Yearly Archives ⇒ 2012

Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

May 10, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s been attribut­ing some of his so-called “evo­lu­tion” on same-sex mar­riage to his daugh­ters. As he told ABC’s Robin Roberts:

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose par­ents are same-sex cou­ples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sit­ting around the din­ner table, and we’re talk­ing about their friends and their par­ents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that some­how their friends’ par­ents would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

So where do Oba­ma’s daugh­ter’s inde­pen­dent friends come from? Like most tweens the like­li­est answer is school – in their case, Sid­well Friends. It’s not unlike­ly that the “evo­lu­tion” owed some­thing to the Quak­er envi­ron­ment there.

Most elite Quak­er schools have only a token base of Quak­er stu­dents and teach­ers, so we can’t assume that Malia and Sasha’s friends are Friends. Like many outward-facing Quak­er insti­tu­tions, mod­ern Friends schools’ strongest claim to Quak­erism is the val­ues and dis­cern­ment tech­niques they share with the wider world. They con­scious­ly trans­mit a style and ped­a­gogy and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of open­ness and diver­si­ty. Of course the Oba­ma kids are going to rub up against non-traditional mar­riages at a East Coast Quak­er school. And no one should be sur­prised if they bring a lit­tle of that back home when the school bus drops them off at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

NYTimes: Oba­ma Girls Influ­ence the Pres­i­dent — Again
Pres­i­dent Oba­ma often uses his daugh­ters, Malia and Sasha, as object lessons in explain­ing his rea­son­ing behind impor­tant pol­i­cy positions.

Is a golden age of reading is gradually, suddenly, almost here?

May 4, 2012
· Martin Kelley

blankA must-read piece from Cory Doc­torow for those inter­est­ed in the changes in pub­lish­ing, Why the death of DRM would be good news for read­ers, writ­ers and pub­lish­ers.  He’s pre­dict­ing the end of DRM (dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment) and look­ing for­ward to a day when for­mats and read­ers are interchangable:

The cheap-and-cheerful man­u­fac­tur­ers at the low end don’t have a sec­ondary mar­ket they’re try­ing to pro­tect, no app store or cru­cial ven­dor rela­tion­ship with a big dis­trib­u­tor or pub­lish­er. They just want a prod­uct that ticks the box for every pos­si­ble cus­tomer. Since mul­ti­for­mat sup­port is just a mat­ter of get­ting the soft­ware right, what tends to hap­pen is that a stan­dard, com­mod­i­ty firmware emerges for these devices that just works for just about every­thing, and the for­mats van­ish into the background.

Many read­ers and pub­lish­ers have been upset at the recent Depart­ment of Jus­tice accu­sa­tions of price-fixing by major pub­lish­ers. The real bad guy, we’re remind­ed over and over, is Ama­zon. The pub­lish­ers are so scared of Ama­zon that they devel­oped a pric­ing scheme (the “agency mod­el”) that often nets them less mon­ey than they get from Ama­zon. But for all it’s mar­ket share, most of Ama­zon’s advan­tages come from smart sales­man­ship and a big-picture view that helps it devel­op an ecosys­tem that “locks in” cus­tomers (e.g., I use Ama­zon video on demand to watch TV, which means I get free ship­ping when I pur­chase from them, I get to “bor­row” an elec­tron­ic book a month, etc., which means when I want­ed to buy an e‑reader, it was real­ly only a mat­ter of which mod­el of Kin­dle I would choose). As Doc­torow points out, the most ubiqutious e‑reader is the cell­phone and most of us get a new one every two years – Ama­zon’s dom­i­nance could end rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly with the right com­pe­ti­tion. Get­ting rid of DRM con­tent lev­els the play­ing field.

blankI’m not sure I’m as opti­mistic as Doc­torow that DRM is about to sim­ply dis­ap­pear. But I agree it’s what needs to hap­pen. It would make Ama­zon just anoth­er sell­er. Pub­lish­ers could stop focus­ing on it and start tak­ing tak­ing more respons­bil­i­ty for shap­ing the future of pub­lish­ing. (Where might that be going? Five Rea­sons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S. is a high­ly enter­tain­ing read and more cor­rect than incor­rect.) But gloom is not the fore­cast. A recent arti­cle in The Atlantic (chart right) per­sua­sive­ly argues that we are in a Gold­en Age of read­er­ship:

Our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of past is astound­ing­ly inac­cu­rate. Not only has the num­ber of peo­ple read­ing not declined pre­cip­i­tous­ly, it’s actu­al­ly gone up since the per­ceived gold­en age of Amer­i­can let­ters. So, then why is there this wide­spread per­cep­tion that we are a fall­en lit­er­ary peo­ple? I think, as Mar­shall Kirk­patrick says, that social media acts as a kind of truth serum. Before, only the lit­er­ary peo­ple had plat­forms. Now, all the peo­ple have platforms.

The oth­er thread that’s been run­ning through my head these past few weeks is a G+ post from Tim O’Reil­ly that pulls a quote from ter­rif­ic quote from Hem­ing­way (“How did you go bank­rupt?” “Two ways. Grad­u­al­ly, then suddenly.”):

I love lines from lit­er­a­ture that crys­tal­lize a notion, and then become tools in your men­tal tool­box. This is one of those. Keep it handy, because you’re going to see “grad­u­al­ly, then sud­den­ly” process­es hap­pen increas­ing­ly in the next few decades, not just in tech­nol­o­gy and in indus­tries trans­formed by tech­nol­o­gy, but in glob­al issues like cli­mate change, and in politics.

Rare video of the old Amatol/Atlantic City Racetrack outside Hammonton

May 2, 2012
· Martin Kelley

blankHard to believe, but a huge race­track of inter­na­tion­al renown once sat on Moss Mill Road just east of Ham­mon­ton, NJ. The site is now indis­tin­guish­able for­rest, with a typ­i­cal Pine Bar­ren sand trail that fol­lows the old oval. I haven’t explored it yet but hope to soon. Just Google for Ama­tol Race­way and you’ll find lots of pic­tures and accounts.

Future of Quaker media at Pendle Hill next month

April 27, 2012
· Martin Kelley

I’m part of a dis­cus­sion at the Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia next month. Every­one’s invit­ed. It’s a rare chance to real­ly bring a lot of dif­fer­ent read­ers and media pro­duc­ers (offi­cial and DIY) togeth­er into the same room to map out where Quak­er media is head­ed. If you’re a pas­sion­ate read­er or think that Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions are vital to our spir­i­tu­al move­ment, then do try to make it out.

blankYoutube, Twit­ter, pod­casts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quak­erism? What does it mean for Friends and our insti­tu­tions? Join pan­elists Charles Mar­tin, Gabriel Ehri and Mar­tin Kel­ley, along with Quak­er pub­lish­ers and writ­ers from around the world, and read­ers and media enthu­si­asts, for a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion about the future of Quak­er media.

We will begin with some wor­ship at 7.00pm If you’d like a deli­cious Pen­dle Hill din­ner before­hand please reply to the Face­book event wall (see http://​on​.fb​.me/​q​u​a​k​e​r​m​e​dia). Din­ner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50

This is part of this year’s Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions con­fer­ence. QUIP has been hav­ing to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor pub­lish­ers and book­stores have closed. I have a big con­cern that a lot of online Quak­er mate­r­i­al is being pro­duced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t real­ly root­ed in typ­i­cal Quak­er process­es. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pen­dle Hill.

Missionary zeal vs international fellowship

April 13, 2012
· Martin Kelley

On a late lunch, just fin­ished “Con­flict­ing Views on For­eign Mis­sions: The Mis­sion Board of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing of Freinds in the 1920s” by Tesuko Toda from the Fall 2011 issue of Quak­er His­to­ry.

Sounds like a page turn­er, right? But it’s inter­est­ing his­to­ry that’s still res­onat­ing. Toda’s piece sheds light on a gen­er­a­tional sea change that hap­pened among the evangelical-leaning sub­set of Philadel­phia Friends (a minor­i­ty of the Ortho­dox year­ly meeting):

When the sto­ry begins, Friends inter­est­ed in mis­sion work have to orga­nize inde­pen­dent of the year­ly meet­ing. Over time they come into the fold but it’s right when younger Friends are giv­ing up the idea of bring­ing Chris­tian­i­ty to the hea­thens for the idea of inter­na­tion­al fel­low­ship (a sim­i­lar atti­tude change was hap­pen­ing through­out Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions).  Toda writes:

Young Philadel­phi­an Friends did sup­port for­eign mis­sions, but did not sup­port con­ven­tion­al ones. Actu­al­ly, none of them approved of for­eign mis­sions aimed at con­ver­sion. Although some point­ed out the advan­tages of Friends mis­sions, no one insist­ed on denom­i­na­tion­al mis­sions. What kind of for­eign mis­sions did young Philadel­phia Friends think was suit­able for the new era (the 1920s), then? The first point to be not­ed is that young Philadel­phia Friends unan­i­mous­ly had a neg­a­tive view of tra­di­tion­al missionaries.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in the group but it final­ly fun­nelled its ener­gies into the still-new Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee. The AFSC had been set up to sup­port con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in World War I and there was no expec­tion that it might con­tin­ue after the war. That it did was because it bet­ter rep­re­sent­ed the inter­na­tion fel­low­ship model.

I’m not going to write a full review but those of you inter­est­ed in the soci­o­log­i­cal his­to­ry of that kind of bold, “let’s change the world” ener­gy in Friends should look it up, as should those curi­ous about how gen­er­a­tional shifts some­times play out in year­ly meet­ing politics.