Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 269

McLuhan in An Age of Social Media

Just written last Thursday - already #1 on
Amazon Computers and Technology Top 100



This essay can be considered a new chapter in my book Digital McLuhan, published in 1999, or before the advent of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the social media of our age. Marshall McLuhan's ideas, including hot and cool, the medium is the message, and the tetrad, are applied to help us understand selfies, tweeting, iconic television shows such as The Sorpanos and Mad Men, the Arab Spring, the U.S. Presidential election of 2016, and the Kindle revolution itself. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Heroes Reborn 1.6: Time, Space, Video Game

I missed Heroes last week - the memory guy got to me and made me forget to watch it.  No, I just got caught up in too many other things, but that's ok, because Heroes is best watched between the cracks, in time stolen from other things, which makes you a kid reading comic books when you're supposed to be doing homework.

Or playing video games.  Both of which - comic books and video games - are the heart and soul and brain of the Heroes saga.  They figure especially vividly in Heroes Reborn, and especially so in episode 1.6, on old-fashioned 2015 television this past Thursday in what was one superb episode, easily the best of the season so far, and setting us up for much more.

The hour was chocked full of great little narratives and scenes - Tommy and Emily teleporting to Paris, and doing so much better than the Eiffel Tower (including a gem of a scene at the Bouquinistes by the Seine, where Emily shows Tommy an Isaac Mendez comic book), Malina saving Luke from drowning by telekinetically pulling him out of the water, and lots of good action with Noah and company in enemy Renautus headquarters - but the best was Katana Girl, and her successful mission to rescue her father, who, as we had to know all along, is Hiro Nakamura.

The quest had its humorous moments, with Ren's laptop running out of battery power at a crucial time, but at its core was deadly serious, with Miko needing to sacrifice her life to free Hiro.  It turns out that she was maybe not really alive, a computer virus living in both virtual and real reality, but that doesn't matter, because she's such an appealing character.  So I'm betting that notwithstanding what Miko/Katana was told, we'll see her again, alive and well and even better than before, in some seamless interface of the real and digital realms, as befits an ultimate video game.

Because, after all, with Hiro and his ability to change the past now unbound, anything is suddenly possible once again in this story.  Hiro is of course wary of changing anything in the past - and with good reason - because that can undo the very basis of the present - but there's a lot in the present that can risk undoing, including not only what apparently happened to Claire but now Miko.

The deft mix of comic book, video game - far better than a LARP - and this reborn series continues.

Note: apropos video game magic, here's a debate I once had with an anti-videogame crusader ...


See also Heroes Reborn: Good to Be Back ... Heroes Reborn 1.3: Carly Fiorina meets Steve Jobs ... Heroes Reborn 1.4: GPS RIP

And see also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

And see also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

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no heroes, but pretty strange


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Uber

A little video in which I explain the significance of Uber.


Which new social media are gaining traction after Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instragram and Pinterest ? posted by Paul Levinson, PhD on Vidoyen.

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Homeland 5.3: Carrie and Kerry

Well, we now know for sure in Homeland 5.3 what we should have known for sure anyway - no way Quinn would have killed Carrie, whoever gave the encrypted order.

But this raises another question - might Saul have given the order after all, knowing that Quinn would never kill Carrie, but figuring that the best way of bringing her in would be to get Quinn to go after her?   And did Quinn understand this all along?  Could be ... but if I had to bet, I'd still say someone other than Saul gave the kill command.

Meanwhile, speaking of Saul, it was good to see him in bed with the CIA woman, but this lends a little more credence to her being the source of the order.   She rummaged through Saul's notes or apps when he was sleeping, and found out how to give the command.   Maybe - I'm still not convinced that she's the one, either.

I liked how Carrie tried to use her bi-polar powers to figure out what was going on in this episode.  As always, the question is whether she really figured it out, or overshot the solution in her state.  In the past, she's usually been right.   But there's always a first time for errors.

It is notable, even in this digital day and age, how Carrie does her most inspired thinking with pictures on the wall and floor.   Hacking is supreme, everywhere, accept for Carrie, where it may be taking second place to what she can do in her mind.

And speaking of hacking and leaks, I had the pleasure of seeing Edward Snowden via Google Hangout at Bard College on Friday.   His philosophic depth and insistence that individual conscience can sometimes take precedence over law was inspiring, and highlights the clanging superficiality of John Kerry's denunciation of Snowden as a "coward" that Homeland has seen fit to work into the opening montage of every episode.  Maybe that's Homeland's way of being critical of Kerry - but just saying.

See also Homeland 5.1: Moving into the Age of Snowden ... Homeland 5.2: Who Wants to Kill Carrie
And see also Homeland 4.1-2: Carrie's State of Mind ... Homeland 4.3: Quinn and Carrie ... Homeland 4.4: Carrie's Counterpart ... Homeland 4.5: Righteous Seduction ... Homeland 4.6: The Biggest Reveal ... Homeland 4.7: The Manifestation ... Homeland 4.8: Saving Someone's Life ... Homeland 4.9: Hitchcock Would've Loved It ... Homeland 4.10: The List ... Homeland 4.12: Out of this Together
And see also Homeland 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.3: Two Prisons ... Homeland 3.4: Twist! ...Homeland 3.6: Further Down the Rabbit Hole ... Homeland 3.7: Revealing What We Already Knew ... Homeland 3.8: Signs of Life ...Homeland 3.9: Perfect Timing ... Homeland 3.10: Someone Has to Die ... Homeland 3.11: The Loyalist ... Homeland Season 3 Finale: Redemption and Betrayal
And see Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional ...Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality
And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

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The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf

A superb episode of The Affair tonight - 2.3, featuring Noah and Alison, and a standalone story in Alison's half-hour about Robert's half-wolf Pete, who in many ways captures perfectly the spirit of the narrative.

Pete is half-wild, runs away from home, and kills a bunch of innocent chickens.   Yvonne, who never liked Pete in the first place, wants Robert to do something about this problem - and Robert offers to kill the half-wolf.

With Alison by his side, Robert levels his rifle at Pete.  But you just knew Robert couldn't kill this animal, with paws in two worlds, civilized and wild.  That's because that situation - civilized and wild - is as good a characterization as we might want of Noah and Alison's story.   They're tied together by a love, still illicit according to the rules of society, but as true as can be.
Noah tells Alison he's been happier in the past six weeks than ever before in his life, and she feels the same.   Robert's firing at the sky rather than at Pete must confirm for her in some profound way that what she is doing with Noah is right, and all the shots being fired at them will miss in the end, too.

Meanwhile, we learn some further details about our characters new and old in this episode, too. Yvonne is not Noah's publisher - she's just a friend of Noah's editor, and she likes hosting an author a year in her guest house.   Her hostility towards Pete, the way she tries to dominate Robert, makes her another woman-as-villain in this story, along with Helen's mother, and even Helen herself, though she seemed a little more sympathetic in her own half hour last week.  The men in this series are no angels either, to be sure, but the women have a special nasty edge.

With the exception of Alison, who, while no push-over, has a winning heart.  She's good for Noah now, and standing by him in the future.  Which brings us back to the question of who killed Scotty. Based on what Noah said tonight, I think we can be pretty sure that he didn't hit and run.  But then who? The only thing we can be completely sure of at this point is that it wasn't Pete.

See also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer
And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

podcast review of every 1st season episode

a different kind of love story 

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The Knick 2.1: Playing off Our Present

The Knick was back for its second season on Cinemax last night.   As was the case last year, the New York 19th-into-20th century cinematography was just perfect.   I mean, I obviously didn't see any of that first hand, but I have a fair number of photographs in my collection from that era, and have seen many more, and this movie-like television show captures the textures just right.

The details are on key, too.   One of Edison's cameras, a horseless carriage ambulance, and of course the medical procedures all fit in like glittering parts of an historic mosaic come to life.   The medical parts of course are the soul of the show. They speak an irrepressible optimism in progress and the success of science, which we also saw last season, and which is sadly lacking or at least tarnished, at least among the general public, right now. We go to doctors, submit to procedures, are admitted to hospitals, but we have a little less confidence in our doctors than people did over a century ago, even though our procedures are so much more advanced.   But back then there was a sense - best portrayed by Thackery,  but others including Edwards have it, too - that they can cure anything, if it's a disease or malady.

Thackery makes this point eloquently at the end of the episode, with his realization that if he considers his addiction an illness rather than a craving, he can find a cure.  And Edwards yearns for a treatment for his detached retina, after his physician tells him there's not much that established medicine can do for it.  But given that this is 1901, and we're watching in 2015, you just know that something will come up - even though, given that this is drama, we also just know that it may not work.

The morality in flux also continues to play a major role.  Edwards is subject to racism, though some of his white colleagues have seen the light of equality.  The nun who performed abortions is in prison, and condemned by one of her sisters, her former student.   We in 2015 know that history is on their side - though it moves forward exceedingly slowly.   And it is from our very age, the present we inhabit, that The Knick derives its ultimate power.  We in the future are the foundation upon which The Knick bounces off and builds upon.

Part medical history, part historical and current social commentary, altogether unique and captivating, The Knick is vert much welcome back.

See also The Knick: Paean to Scientific Method ... The Knick Sneak Preview Review 1.8: Good Loving, the Fix, and Typhoid Mary ... The Knick Sneak Preview Review 1.9: Sacrifice ... The Knick 1.10 Sneak Preview Review: Fallibility

 
deeper history

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Edward Snowden at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College

I spent an extraordinary few hours earlier today, seeing Edward Snowden, live from Russia via Google Hangout, address and answer questions at the "Why Privacy Matters" conference that took place at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College in Annandale, New York (thanks to my friend, author David Brin, who delivered a lecture at the conference yesterday, for the invitation to this event).  The day was beautiful and cool, the Fall foliage peak, but what made the day truly exceptional was what Snowden said - the kinds of things that, well, offer grounds for a little hope for our species after all, or, if you already had such hope, a little more.

There were lots of quotable moments.  Snowden thinks all the candidates in the first Democratic debate on Tuesday, save the one (Lincoln Chafee) who didn't want to see him brought before our criminal justice system, lacked political "courage".  Yet he was heartened that, unlike in 2013, when many politicians were quick denounce him as a "traitor," no one on stage uttered that word on Tuesday.  Snowden (of course) spoke approvingly of the new drone leaks ("The Drone Papers"), and correctly sees that far more incursions on our privacy have occurred under Obama than during George W. Bush's administration.   And he was unafraid to call out his host, Russia, for its own violations of human rights.

But what most struck me about Snowden, and made this event so memorable, was his philosophic depth. In a phrase, he thinks that human values, decided upon by individuals, can be more compelling of our loyalty than any laws.  Yeah, I know this can push us down the slippery slope of anarchy as everyone does what they want to do regardless of the law. And I know that such a principle can easily be used against a progressive law that we support, such an anti-discrimination ruling or statute. But the general principle still holds.  The government, which already holds so many cards, including a monopoly of power (as Snowden also aptly noted), cannot always be the ultimate authority in our lives.

Certainly our right to some small bit of privacy, a piece of our lives not available to governmental scrutiny, would be one place in which human judgement should be superior to governmental fiat. Snowden's leaking of classified information was designed to expose our government's massive incursion on our privacy.   He committed an illegal act to lay bare our government's activities which, legal or not, are intrinsically at odds with one of the very bases of our humanity, our need to have at least a little time off the screen.

Should Snowden come back to the United States to stand trial for this?   He allowed that he would, if he could explain in open court what the government was and is still doing to its citizens.  I admire his willingness to do this but don't know that I would do the same, were I in a similar position.  I've always been a firm believer in the precept that a government which acts immorally loses its claim on us to follow its laws. Had I been visited by Crito on the eve of my death sentence in  Ancient Athens, I would have jumped on that ship in the harbor in a New York minute, and left the hemlock to those who immorally sentenced me to drink it, democracy or not.

In some ways, we've come a long way since then.   We not only are constantly surveilled by the government, but have an increasing power to turn the lenses back on the government, record what it might be illegally doing, and therein begin to hold it to better account.  David Brin has been talking about this kind of "sousveillance" (viewing from below) for years - I'll in effect be talking about it at Annenberg in Philadelphia in December in my Eye in the Sky in the Hand: How Video Cameras in Smart Phones are Finally Beginning to Bring Police to Justice lecture -  and it's part of Snowden's optimism about the future.

Whether it's police killing innocent African-Americans, or the NSA attempting to erase our privacy and therein killing our freedom, these governmental activities deserve our peaceful but staunchest opposition. Hats off to Edward Snowdon for stepping up and acting on this, and articulating the profound issues embedded in his action so eloquently today.


  privacy vs. national security

 
what was Socrates' real motive?

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Fargo 2.1: Good to Be Back in the Freezer

Fargo was back for its second season on FX on Monday, with a narrative that promises to be as brilliant, blackly humorous, complex, and altogether in a world of its own as what we saw in its first season.  And other than this story also taking place in North Dakota, this story seems at this point to have only one connection to the first season, which I'll get to shortly   Indeed, whereas the first season took place in the present, this second season is happening in 1979.

Let me see if I got the setup (always a question, when you've only seen an episode of Fargo just once).  There's a criminal family, the Gerhardts.   They need a judge to make a proper ruling.  One of the sons, a hothead with a gun, thinks he can convince her to do what they want.  He accosts the judge in a diner, and ends up shooting her, a former athlete now working there, and the waitress, all to death.   Then he's hit by a car, and carried along on its hood.

We learn that the driver, Peggy (played by Kristen Dunst) is a married to a guy, Ed (played by Jesse Plemons), who works for a butcher (the honest kind who sells meat, not as far as we know a murderer of humans).   This serves Ed in good stead, as he has a freezer in which to stow the killer's body (after he kills him, after the bad guy attacks him, because the bad guy wasn't thoroughly dead).  You just know that freezer with the body is going to be opened in some upcoming episode at the worst time.

Meanwhile, the sheriff and state trooper are investigating the three killings at the diner.  Hank Larson the sheriff is played by Tad Danson, always good to see.   The state trooper is none other than Lou Solverson, who will age well and be played by Keith Carradine in Season 1 (that's the one connection).

And just to top it off, and provide a little more sinister depth to this story - always a key ingredient in Fargo - the episode ends with a bigger criminal enterprise in Kansas City set to move in on the Gerhardts in North Dakota.

There nothing else quite like Fargo on television, and I'm looking forward with relish to the rest this second second (maybe some mustard, too).

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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Hillary Soars in First Democratic 2016 Presidential Debate

Hillary Clinton was outstanding in the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate (the Democrats' first) - better than she was in any of the 2008 Democratic debates, far better than Bernie Sanders on just about every issue tonight, and easily better than the other three candidates on stage.

On gun control, Hillary was much stronger than Bernie on gun control, who needed to renounce his opposition years ago to the Brady Bill, and other gun control legislation, in order to gain any kind of equal ground on this with Hillary.   Bernie was also wrong when he said that going to war in Iraq was America's worst war decision - the Vietnam War, with 50,000+ American soldiers killed, started with no previous attack on America at all, surely was worse.

Bernie's best moment was when he lashed out at the GOP for its obsession about Hillary's emails. He was also excellent in his attacks on Wall Street, and domestic policy in general.   But in foreign affairs, he seemed over his head at times.  He cited "climate change" as the greatest  threat to national security - it's a threat, to be sure, but not involving what is usually meant by national security. Hillary's response to this question - nuclear proliferation - was much more on target.  Bernie was strong on domestic not foreign policy; Hillary was strong on both.  My hope: President Hillary Clinton appoints Bernie Sanders Secretary of Health and Human Services.

I didn't agree with everything Hillary said - complete agreement with any candidate is the stuff of fantasy in politics.  She thinks Edward Snowden should be tried for his crimes.  I think he should be brought home as a hero - for unmasking illegal activities of the American government. Lincoln Chafee was the only candidate with this view - though Bernie was a little better on this than was Hillary.  Bernie was also a little better than Hillary on the legalization of marijuana.

Hillary, Bernie, and Martin O'Malley (who was more impressive than Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, for whatever that's worth) were all excellent on the black lives matter question - they stressed the often deadly injustice that African-Americans are accorded by American police.   Jim Webb's answer that all lives matter missed the point (and Lincoln Chafee wasn't given a chance to answer).

Hillary's very best moment - and there were many - came in her impassioned support of family leave, and her apt denunciation of the GOP for opposing government spending, except for programs and policies they support.    Such attacks on rife hypocrisy are what successful campaigns are made of.

There's still a long way to go, but Hillary was poised, powerful, relaxed, and in charge tonight.   It's hard to see how anyone else could do a better job than she of getting the Democrats into the Oval Office again, even if Joe Biden does enter the race.




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Homeland 5.2: Who Wants to Kill Carrie?

Well, lots of people want to kill Carrie, but the question posed at the provocative end of Homeland 5.2 is who gave Quinn the encoded order to take Carrie out?  Unless Quinn is in the grip of some kind of schizophrenic split-personality episode, and gave the order himself - highly unlikely - he's the only one we can rule out as the originator of the kill command.

But the others don't seem very likely either -

Saul was the one who put Quinn on the overall hit man job, but it's all but unimaginable that Saul now wants to kill Carrie.  It would be an insanely unexpected twist, with the emphasis on insane.  It can't be Saul.Dar is a suitably dislikable character.  He certainly has the clout to issue such an order.  But he's far too obvious a choice.The only other person I can think of off-hand is the now fired CIA head in Germany.  But how would she be able to break into Saul's system?   And she seems too lightweight to play such a pivotally powerful position in our story.So that leaves us with no one that we know very well, or much about at all.   There are two groups of candidates for issuing the death warrant for Carrie -
Hackers - perhaps one of whom we've already seen (or not), knew enough to crack the CIA code, and issue the order, and make it appear that it came from Saul.   I have no idea if the savvy to do this is on the same level as what was needed to lay bare the US-German digital correspondence.CIA biggies back in the US - other than Dar, I'm assuming there are others in that room we saw in the first episode who have the wherewithal, and could command the tech support, to issue a kill on Carrie.   I have no specific idea just who that could be, though.So we're left with an excellent mystery, on top the excellent scenic action, as the fifth season of Homeland gets going.

See also Homeland 5.1: Moving into the Age of Snowden
And see also Homeland 4.1-2: Carrie's State of Mind ... Homeland 4.3: Quinn and Carrie ... Homeland 4.4: Carrie's Counterpart ... Homeland 4.5: Righteous Seduction ... Homeland 4.6: The Biggest Reveal ... Homeland 4.7: The Manifestation ... Homeland 4.8: Saving Someone's Life ... Homeland 4.9: Hitchcock Would've Loved It ... Homeland 4.10: The List ... Homeland 4.12: Out of this Together
And see also Homeland 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 3.3: Two Prisons ... Homeland 3.4: Twist! ...Homeland 3.6: Further Down the Rabbit Hole ... Homeland 3.7: Revealing What We Already Knew ... Homeland 3.8: Signs of Life ...Homeland 3.9: Perfect Timing ... Homeland 3.10: Someone Has to Die ... Homeland 3.11: The Loyalist ... Homeland Season 3 Finale: Redemption and Betrayal
And see Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional ...Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality
And see also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

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  different kind of espionage
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