Rusty's Blog

Tweeting via local landline to get information out of Egypt. The above "tweet" was my favorite. Fuck yeah Google.

You never know what will hit a nerve with technophiles. The screen protector — a filmy, staticky sheet that covers the screen of a tablet or smartphone — would seem to be a fairly noncontroversial accessory. But people who love their smartphones and tablets are divided over it. The screen protectors, manufactured by companies like Zagg and Splash, really bring out the emotions in gadget fans, especially those of ardent devotees of a certain hallowed tech company based in Cupertino, Calif.

I'm firmly in the "no protector" camp. My rationale is simple – the protector mitigates the usability of the touchscreen to some degree, and the iPhone's glass is hard enough to resist most scratches as is, condom-free. Concerning yourself with the resale value or pristine appearance of something as (ab)used as a phone seems foolish, bordering on neurotic.

Wrapping things in plastic doesn't have to end at smartphones – on my trips to India and China, I've noticed a particular cultural proclivity for wrapping any conceivable durable good in shrinkwrap. Heaven forbid your TV remote looking like it's been used by sullied hands! But by far the worst instance I've seen of this phenomenon was a car in which every inch of its leather upholstery was sheathed. Riding through rush hour Calcutta traffic, sitting on Saran Wrap. Good times. Spare the car, spoil the child.

But any American love for the channel was lost on September 11, 2001. Suddenly, Al Jazeera was accused of being a mouthpiece for the enemy for airing video of Osama bin Laden and showing graphic images of injured and dead American servicemen. (Ironically, when Burns wrote about Al Jazeera two years earlier he noted that the channel had been accused by some in the Arab world of being "a mouthpiece for American ideas.")

"Al Jazeera airs Osama bin Laden’s videos," says John Dunbar, a former fellow at the Center for Public Integrity who studied media. "It is seen, fairly or not, as an outlet for terrorists."

Following the Egyptian revolution using a variety of news sites, Al Jazeera stands out. I've been consistently impressed by the quality of their coverage, and wondered why I hadn't visited before. Their malignment in the US public consciousness almost certainly had something to do with it. Considering the broadcast of the bin Laden tapes more carefully, what was Al Jazeera supposed to do? Not publish obviously newsworthy footage? I certainly hope CNN or even Fox News would have aired the tapes given the same circumstances.

Al Jazeera also deserves a shout out for licensing a significant amount of reportage under a Creative Commons Attribution license – http://cc.aljazeera.net . Of course, media outlets have been sharing stories over the wire for a century – does this represent the natural evolution of pooled reporting?

Even if we were to pretend that all torrent downloads were illegal, Google's blocking has raised some interesting questions about its relationship with potentially criminal activities. Last I checked, making an explosive is a pretty serious crime; but when we type 'how to make a bomb' in the search bar, Google suggests 'out of household items' to complete the phrase. Write 'where to buy drugs' and 'where to buy crack in D.C.' is the instant result. Enter 'how to kill a person' and 'and get away with it' is what Google recommends. Gosh, it's really swell of Google to do its part to shut down all of the menacing downloading out there! I'm all for the freedom of potentially scandalous, even illegal information, but shouldn't it be consistent?

Google recently removed all auto-complete suggestions related to torrents and piracy. This seems like a bad move, for many of the reasons set out above. If Google is a search "common carrier", as it seems to envision itself, how can it expect to be held inculpable for those illegal queries it _does_ suggest?