I think it’s pretty clear that there was no intentionality behind the fact that Siri, the AI assistant on the iPhone 4s, turns out to be pretty good at directing users to anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, but not to abortion clinics (though it seems to find Planned Parenthood very easily when searched for by name). Some of it may simply be that Apple relies heavily on external databases like Yelp to source answers to queries. And pursuant to that, I think Jill Filipovic nails it:

That data is often messy, and savvier companies will pay for the data about them to be accurate and to include the full range of their services. Abortion clinics and other women’s health facilities, obviously, are not dedicating tons of time to figure out how to optimize their search results. So the data is crappy to begin with. To fix that, programmers go in and add tens of thousands of little tweaks to a program like Siri to make it as accurate as possible, and also to include some jokes (like where to hide a dead body). But when programmers are mostly dudes, the lady-stuff just gets… ignored. So Siri knows 15 different ways to say “oral sex performed on a man” and can find a place to get it, but anything involving female sexuality at all leaves her clueless. Which doesn’t make it excusable. It’s pretty appalling that programmers thought far ahead enough to know where to send users who needed to remove rodents from their buttholes, but didn’t consider a medical procedure that 1 in 3 American women will have. I mean, they appear to have thought far ahead enough to have Siri respond to the boyfriend of the woman who is pregnant, but not to the woman herself.

On the first point, and sort of pursuant to the point I made earlier this fall about tech infrastructure for the feminist blogosphere, it would be very smart strategic giving for someone to set up a fund to optimize the hell out of progressive service providers’ sites. I’d be pretty concerned about attempts to politicize algorithms, because I think any step in that direction can have profound and dangerous consequences, but I think it’s important to make sure that progressive organizations have all the resources they need to game those algorithms as effectively as possible.

Second, making technology for women isn’t really a matter of color, or angles, or whether it fits in your purse. It’s about whether the snazzy, solves-all-your-problems technology (which is unquestionably the way Apple is marketing Siri, rather than as a Beta) actually serves that purpose for all of your customers. If your ability to think about the varied needs of your consumers only extends to thinking about the varied needs of men, you’re not actually as an expansive thinker as you believe yourself to be. Tech companies should be particularly attentive to female feedback on products like this not because our tiny girl brains will give them marketing ideas, but because artificial intelligence is about perspective, not just information.

When Cenk Uygur declined to renew his contract with MSNBC earlier this year, he said it was out of a desire not to toe an establishment line he felt was being laid down for him by the network. In September, Current TV announced that it had hired him to join fellow progressive firebrand Keith Olbermann, starting a new show that will premiere on Monday, December 5 at 7pm. I spoke to him about the creative freedom he says he’s found at Current, what he looks for in a guest and a panel, and the themes that run through his favorite movies and television shows.

When you left MSNBC, you talked about the limitations of the role the network seemed to want you to play. And your online show’s always seemed very liberating. How much freedom do you feel you have at Current to define your role and the tone of the show?

It appears that I have 100 percent freedom. There has been absolutely no restraint here whatsoever, God bless their hearts. No restraint stylistically. No restraint substantively. It’s been a blessing. It’s not a dig on MSNBC, they do what they do. You’ve got a system over there…the good hosts begin to stray from that and put their own stamp on that. Here we get to start fresh and create a whole different kind of show. I think people will look at and it say this isn’t a normal cable news show

What do you think Current’s learned from Keith Olbermann’s tenure? Has his experience made for a smoother transition for you? Taken together, how do you think you and Olbermann define Current’s brand?

They’ve created an outlet here on television that lets strong folks do strong programming. Nobody’s going to check Keith Olbermann. That reassured me that this was a place where I was going to get to create an independent program.

Did the fact that Current signed Olbermann make the network a more attractive destination for you?

Sure, yeah. That meant that they were making a significant investment in progressive programming and strong independent programming, and they were headed in the right direction.

You’ve talked about the importance of developing younger audiences. How do you plan to do that? Especially on a channel that may not be a regular part of younger viewers’ rotation?

I think we have a younger audience because we do things differently. It’s a much more conversational, relaxed, irreeverant show. It’s not stiff. The whole thing reeks of faith…I just read an article the other day where it says it turns out the younger generation is a little more skeptical. They’re looking for something genuine. So many of the other shows use the same, old, tired analysts. We’ve got different strong progressive analysts.

What do you think of moves like NBC’s hiring of Chelsea Clinton to do segments? Do younger viewers want to see themselves on screen? A certain kind of tone? A style of presenting content?

I’m always amused by how they try to fix real issues that they have by putting a facade on it. We hired a young person! We hired Chelsea Clinton! She’s a young person and she has a famous name! The problem is you don’t understand that you’re doing programming from 1955. So much of television is so fake. If you take a young person and insert it into a fake facade, it reinforces the idea that it’s a facade. You haven’t solved the problem at all…Meghan McCain, like her or dislike her, she has strong views, there’s value in her message. But you want to see someone who’s keeping it real. Wes Clark Jr. , we don’t have him as a co-host because he’s the son of the general. He ran in, what, 2004? It’s been a long time. We use him because that guy is passionate and the audience reacts to him. He reaches his audience at their gut level.
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An underlying theme of the Muppets has always been finding acceptance for everybody, even trying to reform their villains. Kermit was struggling with his racial identity way back in the first season of Sesame Street, and the new film, The Muppets — which is a fabulously heart-warming must-see — follows the new character Walter’s coming out as a Muppet (a “very manly Muppet”).  But the nebulous relationship between Kermit and Miss Piggy has served as a particularly compelling, albeit subtle, metaphor for couplings that are looked down upon in society.

Given conservatives regularly fear-monger that bestiality is inevitably down the slippery slope from same-sex marriage equality, it’s interesting that they have always given Kermit and Piggy’s interspecies love a pass. After all, being genital-less and felt-covered didn’t protect Tinky Winky from being called gay by Jerry Falwell, and he didn’t even have a love interest. Often by their own invitation, Kermit and Piggy have shouldered the burden of an “ick factor” as long as they’ve had a relationship, and more than ever it resonates as an allegory for the struggles of same-sex couples in a homophobic society.

The most obvious example of parallels with the LGBT community is in George Stroumboulopoulos’ recent interview with Kermit, in which Kermit talks about coming out about his attraction to mammals as a teenager. Stroumboulopoulos jokes there should be an “It Gets Better” campaign for amphibians, and Kermit quips back it would be called “It’s Getting Better Being Green”:

Piggy, meanwhile, has had to deal with many questions about her love life with Kermit. In a recent appearance on Chelsea Lately, she avoided probing questions from Chelsea Handler about what it’s like to have sex with Kermit, as if that kind of private detail is something she should share just because she’s a Muppet:

On other occasions, the couple has been more forthcoming about the complications of their relationship. In a promotional video for the new movie, Kermit and Piggy ponder whether they can produce offspring and consider perhaps adopting instead. Here also is a 2008 Morning Show with Mike and Juliet appearance in which the sheepish Kermit admits that they have engaged in some public displays of affection and Miss Piggy thanks him for “coming out like this”:

Lastly, flashback to 1993 when Kermit and Piggy sat down for an in-depth interview with Larry King. Piggy talks about the struggle of coming out to her fellow pig friends about loving Kermit. Some took it tough, but they said a frog was “better than an aardvark.” Kermit later denies his marriage to Piggy “for his fans,” hiding in a closet of his own. King also raises questions about potential offspring, and when he asks Piggy “what kind of child would it be?” she responds, “a loved one, Lawrence, a loved one.” She then defends interspecies love, saying, “If one has love in one’s heart, does it truly matter?”:

While Jim Henson might not have ever explicitly spoken out on LGBT issues, his legacy of promoting acceptance of others continues to grow and adjust to the challenges of every generation. Hopefully, the new Muppets film re-energizes the franchise and creates more opportunities for Kermit, Piggy, and their motley crew to fight bullying and stigma in their uniquely sweet way.

The bridge is yours.

-Should I give Work of Art a shot? An increasing number of my critic pals love it, but I’m curious as to your takes.

-I really hope the folks making Ender’s Game remember that Mazer Rackham isn’t white.

-Time to catch up on everyone’s favorite prematurely-canceled private detective show.

-Game of Thrones is going to start diverging from A Song of Ice and Fire.

-Yay Girl Talk!

Very smart talk from Gabe Newell of Valve Corporation:

In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

I understand the entertainment industry’s antsiness about piracy, even if I don’t particularly agree with their approach. And I think that more companies and groups could take a lesson from this lens on the challenge. Even if you’re cracking down on “rogue sites” rather than on individual consumers, spending all your time talking about the evils of piracy sends the message to consumers that your focus is on limiting the way they get to the product, rather than on the product itself, or on improving methods of delivery. And even if I don’t think it’s the main reason people download content they don’t pay for, I think the idea that production companies have the interests of neither consumers nor artists in mind becomes a powerful part of the moral justification that people use to give themselves permission to do so. Focusing more of their public messaging on improving and diversifying delivery mechanisms — and actually doing so — seems like it would do much more to change the culture of consumption than talking about piracy will. And ultimately, it’s that cultural shift is what undid media companies and what they really need to change.

In case any of you are interested, here’s the text of my remarks to the Yale Political Union. It was a fun debate, which included a vigorous clash over the ethics of curation, the question of whether creation is a subject for criticism, and whether criticism is literature. I bet you can guess my answers to the last two questions. In any case, it was a nice chance to pull together my thinking over the last six months.

* * *

I’m here today to argue that we should evaluate art not merely on aesthetic grounds, but on political ones. To that end, I’d like to make four main points.

First, given that we spend so much of our time consuming art and popular culture, it would be unwise to ignore the assumptions that we absorb along with our vampires, detectives, space odysseys, and gallery shows.

Second, if our goal is to give art full credit for the power it’s capable of exerting, we should accord it the respect of engaging with its ideas—and give artists the respect of holding them responsibile for how they express those ideas.

Third, politics and political assumptions, because they’re subjects often invite didactic, lazy thought, are a leading indicator of artistic energy and consideration, particularly in narrative fiction.

And finally, I’d argue that at a moment when our standard venues for political and policy debate have become sclerotic, hyperbolic, and unproductive, politically engaged art can be a particularly important forum for playful thinking about our values, and our plans for the future.
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