Here’s an excellent analysis by Richard Seymour of the Israeli government’s shifting propaganda line regarding the recent bombing of a UN-run school which killed 43 refugees.  It’s a typical example of Israel’s Big Lie in this brutal assault on the Palestinian people, which, repeated so often, becomes officially-sanctioned truth: those evil Hamas fighters hide among the civilian population and are therefore ultimately to blame for the resulting civilian casualties.

The IDF’s initial justification for the attack on the Al-Fakhura school was that Hamas had used the building to fire mortars from, and its tanks had responded. Implicit in this was an admission that they had targeted the school on purpose. The tank shells, presumably shot from quite nearby, were fired by soldiers operating under orders from command centres equipped with detailed targeting intelligence. As is now known, the Israeli military had the GPS coordinates not only of this UN school but of the other UN schools that it attacked. And the first thing the IDF let us know is that it was done on purpose. Their excuse was barbaric, of course. The idea that an invading force may attack a building filled with hundreds of terrorised civilians just in order to kill two of those resisting the invasion is nothing short of grotesque. But the fact that it was barbaric was part of the point: rather than bluntly condemning a war crime, you were invited to focus on whether Hamas would be so evil as to attack Israel’s brave boys from within a civilian building. Because it is so frequently repeated you might be predisposed to assume that Hamas did indeed position its ‘infrastructure of terror’ among unsuspecting citizens but, whether you are so predisposed or not, you are already drawn into the macabre calculus of the murderer if you even get involved in that argument. You have tacitly accepted the logic in which war crimes are not merely acceptable, but actually appropriate, if the enemy really is as evil as Israel says. The usual suspects, of course, immediately embraced Israel’s excuse: Israel’s killing, they expostulated, merely demonstrates the ruthless, diabolical genius of Hamas. If anything, they added, the IDF was admirably restrained in its action. But it is doubtful that many others were taken in.

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Technorati Tags: Gaza, Israel-Palestinian conflict, propaganda

In 2004 Wired editor Chris Anderson coined the term “the long tail” when describing an emerging business model built around the digital distribution of products – using the online sale of music as the prime model.  He claimed selling “less of more” would become the new paradigm for many businesses.  Blockbusters would matter less while consumers would be able to chose from an easily available, ever-expanding variety of content, which would then become the main source of profit for companies and producers.  In short, the long tail marks a democratizing of distribution, where consumer choice would reign supreme.

Anderson’s assertion was quickly accepted as fact in the mainstream, where technologically deterministic, utopian claims of democratic progress have always been applauded while more skeptically-oriented analyses that stress socioeconomic continuities are ignored or rejected.  I maintain that techno-utopian notions like Anderson’s long tail are best seen as ideologically-based, maintaining a belief that technology, of its own accord and absent human subjectivity, will expand democracy through a process of opening channels of communication.  When it comes to reinforcing prevailing ideology, all that’s needed are fashionable claims with little evidence.

Long tail theory fits this archetype. It’s been subject to little scrutiny or empirical analysis – until now.  British researchers Will Page, Andrew Bud and Gary Eggleton have recently unveiled their conclusions of a scientific study of online music sales encompasing more than the 13 million tracts available: verdict, the long tail looks very short indeed.  As Patrick Foster at the Times (UK) sums up:

for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. For albums, the figures were even more stark. Of the 1.23 million available, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year.

More research is needed, but these findings don’t bode well for the techno-utopians.  It points to the fact that just because an idea sounds well and fits into our preconceived notions, it is anything but truth.

Technorati Tags: long tail, Web 2.0