Cody Brown, an NYU undergrad, just announced Kommons, an ambitious effort to build a new model of news gathering and presentation. I just read his blog post announcing the new venture, “A Public Can Talk To Itself” and find myself deeply disturbed. Although its no longer fashionable to say so, we live in a class society and our news organizations serve the needs of the classes they represent. Brown may very well go on to build the most successful news gathering operation of this new era, but whose interests will it serve? Brown’s idea of “the public” is clearly limited to those people who have access to technology, to the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to express themselves with that technology and the time to be a “citizen journalist.” Brown’s use of his mentor Clay Shirky’s automobile analogy confirms this when he writes: “A hundred years ago, back when cars were first being sold, you didn?t just buy one and drive it off the lot, the car itself was so complicated and difficult to manage that you hired a professional chauffeur who also served as a kind of mechanic.” I”m not sure how wealthy you had to be to buy the pre-Model T cars but I’m assuming it was a very small percentage of “the public.”
A last point, i find it fascinating and not insignificant that Brown has named his new venture, Kommons. I’m sure he just thinks it’s cute, but if he checks the Wikipedia, he’ll find there is a specific historical meaning often attached to the switch from K to C. I’m sure he didn’t set out consciously to trash the concept of the Commons but then i’m also sure he doesnt’ see any problems with his definition of public either.
From Wikipedia
“K” replacing “C” (article here)
Replacing the letter ?c? with ?k? in the first letter of a word came into use by the Ku Klux Klan during its early years in the mid to late 1800s. The concept is continued today within the ranks of the Klan. They call themselves “konservative KKK.”
In the 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, leftists, particularly the Yippies, sometimes used Amerika rather than “America” in referring to the United States.[1] It is still used as a political statement today.[2] It is likely that this was originally an allusion to the German spelling of America, and intended to be suggestive of Nazism, a hypothesis that the Oxford English Dictionary supports.
In broader usage, the replacement of the letter “C” with “K” denotes general political skepticism about the topic at hand and is intended to discredit or debase the term in which the replacement occurs. [9] Detractors sometimes spell former president Bill Clinton’s name as “Klinton” or “Klintoon”. [emphasis mine]
A similar usage in Spanish (and Portuguese too) is to write okupa rather than “ocupa” (often on a building or area occupied by squatters [10], referring to the name adopted by okupación activist groups), which is particularly remarkable because the letter “k” is rarely found in either Spanish or Portuguese words. It stems from Spanish anarchist and punk movements which used “k” to signal rebellion [3].
The letter “C” is also commonly changed to a “K” in a non-pejorative way in KDE, a desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems.
if:book
A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
To Mr. Bob Stein :
Just a thought: not too many people had known how to read and write either, before the Gutenberg press…[1]
And what’s with the white extremist labeling? I’m sure you can do better than personal attacks… There’s some flesh there in your allegation of elitism, it would do good to explore further IMHO.
Perhaps this is just a first response from you after a quick skim of Cody’s article. And I am sure, Sir that you are capable of much more prescient criticism. Which I personally, and humbly, await.
—
[1] speaking from a Western Hemisphere context here; never mind how long it took for the alphabet, ink, and paper to become widespread in Southeast Asia. Which means (I would imagine) that those that “buy ink by the barrel” are even more elite in these here part of the world…[2]
[2] Which makes me think: Doesn’t buying a PC and a ‘Net connection cost less than maintaining a printing press? Doesn’t that make Internet-based media a little less elitist than ink-and-paper? (though arguably still not completely egalitarian yet?)[3]
[3] Nested footnotes are fun (with apologies to Dave Weinberger) xD
For context, using “K” instead of “C” is also rumored to be a mark of the Bloods street gang.
And, Bob, you’ve already been called a kunt on Twitter.
The kid is an undergraduate at NYU. You think he’d be reading John Dewey or Jurgen Habermas or Jean Baudrillard, but instead he’s smoking pot and making websites and dreaming up a future that is kinda exactly like the present of his dorm room and writing a rambling incoherent blogpost with some cool graphics that links to a website announcing a new project but that provides only — guess what — a Twitter feed, where people approvingly link back to the incoherent blogpost so that they can go around and around in a new media circle jerk. Oh, right, and there’s … something about something called “news” too. Kool.
Dear Ferdi Zebua . . . . not sure what i said that you think is “extremist labeling.” i was only trying to point out that there is political content in the name Kommons. the reference to the Klan is from the Wikipedia article that you can find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiric_misspelling
Hey Bob –
Thanks for reading the essay, I’m sorry you found it deeply disturbing. To your point about how you think the project would reinforce class divisions, I’d ask relative to what? The question I posed on Twitter was this:
What’s more accessible, a returned phone-call from a NYT reporter, or a netbook from walmart?
Then of course there are projects like this: http://laptop.org/en/
The point about the C to the K is pretty out there. I don’t know how to answer other than to assure you I’m not in the KKK.
-cody
Cody,
The Institute for the Future of the Book is actually located at NYU. If I can arrange it, would you be willing to continue this discussion in a public forum.
Bob
Hey Bob,
Totally.
My email is codyvbrown@gmail.com
-cody
That is some ridiculous guilt-by-association line you’re peddling there over the C/K spelling. I think you’ll find there are many, many more C/K switches that have absolutely nothing to do with the KKK. Isn’t OK supposed to be the acronym of “Oll Korrect”? In fact, if you google Korrect, you’ll find a million small businesses use it in their name: Korrect Optical, Korrect Kritters, etc etc.
Susan,
the reason i mentioned the C/K switch and think it’s important is that the COMMONS is a crucial concept in the digital era and messing with that word has a political connotation even when unintended. please notice also that the passage i rendered in bold was the following:
In broader usage, the replacement of the letter “C” with “K” denotes general political skepticism about the topic at hand and is intended to discredit or debase the term in which the replacement occurs. [9] Detractors sometimes spell former president Bill Clinton’s name as “Klinton” or “Klintoon”. [emphasis mine]
There is a brilliant collection of essays about the importance of defending the Commons in the digital era published by City Lights — Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that the name commons was referring to the right of commons, whereby peasants could use the land of their lord.
What’s ironic is that the K was probably used to make the word a trademarkable term for intellectual property reasons, much like the way the sci fi network changed their name to syfy, so they could own the brand.
Pretty sure ‘commons.com’ wasn’t available.
To me – changing the C to a K gives it a ‘socialist’ feel, which makes me think the site is created by the people, and a little political. A good name choice, if that’s what Cody was after.
Strict analysis about the domain name is silly. If it means something to a visitor, then it means something. Otherwise, who cares?
This is a truly unfair criticism. Did you check and see whether the domain “commons.com” is available? There are lots of variations played on names in order to secure a web domain. There is no suggestion that there is anything else going on here.
And in Spanish, while texting or writing quickly, ‘k’ is often used as an abbreviation for the word “que” without any political or anarchist intent whatsoever.