did nothing to stop the crime. Most of us hear that story and say that we would never allow that. Real Life Superheroes hear that story and take the next step designate themselves as the person to take the responsibility that no one else wants.

The Last Gladiators

 

    This week, in honor of the Los Angeles Kings being in the final for the 2014 Stanley Cup, Hannah and I watched a documentary called The Last Gladiators. This film considers the "Enforcer" position in hockey, and features Chris "Knuckles" Nilan, an enforcer for the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Bruins and the New York Rangers between 1980 and 1992.
     Those who are not fans of hockey may not know how brutally violent the game really is. I would go so far as to say it is the most violent of the North American team sports, much more so than football or lacrosse. This violence is aggravated by the speed at which the players move and the fact that they are are surrounded by solid glass walls. Furthermore, the rules against fighting used to be much more lenient than they are today, to the point that fighting (outright gloveless boxing) was a regular part of the game that many fans looked forward to. Even today teams will classify their players into two kinds. First there are the finesse players. These players are experts at skating and hockey maneuvers, and are usually smaller and are very quick on the ice. Their job is to get the puck in the goal and past the three or four players who are trying to stop them. Since there are very few rules against violence in hockey, the opposing team will do their best to intimidate, frighten and hurt these finesse players. They will crash into them at high speeds, slam them into the walls and otherwise throw them off their game. The second classification of players is popularly termed "Enforcers". The job of an enforcer is to protect the finesse players from physical attacks from the opposing team. If the opposing team manages to get to the finesse players the enforcers often will physically beat the offending adversary. As a result hockey players often break arms, noses, ribs, as well as suffer concussions and lose teeth. There have even been several hockey players who have died as a result of injuries on the ice.
    In 2004 and 20005 there was a lockout in the NHL that resulted in several rule changes that decreased the number of fights that occurred during the games. The long term effects on retired players was a major factor in these changes. It had been seen that former professional hockey players had experienced traumatic brain injuries that left them susceptible to depression, suicide and substance abuse among other things.

    The Last Gladiators explores these things through the life of Chris "Knuckles" Nilan from his childhood to his retirement and documents his struggles both on and off the ice.
We see his fights on the ice and his even more difficult fight to stay sober after he retired. One of the most fascinating things we see is interviews with his still estranged family (with particularly emotional testimony from his green beret father) about how they felt betrayed by Nilan's addiction. Today Nilan is a sports radio host in Montreal and has reportedly stayed sober since his third stint in rehab in 2010. He wrote a very interesting book which was published in 2013 called Fighting Back: The Chris Nilan Story, which talks about everything from his hockey career to his struggles with drugs and alcohol to his guns drawn encounter with "Whitey" Bulger, on whom the movie The Departed is based.
    While The Last Gladiators may not be everyone's first choice when choosing a Netflix documentary it improves upon the usual sports documentary by showing a real life struggle with the world's fastest spreading disease: addiction.