Time for a Change

I have stepped down from my Civil Air Patrol national staff position (volunteer staff) in the radio communications program.

Many of my social media friends are CAP members, but many around me know little about this part of my life.

General Amy Courter awards my first of two
Distinguished Service Medals for my
CAP Communications leadership

The reasons are complex and do not need to be shared in public, but for the last 15 years I have been part of the policy-setting and leadership of the communications program at the national level of CAP, the official auxiliary of the US Air Force.

My accomplishments (with the collaboration and leadership of many others) have included:

-- Front-line management of the VHF narrowband transition, a $5 million project that replaced over 500 repeaters around the country, often with volunteer installers, and has been called the single biggest CAP project since World War II 

-- Advocating “if the national commander wants radio messages, then let’s SEND messages...” leading to the weekly Intercom messages that began the revitalization of CAP’s HF radio nets, and which in turn has opened up very cool new missions for CAP as a whole  

-- Designing the innovative, multimedia Introductory Communication Users Training (ICUT) course, in an age when most training consisted of “look at these PowerPoint slides” (and too often still does) 

-- Visioning and rewriting the communication management and operational procedure regulations every time since 2004, as well as multiple national communications plans…

Which collectively helped transform the communication system from a legacy relic of the 1980s to a vital 21st century operational mission resource… 

Including, among many other things, bringing the NIMS/ICS “plain language” expectation for inter-agency radio traffic to the CAP voice operations manual, and incorporating after action reporting (AARs) as an expectation of CAP communications exercises.

-- Specialty Training Track test revisions multiple times since 2006, including transformation of the requirements from electronics orientation to management training, and changing the educational theory according to which test questions are structured 

-- Saying “if the wings (states) are required to send in communication plans, we should be READING the plans and giving feedback” 

-- Developing and implementing the 2011 transformation of CAP’s dormant Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) HF network to a nationally-managed vital communication asset 

-- Planning and conducting the first national communications exercise in anyone’s memory a decade ago and three subsequent national exercises, before somebody else took of the exercise function 

-- Oh, and then there was the time I got repeatedly threatened with being called to testify before Congress for an imagined failing of the comm system, which in reality was “a feature, not a bug”

As I said, LOTS of other people were part of these accomplishments, including often taking ideas I voiced first and running with them, to great success.

I will still be around the national comm program, and may work on special projects.  I also have other people in CAP actively recruiting me to work on national-level projects.

Star Trek's Borg are reflected in today's society

I wrote this in 2018, but given the extraordinary growth of white nationalism in American society, it's worth considering again.

Star Trek's ultimate bad guys, the Borg, are a metaphor. As we see them from today’s perspective, they are placeholders for white nationalists and for invasions of our privacy by technology.

The Star Trek Enterprise episode Regeneration was on the other evening, and it made me think again about the Borg, their original role in Star Trek storytelling, and how they speak to us today.

From its beginnings in the 1960s, Star Trek has told stories of computers and technology overshadowing human freedoms.

• The Ultimate Computer made the captain and crew unnecessary
• Several aliens, like Trelane and Apollo, used hidden technology to amplify their god-like powers
• Landru and Vaal were computers that controlled entire planetary societies
• Androids imprisoned Harry Mudd
• Nomad and Vyger just wanted to kill everybody

These stories were clearly rooted in the concerns that were common in the 1960s that computers were turning us into numbers and taking away our individuality. It was a time when computer databases were first used to automate and track the interactions of people, and errors were often made due to lack of sophistication.

The Original Series plots served as metaphors for these societal concerns, generally showing the defeat of the computers/technology through the cleverness of the captain and crew, including confusing the computer with logic or illogic, getting it to calculate π to the last digit, etc.

These social anxieties about computers and technology have never completely gone away, and we see them resurgent today in the news about hacking and tracking and deceiving people via their social media and smartphones.

When The Next Generation producers were looking for a nemesis, they reportedly first considered a society of space-going insects, but settled on cyborgs, i.e. the Borg.

The Borg drones are humanoids that have extensive technology implants and replacements of body parts, but the technology suppresses their individuality. They are the ultimate of a peer-to-peer network, with no central control (the Borg Queen is simply a mouthpiece for the collective) and no individuality, hardly even individual consciousness.

But Borg is not just a cybernetic society.  It aggressively assimilates species after species, claiming to want to improve their quality of life, which requires taking away their individuality.  They are the ultimate of conformity to a black-and-white values system, with "you must comply" as their mantra.

The drive for conformity was powerful in 1950s America.  In the 1960s, the pendulum swung the other way, at least among young people, and "do your own thing" was the standard wisdom, along with great distrust of "the establishment", prompting the "don't trust anyone over 30" rule.

These twin youth culture rules had largely faded away by the time the Borg were introduced in The Next Generation.  Their original proponents were in or near their 40s, were settled down with children, and most had establishment jobs. But in Star Trek's positive multi-cultural view of a future embracing technology, it is not surprising that the great antihero (the Borg) misuses technology in a mono-cultural and deeply utilitarian society that has no respect for those who are different, including those who embrace individuality.

Based on Seven of Nine and other drones separated from the collective, Borg drones find great comfort in never being alone, in being immersed in the cacophony of the thoughts of billions of Borg.

I can't help note that many people today seem to be unable to stand being disconnected from their smartphone "friends" and are endlessly pressured to conform by forwarding memes, playing "games", and being guilt-tripped by statements like "only 1 in 147 people will share this, but do it to prove that you are my friend."

But the Borg are not just representative of today’s marketing in which loss of privacy and sharing of data leads to improved quality of life.  They are the powerful majority, suppressing the weaker minority.

The great underlying message of all Star Trek is multi-culturalism. The Borg are not just compelling bad guys. They are the antithesis of a multicultural society. In today’s terms, they are the White Nationalists, who are really interested only in power.

The dominant white culture, they believe, is polluted by the differentness (individuality) of the immigrants, just as the Borg cannot abide by individuality, forcing individuals to perfectly integrate into their cyborg society.  I wish we could simply order THEM to calculate π to the last digit.

Rick Berman (executive producer of four Star Trek series) said recently:

“If you believe in the values of Star Trek, you need to vote in November, and to get everyone you can to vote. Trek and apathy don’t fit.” 

I would go a step further and say that if you believe in the values of Star Trek, you have to take a stand against those who oppress minorities.

Don’t engage in violence, but vote, call out ethical and moral failures and don’t assume it is going to happen without getting yourself involved.

(Image from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Borg_dockingstation.jpg)

Facts vs. Truth

Screen capture from Meet the Press, NBC

Rudy Giulaini claiming that "truth isn't truth" is so strange, but WHY it's strange has been missed by the people reacting to his comments. 

It is a tenet of conservationism that there IS an absolute truth, outside of human experience and perception, that it is fixed, and relatively easy to understand. That is where literal reading of the Bible comes from. 

Conservatives, in the meantime, are skeptical about "new" knowledge, particularly when it contradicts the established narrative. This is where climate change denial comes from. I can easily understand a conservative saying that "facts are not the same thing as truth because facts are always suspect." 

The trouble for Giulaini is that this idea goes both ways. An administration that thrives on ignoring evidence, "alternative facts", and innuendo cannot be assumed to be telling the truth. But the way that Giulaini said "truth is not truth" smacks of propaganda and "if I say it enough times, they'll believe it IS the truth." And if the truth is not the truth, it leads to a mindset that lies are not lies. 

It seems to me that we see this "truth is what we persuade people it is" mindset all the time in the bogus and easily debunked claims that float thought the advocacy media. 

That is why we NEED professional, trained journalists, whose job it is to question claims, and fearlessly seek the actual truth, among the jumble of facts and opinions. The advocacy media can't do that for us, which is why we need the professional journalistic media.

Judging Ethics and Morality based on Behavior

All of the news about separating children from their parents keeps bringing me back to questions of ethics and morality, and the ACTIONS of the current administration, which many are judging to be immoral.

Behavior stems from ethical principles and moral judgments about right and wrong.  Thus we can evaluate a person's (or government's) ethics and morality by observing their behavior and actions.

I teach ethics in most of my media classes, so here are some definitions:  Ethics are general principles, morality is the ethical judgment of good and bad, and values are actions based on ethics and morality.

I don't like being partisan. I am registered without any party affiliation and I have said for years that I base my election choices on my perception of the ability of the candidate to perform critical thinking, as well as stance on specific issues of importance to me. Critical thinking, applied to ethical principles, is where morality and behaviors come from.

The morality of separating children from their parents is not defensible, particularly since they apparently have no plan for how to reunite the parents and children.  Adults who have been released still can't find out where their kids are.

The attempts at rationalization do not hold up and are often logical fallacies:

• "They broke the law."  Sorry, but many of them did not, because they stopped at the border and requested asylum. And even if they did, first-time violations are no more than misdemeanors. Separating children from parents in a way that they may not be able to find each other again is cruel and unusual punishment, particularly when it is done before conviction. Even felony convicts can have family visitation.
• "Obama (or somebody else) did it too."  Sorry, but alleged past infractions are irrelevant to current unethical behavior. Morality must stand on its own, not through "whatabout" logical fallacies about the past. 
• "The Democrats made me do it." Sorry, but the Trump administration's policy changed in April 2-18, through a directive from the Republican administration.  Nobody MADE them do anything. You have to take personal responsibility for your actions.
• "The Bible made me do it."  Sorry, but narrow out-of-context Bible verses, particularly verses that have been used to justify immoral actions in the past, cannot be a basis for ethical policy today. Holistic reading of the Bible makes clear that you do not mistreat foreigners or children.
• "We need the WALL, wah, wah, wah..." Sorry, but this is a policy question that is unrelated to tearing families apart. Republicans have not been motivated to pass funding for The Wall, so the Trump administration tried blackmail (although the GOP is trying). 

The list of rationalizations and logical fallacies goes on and on, but the point is that immoral behavior cannot be lessened by weasel words. Actions tell the tale about ethics and morality.  We judge a person's (or government's) ethics by ethical or unethical actions.

This is exactly why we need organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).   We need organizations that are willing to TEST the morality of the "groupthink" that can lead policymakers astray. The causes ACLU champions are often not popular, but the way to push back against immoral governmental behavior is to challenge it in the courts, and that's what ACLU does well.

By the way, I wonder if it has occurred to Trump supporters that if they LIKE the separation policy as a deterrent, they should be thanking Democrats, who they feel are responsible for the wording of the law.

So, if you, or politicians you support, make immoral decisions, and act accordingly, don't be surprised if YOUR ethics and morality are found to be lacking.

Trump: Masterful Control of the Narrative

More than ever before, political operatives struggle to influence what people talk about, and thus influence what they believe.  More than ever, it's done by making assertions that are, at face value, false.

Why do they do this and how does it work?

Many years ago, I watched an election campaign in which a member of Congress was seeking reelection.  His opponent had been active in local causes but was not well-known statewide.  The incumbent's campaign staff thoroughly researched the opponent for past public statements, such as letters to the editor.  For the last 45 days of the campaign, the incumbent blasted the challenger about every three days for some past public comment. The result was that the opponent was always defending himself, and never got to go on the offensive.  He lost the election in no small part because what people believed about him was defined by his opponent, not himself.

In all manner of public relations, practitioners want to maximize the positive and minimize the negative.  That's why negative news is often released after 3 pm on Fridays - because fewer people will see it Friday evening and Saturday, so any reaction will be smaller, and less intense.

Years ago, when Donald Trump became a celebrity, he learned that when he said outrageous things, they would be reported by journalists. He learned about the news cycle, in which his statements would be reported for a day or so, and then any reaction would be reported over another day or so. He learned to influence what the media talked about.

When he became a political candidate, reporters were guaranteed to report what he said in campaign rallies/interviews, particularly when it was something other than a standard stump speech.  It was the same pattern - inflammatory statements reported for a day or so, and reaction for another day or so, always repeating the original claim and thus validating it.

And on top of that, the more inflammatory the Trump statement, the more it, and reaction to it, would dominate the news for a couple of days, often marginalizing other stories having less controversial content.

Lesley Stahl's report that Trump has admitted attacking the news media so that negative stories about him won't be believed is just another way of using the news cycle to control the narrative.  It's not really a new tactic.  Vice President Spiro Agnew was famous for attacking the press (before pleading guilty to tax evasion, resigning from office, and serving felony probation).

Singling out of people and media employees for personal attacks uses the ad hominem logical fallacy, and while all of our teachers tell us that we should avoid logical fallacies, they can be highly effective in persuasion, because most people do not detect that the logic is flawed.

So here is the pattern:

1. A claim is made, with either no evidence or faulty evidence, but is reported by many media outlets because of who said it.
2. Other people react, repeating the original assertion, denying it or supporting the assertion, so the original claim is reinforced from many directions, creating doubt about the truth in the minds of the public.
3. When there has been enough talk, allies then say "we need a formal investigation into whether this is true."
4. The investigation repeats the claim endlessly, making it seem more and more plausible, or disappears into the background static of the news, and gets little attention when conclusions are finally released (if ever), because they are not as inflammatory as the original claim, thus leaving the original claim as the strongest thing most people remember. 

You can criticize this strategy of controlling the media.  You can make an excellent case that the use of falsehoods and exaggeration makes it unethical (along with a lot of other things in politics).

BUT...

It is a sly, crafty, and highly strategic way of manipulating the media and controlling the narrative, making sophisticated use of the fundamental ways in which journalists work, public psychology, and ways in which people consume news content.

Lost in Space; Lost in Science

The new Lost in Space from Netflix is an ambitious project with likable characters, but the show runners could have benefited considerably from a science adviser.

There are a few minor spoilers below about situations, but not about the characters or story line details (unless they have already been shown in trailers).

As in the original 1960s Lost in Space, the Robinson family is on a colonizing expedition to Alpha Centauri.  This time, the Jupiter 2 is a landing craft from a larger vessel, which ends up in the wrong place and runs into trouble, requiring evacuation.

The production, based in Vancouver, uses beautiful locations and elaborate sets to produce an authentic feel.  The characters are generally likable, although they have different and more complex family relationships than in the original Lost in Space.

At face value, it is an enjoyable season with nuanced characters, a complex villain, and good action sequences, partnered with thoughtful character development.

But time and again, I was taken out of the story by having to say "that's not right" or "it doesn't work that way" about things related to science.


Ice doesn't freeze that way

Early in the series, we see a lake freeze solid in an instant, causing problems for the characters.  But water freezes at the surface first.  Yes, the script established that it was really cold, but there is liquid water under the ice on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, not to mention probably at Pluto, which has been very cold for a long, long time.  Ice freezes by forming a thin crust of ice, which slowly gets thicker and thicker.

There are other scenes (hinted at in the trailers) in which the Jupiter 2 is also stuck in ice, and the way the ice works in those scenes doesn't seem right, either.


Forests and critters don't grow that way

Like in the original Lost in Space, the planet the Robinsons are on is in a funny orbit that will cause it to get VERY hot and pretty much kill all life.  At one point, a character notes that the trees only have one growth ring.

The life clearly has ways to recover, but the series was shot in a typical BRitish Columbia forest, with tree trunks several inches in diameter.  You are telling me that the trees get that big in one growing season?

Plus we see several indigenous animals, some of which are very large.  How do they survive the heat?

Oh, and in one scene, we see a fallen tree and stump that was clearly cut by a chainsaw.


Radio doesn't work that way

One of the main points of the overall story line is that part of the colony ship is still in orbit and and the remaining crew there is transmitting, but can not hear the landing craft on the planet, because the colony ship's dish antenna is missing.  But if you know ANYTHING about radio, this breaks down.

A broken dish antenna WOULD prevent one from receiving, but it would also prevent one from transmitting, which they were doing just fine. Plus one would not use a big dish antenna for general coverage of the entire planet, which is what the folks in space wanted.  Dish antennas are directional and the colony ship did not appear to be in a high enough orbit to be able to cover the entire planet with a tight beam dish antenna.

True, they could have been using a different omni-directional antenna to transmit, but such an antenna would also work fine for receiving signals from the surface.  Astronauts on the International Space Station use five watt portable (handheld) radios to talk to ham radio operators on Earth, transmitting through a window and using nothing but the built-in antenna of a few inches long.  Because of the altitude, and nothing in the way, it doesn't take much.

In addition, if the transmit antenna is not working right (or missing) the transmitter in the ship would not work right.  The radio operators would realize immediately that they had an antenna problem.  For purposes of talking to and from the planet, jury-rigging a replacement would not be at all hard.

Without this "the ship can't hear us" plot point, the entire rest of the story breaks down.  It is clear from the dialog that the landing ships don't have the fuel to go back into space, to save themselves from the heat, but that if the colony ship could hear them, it would send down fuel.

So the whole rationale of the ten episode story arc breaks down.


Biofuel production doesn't work that way

At one point, the folks on the planet talk about using the biowaste (manure) from animals on the planet to create fuel to power their ships.  I can't say much more, in order to avoid spoilers, but the plan is to produce huge amounts of fuel in a very short period of time, and I am not convinced that they can produce enough fuel to do what they want, starting from scratch, in the time available.


[Sigh]

I still liked the new Lost in Space and if they make a season 2, I will watch.

It has a rich production design, character-based scripts with lots of interesting character development.  It generally does a nice job of promoting the "willing suspension of disbelief" that is needed in science fiction.....

Except for these troublesome "it doesn't work that way" problems with the science part of the science fiction that significantly undercuts the story arc of the series.

Facebook

There has been a lot of angst recently about how Facebook uses data from user profiles. But pretty much every organization that uses advertising does essentially what Facebook does, i.e. collecting information about customers and using it to target advertising messages to them.  So how do we make sense out of current events in social media?

Yes, Everybody does it

It is a standard postulate of advertising and marketing that we respond most favorably when the messages we receive are relevant to our interests. So ALL advertising companies do research to find out where their preferred customers (and prospects) hang out in the media, and they advertise in those locations.

They also do various kinds of research to understand us better.  For example, the bar code scanning in our favorite supermarket.  Everything goes into a database, and if we pay by credit card for check, they know a lot about us, personally.  Have you ever noticed that the coupons that print out while we're checking out are usually for something we already buy (or a competitor)?

Data collection about customers is not new, by any means.

• For centuries, newspapers and later radio and TV created interesting content in order to get people to also see advertisements.
• Starting in the 1970s there was an explosion of specialty magazines, allowing advertisers to reach audiences they knew was already interested in the specialty products the advertiser sells. 
• The hundreds of cable channels now provide this same pre-selection of specialty interests for advertisers.
• When businesses started using the WEB, the same thing happened -- specialty websites sprang up allowing advertisers to find the audience interested in their particular specialty products.

Modern mobile technology has certainly taken this way of doing business to new heights, like knowing your exact location so they can text you discount coupons when you are near a certain store. But it is more of the same and NOT something unprecedented.


How does Facebook Advertising work?

When you make a post on a Facebook business page, some people see the post "organically" because they already follow the page, or they see a friend comment or like the post.

But as page administrator, you also have the opportunity to pay money to extend the post so more people see it.  You can select friends of your current followers, or use a variety of other criteria, such as geographic area, age, and gender.  Facebook also watches what members post, like, and share, so you can select people based on a variety of interests which Facebook has identified, resulting from your history of posting.

In doing this, Facebook does NOT actually share your data.  The advertiser provides the criteria, and Facebook does the match internally in its system, and "serves" the post (advertisement) to the people who match the criteria.


So how did Cambridge Analytica get the data?

According to this article, the researcher, Dr. Kogan, made an agreement with Facebook which allowed collection of data for research purposes, but forbade transferring the data to third parties.

At face value, this is reasonable.  Academic researchers collect personal data all the time, but ethical research does not allow the identities of the participants to be known by anyone outside the study. Institutions have mechanisms in place to ensure this, called "Human Subjects Institutional Review Boards."  I have served on HSIRB at my school and have written proposals seeking approval for my research plans.

In keeping with this, Facebook prohibits collected data from being sold or transferred “to any ad network, data broker or other advertising or monetization-related service.” Dr. Kogan apparently collected the data, then violated the agreement with Facebook and transferred the data anyway.


What was the real failure here?

One can certainly argue that Facebook needs a stronger way of enforcing it's terms of service policy than simply trusting people to comply.

One can argue that websites and apps on which we post personal data should not be allowed to use that data, but this has been happening for 20 years or more on almost every commercial online platform you visit.  It is the REASON they exist, i.e. to make money (not to "serve the public.")

One can argue that users need more warnings about "the information you are about to post may be used for advertising, and delivered back to you in individually-targeted messages."  Most people will still ignore the messages, as they do the terms of service and other warnings.

One can argue that the people in Congress who are charged with regulating this stuff have no clue about what they are trying to regulate (a fact made clear by the questions from members of Congress to Mark Zuckerberg).

I wish I could boil this all down to a single failure with corresponding solution, but the social media environment is too complex.

The vast majority of these web and app systems are for-profit undertakings, meaning that they either need to charge fees, or depend on advertising.  The tried and true business model is to attract an audience with interesting content, and then expose them to advertising, ideally focused to the interests of the audience because what is advertised aligns with the content.

But most consumers conceptualize these content sources as "services" and do not understand that they, themselves, are an audience being sold to advertisers.  This makes them gullible and prone to impulse when they encounter memes, quizzes, and other means of data collection.

There is no simply way to change this paradigm, but public education is part of it.  Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware) is critical.  Stop and think what information you are entering into the app or website.

If you don't want the entire world to know something, don't put it on the Internet (including ANY communication transmitted via technology).

What can we learn about the 2nd Amendment from 1st Amendment court rulings?

I am not a gun enthusiast, but I have taught Communication Law.  So every time I hear 2nd Amendment arguments, I think in terms of the 1st Amendment, which says:

Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In the 1st amendment case law, "no law" clearly does NOT mean "NO law."

If it meant NO law, there would be no laws about slander or libel, no local ordinances requiring parade permits, and no laws about lots of other behaviors that come under the legal definition of "speech."

The courts have ruled that the "no law" 1st Amendment protections are very important, except in narrowly-defined circumstances in which there is a "clear and present danger" resulting from the speech or behavior (Schenck v. the United States).  The most common example is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no real fire," but the courts have also ruled that "speech" such as child pornography, inciting people to commit crimes, and slander/libel is NOT protected under the 1st Amendment.

In each case, it is because the lawmakers have voted, and the courts confirmed, that such "speech" represents a "clear and present danger" of harm to others.

So how do we apply this same logic to the 2nd Amendment issue of gun ownership, and particularly of assault weapons?

First, the 2nd Amendment does not mention guns, but rather covers "arms" a collective term for weapons of all types.

Second, the 2nd Amendment does not use the phrase "shall make no law." It refers to the right of the people "keep and bear arms" and says that this right "shall not be infringed."  (Note that this is written in "passive voice" and it does not identify who might be doing the infringing.)

Still, the wording of the two amendments seems to have similar intent, so my original question about what we can learn about the 2nd Amendment from 1st Amendment case law remains valid.

The reality is that there are lots of national, state, and local laws and regulations limiting the ownership of a wide range of weapons. In Chicago, for example, it is illegal to carry concealed a knife with a blade longer than 2.5 inches. In New York, it is illegal to carry a dirk, dagger, or stiletto with the intent to use it as a weapon against another. You can't own your own nuclear weapon because of risk of radioactive contamination, not to mention the actual explosions (arguably a "clear and present danger").

These rules would appear to violate the absolute "shall not be infringed" requirement.  But when we look at the 2nd Amendment and 1st Amendment together, it only makes sense that the same legal theories apply.

Thus, it only makes sense that arms CAN be regulated, based on the same criteria as the 1st Amendment protections:

1. Is the law well-constructed, i.e. specific enough, but also not so narrow that it doesn't make sense?
2. Is there a "clear and present danger" resulting from lack of regulation, making it in the best interests of society for the government to make an exception to the constitutional protection?

It is this "clear and present danger" test that is the focal point of the gun regulation issue.

We regulate child pornography because children may be harmed in the making of it, even though we cannot predict which children, where, are at risk. 

How does this logic translate to regulation of weapons which COULD be used in mass shooting, but there is no way to predict when and where these shootings may occur?  Is this enough of a "clear and present danger" that an exception to the right to "bear" certain categories of weapons is compelling?

Regardless of what you think about the subject, the final decisions will be made via court review of legislation, based on meticulous legal arguments derived from principles such as those above.

Whatever the legislation says, the courts will not affirm, overturn, or otherwise take action based on emotions.

Why they had to Redesign the Enterprise...Again

Spoilers below!

Note: This post was written before the reuniting of CBS and Paramount.  This article reflects the considerations in effect when the Discovery version of Enterprise was created.

-------------

The Star Trek Discovery season finale appeared on CBS All Access last night, and the cliffhanger was an unexpected appearance of the original USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 (no bloody A, B, C, D, E, or anything else, as Scotty might say).

Careful examination reveals that this is yet another "re-imagining" of the classic starship.  So why couldn't they just use the design from the "Kelvan Universe" in the most recent movies?  That would be logical, wouldn't it?

The answer is that if they had, they'd probably get sued.

The problem is that movie Star Trek and television Star Trek are no longer controlled by the same corporations.  CBS and Viacom (which owns Paramount) were once part of the same corporation, but over a decade ago they were split into two separate publicly-traded corporations (now there is talk of them recombining).

The result required years of negotiations over who owns Star Trek, which is why we didn't see new Star Trek for years.

Viacom/Paramount controls the rights to the Star Trek movies, whereas CBS controls the rights to television Star Trek.  When to comes to making NEW Star Trek, they're not allowed to draw significant content from each other.  They have to go back to the source material that THEY control.

All previous redesigns of the NCC-1701 Enterprise were in the movies.  The only appearance of a Constitution Class Starship in television Trek since The Original Series was the USS Defiant, seen in Star Trek Enterprise, which was a faithful CGI reproduction of the original design.

So given the decision to redesign the Enterprise, CBS HAD to create an Enterprise that was not directly linked to any of the movie incarnations of the ship. Of course, they COULD have made this Enterprise also a faithful reproduction, but...

My guess is that merchandising considerations led to the redesign.  We now have (or will have next season) yet another version of the Enterprise to make into plastic model kits, Hallmark ornaments, etc. 

Oh by the way, Pocket Books, which publishes all the Star Trek novels, is owned by CBS. Last year they negotiated a deal with Viacom/Paramount to also public Star Trek books based in the J.J. Abrams Kelvan Universe, but I do not know when any actual Kelvan Universe books may be released.

Separating the two companies resulted in Byzantine complications for Star Trek.  Merging them again would probably be highly beneficial for Star Trek, if they could decide which production team takes over.

For the record, what is different in the redesign?

• The struts attaching the nacelles are different.
• The shape of the rear landing bay is changed
• The nacelles, themselves, are different - the original did not have those lighted side panels
• The exterior lighting is different   
• The ship's markings in some areas are different
• The impulse engines at the rear of the saucer are different

There are probably plenty of other things that we will see when we get a plastic model kit or Hallmark ornament...or more video from next season.

No More "Like and Share" - Maybe

Facebook's new policy about keeping "Engagement Bait" out of the newsfeed is intended to eliminate posts with "like and share this post" calls to action.  But liking and sharing is part of the engagement that marketers really want.

So what do they do?

First, let's take a step back and analyze why "like and share this post" has been so common.  There are three things to consider:

1.  Some marketers do superficial planning and all they want is good numbers.  Liking and sharing does cause more people to see a post, although they may not be the best people, i.e. the ideal prospective customers or key stakeholders of the business/organization making the original post. 

2.  Facebook has also been downgrading the ability of a post to spread via organic sharing and liking.  Facebook is a business and they are incentivizing marketers to spend money to deliver their posts (which are really advertising messages) to constituents who are selected by various categories and interests. 

3.  Persuasion theory says that we get people to do big things by first getting them to do little things that build towards the big thing.  Liking and sharing our posts demonstrates support, and repeated small demonstrations of such support set the stage for larger acts of support, like buying our product or voting for our candidate.  So, getting people to like and share has a strategic role.

So how do we respond to the new Facebook rules?

Marketing communications is about brand persuasion, and brand persuasion requires engagement -- a two-way interactive relationship between our business/organization and our customers/constituents.

So, we still want people to like and share, but we'll have to use more creative language.  Language like "pass this along" and "tell us what you think" are likely to become more common.  And marketers will need to monitor their insights (statistical reports from Facebook) about performance of messages containing various calls to action, to see which work best.

But the reality is that as social media matures, it is going to cost more money to use it for marketing.

Up to now, the costs have been relatively hidden -- the staff time for people to create posts and maintain the page, and the costs to develop customized content, like graphics, photography, and video.

More and more, organizations are going to need to use paid reach to get their messages to the people they want to reach. A small business may be able to do this with only $15 or $20 a post, a handful of times a month, reaching a few thousand people. Bigger businesses, of course, will need more money to reach the hundreds of thousands or millions of people they need.

So, strategic planning, including budgeting, is a new reality of Social Media Marketing.

2018: A critical year in Star Trek History

SS Botany Bay

We don't know a lot about the early 21st Century from historical references made on-screen in Star Trek, but we know something BIG happened in 2018 - the invention of Impulse Engine Drive.

One of the things that has always appealed to me about Star Trek is how all of the timeline and historical references fit together, an important part of the overall continuity of the multiple Trek TV series.  From the beginning, the producers have worked hard to ensure that they remember what they have said previously, and everything (usually) holds together well. 

So, this essay is based on many tidbits of what onscreen characters have said about 2018, and this general era in Star Trek history.


Star Trek is not in OUR Timeline

First, we have to admit that we do not live in the Star Trek universe.  As early as the 1990s, things happened in Star Trek history that did not happen in our own.  Specifically, the Eugenics Warshappened, in which genetically engineered "supermen" conquered a lot of countries and ruled as dictators.  Khan was one of them.

The Eugenics Wars are a fixed point in time in Star Trek history.  So what can we infer, based in this fact?

Humans, at least in one secret laboratory somewhere, had genetic engineering technology in the 20th Century that was already well in advance of what we have today.  The Original Series referred to Khan as the result of "selective breeding" but The Wrath of Khan and later TV episodes amended that to "genetic engineering."  Assuming that Khan and the supermen aged at normal speed (not TV magic rapid aging) means that somebody had advanced genetic engineering capability in the 1950s or 60s, which in our timeline we didn't have.


DY-100 Space Craft

We know that in 1996, the last of the supermen was overthrown, and Khan and 81 of his followers escaped Earth in the sublight DY-100 class SS Botany Bay. The Botany Bay, pictured above, appears to be a cargo ship, vaguely like the Hermes in The Martian, with detachable cargo pods. The Botany Bay was a sleeper ship, putting passengers in suspended animation for the months-long trip to Mars or other places int eh solar system.

Having an operational inter-planetary craft in 1996, with functional suspended animation, was certainly beyond what we were capable of in our own timeline.  This implies that humans were capable of transporting heavy cargo to the Moon, Mars, and maybe other places (you don't need a sleeper ship to go to the Moon).


2018, "The Year Everything Changed" 

In 2018 in the Star Trek universe, humans invented the first generation of Impulse Drive. Eventually, Impulse engines would be able to propel a starship close to the speed of light. Even the primitive 2018 first generation would likely have dropped the Mars trip to only weeks, or maybe even days.

(In our own timeline, a possible Electromagnatic Thuster is being tested. If it is proven to actually work, it might be something that could be scaled up to serve as our own version of an Impulse engine.)

The consequences of Impulse Drive in the Trek universe are not discussed on screen but it is clear that a small fleet of DY-100 or similar DY-500 ships, upgraded to employ Impulse engines, would have opened up the solar system to exploration and eventually to colonization.


What Comes Next

In 2037, Earth launched a mission outside the solar system, the Charybdis, which was large enough to carry planetary shuttles and an extensive library, arriving in the Theta 116 star system in 2044. To achieve interstellar distances in seven years certainly required speeds close to the speed of light, i.e. Impulse Drive. 

The 2030s is about the time when Zefram Cochrane was born, who would go on to invent Warp Drive in 2063, after a nuclear war a decade earlier. Within a few more years, the starship Valiant reached the "edge of the galaxy," a century before Kirk and Spock.

So, 2018 is a BIG turning point in the Star Trek parallel universe.  Maybe it will also be in our own. 


Image from: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/bQgAAOSwTglYkpSy/s-l400.jpg