Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Tuesday May 17, 2005

[ Society ] Searching Videos and Quotes--from British MPs to American Editors

I have written about the limitations of hyperlink for capturing meaningful associations and relations. I have also written about the failures of search and have noted other works on similar topics from writers such as Hubert Dreyfus. I was reminded of the limitations of hyperlink and search, again, tonight.

This evening I was looking (or was I "searching"?) for the video of George Galloway's hearing at the Senate. Galloway is a Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow, Great Britain. I ran into the news about his appearance in Yahoo. Unfortunately, Yahoo only pointed to a one-minute clip of Galloway's testimony.

After looking about, I decided to go to the source, www.senate.gov, navigate to the hearings of U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, to the hearing on May 17, 2005, titled "Oil For Influence: How Saddam Used Oil to Reward Politicians Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program."

Having arrived at the link to the video, I had to search, "by hand," within some two hours of it in order to arrive at the following section: (The "by-hand" search may have been shorter had I looked at the order of the panelists in the Senate hearing.)

In the 2:41:00 hour video, we have the following:

George Galloway starts on the committee panel at 1:51:20 and ends at 2:39:13.
- I simply don't know whether there is a way for me to create a link into this section of the video. All I need in my link is the record of the timer where the section begins. If there is a way to do this, please let me know.
Senator Norm Coleman's preamble ends, and Galloway starts speaking at 1:58:30 into the video.
Senator Coleman's questioning of Galloway begins at 2:16:13. Senator Carl Levin's questioning begins at 2:28:00.

Of course, Galloway's delivery of his rebuttal is unique and deserves a close hearing. The 1-minute Reuters clip does an injustice to its content, and a full transcription of the hearings may also fail to convey the tone of the exchange, which will be a reminder of the courage required to take on "the system" even when it comes to what should be considered almost common moral issues. How often do the citizenry get to see such deep disagreements brought and discussed at such high places by people who can articulate and defend an idea, as it deserves to be defended, not only with words and play of logic but with conviction and facts that matter? Yes, it may surprise some but facts and their multiple interpretations have a hierarchy of importance and can matter to varying degrees. This fact is often ignored by those who possess the right of formulating "acceptable" selections and interpretations of facts, for example the committees set up to do so.

This sort of search by hand and context seems to be necessary for all important documents. Will we then be better off if there's a true linking of text to video, at least for Senate committee or governmental documents and hearings?

Now, for those of you who may have read George Orwell's 1984, you might remember that assassination of political (and also very common) characters begins with record clearning and manufacturing. This also brings me to the point about books and digital content (including weblogs), about which I've written earlier—about multiplicity and immutability of one and the shortage of such characteristics in the other.

Even the most excellent text search will also not get us to where we want to be. So, for example, I wonder if you could find which editor of which magazine has said the following: "This is all we've been able to find out. We suggest we may have gotten something wrong, but we're not entirely sure what we got wrong at this point, frankly." Hint: It appeared in a major national paper on Monday, May 16, 2005.

Search, Video, Text, Senate, Iraq.