The Devil at our Shoulder

23 May 2009 Dan McGarry

Anybody who’s opened a newspaper in the last few years will recognise the characters and events portrayed in 40 Dei, Wan Smolbag Theatre’s latest stage production. Smolbag’s greatest gift to us is its ability to show us our own world. The play is populated by the same reprobates, righteous hypocrites, prostitutes, politicians and just plain folks as we find in any neighbourhood in Port Vila.

We all walk with the Devil at our shoulder. Without surrendering to dogmatic, moralistic finger-wagging, 40 Dei confronts us with the knowledge that the most insidious enemy to Vanuatu society lies within it, not without. Until we recognise that there are no easy answers to the complex afflictions of a society in transition, until we accept that prostitutes, prisoners and penitents alike are all our family, until we recognise our own weakness in the face of venality and ambition, we will never completely be whole.

In the words of the immortal Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

ABOUT THIS SHOW: 40 Dei plays at Wan Smolbag Haos in Tagabe on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The show starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are 50 vatu for adults, students and children. Because of its popularity, attendees should arrive at least one hour before show time to be guaranteed seating.

The thematic heart of 40 Dei (40 Days), Wan Smolbag’s powerful new play, is the story of Jesus’ 40 days of suffering and temptation in the desert. With Satan constantly at his side, Jesus fasted, contemplated and steadfastly resisted the Devil’s threats and inducements. Even in the extremities of suffering, he accepted his humanity, refusing assistance either from above or below.

As the New Testament tells it, Jesus embarked on this pilgrimage of suffering immediately after his baptism. It was, in a sense, his preparation to enter into the world. We first meet Matthew, the protagonist in Jo Dorras’ stark, deeply probing script, as he emerges from his own moral desert, a wasted youth of faithlessness, drinking and violence.

Lying on the roadside, bloody, filthy, half-clothed, Matthew presents a repulsive figure. Only Lei, a pastor’s daughter, sees him for what he is – a lost soul. Ignoring imprecations to leave this filth, this ‘doti blong taon’ where he lies, she instead recalls the parable of the Good Samaritan to her father.

Matthew awakes from his stupor to a vision of love – a beautiful young woman beside him, joyous music and light emerging from a nearby chapel. He is transformed, and decides at that moment to leave his errant past behind, to seek redemption and salvation.

But as with Jesus in the desert, the Devil is always at his side. And Matthew is human, all too human. Beset by difficulties, he tries to navigate the narrow passage between hypocritical moral rectitude and the nihilistic, hopeless existence of his young friends.

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Masters of our own Domain

23 May 2009 Dan McGarry

The role of a ccTLD administrator is not to arbitrate public morals. While simple rules can be set concerning appropriate use of the domain, they need to be kept to a minimum. The approach we need to take is a minimalist one. There are some terms, for example, that do little or nothing to enhance the public dialogue. Swear words, for example.

But that does not mean that a domain administrator should have any direct role in defining what topics can or should be discussed in the public sphere.

A ccTLD administrator is neither pastor, policeman nor politician. It does not exist to make rules about public morality, nor should it be given powers beyond the minimal set necessary to ensure the smooth operation of its part of the Internet Domain Name Service (DNS).

Vanuatu has laws, and everyone has to respect them. A national domain administrator has a responsibility to uphold those laws, and to the extent that it’s reasonable to do so, it should ensure that those laws are upheld by its stakeholders and clients.

A domain administrator’s role is primarily technical. Most of what they do is make the registration of domains by multiple parties practical, simple and conducive to the conduct of a public exchange of information, for whatever purpose.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on contract to assist the Interim Telecommunications Regulator in conducting a consultation seeking public input on how best to manage Vanuatu’s .vu domain in a pluralistic, healthy commercial ISP market.

A fair amount of technical information necessarily goes into such discussions, and you can read more about that on the Regulator’s website.

The issue of managing Vanuatu’s national domain affects us all. It’s not sufficient for a bunch of geeks to get together and decide everything; we need to make sure everyone in Vanuatu has a clear idea what’s happening.

To that end, I’ve dug through a number of older columns on the subject of what a domain is, how it should work, and what it all means to Internet users in Vanuatu.

Read more “Masters of our own Domain”

A New Page

18 May 2009 Dan McGarry

There’s been a lot of concern of late over the apparent impatience shown by Australia and New Zealand to engage with their Pacific Island neighbours on the PACER Plus round of trade talks. Local commentators have had little good to say about the prospects, and speculation has been rife over what’s really at stake.

The strongest fear expressed by commentators throughout the Pacific is that New Zealand and Australia will use their foreign aid to the region as a stick to bring the small island states into line. Having witnessed the drubbing that Fiji and PNG took in their Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to see their economic health similarly threatened.

This week, Pablo Kang, Australia’s new High Commissioner to Vanuatu, published a surprisingly intemperate letter to the Editor in this newspaper. He was rightly chastised for the distinctly un-Melanesian tone he took in confronting nay-sayers. Vanuatu has spent years assiduously cultivating a cordial, solidly two-way engagement with its development partners that allows it to assert its own priorities. This week’s pronouncements reminded some of a repeat from the Howard/Downer show.

But, lest the baby exit with the bath water, it needs to be said that one key observation that High Commissioner Kang shared with us in undoubtedly true: As things stand right now, PACER Plus is still a blank page.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

Note: This week marks the beginning of my second year holding forth on the editorial page of the Daily Post. Thanks to all of you who offered kind words and wise counsel over the last 52 weeks. Thanks especially to the editors and staff of this paper. Your patience, tolerance and assistance have been invaluable.

It’s ours to write on as much as theirs. Maybe more so, if we play our cards right.

Protecting our Children

16 May 2009 Dan McGarry

Over the last two weeks or so, there’s been an animated and quite fascinating discussion on the VIGNET technical mailing list. VIGNET is a mailing list service provided by the Vanuatu IT Users Society (VITUS) in order to contribute to a public dialogue about all things to do with technology. With over 220 subscribers, it represents a significant number of people working in IT in Vanuatu.

Following the roll-out of Digicel’s GPRS mobile Internet service, concerns have been raised about children and youth in Vanuatu having access to unsuitable content, especially pornography, through their mobile phones.

With nearly 100 messages from dozens of different contributors, the discussion was illuminating, intelligent and remarkably respectful, especially given the delicacy of the topic. What follows is a small but representative sampling….

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Note: Because of public demand for a printable version of this column, here’s a PDF version of this week’s column.

This week, I’m going to give over much of my column space so that other voices can be heard.

The Supply Problem

9 May 2009 Dan McGarry

The Internet operates in an economy of plenitude and nothing is ever going to change that. Finding a place in it will be an uncomfortable and sometimes disappointing exercise for many – but not all – print publications.

The solution, if they choose to recognise it, is not to stand like Canute among the waves and order back the tide. The secret is to find news, analysis and insight that is in short supply, and to add it to the flood. This is something that our local publishers a uniquely positioned to do.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent. This is a re-working of the ideas expressed in this post, applied specifically to Vanuatu’s newspaper publishers.]

(As this column was going to press, the news broke that Rupert Murdoch had decided to move all of his newspapers behind a pay wall. I’d like to thank him for his sense of timing.)

I write for both of our national newspapers, and love nothing more than flipping through their pages over a good cup of coffee. But I still get the vast majority of the commentary, analysis and hard news I read in a day from my computer.

Publishing a newspaper in Vanuatu has always been more a labour of love than anything else. The number of readers and advertisers is decidedly limited, so the amount of cash available to this critical part of the public dialogue is limited, too.

That puts constraints on the depth of detail that can go into important news stories. It also limits the amount of editorial oversight, fact-checking and analysis that can be brought to bear. Nonetheless, our local rags do manage to muddle through and, generally speaking, they do a pretty commendable job of keeping us abreast of important issues. All the journalists I know are keenly aware of their role in ensuring that the public is as informed and engaged as they can be about the important issues of the day.

Despite all their effort and devotion, they reach only a fraction of the people to whom their news is relevant. The task of delivering newspapers outside of Vila, Santo and a few airports is prohibitively difficult. The Internet can change that, but in so doing, it could also bring about the demise of our local media.

Damage

1 May 2009 Dan McGarry

The presence recently of Sulu Censors (so called for the skirt-like traditional dress many of them wear) in all television, radio and print media outlets has largely neutered Fiji’s traditional media. But the flow of information has simply found a route around this ‘damage’. In recent weeks, Fijians at home and abroad have flocked en masse to the Internet to get their fix of national and local news, uncensored by the Bainimarama regime.

Countless blogs have sprung up like flowers across the Internet in reaction to the media crackdown. With names like Coup Four and a Half, Fiji Coup and Fiji Uncensored, they’ve made their raison d’etre clear. While a few leave no doubt that they have very particular axes to grind, the majority are replete with well-sourced, insightful news, commentary and analysis.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

This statement was first uttered in 1993 by John Gilmore, Internet pioneer and co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Since it was first quoted in Time magazine, it’s become axiomatic, an unanswerable trump card to be played whenever the issue of Internet censorship arises.

There’s a good reason for this. Numerous efforts by governments, institutions and organizations to impede the free flow of information have achieved mixed results at best and, more often than not, failed. Only in places like Tibet and Burma, where the government owns and closely controls the information networks, has any kind of comprehensive censorship been successful.

The Internet was designed as a ‘network of networks’ – that is, a communications medium that effectively had no centre of control. While it never completely achieved that aim, it’s still a vast departure from the monolithic telecoms networks that we used to have.

Internet Pioneer Mitch Kapor’s assertion that “[Internet] architecture is politics” has never been more true.

Planners and Searchers

25 April 2009 Dan McGarry

Vanuatu’s decision makers can’t sit still forever. At some point, they’ve got to get on with muddling through the reefs and shoals of development planning and sign on to someone’s plan. While it may behoove some to play for time, we will inevitably have to commit to improving our national communications capacity.

Doing so quickly could have quite a salutary effect on the local market. Once our current incumbents get comfortable, it’s not unimaginable that they might want to start consolidating their position, with an eye to keeping upstarts out. The presence of a neutral backbone communications provider with no vested interest in the status quo could enhance competitive market forces significantly.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Fifty years ago, Charles E. Lindblom, a professor at Yale University published an essay entitled ‘The Science of “Muddling Through”.’ The paper’s main point was stated briefly and simply: We can’t know everything about anything. So, as long as we’re just muddling through an imperfect world with only imperfect knowledge, we’d just as soon admit it.

At the heart of Lindblom’s rationale is the contention that even if we could know everything, we’d never be able to adequately express the value of competing development priorities. Therefore, we should work within our limitations, reduce the scope of our planning activities and allow competing interests to adjust to each other over time.

In a column marking the 50th anniversary of this seminal essay, Financial Times columnist John Kay remarks that, while contemporary economists may have scoffed at what they considered to be an unscientific and benighted approach to policy and planning, Lindblom’s gradualist approach has largely been vindicated.

Kay’s take on gradualism is filtered through the eyes of a businessman. Noted development economist William Easterly, however, celebrates Lindblom’s work as the only really workable model for developing countries.

Winter

21 April 2009 Dan McGarry

I wrote a slightly different version of this for my friend Tracy when Chris died, years ago now. It’s a mild variation on a villanelle, a song form first used in 16th Century France. It’s simple, sentimental and true.

It should really be sung, acapella, with a slowly moving melody reminiscent of Cathedrals, by Jump Little Children.

I found myself searching for something to say when Tracy wrote to tell me that a mutual friend had died, unexpectedly and far, far too soon. This is what came out.

It’s for John, and for all of those who knew Shannon.

I know this winter isn’t going to end.
The thought itself’s imperishably old.
What cold can best preserve, it cannot mend;

And cold preserves itself, so don’t pretend
That Spring will leaven spirits with its dole.
I know this winter isn’t going to end.

I’m not so bold that I could not defend
Against my guilt, against the life you stole.
But cold can best preserve what cannot mend,

So now, unlike Raskolnikov, I lend
No weight to claims that time can heal the soul.
I know this winter isn’t going to end.

The day you died, I ceased to be your friend;
Became instead the warden of your soul.
What cold can best preserve, it cannot mend.

Your life gave in to time and mine to cold,
And this, love, is my curse, my fate, my goal:
What cold can best preserve, it cannot mend;
I know this winter isn’t going to end.

Note: I wrote a somewhat different version of this for my friend Tracy when Chris died, years ago now. It’s a mild variation on a villanelle, a song form first used in 16th Century France. It’s simple, sentimental and true.

I found myself searching for something to say after Tracy wrote to tell me that a mutual friend had died, unexpectedly and far, far too soon. This is what came out.

It should really be sung, a capella, with a slowly moving melody reminiscent of Cathedrals, by Jump Little Children. Maybe Tori can come up with something….

It’s for John, and for all of those who knew Shannon best.

The Supply Question

20 April 2009 Dan McGarry

I write for two newspapers, and love nothing more than flipping through the pages over a good cup of coffee. But I still get the vast majority of the commentary, analysis and hard news I read in a day from my computer. None of that is going to change.

That said, it’s hard to imagine how this essay by Nicholas Carr could be more wrong. While his analysis is dead on, his conclusions consist of little more than wishful thinking.

From his post:

“The fundamental problem facing the news business today does not lie in Google’s search engine. It lies in the structure of the news business itself.”

This is exactly right. The digitisation of publishing and distribution militates strongly in favour of bytes over atoms. While holding a newspaper in one’s hands is not without a certain appeal, the desire for specific information, delivered quickly and at low cost, trumps the old approach most of the time.

Carr thinks the problem is supply, and he’s right, as far as that goes. But he’s dreaming if he thinks there’s any practical way to arbitrarily limit supply in an economy defined by ubiquity and ease of access. The problem is mechanical in nature: Bytes are infinitely replicable and transportable. Reducing the number of bytes requires that we control all sources of replication and I can’t see this happening even in a police-state online environment.

That said, it’s hard to imagine how this essay by Nicholas Carr could be more wrong. While his analysis is dead on, his conclusions consist of little more than wishful thinking.

From his post:

“The fundamental problem facing the news business today does not lie in Google’s search engine. It lies in the structure of the news business itself.”

Digicel Mobile Internet Service – Take Two

18 April 2009 Dan McGarry

This week, Digicel Vanuatu officially unveiled their new GPRS mobile Internet service. Their first event was held on Thursday last week at the Port Vila market house. Digicel staff demonstrated their service to passers-by and helped those with compatible phones to activate the service.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

This hand is more accustomed to holding a bush knife than an Internet-connected mobile phone. This week, Digicel Vanuatu officially unveiled their new GPRS mobile Internet service. Their first event was held on Thursday last week at the Port Vila market house. Digicel staff demonstrated their service to passers-by and helped those with compatible phones to activate the service.

The process is simple enough. Just call Digicel’s Customer Care centre at 123, then tell the service representative the brand and model of your mobile phone. (Salesperson Maureen George offered some sage advice on this count – if you’re not sure what model you’ve got, just tell the service rep what brand it is and how much you paid. The service rep will know which model you mean.)

If your phone supports GPRS, Digicel will enable your account for the Internet service free of charge. You will then be sent a message containing the proper setting for your phone. Just enter the PIN number (1234) and accept the updated configuration.

If your Digicel mobile isn’t on the list of phones for which Digicel provides automatic configuration, don’t despair. You can still use the service, but you’ll have to enter the configuration values yourself. It’s not too difficult, but if you’re feeling uncertain, you might want to find a helpful geek to lend a hand.

Remember, though: Whether your phone is supported or not, you still need to call Digicel Customer Care at 123 to get your account activated.