Gizmodo's got my back (well, really we just read the same blogs)

I wrote last week about Stuxnet as a language attack with real-world consequences. I also wrote about how some in the security world think that the level of sophistication and the specificity of the target suggests that a nation/state - rather than merely some hacker or group of hackers - might have orchestrated the attack. I mean, I don't have access to the Stuxnet code; I'm just reporting what some in the industry believe.

Today Gizmodo reports that "the Pentagon and German intelligence are being accused of creating the virus to take down Iran's atomic facility." They point to articles at a variety of news organizations who are reporting the accusation (scroll down after the jump). Interesting food for thought, especially if we ask ourselves the tough questions about the nature of military attacks (and what qualifies/what doesn't/etc.

Possible example that the pen IS mightier than the sword?

A while back, in my ENG 2353 (Professional Writing Technologies) class, I mentioned that no one country has oversight of the interwebs. In general, our participation - as individuals, as communitites, as part of a city/state/country/world - is without governance. I mean, it's not completely without government, but it's not exactly like the United States FCC can regulate globally-generated internet content. Well, not yet anyway.

So, I was reminded of our class' talk recently by two news-stories about the - hmm, how to describe it? - desire by some to globally regulate internet content. Maybe it's not merely about the desire; maybe desire is predicated (trumped?) here by necessity? I'm not 100% sure, but I do know that the ideas in these two stories speaks to the idea of content control/regulation. Read on!

Ever heard of Stuxnet? Probably not, and there's no reason you necessarily would have. However, some believe that it could very well kill everyone you know. Got your attention now? Wait, there's more!

Stuxnet is malware designed to deliver a pretty specific set of trojans into a computer system, theoretically then allowing some remote user(s) access into the infected system. Usually, trojans like that are designed to give those remote users access to our sensitive information: passwords, bank account/credit card info, etc. On that level, Stuxnet works a lot like malware you or I might get on our adorable little computers at home or school. However, (according to a great article on PC World) industrial cyber-security experts like Ralph Langer and Dale Peterson, CEO of Digital Bond, believe that because of the sheer complexity and artistry of the code itself, the malware likely was designed for a specific target: Iran's nearly-completed Bushehr nuclear reactor. In fact, Langer describes Stuxnet as "the hack of the century."

Stuxnet evidently targets some specific sectors of computer networks designed by Siemens, a big name in giant, industrial computer networks, among other things. The specificity and complexity of the attack, coupled with the small number of organizations that use the exact combination of Siemens' systems, limits the possible number of targets to just about one: Iran's nuclear reactor. Put another way, the Stuxnet trojans were designed to shut down "critical factory operations -- things that need a response within 100 milliseconds," according to IDG News' Robert McMillan (via PC World), not to infiltrate lots of different computers all over the world to steal lots of info like credit card numbers from regular Windows/Mac computers. McMillan argues that failure in those industrial systems could mean reactor meltdown, chemical catastrophe, etc, and that the target's specificity suggests that a new breed of cybercriminal - and/or "possibly a nation state" - created this malware to "destroy something big."

Up next time: "idea crime" and the internet!

Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street!

Sesame Street is older than me. That's probably one of the many reasons I respect it, even look up to it. However, I also admire Sesame Street for the brilliant approaches it has taken over the years to build foundational language education. In many ways, Sesame Street was the foundation for my interest in language and rhetoric. And cookies. And being a Grouch.

Sesame Street started as an experiment, and - like our language itself - that experiment has undergone frequent revision. Now that I've got a little child, Sesame Street has rejoined our TV schedule. I was very surprised by the fact that, despite the frequent revisions, the songs, many of the characters, and - most importantly - the lessons are still familiar to me.


NPR did a fantastic story on Sesame Street this morning. You can check out the text of it here. Also, (I'm such a sucker for Google) Google has a blog post about their involvement with a project called Sesame Workshop. They also have a link up to the great Sesame Street anniversary images they've been running for the last week or so.

FTC now regulating blogs? Relax, civilization won't end.

The Federal Trade Commision announced yesterday that they are now regulating some specific types of speech in the blogging world. Specifically, they are going to try to force bloggers to divulge freebies and endorsements from products they promote on their blogs. The FTC says they're going to levy up to $11,000 per violation, and on a blog there could theoretically be several violations per post. So what's really at stake here?

I've referenced Jeff Jarvis on this blog before, and I still think he has some important ideas on language and business communication. However, he states in a recent post, that he's very, very opposed to the new FTC regs, and I'm not exactly sure why. Well, I mean understand his argument; I'm just not sure I agree. He points to horrendous semi-spam sites like Pay Per Post and says that they are one big target of the new regs.

Sidebar: Pay Per Post (PPP) connects advertisers and bloggers by subject matter. For instance, some company sells rhetoric textbooks, and they want to advertise those books. They find out through PPP that I've got a blog that talks about, among other things, rhetoric. They offer to give me copies of their books, and even to pay me through PPP, to blog about how great their books are. I've got an established blog, a built-in group of readers, and a history of being trustworthy.

I think Jarvis is right that one of PPP's real goals is to cheat Google's search process. Furthermore, I agree with him (and plenty of others), on the princpal of language policing, who are initially against FTC regulation in this way.

However, I think there's another reason, rooted in our assumptions of language, that the FTC should target not only PPP but also other blogs that endorse products without full disclosure. And really, the issue of disclosure seems to be the FTC's main focus: you want to endorse some product on your blog because the producer paid you? No problem; just be transparent. Admit that payola to your readers, thus implying the possibility of bias. However, there is an over-arching issue here, from a rhetoric standpoint, wrapped up in how/why readers trust blogs (and language in general), and it points to two terrible attitudes a reader can have: full-on trust or full-on relativism.

Full-on trust: You believe everything that you read, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. You take nothing with, as they say, a grain of salt. you never demand evidence in support of truth. You're slowly bled dry by people who realize that, if asked, you will give them money in exchange for a product or service.

Full-on relativism: You essentially trust nothing because you believe that everyone's opinion is right in their own special, little way, but nobody's opinion is as right as yours. You don't accept evidence, even when it's incontrovertible, in support of truth. Your favorite things to say include a dismissive "Whatever" and "Thas just, like, your opinion." You never really engage any academic or intellectual pursuit or seek any new knowledge, and your brain stays the same size it is now.

Or, we can realize a few things about humans and language use. First, it turns out that humans have opinions. Put another way, many philosophers argue that there is no such thing as objective information. Subjective information can still be useful, though, when it's supported by good evidence (logos). Secondly, Jarvis argues that the Internet is not a medium. He says that "it’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism." I like Pew's claims about blogs and journalism, but I think that Jarvis is wrong. As I've argued before, blogs represent a special hybridized delivery system for meaning. By definition, that kind of delivery system is a medium. The material of that medium is language. The language of blogs comes from humans. Humans have opinions. The circle is complete.

Seriously though, the rhetoric skills we work on, especially our critical reading skills, create in our brains a better ability to search language for meaning. However, the percentage of readers who are overly trusting or overly relativistic seems to be huge and growing, from my perspective. If that's the case, what's the harm in FTC regulation of language? A compromise to our First Amendment right of free speech? News flash: those rights are already compromised. There are lots of things people aren't allowed to say (or show), and those limitations exist in part because of how readers/audiences interpret meaning (or fail to).

Readers tend to both trust and dismiss blogs by default (there's part of that hybridity in action). When we read something on a blog, I think we either assume that it comes from a trustworthy, unbiased source (often because it's in-line with our own opinions), or we dismiss it because, well, any crackpot can put anything on the web (or, more truthfully, because it is not in line with our opinions). Why do we trust or distrust these sources? Because blogs have some kind of punk-rock, DIY, outside-of-the-mainstream-media ethos?

No, no, no, I warn you. Our discerning eyes must depend not merely on ethos, but also on logos and the occasional smattering of pathos. If bloggers are paid to endorse a product, they should be compelled to admit that inforamtion. However, if we are going to read blogs, we should compel ourselves to use our critical reading skills to discern merit and truth. If we can't (or don't want to) compel ourselves in that way, maybe we shouldn't be reading.

Finally, a medium worthy of politics

I just read this article about Governors Palin and Schwarzenegger tweeting about ethics charges and failed economies (respectively). I said to myself, I said, "Self, is 140 characters really enough to adequately address 'real world' issues?"

There is such a ridiculous rush to "adopt" Twittering (even though the technology is years old... way to stay current, Favorite News Corporation), that I wonder if new users even think about the rhetorical ramifications of their tweets. When, if ever, are 140 characters sufficient to deliver meaning? Well, I suppose that could be enough space to "say" something meaningful , but it takes a pretty skilled rhetorician. And even if a rhetorician is skilled enough, boiling complex issues down to tweets like

Re inaccurate story floating re:ethics violation/Legal Defense Fund;matter is still pending;new info was just requested even;no final report.

seems dangerously reductive. That's from soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Sarah Palin's twitter-stream, the bulk of which is being celebrated on Gawker.

While you're thinking about it, feel free to twitter your congressperson and/or follow their tweets at tweetcongress.com.

What does it mean to "write for the Web?"

I found this image on Flickr a while ago. It's a mind map of what web 2.0 is supposed to look like. I'm very interested in one of the elements (bubbles? tags?) in particular. Over on the far left, an element describes web 2.0 as "an attitude, not a technology." I'm interested in how well, in one way, that defines how we use language for the web.

Do we view the internet as a technology or a mindset? What might the implications of those two outlooks be? Do they change at all between a "traditional" website (a use of language that's only a few years old...) and web 2.0?

Which of the elements interest you? In light of our discussions in class and in this post, which has meaning to you?

UPDATE: I just realized that the mindmap image also appears on the O'Reilly blog, which kind of makes sense in light of this post about Web 2.0.