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What did that whale say?
Fredrick Douglass once likened people who claimed to support freedom — but who discouraged agitation — to people who want to grow crops without plowing up the ground. 140 characters or not, it seems like an appropriate response to the news that Twitter has developed the ability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis.

I know this isn’t a simple issue. Many countries, wary of the potentially destabilizing force of social media, simply will not allow companies like Twitter to operate unless they agree to some form of censorship. Even Google, who two years ago pulled access to their main search engine in a dispute with Chinese authorities, recently began softening its rhetoric in an attempt to regain lost time and market share.

One could make the case that a policy of engaging with oppressive regimes helps them become more liberal — even if only in small, slow increments. Change takes time and maybe half a loaf of Twitter is better than none at all.

But whether you think that idea makes sense or not, this much is clear: Many companies who market their products as tools to empower individuals are, in fact, actually building them in ways which aid in subjugating those same people. [Read more…]

Who are we once we’ve been stripped of everything we call “us”?

The sad, but not unexpected news of the death of Christopher Hitchens reached me late last night.

Though it felt a clichéd gesture, I couldn’t help but pour a little single malt scotch into a rocks glass in his honor before turning in.1 Today, the obituaries and personal eulogies begin to try to explain just who Hitchens really was — just as the remembrances of Steve Jobs attempted to do only a few short months ago. Hitchens sometimes took positions that felt strange or even hypocritical to me, but almost everyone I know would at least offer a toast to the style and aplomb with which he expressed himself.

As one of my friends put it — You didn’t always like him, but you always read him.

Shortly before he died, Hitchens wrote an essay which challenged the notion of “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”. At any point in his career, he could make short work of platitudes like these but, when accompanied by a photograph taken of him in the final stages of the esophageal cancer which ultimately claimed his life, his words took on an added weight which all but obliterated any possible counter-argument.

Now if you’ve ever had a front row seat to “The Cancer Show”, you knew that this was exactly the kind of falsely-sentimental thing about the disease that Hitch would enjoy laying waste to — and lay waste he did. But after I had finished reading it, I found myself considering a reformulation of the very idea that Hitch had just destroyed:

Who are we once we’ve been stripped of everything we call “us”?

[Read more…]

  1. It may have been more than a little [↩]

Redesign news and a Code Library update.

Visual Approximation of the Veritrope.com Redesign Effort

Autumn has arrived here in New York City and, somewhere out there, Bill Cosby is probably feeling grateful that it’s “sweater weather” season again!

Anyhow, I thought it would be a good moment to touch base with some site news:

Veritrope.com redesign and relaunch

2011 has already been a wonderful year for Veritrope.com: Readership is at an all-time high, we raised over $6,000 in cash and donated goods for two worthy non-profit groups and, on a personal level, it’s been incredibly gratifying to hear from so many of you.

All of this has helped me to discover something – how much I really like helping you. I’ve always believed in the power of doing things yourself and it makes me happy to know that the tools, resources and thoughts that you find here are helping you to do just that!

To that end, I think it’s time to take Veritrope to the next level. I’ve been working behind the scenes to find new resources to share with you and better, cleaner ways to present those resources to you. If you have any requests or ideas for things you’d like to see here, now would be an excellent time to get in touch. You can send me a message:

If all goes well, you’ll probably start to see the new stuff rolling out by the end of the month.

AppleScript updates

While things have been a little slow on the feature post front due to the redesign, things are busier than ever in the Veritrope.com Code Library! Right now, there are over 80 different AppleScript code modules and projects for you to download, remix, play around with, etc. (and there are more on the way!)

If you are looking to get more out of your Mac, I urge you to take a peek and see some of the ways that people are writing their own programs to do just that.