Posts by giovanni tiso
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As a media commentator, Russ almost has an obligation to cover such things,
As a media commentator, Russell has an obligation to do what everybody else is doing? No, I don't think so. I thought in fact it was the whole point about Media Watch and Media7 - to examine what the media are doing, critically.
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I feel like I'm being hectored now.
I have that effect on people sometimes. Actually I think this time it was a genuine attempt at hectoring. I was a little frustrated to be honest in the Media7 ep. with McVicar which was so desperately stretched for time to find some of that time taken by a piece on the iPad. I think it's a media obsession that needs to be critiqued.
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(I should have qualified that "perturbing" statement. I meant that while it is your job to have media gadgets, maybe it's not everyone's? Although sometimes it feels like it is. And that could be in part because not many technology writers set aside the fact it's their job to own media gadgets when they write about gadgets.)
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Well, firstly, it's sort of my job to have media gadgets
That is one of the most perturbing sentences I've ever read!
I imagine it'll be a lounge-room device, but I could see it being a suitable form factor to sit on the kitchen sill with a recipe on it.
A loungeroom device? Is this what the world media have been hammering us with for months? Something to sit on the kitchen sill with a recipe on? (And incidentally, you know what else has the right form factor for that? A bloody recipe book. Or a printout if it's a recipe you found on the net.)
I mean whilst definitely not my thing I kind of understood the hype behind the iPhone. But this is verging on the obscene. And again, not the object itself - I really don't care about it either way. But the tonnage of coverage on it. There's something wrong going on here, or is it just me?
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I'll buy an iPad in July, and use to to read books, comics and magazines, watch video, play games, do email, web browsing, light word processing, etc. Were I suitably talented, I might want the Korg synthesiser app, or Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro. I'm quite keen on Wikipanion. I'm sure I'll find many other things I want to do with it.
The thing is I don't get is... where? I mean you have an iPhone, and you have a desktop Mac, right? So where is the intermediate place where one uses an iPad? While standing at the kitchen bench? In the driveway? Unless I suppose this thing superseded the laptop. But what happens if you're doing actual work outside the home, I mean more than light word-processing?
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Actually, I think I might have a useful mental exercise to offer. If you're about to say that Rodney Hide is a Fascist, make yourself say that Helen Clark or Phil Goff are socialists first. And if you find that you just can't do it, it's probably better just to leave it there.
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Should we adopt and lift fascist out of its European meaning for use here in Aotearoa, or should we make the effort to find another word?
Fascist doesn't apply just to Italy or even just to Europe. I just mentioned Pinochet. There is a small 'f' fascism, the watered-down colloquial meaning that it's taken particularly in the United States to mean authoritarian tendencies of all kinds, but even there it seems to me it just identifies the speaker as somebody who likes to use big words instead of confronting people and ideas. I think we ought to strive for precision, words being quite important things.
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Because you come from Italy and you clearly fancy yourself the world expert on the subject?
Not a world expert, no. Knowing more than you, by a long shot. And not because I'm Italian either, simply because you don't know shit.
If both fascism and Hide's neo-liberalism are incompatible with democracy, and both favour authoritarian governance, what's the difference?
Why not call it Nazism then? Why not Stalinism? Not everything that is anti-democratic is Fascist. Friedman in fact had dealings with Pinochet, who was a Fascist, so it's not as if there haven't been collusions between the two - a fact that should certainly continue to give us plenty of pause. But Friedman wasn't Pinochet. Neither was Douglas. Neither is Hide. And the ideas of Friedman - do I even need to say it? - were introduced in this country by Labour (was Lange a Fascist?) and still enjoy far more credit than they should amongst so-called moderate economists. Amongst Obama's experts, for instance. We need to fight those ideas, point out they don't work, point out they're anti-democratic. Saying that the people who espouse them are Fascists doesn't do that, it just make you look silly.
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Gio, I didn't realise the liberalism, even of the neo variety, extended to deeming democracy and its processes to be an inconvenience that must be subverted, denied, or ignored whenever possible. ie: at all times outside the electoral cycle. Because that's what we're seeing from Rodney.
Liberalism, no. Neoliberalism, yes.
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Final in the US was on Monday our time - their Sunday - I think. I banned some of my facebook friends from mentioning it. So far so good.
Turns out she's actually a bloke. Sorry you had to hear it from me.