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Should things go back to the way they were before Covid-19 or is it an opportunity to do things differently? A greater investment in public services and public ownership could be the legacy of this pandemic.

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‎Big Ideas: Covid-19 as a catalyst for change on Apple Podcasts

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‎Should things go back to the way they were before Covid-19 or is it an opportunity to do things differently? A greater investment in public services and public ownership could be the legacy of this pandemic.

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A Great Film Review

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Dystopian fiction has been hot for years, perhaps now more than ever. Donald Trump's election pushed George Orwell's "1984" to the top of bestseller lists, and fueled interest in Hulu's recent adaptation of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." But in the midst of a genre obsessed with riffing on twentieth-century fascism, Dave Eggers' novel "The Circle" stands apart. The nightmarish vision it depicts-captured in this film adaptation-draws far more on Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" than Orwell's "1984." Eggers' dystopia isn't something thrust upon us by scheming leaders, but something we collectively choose.

In many ways, the film version of "The Circle" plays out like an extended episode of Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" TV series: a study of how the technologies we unthinkingly accept may ruin us. As the film opens, bright young HR employee Mae Holland (Emma Watson) takes a new job at "the Circle," a Silicon Valley tech company bent on "connecting the world" through a universal online ID system. With charismatic Steve Jobs stand-in Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) at the helm, the Circle is rolling out a new product called SeeChange, a global network of cameras designed to "promote total accountability." After a kayaking accident nearly claims her life, Mae volunteers to become the first "fully transparent" Circle employee-wearing a live-streaming SeeChange camera at all times. Unintended consequences, as you might expect, result.

There's a lot to like here, even beyond the obviously compelling themes involved. Director James Ponsoldt (responsible for 2015's outstanding "The End of the Tour") conjures up a memorable vision of saccharine, poison-laced utopia. Emma Watson makes, as ever, a suitably winsome lead (even if she can't quite shake a "British aristocrat" demeanor), and Tom Hanks is great as always. John Boyega (of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" fame), Karen Gillan, and Patton Oswalt also put in appearances.

Given the quality of talent it musters, it's a shame "The Circle" is so wildly uneven from a storytelling standpoint. The movie's disastrously bloated screenplay abandons the "show, don't tell" maxim in favor of endless exposition dumps, particularly early on. The book's pitch-black ending is bowdlerized in favor of a conventional Hollywood finale, robbing the story of its most biting edge. Most frustratingly of all, the movie collapses the novel's far-reaching social critique into a story primarily centered on mass surveillance. There's a great scene at the beginning where Mae slowly realizes that she's actually enslaved to a host of "optional" after-work social opportunities, internal "popularity scores," and customer "performance algorithms"-but sadly, these plot threads are dropped immediately thereafter. In an age where an ill-advised tweet can summon forth death threats from digital mobs, the "radical openness" envisioned by "The Circle" is a truly skin-crawling possibility. It's a shame such dread isn't allowed to linger.

But cinematic foibles notwithstanding, "The Circle" remains a brutal exploration of an American totalitarianism voluntarily adopted-technocracy taken to its logical, literal conclusion. Its themes, more than its moviemaking virtues, take center stage.

The film's power stems from its sheer plausibility: it's impossible not to recall last year's controversy surrounding Facebook's alleged suppression of conservative news outlets, Mark Zuckerberg's recent proclamation that Facebook is the next step in the evolution of global community, Amazon's ever-listening Alexa gadget, Elon Musk's newfound commitment to brain-computer interfacing, and so forth. Right now, intense competition between companies has kept the dystopian vision of "The Circle" at bay (that is, everything isn't integrated under one banner), but with companies like Amazon increasingly controlling all aspects of consumer life, and powerhouses like Facebook bringing competing social networks under its banner, the hour may be later than we think. There's a reason I still write important things down on paper, confine my innermost thoughts to private conversations, and spend money on non-"cloud" goods and services (David Sax's recent book "The Revenge of Analog" explores this in greater depth).

"The Circle" also depicts an insidious conflation of business with government-a lethal cronyism that demolishes barriers between corporate money and state authority. Many talented writers on both the right and left have explored the increasing misalignment of values between corporate America and American civil society; with these considerations in mind, even "pro-business" conservatives should be willing to engage that conversation, pushing back against the intermingling of political power with private, self-serving interests. (Maybe privately designed "electronic voting systems," authorized by copyright laws to shield their source code from public view, aren't all they're cracked up to be.)

And perhaps, in a curious way, the movie's odd emotionlessness and endless discussion scenes actually work to its advantage. This is, after all, a story about the fundamental transformation of the human experience. Were the Circle's vision to come about in real life, it would probably start like this: an unfolding series of densely worded, matter-of-fact statements (or TED talks?) about massive paradigm shifts to come. Viewed through that lens, some of the film's discombobulated storytelling is forgivable. (I'm still miffed about the ending, though.)

In short, while "The Circle" doesn't really do full justice to its source material, it's still highly watchable (and eerily relevant). Its central question-where do you draw the line between your true self and the image you share with the world-isn't an easy one, but everyone must answer it in some way or another. If nothing else, "The Circle" really succeeds as a powerful conversation starter. Three cheers for the concept, one for the execution.

VERDICT: 5.5/10
"The Circle" isn't a great movie, but it's jammed with great themes.

Normalized Score: 1.0

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Dystopian fiction has been hot for years, perhaps now more than ever. Donald Trump's election pushed George Orwell's "1984" to the top of bestseller lists, and fueled interest in Hulu's recent adaptation of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." But in the midst of a genre obsessed with riffing on twentieth-century fascism, Dave Eggers' novel "The...

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This is a link that I found that could help anyone

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-circle

https://www.shmoop.com/the-circle/

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Responding to  a range of texts that explore the use of digital technologies

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Responding to  a range of texts that explore the use of digital technologies

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 ‘Social Media Backlash as Influencers Rapidly Fall from Grace’ (posted 19/6/19):

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 ‘Social Media Backlash as Influencers Rapidly Fall from Grace’ (posted 19/6/19):

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Worksheet

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Contemporary Possibilities SMH article analysis 

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Belle Gibson

The 26-year-old Australian amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, wrote a book and launched an app based on her claims to have cured her multi-site cancer without drugs, using diet and alternative therapies.

She also claimed that a large chunk of her income from app and book sales was being donated to charity.

But it was all a lie. In 2015, under pressure from journalists investigating claims in her book, Gibson admitted to having fabricated her cancer story, while it also emerged that far smaller sums than she had claimed had gone to charity.

Gibson was hauled before an Australian court and fined over $400,000, which she is yet to pay. If she continues with her non-compliance, she could face jail time.

All that hasn't kept her off social media though - she recently opened a new Instagram account. It's private, but "shoutouts [are] appreciated".

Olivia Jade

Or Olivia Jade Giannulli, aka Lori "Aunt Becky" Loughlin's mini-me, and not a varsity-level rower - despite her apparent rowing prowess (and a convenient $US500,000 donation to the coach) being the basis of her admission to the University of Southern California.

Before the college cheating scandal, Giannulli was a vlogger and Instagram personality, with more than 3 million followers across the two platforms, a make-up line with Sephora, and brand endorsement deals with the likes of Marc Jacobs and Estee Lauder. In a video widely circulated after the scandal broke, she showed viewers around her dorm room, which appears to have been almost entirely kitted out for free via a deal with Amazon Prime.

Unlike the children of, say Felicity Huffman, Giannulli appears to have been aware of the activity that got her into an elite university (she posed for the photos of herself apparently training, after all) and the backlash has been swift, with several brands severing ties with her and Giannulli going completely quiet on her social media, though her accounts are still active.

Emma Hallberg

Another Swede, Hallberg was at the centre of what became a much bigger controversy late last year when followers began accusing her of posing as black.

On her YouTube channel and Instagram, the 19-year-old seemed to present as a woman of colour, with caramel-coloured skin, black hair and eyebrows, dark brown eyes and very full lips. Her deals were mostly with fashion and make-up brands that cater specifically to the black market, such as clothing label Fashion Nova.

But Hallberg, it transpired, is not black at all.

Following the scandal, during which she shed both followers and sponsors, Hallberg claimed that she did not intend to mislead anybody and that she didn't spray tan, take pigment-enhancing hormone melatonin or get collagen injections. Rather, she claimed to tan very easily and to have naturally dark curly hair.

"I do not get my sponsorships, work opportunities and collaborations because of the colour of my skin," she added. "I get it because of the way I style my clothes and create my make-up looks."

And despite these revelations leading to the discovery of several more black-passing white influencers whom the media has grouped together under the label "blackfishing", Hallberg continues unapologetically to sport the same look, continuing to post regularly - often multiple times a day - to Instagram.

Logan Paul

Paul was one of YouTube's biggest stars with a channel boasting over 15 million subscribers when he made mainstream headlines for posting a video showing the body of a victim in Japan's "Suicide Forest".

A horrified backlash ensured, and Paul posted the obligatory apology video ("So. Sorry.", it was entitled), but he still lost access to Google's premium ad programme, Google Preferred, and to subscription service YouTube Red.

That didn't stop him, though. Three weeks after the apology video, Paul was back on YouTube - albeit with drastically limited ad-revenue options - with a video about suicide prevention programmes that garnered 30 million views.

His YouTube channel, last updated two days ago, now has more than 19 million subscribers.

Yovana Mendoza

A social media storm erupted when Mendoza - who goes by the online moniker Rawvana - appeared in a fellow vlogger's video with a plate of fish in front of her.

The problem? Mendoza's online identity, and her brand sponsorships, are based around her veganism.

In a YouTube video clocking in at a whopping 33 minutes, Mendoza apologised to her fans, saying that doctors had encouraged her to reincorporate some animal proteins into her diet after she stopped menstruating and developed a growth on her small intestine.

Although she lost a number of followers in the wake of the scandal, with many accusing her of exploiting the vegan platform for commercial purposes and lying to the public, Mendoza continues her social media activity.

The last recipe she posted was for a classic egg salad.

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Social media backlash as influencers rapidly fall from grace

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The 26-year-old Australian amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, wrote a book and launched an app based on her claims to have cured her multi-site cancer without drugs, using diet and alternative therapies. She also claimed that a large chunk of her income from app and book sales was being donated to charity.

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Contemporary Possibilities   The Circle film guide

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Divide into Groups and choose one of the below texts to read and report back to the class on. 

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Divide into Groups and choose one of the below texts to read and report back to the class on. 

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Focus Questions:
How is social media represented in the news?

What does the future hold for social technologies?

Are the ways that humans are communicating permanently altering due to technological saturation?

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The joining of people to devices has been rapid and unalterable. The application of the personal device in daily life has made tasks take less time. Far away places and people feel closer than ever before. Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves. In similar ways that photography transformed the lived experience into the photographable, performable, and reproducible experience, personal devices are shifting behaviors while simultaneously blending into the landscape by taking form as being one with the body. This phantom limb is used as a way of signaling busyness and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addictive force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not.

The work began as I sat in a café' one morning. This is what I wrote about my observation:
Family sitting next to me at Illium café in Troy, NY is so disconnected from one another. Not much talking. Father and two daughters have their own phones out. Mom doesn't have one or chooses to leave it put away. She stares out the window, sad and alone in the company of her closest family. Dad looks up every so often to announce some obscure piece of info he found online. Twice he goes on about a large fish that was caught. No one replies. I am saddened by the use of technology for interaction in exchange for not interacting. This has never happened before and I doubt we have scratched the surface of the social impact of this new experience. Mom has her phone out now.
The image of that family, the mother's face, the teenage girls' and their father's posture and focus on the palm of their own hands has been burned in my mind. It was one of those moments where you see something so amazingly common that it startles you into consciousness of what's actually happening and it is impossible to forget. I see this family at the grocery store, in classrooms, on the side of the highway and in my own bed as I fall asleep next to my wife. We rest back to back on our sides coddling our small, cold, illuminated devices every night.

The large format portraits are of individuals who appear to be holding personal devices although the devices have been physically removed from the sitter's hand. They are asked to hold their stare and posture as I remove their device and then I make the exposure. The photographs represent reenactments of scenes that I experience daily. We have learned to read the expression of the body while someone is consuming a device and when those signifiers are activated it is as if the device can be seen taking physical form without the object being present.

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The joining of people to devices has been rapid and unalterable. The application of the personal device in daily life has made tasks take less time. Far away places and people feel closer than ever before. Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves.

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Updated May 04, 2017 12:44:26

Facebook has dubbed it "the grandparent effect": when older people create profiles on the social networking site to look at pictures of their grandchildren.

The company will not say exactly how many older Australians are on its site, but with 12 million Australians using it every day, it is a fair bet the age range of its users is getting wider.

Ray Jackson, 69, is an example of the grandparent effect. He signed up to keep in touch with family.

"Every day first thing in the morning, you get up, turn the computer on, look at Facebook," he said.

"See what the kids have done, grandkids have done something at school or whatever."

Real life reunion after 50 years

And like Facebook's younger users, Mr Jackson has also used the site to reconnect with school friends.

He started secondary school in 1960 at Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields Senior High School and had not seen many of his classmates in more than 50 years.

But six months ago, after finding each other on Facebook, a group of them resolved to catch up in real life.

Fellow classmate Geoff Higgs said he was "a bit nervous" before the get together.

"I didn't think I'd recognise anyone, but fortunately because of Facebook I could study their photos ... and I could pick up a couple of faces, and then I was right," he said.

"We met at midday, and next time I looked at my watch it was about 4:30pm - because you just get carried away.

"We talk a load of rubbish mainly."

On Wednesday the group met again and were joined by three more classmates.

Mr Jackson agreed the catch-ups had a bit of a men's shed feel about them.

"I've donated stuff to our local men's shed, the sort of life I lead at the moment doesn't give me time to go there and do things," he said.

"But yeah, I imagine it's exactly the same sort of thing, guys talking about guys' issues."

Last year one of the men, Ray Varley, lost his wife.

"Judy was in our class at school, so we'd got married at 20 and we had 49 years together, it was fantastic, I miss her heaps."

He said reconnecting with his school friends had helped and offered advice for seniors yet to take the social media plunge.

"Do it while you can, just get out there and find out where your friends are and search 'em up and reconnect," he said.

"There's no harm done, you might enjoy it."

The group said they now planned to catch up regularly.

"We've decided it's got to happen three or four times a year, just so we don't let it go for another 50 years - we don't reckon that'll happen again," Mr Varley said.

Topics: internet-technology, internet-culture, information-and-communication, older-people, family, social-media, community-and-society, perth-6000, wa, australia

First posted May 04, 2017 11:40:10

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How older Australians are going online to reconnect

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Updated May 04, 2017 12:44:26 Facebook has dubbed it "the grandparent effect": when older people create profiles on the social networking site to look at pictures of their grandchildren. The company will not say exactly how many older Australians are on its site, but with 12 million Australians using it every day, it is a fair bet the age range of its users is getting wider.

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Updated September 07, 2017 18:51:40

You're on social media, scrolling for something to capture your attention, and you pause.

There's an image or link that looks interesting. But if you were to click and others - your friends, your family, your employer - were to find out, would that be embarrassing?

While the internet and social media have made us more interconnected than ever, it's also meant constant surveillance by companies - in other words, the feeling that on the internet, we are always being watched. Our clicks are logged, categorised, interpreted and rated.

It's leading to what Tijmen Schep, a Dutch technology critic, calls "social cooling" - a society of increasing social conformity and rigidity, in which we self-censor or second guess what we do online for fear of repercussions.

Schep says it all starts with the collection of our data

"There's a huge business of companies called data brokers," Schep, the author of Design My Privacy, a "beginners guide to ethical design for the Internet of Things", told Lateline.

"They gather data about us, from everything from our cookies through emails - everything they can get their hands on. They're creating reputation scores about us, detailed psychological profiles."

Based on what we post and like and share on social media, these firms use artificial intelligence to infer intimate characteristics, creating valuable data.

That's given rise to something called the reputation economy.

"Where in the past you had your money to increase your value, increasingly your social capital - your reputation - is now being gathered in these systems," Schep said.

"That's really creating large social pressure to be perfect, to be a good citizen."

In next 10 years, Schep said, we will begin to appreciate the wide-ranging effects of this system, "like [how it will impact] your opportunity to get a nice job, to get a cheap bank loan".

"And that will profoundly change how [people] will look at themselves and how they will express themselves," he said.

"There are some companies out there that focus on human risk business. They will look at employees' data - what they say, what they do - and try to predict the ones that will leak, basically creating a dashboard with the employees and their risk scores."

How far could this go? Look at China

China is already taking advantage of this kind of information, Schep said - in fact, they are "weaponising" it.

"They're creating something called the social credit system," he said.

"This is a system where each adult citizen in China will get a score that basically represents how well-behaved of a citizen they are. And that's using all kinds of details - your credit rating ... what you say on social media, what you buy on sites like Alibaba. It combines it all.

"What they say is 'the state wants to help you to be a better citizen, to be a more ethical person, a more normative person'. They don't trust you to be free; they don't want you to develop your own norms. It's been actively developed by the Chinese Government to increase social pressure and keep people in line."

What are the long-term effects of living in a data society?

Mr Schep sees three things happening:

More self-censorship: "People might not do things, not say things, because they're afraid it might affect their score. There's a paradox here where you have free speech, you're just not using it."

Holding society back: "If people are not willing to protest, or not willing to stand up, that might lessen society's ability to change or to evolve."

Increase risk avoidance: "These reputation systems are very much at odds with taking risks because they want to limit us taking risks; they want us to not stand out."

This story is part of a series ABC News is working on looking at the algorithms that affect our lives. Tell us about an algorithm you'd like to know more about.

A small example of social cooling in action, Schep said, took place in 2013, when the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the US Government's electronic surveillance programs.

"There's research by [University of Toronto research fellow] John Penney who points out that after the Snowden leaks, people were less likely to search up terrorism on Wikipedia or Google, for example," he said.

Mr Schep said this kind of environment could dampen values like creativity and individualism that Western societies hold dear.

"There's a bit of a paradox there where these systems, in a way, are limiting divergent thought, are limiting different thinking," he said.

What can we do about this?

Mr Schep puts it this way:

"If oil leads to global warming, then data leads to social cooling."

He said data, like fossil fuels, may create a toxic environment.

"It's creating a lot of problems, it's damaging our social environment, and in the next 10, 20 years we'd have to see the same things [happening] that we saw [with] global warming, like moves towards regulating it, moves towards alternatives," he said.

"Privacy is the right to be imperfect. That's an important thing, because we humans are fundamentally imperfect.

"So, you could say privacy is the right to be human."

Topics: social-media, internet-culture, australia

First posted September 07, 2017 05:13:26

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Does the fear of surveillance make you think twice about what you click on?

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Updated September 07, 2017 18:51:40 You're on social media, scrolling for something to capture your attention, and you pause. There's an image or link that looks interesting. But if you were to click and others - your friends, your family, your employer - were to find out, would that be embarrassing?

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Updated November 28, 2017 14:02:57

Remember when we fell in love with digital social networks? Like the smartphone, it's only been one decade since these platforms began sinking their roots deep into our lives. And just like smartphones, many of us wonder how we ever lived without them - and how we might escape.

And by "them", we really mean Facebook. With more than 2 billion users worldwide, nothing else comes close to being the place where everyone you've ever known is a participant.

Other platforms have an angle on what it means to be a social network. But Facebook is The Social Network. It is everything. It has everyone.

Which is why so many people wish they could leave but don't believe they can. If you're not checking Facebook, you're not getting invited to parties. You're missing out on births, marriages, family news, cute animal memes and work gossip.

At best, many think of it as a banal distraction that gets in the way of our higher callings in life. At its worst, we see it as a creepy lurking presence that knows too much about us and is dividing society into political silos.

Life beyond Facebook

Now we're seeing people proclaim they're taking a social detox. We hear from that one weird friend who quit that they feel better than they have in years. Could Facebook's days be numbered?

Nothing lasts forever. The MySpaces, Nokias and Yahoo!s of tech show us that every juggernaut can be toppled. Every service has its tipping point toward success and into failure.

So it's interesting to think about what our lives could be like with whatever comes next.

Interestingly, Facebook knows that day will come too. When acquiring companies in recent years, it hasn't directly integrated them like it did in its earlier days. Now it runs divisions like Instagram and WhatsApp as separate, highly successful entities. It's becoming the new conglomerate. The General Electric of the 21st century.

Its latest acquisition is a company called "tbh" (to be honest), a teen-focused app that connects friends then allows anonymous voting to send kids positive messages about how fun and interesting they are to their friends.

Its frivolous and fun, and Facebook has bought the app in a very early stage of growth, so it was a speculative play for what amounts to Zuckerberg pocket change. But it points to what Facebook knows is its biggest problem yet - generational change.

Young people move on

I asked futurist Mark Pesce for a few clues on why the most digital generation ever is avoiding Facebook.

"Anecdotally, the youngest generation of connected humans - tweens and early teens - tend to shy away from Facebook," Pesce says.

"They use it to talk to their grandmothers, but not to share with their friends. They seem to be creating their own - and very tightly managed - networks of sharing. That may point to where we're going."

So where are they going? They're on Snapchat, Yellow, Monkey, Whisper, Musical.ly, Kik and more. I'm sure there's at least two in that list you've never heard of.

This variety of text, image and video based platforms play with a mix of anonymity and private, secure sharing to deliver a very different experience to what we know from Facebook.

What's next?

And this is the hard part about imagining what comes next. Whatever it is, it's unlikely to be something that exists on the scale of Facebook itself.

Facebook is going to be the-one-and-only Facebook for a long time to come.

Want to chat to grandma, or those old school friends? Go to Facebook. But it will be our tighter circles of friends and family that we take with us elsewhere to regain some sense of control.

Private and secure family groups on WhatsApp are becoming more commonplace for sharing photos of children and personal moments without accidentally leaking them to the entire world.

One "anti-Facebook" start-up, Ello, may have failed in its original mission, but has been rebounding quietly as a creative-focused social network. One of the big possibilities is a shift towards engaging with targeted interest groups that inspire and feed our minds.

Returning control to users

At its most extreme, some experts are conceiving of new networks based on personal control of data. You keep all your own details, photos, and updates in a storage box you control, and then you allow access to friends through a new generation of social apps.

It's a great concept for those worried about how much access Facebook has to our lives, but without the advertising dollars it's hard to see ideas like this getting off the ground - are we really willing to pay when we're so used to getting so much for free?

If Facebook has become one network to rule them all, then the future looks like a splintered, fractured mess.

But real life is often a little messy at its best.

Topics: social-media, internet-culture, australia

First posted November 21, 2017 07:26:03

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One day we'll stop using Facebook. What happens next?

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Updated November 28, 2017 14:02:57 Remember when we fell in love with digital social networks? Like the smartphone, it's only been one decade since these platforms began sinking their roots deep into our lives. And just like smartphones, many of us wonder how we ever lived without them - and how we might escape.

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Updated December 15, 2016 14:33:09

By now it is an agreed fact that rudeness can run riot on social media as "Twitter trolls" or "keyboard warriors" launch cyberspace insults at each other.

Yet what impact is this having on our real-life interactions? Are we on a slippery slope to a less civil society?

Author and editor David Meagher has tackled more than 150 social etiquette scenarios in his book, The A to Z of Modern Manners, which includes advice on everything from texting while walking, to "unfriending" someone on Facebook.

He is a self-described curmudgeon for whom manners are vital and social media represents a changing of the playing field.

"The thing about social media is often people hide behind the anonymity of it ... people say and do things they wouldn't in normal life," he told ABC News Breakfast.

Sorry, this video has expired

"Which is why it's always very easy to descend into an argument with people on Facebook in the comment section.

"You could say people are ruder, but the nature of the technology allows people to communicate with a range of people on a range of topics and it's really easy to have your two cents worth without having to think about it before you hit send."

However, Meagher said the proliferation of social media platforms and the increasing amount of time spent on them is starting to influence face-to-face interactions.

"Sometimes those kind of habits that you get into and the way you speak on Twitter or on Facebook or Instagram can kind of creep into your day-to-day life," he said.

"I see it in the workplace all the time.

"I hate to say it, but especially with younger people ... they're used to commenting on things because they can comment on things [online].

"Whereas I think five or 10 years ago, people might have just sort of spoken when they were spoken to."

'I'm always the optimist'

While social media might be a breeding ground for bad manners, Meagher said it was not the first time society has had to deal with changing social norms.

"I'm always an optimist," he said.

"I'm constantly asked questions now about social media, and I think it's just because of new technology.

"If you go back to the 1950s I read a few historical etiquette books, they were faced with dilemmas such as: how do you behave in work now there's a whole lot more women in the workplace?

"Or when aeroplane travel became much more common, rich people mixed with poor people and so on so they had to work out a way for different social classes to mix together.

"As society changes and as there's been huge shifts in the way people live, the way we behave comes into question as well."

So what is Meagher's advice for navigating this manners minefield?

"Keep in mind you live in a society with other people and your behaviour does impact on other people."

Topics: community-and-society, social-media, australia

First posted December 15, 2016 14:09:54

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Is social media making people ruder in real life?

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Updated December 15, 2016 14:33:09 By now it is an agreed fact that rudeness can run riot on social media as "Twitter trolls" or "keyboard warriors" launch cyberspace insults at each other. Yet what impact is this having on our real-life interactions? Are we on a slippery slope to a less civil society?

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Wide Reading Instructions and Guided Questions

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Wide Reading Instructions and Guided Questions

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Ray Bradbury

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How has technology increased the possibilities in how we communicate?

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How has technology increased the possibilities in how we communicate?

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How has technology increased possibilities in how we communicate

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Unleash the natural forces of K'gari to destroy one of Australia's first fake news stories and return Fraser Island to its rightful name.

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Questions and answers

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Read this essay and make notes on the specific advances made in technology and the ethical implications which emerge as a result.

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Editor's Note: This essay was produced in coordination with the World Economic Forum.
In the past four decades technology has fundamentally altered our lives: from the way we work to how we communicate to how we fight wars. These technologies have not been without controversy, and many have sparked intense debates that are often polarized or embroiled in scientific ambiguities or dishonest demagoguery.

The debate on stem cells and embryo research, for example, has become a hot-button political issue involving scientists, policy makers, politicians and religious groups. Similarly, the discussions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have mobilized civil society, scientists and policy makers in a wide debate on ethics and safety. The developments in genome-editing technologies are just one example that bioresearch and its impact on market goods are strongly dependent on social acceptance and cannot escape public debates of regulation and ethics. Moreover, requests for transparency are increasingly central to these debates, as shown by movements like Right to Know, which has repeatedly demanded the labeling of GMOs on food products.

Ethical and regulatory challenges
On March 4 the World Economic Forum released its list of the top 10 emerging technologies for 2015. It includes advances that aim to resolve some of the ethical debates posed by an earlier generation of technologies as well as others that will bring about new ethical and regulatory challenges. The notion of "emerging" technology does not necessarily mean that all such advances are new or revolutionary by themselves. Some have already been around for years or, in various forms, for decades (for example, fuel-cell vehicles, artificial intelligence, the digital genome, additive manufacturing methods). They are now transitioning to a new phase, however, becoming more widely used or incorporated in consumer goods. In one way or another all these technologies are bound to gain more ground in coming years.

Precise genetic-engineering techniques will likely solve some of the main controversial elements in the GMO debate-for example, the fact that genetic engineering was neither precise nor predictable. The range of procedures associated with GM crops is precise in the initial process of cutting and splitting genes in the test tubes. But the subsequent steps are uncontrolled and some mutations can occur and alter the functioning of the natural genes in potentially harmful ways. A technique that would achieve greater accuracy and greater predictability over genetic mutations is, of course, a net improvement on conventional GMOs. It is, however, critical that this technique is properly studied and implemented in a sustainable way and that it doesn't just give renewed legitimacy to genetic engineering in agriculture.

More accuracy is also expected in the operation of drones with the adaptation of the sense-and-avoid equipment. This will have unequivocal security benefits, helping unmanned aerial vehicles avoid collisions with other drones or piloted aircraft. The critical offshoot of this innovation is that it will encourage and enable the operation of a larger number of drones, a development which can be both welcomed (for instance, China flies drones to help fight pollution) and anticipated, as the growth in dangerous drone flights around populated areas appears to be developing ahead of regulations.

Autonomous systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, while already decades-old technologies, will continue to expand their functionalities and enter new eras of continual specialization. More intuitive, emergent AI could change speech and conversational software with unprecedented precision, helping millions of people and also redefining the way we command and interact with computers.

Robots as intelligent as humans
New-generation robotics will increasingly have more autonomy and capacity to react without preprogramming, which complicates current debates on robotics: The trust and reliance invested in a robot will have to be greater, bringing robots closer to the point of being on par with us. Neuromorphic chip technology further illustrates this. It is among the most revolutionary developments in AI and a radical step in computing power. Mimicking the intricacies of the human brain, a neuro-inspired computer would work in a fashion similar to the way neurons and synapses communicate. It could potentially learn or develop memory. This would imply that, for instance, a drone equipped with a neuromorphic chip would be better at surveillance, remembering or recognizing new elements in its environment.

Immediate ethical red flags emerge, however: Building neuromorphic chips would create machines as smart as humans, the most intelligent species on the planet. These technologies are demonstrations of human excellence yet computers that think could be devastating for our species and, as Marvin Minsky has put it, they could even keep humanity as pets.

The interest in smart machines is now also pursued in additive manufacturing methods, which are increasingly integrating smart materials into manufacturing. These materials could adapt, change properties, interact or respond to their environments. With 4-D Printing, which takes into account the transformation that occurs over time, some materials will adapt and repair by themselves without maintenance or they could be preprogrammed to disintegrate on their own. This will raise new questions of standardization, traceability and copyright.

More radical disruptions will occur once the technology transitions to the organic world, making it possible to assemble biomaterials that evolve and develop on their own, design cancer-fighting robots that would release antibodies only in contact with cancerous cells, and so on. The moment of the print button for biology is nearing. Effectively, this could also mean that in a not too-distant future smart pharmacology will permit us to receive a continuous supply of antidepressants or neuroenhancers every time our dopamine level drops. The ethical consequences of such developments should be thought through. Having our emotions controlled in detail by smart machines will pave the way for dangerous forms of dependences and new understandings of our humanity and the emotions that define us.

Genome-based treatment, based on wider and cheaper availability of genome data, will provide new ways to customize the therapeutic protocol and enhance our control over diseases and medical treatment. The speed, accuracy and costs of genome-reading have changed dramatically in just a matter of years: A decade ago this process was a billion-dollar effort whereas today the price has dropped sharply to around $8,000. In cancer treatment, for instance, this will allow transitioning from broad-spectrum chemotherapies to more individualized diagnoses and targeting of specific malfunctioning genes. As we are truly starting to gain more precise tools to fight life-threatening diseases, a range of other issues arise. Pervasive global inequalities will still prevent millions of people from enjoying the benefits of such treatments, even in a context of decreasing costs of genome sequencing. Furthermore, a range of security and privacy risks associated with data storage of genome data will invariably arise and require protective mechanisms, especially as such databases are often shared for security reasons (for example, between international police forces), increasing the possibility of hacking or abuse by authorities.

Inevitably, the emerging technologies of the future will redefine our understanding of biology, the material world and manufacturing. The implications will further extend into geopolitics and global balances of power. Fuel-cell vehicles are finally expected to make their way to the market and reduce dependency on oil or emissions that contribute to climate change. In the long term, this will accentuate the vulnerability of oil-dependent economies and recalibrate geopolitical relations. Recyclable thermostat polymers, reportedly discovered by accident, will dramatically change fabrication and manufacturing, leading to new standards in industries. Globally, the advent of distributed manufacturing is bound to lead to a reassessment of the meaning of value chains and infrastructure. Rather than ship parts of a given product, some companies will simply trade information, leaving it to the customer to finalize the product's manufacture. A suite of other technologies such as 3-D printing, informatics and robotics are enabling a paradigm shift to a dematerialized future with endless possibilities for customization.

Changes ahead
As always, we must welcome innovation and the benefits it brings us. But we must also remain committed to sustainable development, taking into account issues of inequality, human dignity and inclusiveness. Finally, this year's top emerging technologies also remind us of the importance of political commitment. Take the example of the transition toward fuel-cell vehicles: it will require huge infrastructural adaptations and conversions. In fact, it's estimated that if the U.S. spent the same amount of money it took to put a person on the moon ($100 billion in today's dollars), the shift to hydrogen-powered cars and refueling stations that pump hydrogen would be significantly eased. Often the technology itself is available but only a massive exercise of political will can bring about change.

Some technologies might progress independently of political support. But good governance, examinations of dual-use risks and ethical considerations must still remain guiding posts at all times. Ultimately, how we approach the regulation of emerging technologies will inevitably have wide implications-not only for security and ethics but for our definition of human dignity and the equality of individuals.
Nayef Al-Rodhan is a philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist and author as well as an Honorary Fellow at the University of Oxford in England.

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The Many Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies

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Editor's Note: This essay was produced in coordination with the World Economic Forum. In the past four decades technology has fundamentally altered our lives: from the way we work to how we communicate to how we fight wars.

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Snow Fall: the Avalanche at tunnel Creek

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After a few minutes, the small talk faded. Worries went unexpressed.

"When you're up on top of a peak like that, it's usually hang out for a second, and then it's momentum," Castillo said. "You just kind of feel it. Everyone's like: 'O.K., we're not here to hang out. Let's start going.' So I saw people starting to slide, get going, and I was like: 'Hey, Johnny, partner up. Buddy system. Let's go. Me and you.' And at that point, it clicked. Everyone's like, yeah, partners, partners, partners."

It is a tenet of avalanche safety, and the command snapped the group to attention.

"Someone said, 'Partner up - everyone should grab a partner,'" Carlsen said. "Immediately I thought, We're in a somewhat serious situation. It wasn't just grab a partner so you don't get lost. It was grab a partner so you. ...

"It just felt bigger all of a sudden."

Rudolph, the Stevens Pass marketing director, teamed with Saugstad, the professional skier.

"I was really excited about that," Saugstad said, "because he's just such a cool guy and I thought, wow, cool, he wants to be my partner. A very trustworthy guy that's an amazing skier."

Jack, on borrowed Salomon skis, paired with Joel Hammond, the Salomon representative. Carlson looked at Pankey, his childhood friend.

"Dude, you're coming with me," he said.

Wesley gave a little whistle to Carlson and Pankey and nodded downhill. He wanted to be first. The conditions were too good to waste time, and he did not want to be slowed by the huge pack.

With little warning, Wesley dropped straight through the large cluster of trees, using firs as a slalom course. Pankey and Carlson followed.

Rudolph, always up for competition, sped around the trees, not through them. He curved around a banked C-shape turn that dropped him a couple hundred feet into the broad meadow below.

He arrived just in time to see Wesley, Pankey and Carlson burst from the trees into the open powder. Rudolph pointed his ski poles and playfully shouted invectives as their tracks crossed.

Wesley laughed, and his two friends followed him left and over a small rise.

Rudolph headed straight down the mountain.

"I remember looking back at where he was going and being confused," Wesley said. "Like, 'Where is he going?'"

All the locals in the group presumed they knew what the others were thinking. They did not.

"When you know an avalanche is not very likely, that's a great way to go," Wesley said of Rudolph's choice to ski straight down farther. "It's three open glades of awesome powder."

Earlier that morning, Wesley and Carlson had skied the opposite side of Cowboy Mountain, in the ski area. It had been cleared of avalanches by the ski patrol at dawn, but the two still triggered several slough slides - small, shallow avalanches that washed at their feet and petered out before snagging victims.

"That's why, when they said we're doing Tunnel, I was like, 'Ooh, dicey,'" Wesley said.

Pankey and Carlson followed Wesley and looked back, too, wondering why Rudolph and the others were not following them toward relatively safer terrain. Within a minute, long enough to be well out of sight of the group they left behind, the three men found something that made them stop.

"We were right on top of a knoll, a little rollover, where we were about to make some really fun turns, and we saw that the face had already slid," Carlson said. "It was pretty large."

Alarmed, the three decided to go farther left. They crossed through trees and avoided big meadows and steep pitches. They soon found evidence of another avalanche, this one cutting through the forest.

"I'd really never seen anything slide in the trees like that," Carlson said. "And that was definitely like: 'Holy cow, we shouldn't be back here, Ron. Let's go left. Let's go hard left.'"

Wesley had disappeared in the pale light. He left nothing but a track through the deep snow that the others tried to follow.

"I just went, and didn't really stop," Wesley said. "I went all the way down. But I've never taken a run where I looked uphill more times in fear."

'I Got Eyes on You'

Rudolph stopped on the left edge of the upper meadow, above a cluster of trees. Others filed behind him, spilling down the mountain in plumes of spraying snow.

Erin Dessert did not follow. She was confused. She was once a Tunnel Creek regular, until a nonfatal avalanche captured five friends in 2002 and scared her away.

"Chris Rudolph's, like, totally all about safety protocol and mountain awareness and wisdom," she said. "That guy knows the conditions like an animal. He has instincts. It didn't register, even for a second, that he might be bringing this group to Tunnel Creek. It wasn't logical. I thought we were doing the front side."

She headed hard to the right, away from the others. The other snowboarders that she knew, Carlson and Wesley, were gone in the opposite direction. Some in the remaining group noticed Dessert heading away in the distance and dismissed her as an oblivious backcountry rookie. She dipped out of sight in a lonely panic.

"I've been riding Stevens Pass since I was 3 years old," Dessert said. "I can tell circumstances, and I just felt like something besides myself was in charge. They're all so professional and intelligent and driven and powerful and riding with athletic prowess, yet everything in my mind was going off, wanting to tell them to stop."

Rudolph and the others, now a group of 12, were focused downhill. It was 11:52 a.m. Rudolph did not wait for the back of the pack to arrive before continuing to demonstrate the way.

"So Chris Rudolph went first, and then he pulled into the trees and we waited for a sec," said Castillo, who was near the front of the group, wearing a helmet camera. "He goes out of sight and behind the trees. So I said, 'O.K., Megan, go ahead, spoon those tracks, and you'll see Chris on the left.'"

It was not Megan Michelson. It was Elyse Saugstad.

"I thought it was Megan," Castillo said. "I said, 'Are you Megan?' She said, 'No, no, I'm Elyse.' That's when I met Elyse. It was right there. And she made these turns that were like: 'Aah, I think I know who that is. I've seen her name. Those are pro turns.' She ripped the hell out of it."

Saugstad traced through the knee-deep snow just to the right of Rudolph's elongated S-shape tracks. She dipped through trees at a pinch in the meadow and disappeared out of sight. She crossed over Rudolph's tracks and giggled. After about 30 seconds, she was back at Rudolph's side, having cut left into a notch of the trees again.

"We skied to an area that was probably about 500 feet down or so from where we started," Saugstad said. "And where we skied to was an area of old-growth trees. You know, several-hundred-year-old trees. A very good indication that this is a safe place. Things don't happen here."

Castillo and Brenan teased each other about who would go next.

"Finally, he's like, 'Go ahead, I got eyes on you,'" Castillo said.

From where Rudolph and Saugstad stopped, they could not see the subsequent skiers approach. Castillo went past and cut left. His camera recorded Rudolph and Saugstad whooping their approval as he stopped in a shower of powder, about 40 feet below them.

But just before he stopped, Castillo was jolted by a weird sensation.

"A little pang, like, ooh, this is a pretty heavy day out here," Castillo said. "Thing's holding, but I remember having a feeling."

Castillo stopped above two trees. He nestled close and pushed his right ski tight against them.

"A lot of people think you should be below trees, but I stand above them," Castillo said. "I'm like, 'I'd rather get pinned against this than taken through.'"

His helmet camera showed that 14 seconds after Castillo stopped, Brenan appeared through the trees above Rudolph and Saugstad. Brenan had hugged the tree line on the left, avoiding the open meadow, then slalomed through the patch that the others used for protection. He stopped in a spray of snow a few feet from Rudolph and Saugstad.

"That was sick!" someone shouted.

Castillo silently took note of the terrain.

"I was downhill from them - skier's right from them," Castillo said. "But the trees that they were behind, I didn't think it was a bad spot to stop. They were huge. Giant old-growths that three of us probably can't put our hands around."

But he knew the direction of the slope did not follow the meadow. It dipped harder left into the trees, down toward a gully. And there were still a lot of skiers above them.

Saugstad was next to Rudolph. Brenan was a few feet away.

"We weren't straight across from each other, in a perfect horizontal line on the slope," Saugstad said. "We were peppered up and down, spread out."

Castillo kept his attention up the hill. Less than 30 seconds after Brenan stopped, he saw Tim Wangen cut through the trees above the earlier arrivals, gliding horizontally through the forest. Wangen had been taught how to navigate Tunnel Creek by his father. He knew that the farther down the mountain he went, the harder it would be to cut over the ridge and into the next big meadow. He crossed the shallow gully and rose up the other side.

"I could see the others when I cut over," Wangen said. "I thought: Oh yeah, that's a bad place to be. That's a bad place to be with that many people. But I didn't say anything. I didn't want to be the jerk."

Wangen had told Peikert to follow his tracks, and Peikert was close behind. Castillo watched where they went.

"Want to cut over?" Castillo shouted to those above him.

Sliding Snow

The start of an avalanche is unlike any other force of nature.

A hurricane is foretold by wind and lashing waves. A tornado often is spotted before it strikes. Lightning is usually presaged by black clouds and rumbling thunder.

Avalanches rarely provide such a warning. Unlike waves or wind, tremors or storms, they are usually triggered by their own victims, sometimes unaware of what has been unleashed.

"If you swim out in the ocean, the ocean's always alive," Saugstad said. "You can feel it. But the mountains feel like they're asleep."

Back up the mountain, Jack never seemed worried. That was his nature. Here he was, a rare weekend off, skiing with some of his best friends from Leavenworth and people from Powder and ESPN and all over the industry, on an epic run on a perfect powder day.

Carlsen, the Powder photographer, had never been to Tunnel Creek. The first few easy turns gave way to a slope that fell steeply away, out of sight. He sidled up to Jack.

"I grabbed him, and I said, 'What is the move here?'" Carlsen said. "It was basically like, 'This is getting real, how do we handle it?' He's like: 'Oh, no big deal. We go out here, swing out, make a few pow turns, and get back in the trees.' I looked at him and said, 'Have a great run.' Gave him a fist, a knuckle-to-knuckle high-five thing. And that was it. I watched him swing out, way out, skier's right, and then dive into his turn left."

Jack flowed through the thick powder with his typical ease. He skied the way other people walked down a sidewalk, a friend had said.

Jack disappeared over the knoll, gliding through the trees in the middle of the meadow. Behind him, the five remaining skiers watched in silence.

"He looked like he was having a great time, the run of his life, in fact," Michelson said. "And he actually made, I remember, a little 'woo' sound, as he dropped in on his first or second turn because the snow was really good. It was deep and light."

Then the snow changed without warning.

Across the meadow, above Jack, loose snow seemed to chase him down the hill and out of sight.

Not everyone saw it. A couple did. They caught it in their peripheral vision and were unsure what to make of it.

"That was sketchy," Hammond said.

The five others listened. Not a sound. They stared for clues through the flat light below a murky sky. Nothing.

Silent seconds ticked. Finally, Hammond spotted the first sign of evidence. It came from a tree, one among thousands, far down the hill, almost out of sight. Only the top of it was visible, and it was covered in snow.

"I saw it moving," Hammond said. "Like something had hit the tree, and it shook. And I could see the powder falling off the tree."

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Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek

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After a few minutes, the small talk faded. Worries went unexpressed. "When you're up on top of a peak like that, it's usually hang out for a second, and then it's momentum," Castillo said. "You just kind of feel it. Everyone's like: 'O.K., we're not here to hang out.

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Write a reflection statement explaining how the reading of this text has changed the way that you view the power of  photographic images. Consider the way that a composer can purposefully position the responder in terms of the way that they view a person in a text.

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Time Magazine put Donald Trump on its cover last year. The Forward's Jake Romm called the cover shot a covert act of political subversion. It became the most-read article in the history of our digital publication. A year later, his analysis rings even truer than ever.
Time Magazine's annual "Person of the Year" announcement is, year after year, grossly misunderstood. Time Magazine is clear on its sole criterion - "the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year" - yet, do a simple search on Twitter and you will find countless people who seem to think that the "Person of the Year" selection is tantamount to an endorsement. Previous winners have included Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Adolf Hitler (1938), and other figures who I think it is safe to assume the Time staff does not endorse.

This year, it should come as no surprise that President-elect Donald Trump was chosen to grace the cover of Time's annual issue (shot by Jewish photographer Nadav Kander). "For better or worse," Trump, during his campaign and now after his election, has certainly been among the greatest influences on the events of the year. For clues as to how Time feels about that question - is it "for better or worse?" - we can look to the image chosen for the cover of the issue. The decisions that Time made regarding how to photograph Trump reveal a layered, nuanced field of references that place the image among, in this viewer's opinion, the magazine's greatest covers.

In order to deconstruct the image, let's focus on three key elements (leaving aside the placement of the 'M' in 'Time' that makes it look like Trump has red horns): the color, the pose, and the chair:
The Color
Notice how the colors appear slightly washed out, slightly muted, soft. The palette creates what we might call a vintage effect. The image's sharpness and detail reveal the contemporaneity of the picture, but the color suggests an older type of film, namely, Kodachrome. Kodachrome, the recently discontinued film produced by Kodak, was designed to create accurate color reproduction in the early 1900's. It was immensely popular between the late 30's and 70s, and its distinctive look defines our common visual concept of nostalgia.

By reproducing a Kodachrome color palette, the Time cover makes us reimagine the cover as if it were an image from the era of Kodachrome's mass popularity. (Where your mind goes when thinking about leaders from the era of World War Two, segregation, and the Cold War era is up to you.) This visual-temporal shift in a sense mirrors a lot of the drives that fueled Trump's rise. Trump ran a campaign based on regressive policies and attitudes - anti-environmental protection, anti-abortion, pro-coal, etc. This election was not just about regressive policy choices, but also about traditional values (defined primarily by the Christian right), about nostalgia for American greatness and security, about nostalgia for a pre-globalized world.
The Pose
Trump's pose can be read as a subversive play on a traditional power-portrait pose (look to Delaroche's portrait of a defeated Napoleon for another wonderfully subversive take on the pose, though the tone there is elegiac as opposed to scheming).

© Le Gall 1990 / Reproduc...

Napoleon I At Fontainebleau, 31 March, 1814 - Paul Delaroche

Paintings of seated monarchs can be seen to hold two aesthetic functions - to ground the association between the sitter and the throne, thus solidifying the metonymy, and to heighten the sense of servitude in the viewer. The viewer must approach the monarch, the monarch does not rise for the viewer.

In our post-monarchic time, the power of the throne is largely gone, but the power of a seated figure remains. The chair itself is unimportant, it is the act of sitting that matters. By placing a portrait in this tradition, the chair assumes the role of the throne, and the sitter the role of king (or queen) - the visual effect is the same.

Consider the following image of the Lincoln Memorial (for further reference, view these images of Vladimir Putin and LL Cool J:

The image of the Lincoln Memorial (and the other two images) is an exaggerated version of the traditional pose. We see our subject head on, but, most importantly, we see the subject from below. The angle forces us to look up at the subject, which in turn creates the impression that the subject is looking down at us. This pose and angle, with the viewer seemingly (and literally in the case of the Lincoln Memorial), at the subject's feet, makes the subject appear dominant, powerful, judging.

But, flip the image around, and suddenly we have a whole new set of connotations. On the Time cover, instead of seeing Trump head on and from below, we see him seated from behind and roughly at eye level. The power relation has shifted entirely.

Trump's turn towards the camera renders the tone conspiratorial rather than judgmental. There are two images at play here - the imagined power-image taken from the front, and the actual image, in which Trump seems to offer the viewer a conniving wink, as if to say, look at how we hoodwinked those suckers in the front (both Trump and the viewer are looking down on those in front). By subverting the typical power dynamic, Time, in a sense, implicates the viewer in Trump's election, in his being on the cover in the first place.

In another layer, much of what we know about Donald Trump has been gleaned through images. He is a master of branding, a reality TV star who has long been a tabloid favorite. By choosing not to shoot Trump head on, the Time cover almost offers us a "behind the scenes" glimpse of the man who has spent so much of his time in front of the camera - heightening the conspiratorial tone and complicity of the viewer. The highly posed and processed nature of the photograph offers yet another level of irony.

Finally, we must note the ominous shadow lurking on the backdrop. It's a small, but important and clever detail. Just as this image provides us with two theoretical points of view, it also provides us with two Trumps - Trump the president-elect, and the specter of Trump the president, haunting in the wings, waiting to take form.
The Chair
The masterstroke, the single detail that completes the entire image, is the chair. Trump is seated in what looks to be a vintage "Louis XV" chair (so named because it was designed in France under the reign of King Louis XV in the mid 18th century). The chair not only suggests the blindly ostentatious reigns of the French kings just before the revolution, but also, more specifically, the reign of Louis XV who, according to historian Norman Davies, "paid more attention to hunting women and stags than to governing the country" and whose reign was marked by "debilitating stagnation," "recurrent wars," and "perpetual financial crisis" (sound familiar?).

The brilliance of the chair however, is visual rather than historical. It's a gaudy symbol of wealth and status, but if you look at the top right corner, you can see a rip in the upholstery, signifying Trump's own cracked image. Behind the bluster, behind the glowing displays of wealth, behind the glittering promises, we have the debt, the tastelessness, the demagoguery, the racism, the lack of government experience or knowledge (all of which we unfortunately know too well already). Once we notice the rip, the splotches on the wood come into focus, the cracks in Trump's makeup, the thinness of his hair, the stain on the bottom left corner of the seat - the entire illusion of grandeur begins to collapse. The cover is less an image of a man in power than the freeze frame of a leader, and his country, in a state of decay. The ghostly shadow works overtime here - suggesting a splendor that has already passed, if it ever existed at all.

-

Taken together, these elements add up to a profound portrayal of anxiety for the coming years. We have the implicit placement of Trump in the mid 1900's (looking through the Time Magazine cover archives, no images really resemble this cover, save the one seen on the left [a purely visual comparison]). We have a suggestion of the scheming, sordid underside of power. We have the crumbling facade of wealth, which, like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" suggests more than just a physical deterioration.

As a photograph, it's a rare achievement. As a cover, it's a statement.
Jake Romm is the Forward's culture intern. Contact him at romm@forward.com or on Twitter, @JakeRomm
This story "Why Time's Trump Cover Is Even More Subversive Now" was written by Jake Romm.

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Why Time's Trump Cover Is Even More Subversive A Year Later

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Time Magazine put Donald Trump on its cover last year. The Forward's Jake Romm called the cover shot a covert act of political subversion. It became the most-read article in the history of our digital publication. A year later, his analysis rings even truer than ever.