Corollary: Nervy, Pervy XII
Phew! Despite an iBill screw up and challenges accessing Suicide Girls' new secure payment server using multiple browsers in multiple OS's, a password tweak and assistance on the part of almost all of the core SG team -- LE, O, and Spooky -- has helped me get back into the mix.
It's weird. I don't even visit SG every day, but my interest in what they're doing -- and my inexplicable need to keep giving them $48 a year -- was really starting to take its toll. If I didn't have a passing acquaintance with them and hella respect for their community organizing model, I'd have given up and jumped ship when it first got difficult to get back in with my existing membership. Hope no one else has the same problems I was having!
Their attention to customer service is impressive. I'm sure they had better things to do today.
Friday, March 21, 2003
Corollary: South by Southwest 2003 XXI
This is oversimplifying his response to my SXSW Interactive reports, but Joe Clark doesn't think I should blog conferences. He's got some interesting reasons why, and an intriguing technical solution to the challenges of manual real-time transcription.
This is oversimplifying his response to my SXSW Interactive reports, but Joe Clark doesn't think I should blog conferences. He's got some interesting reasons why, and an intriguing technical solution to the challenges of manual real-time transcription.
Anchormen, Aweigh! XVII
The forthcoming CD, Nation of Interns, isn't even done yet, but the Anchormen have already written four new songs! Before you know it, we'll have another record's worth of material ready. Here are the new songs we almost completed last night. They're about 99% finished, I think.
Evacuation Day
Do we ever really know if we've found the one we're looking for, or do we just get tired and stumble home? Do we ever really care about the places where we spend our time, or are they just containers for the air that we breathe, and the water that we drink, and the dreams that we dream with the coming of the sleep, and the songs that always get sung when the bars are closed and we're walking home? Evacuation, oh, happy Evacuation Day. You've got to get out while the getting's good. Your reputation, your reputation can't be saved. Do we ever really claim the prizes that we're fighting for, or do the felt ears come off in the rain? Do we ever really heal from little scars in little wars, or are they just an outline of the pain that we feel when we're walking down your street, and the books that we read while we're eating our last meal, and the songs that always get sung when the blinds are drawn and we're home alone?
Harrison Avenue Overpass
I'm on the Harrison Avenue Overpass, watching the sun set behind the Pru, and the bridge below me is shaking and quaking as the commuter rail pushes through. And the cranes behind me are bending their necks as they life their heads high as my hopes. And the sky is turning purple as my heart. And I am reminded how great I am not.
She's Sick
She's sick: That's what her family says. Just like her mother, counting down the days. Please fix: I seek repair. I am so, so tired, just like damaged hair. She's sick, and I don't know what to say. She's sick, and she's always going away. She's sick; I guess that's the price that I've got to pay. She is sick. She's sick: That's what the doctor says. No chance of improvement; limited recovery.
Trapped in the Basement
We broke in through a window and climbed into the house. We were all tippy toe and dodgeball. We had to check it out. But then we saw the flashlight coming down the stairs so we ducked into a closet; we were feeling pretty scared. Now we are trapped in the basement. Got to get out!
The forthcoming CD, Nation of Interns, isn't even done yet, but the Anchormen have already written four new songs! Before you know it, we'll have another record's worth of material ready. Here are the new songs we almost completed last night. They're about 99% finished, I think.
Evacuation Day
Do we ever really know if we've found the one we're looking for, or do we just get tired and stumble home? Do we ever really care about the places where we spend our time, or are they just containers for the air that we breathe, and the water that we drink, and the dreams that we dream with the coming of the sleep, and the songs that always get sung when the bars are closed and we're walking home? Evacuation, oh, happy Evacuation Day. You've got to get out while the getting's good. Your reputation, your reputation can't be saved. Do we ever really claim the prizes that we're fighting for, or do the felt ears come off in the rain? Do we ever really heal from little scars in little wars, or are they just an outline of the pain that we feel when we're walking down your street, and the books that we read while we're eating our last meal, and the songs that always get sung when the blinds are drawn and we're home alone?
Harrison Avenue Overpass
I'm on the Harrison Avenue Overpass, watching the sun set behind the Pru, and the bridge below me is shaking and quaking as the commuter rail pushes through. And the cranes behind me are bending their necks as they life their heads high as my hopes. And the sky is turning purple as my heart. And I am reminded how great I am not.
She's Sick
She's sick: That's what her family says. Just like her mother, counting down the days. Please fix: I seek repair. I am so, so tired, just like damaged hair. She's sick, and I don't know what to say. She's sick, and she's always going away. She's sick; I guess that's the price that I've got to pay. She is sick. She's sick: That's what the doctor says. No chance of improvement; limited recovery.
Trapped in the Basement
We broke in through a window and climbed into the house. We were all tippy toe and dodgeball. We had to check it out. But then we saw the flashlight coming down the stairs so we ducked into a closet; we were feeling pretty scared. Now we are trapped in the basement. Got to get out!
Conferences and Community IV
Adam Greenfield is planning a conference about moblogging in Tokyo this summer. I was supposed to go to Japan last spring, and a dear friend is moving back home next month, so I'm thinking about going. We'll see if this passes muster as a topic for a presentation or panel discussion, but here's what I just proposed to Adam:
What do you think? Worth researching?
Adam Greenfield is planning a conference about moblogging in Tokyo this summer. I was supposed to go to Japan last spring, and a dear friend is moving back home next month, so I'm thinking about going. We'll see if this passes muster as a topic for a presentation or panel discussion, but here's what I just proposed to Adam:
1:1 Mapblogging
Billboards outfitted with low-frequency radio transmitters. Acoustiguide's audio tours of museums. The Portland Radical History Tour's coupling of audio cassette and fanzine. The Web-based New York Songlines walking tour guide. The Wiki-like Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. What if every building in every city in every country was set up with WiFi and a Web site or blog? What if you could learn what was inside the building -- offices, shops, sales, access to telephone directories and Web search results -- as well as about the _history_ of the building merely by approaching the building? What if you could contribute to that living urban history and map using Moblogging -- or Maplogging -- technology? This panel discussion will consider several extant experiments leading in this direction -- and consider what the final product and process might be, as well as its societal and cultural implications.
What do you think? Worth researching?
The Free-Range Comic Book Project IV
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
The Adventures of Superman #477 (DC, April 1991). Writer and artist: Dan Jurgens. Location: On the Green Line between Haymarket and Park Street.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
Products I Love VII
I don't know if you remember the zine Office Supply Junkie, which was published by the Baby Split Bowling News crew in the Twin Cities. But a catalog I received in the mail recently rekindled my love affair with the humble office supply. Particularly those supplies found in the mail room and shipping department.
Ship It, a mail-order company based in Twinsburg, Ohio, is "your complete shipping supply source." Claiming more than 600 box sizes, the company also provides bags, bins, bubble wrap, edge protectors, envelopes, packing foam, knives, labels, mailing tubes, scales, stretch wrap, and tape.
And the catalog is a joy to behold, hella better than the office supplies available at Staples or Office Depot. Ship It also sells carton stands so you can neatly organize your flattened boxes, as well as a carton sizer so you can perforate and resize boxes that aren't the right size. The label section alone is awe-inspiring: "Discard," "Hold," "Salvage," "Re-Work," "Must Ship Today." There are international pictorial labels and caution labels available, as are your general mailing labels and manila shipping tags.
To paraphrase Devo, "Ship it. Ship it good"
I don't know if you remember the zine Office Supply Junkie, which was published by the Baby Split Bowling News crew in the Twin Cities. But a catalog I received in the mail recently rekindled my love affair with the humble office supply. Particularly those supplies found in the mail room and shipping department.
Ship It, a mail-order company based in Twinsburg, Ohio, is "your complete shipping supply source." Claiming more than 600 box sizes, the company also provides bags, bins, bubble wrap, edge protectors, envelopes, packing foam, knives, labels, mailing tubes, scales, stretch wrap, and tape.
And the catalog is a joy to behold, hella better than the office supplies available at Staples or Office Depot. Ship It also sells carton stands so you can neatly organize your flattened boxes, as well as a carton sizer so you can perforate and resize boxes that aren't the right size. The label section alone is awe-inspiring: "Discard," "Hold," "Salvage," "Re-Work," "Must Ship Today." There are international pictorial labels and caution labels available, as are your general mailing labels and manila shipping tags.
To paraphrase Devo, "Ship it. Ship it good"
Thursday, March 20, 2003
The Free-Range Comic Book Project III
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
Action Comics #658 (DC, October 1990). Writer: Bill Messner-Loebs. Artist: Curt Swan. Location: On the Red Line between Park Street and Central Square.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
Animation Nation III
If you haven't already eyed the Animatrix shorts currently available, they're worth checking out. Beautiful work. So far, there are two episodes available -- and a trailer. Seven directors take on nine animated shorts, some of which will be released for free online, and some of which will precede feature-length films in movie theaters. A DVD of all the eps will be released this June. The animation released online to date is primarily Moebius-meets-anime styled work, but some of the pieces teased in the trailer appear to be more video game graphic-like in approach. There's even a Hack the Matrix Easter egg hidden on the site that allows you to access video shorts from the Matrix movie itself. Fun stuff.
If you haven't already eyed the Animatrix shorts currently available, they're worth checking out. Beautiful work. So far, there are two episodes available -- and a trailer. Seven directors take on nine animated shorts, some of which will be released for free online, and some of which will precede feature-length films in movie theaters. A DVD of all the eps will be released this June. The animation released online to date is primarily Moebius-meets-anime styled work, but some of the pieces teased in the trailer appear to be more video game graphic-like in approach. There's even a Hack the Matrix Easter egg hidden on the site that allows you to access video shorts from the Matrix movie itself. Fun stuff.
The Mediated Me
Two recent Web readings match up quite nicely. Joi Ito comments on how different Anil Dash is in person than he is in his blog, remarking that "his ability to manage his online personality was his key to success."
Elsewhere, William Gibson considers the difference between mediated personas and the public self. "While a ruler would have a public (as well as a private) self, this technological 'broadcasting' of the individual constitutes something else, something fundamentally different," Gibson says.
These posts raise some interesting questions. Sure, Sherry Turkle and Brenda Laurel have written about the performative aspects of computer-mediated communication. But what about blogs and LiveJournals?
Here, in Media Diet, am I sharing a public self? Or am I portraying an idealized self? The me I want to be -- or the me I want you to think I am? I don't know. To be true, the Media Diet me is a mediated me. I consider what to say and how to say it -- which is no different than in real life. And I can probably make myself out to be more than I really am, although I like to think I rarely do that. But it's easier to say less or more when an audience is largely anonymous. Just like when I published perzines.
I've also been thinking about this in terms of email communications with friends. Sometimes there are things that are easier to write -- and hit Send -- than they are to say in person. You can be more honest. You can be almost irresponsible. But yet, what's been said is out there, and we're left with the repercussions, as tenuous as they may be.
Were I to ask Media Dieticians a question, it wouldn't be whether our Web writing represents a mediated persona (which I believe it does), but what such self-representation means -- for us as well as for the other.
Discuss.
Two recent Web readings match up quite nicely. Joi Ito comments on how different Anil Dash is in person than he is in his blog, remarking that "his ability to manage his online personality was his key to success."
Elsewhere, William Gibson considers the difference between mediated personas and the public self. "While a ruler would have a public (as well as a private) self, this technological 'broadcasting' of the individual constitutes something else, something fundamentally different," Gibson says.
These posts raise some interesting questions. Sure, Sherry Turkle and Brenda Laurel have written about the performative aspects of computer-mediated communication. But what about blogs and LiveJournals?
Here, in Media Diet, am I sharing a public self? Or am I portraying an idealized self? The me I want to be -- or the me I want you to think I am? I don't know. To be true, the Media Diet me is a mediated me. I consider what to say and how to say it -- which is no different than in real life. And I can probably make myself out to be more than I really am, although I like to think I rarely do that. But it's easier to say less or more when an audience is largely anonymous. Just like when I published perzines.
I've also been thinking about this in terms of email communications with friends. Sometimes there are things that are easier to write -- and hit Send -- than they are to say in person. You can be more honest. You can be almost irresponsible. But yet, what's been said is out there, and we're left with the repercussions, as tenuous as they may be.
Were I to ask Media Dieticians a question, it wouldn't be whether our Web writing represents a mediated persona (which I believe it does), but what such self-representation means -- for us as well as for the other.
Discuss.
Technofetishism XXIX
It's about time! For years, I've pestered the fine folks at Corex Technologies to release a Mac-compatible CardScan business card reader to no avail. Earlier this week, in the April 2003 issue of MacHome magazine, I read about the Iris Business Card Reader II for Mac. I still need to research its features and such, but, wow. Maybe my piles and stacks and shopping bags of business cards will soon be useful.
It's about time! For years, I've pestered the fine folks at Corex Technologies to release a Mac-compatible CardScan business card reader to no avail. Earlier this week, in the April 2003 issue of MacHome magazine, I read about the Iris Business Card Reader II for Mac. I still need to research its features and such, but, wow. Maybe my piles and stacks and shopping bags of business cards will soon be useful.
Shock Jock or Not?
Howard Stern has filed a $10 million law suit claiming that ABC stole its "Are You Hot?" idea from him. I'd say that it's much more likely that they cribbed the concept from the uber-rating Web site Hot or Not?, if anywhere. I wonder whether Jim and James' project predates Stern's "The Evaluators" radio bit.
Howard Stern has filed a $10 million law suit claiming that ABC stole its "Are You Hot?" idea from him. I'd say that it's much more likely that they cribbed the concept from the uber-rating Web site Hot or Not?, if anywhere. I wonder whether Jim and James' project predates Stern's "The Evaluators" radio bit.
Archeolo-Gee!
It's a good day for archeologists, historians, and urban anthropoligists. In Boston, preservationists have determined how the Union Oyster House acquired the characteristic bend in its structure. Turns out that the proprietor of a once-nearby candy needed to widen the street to accomodate carriage access to his building. The Union Oyster House bent to his will.
Meanwhile, an FBI sting snagged North Carolina's original bill of rights when a collector tried to sell it for $5 million. The historic document, actually worth about $20 million, was stolen by Union soldiers in 1865 and has been passed hand to hand since then.
And Spanish archivists have discovered almost 1,000 ancient Hebrew texts tucked into the covers of medieval books. Hidden inside about 165 books, the texts include fragments of the Torah, as well as wedding and business contracts. The son my my childhood piano teacher used to hide pages torn from pornographic magazines in the sleeves of record albums. I wonder if those documents have ever been found.
Just goes to show, as uncertain as the future might be, the past can only become more and more certain.
It's a good day for archeologists, historians, and urban anthropoligists. In Boston, preservationists have determined how the Union Oyster House acquired the characteristic bend in its structure. Turns out that the proprietor of a once-nearby candy needed to widen the street to accomodate carriage access to his building. The Union Oyster House bent to his will.
Meanwhile, an FBI sting snagged North Carolina's original bill of rights when a collector tried to sell it for $5 million. The historic document, actually worth about $20 million, was stolen by Union soldiers in 1865 and has been passed hand to hand since then.
And Spanish archivists have discovered almost 1,000 ancient Hebrew texts tucked into the covers of medieval books. Hidden inside about 165 books, the texts include fragments of the Torah, as well as wedding and business contracts. The son my my childhood piano teacher used to hide pages torn from pornographic magazines in the sleeves of record albums. I wonder if those documents have ever been found.
Just goes to show, as uncertain as the future might be, the past can only become more and more certain.
Got "Our" War On
So we bombed Baghdad early their morning. And I think I now realize the source of part of the malaise I felt earlier this week. It's war. A war that much of America doesn't support, that much of the rest of the world doesn't support, that the "leaders" of America are waging in our name regardless.
I felt this way back when the Gulf War was just getting started, and I was hanging out with Jodie and stressing over whether I'd be drafted. At the time, there was no draft, but I'd researched conscientious objection and talked with friends in Canada just in case I needed an out. I also felt this way just after Sept. 11, having left work early to eat takeout pizza with Sarah and Paul -- and debate whether we should watch the news coverage or change the channel to something less real. I felt this way days later sitting upstairs at Charlie's Kitchen, almost crying into a beer as the import of what had really happened really hit me. (That night, I actually left without paying my bill. I mailed the restaurant a check for $9 because I wasn't able to get back before leaving for the 2001 CoF Roadshow. I've never ditched a bill before. Or since.)
And I feel this way now. It's a slightly different feeling because so much of the country's population isn't with Bush on this one. But it's frustrating to think that this is happening in America's name without the full support of America. We do this to ourselves. And the sociologist in me is curious. What impact does war have on the mood and emotions of the populace? Is there a war-time depression?
A lot of research has been done on war's impact on soldiers and veterans -- shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder -- but what of those who don't fight but still bear the psychological brunt of the fighting? Researchers have considered how the threat of war affects Iraqi children. Clinical psychologists offer advice on reacting to terrorist attacks on our soil. Economists analyze how war can influence economic activity. And experts line up to comment on the psychological effects of war.
But what about me? That's all a bit macro; let's go micro. Is war-time sadness and helplessness natural and normal? What toll does this take on us as military conflicts expand and continue?
How does this make you feel?
So we bombed Baghdad early their morning. And I think I now realize the source of part of the malaise I felt earlier this week. It's war. A war that much of America doesn't support, that much of the rest of the world doesn't support, that the "leaders" of America are waging in our name regardless.
I felt this way back when the Gulf War was just getting started, and I was hanging out with Jodie and stressing over whether I'd be drafted. At the time, there was no draft, but I'd researched conscientious objection and talked with friends in Canada just in case I needed an out. I also felt this way just after Sept. 11, having left work early to eat takeout pizza with Sarah and Paul -- and debate whether we should watch the news coverage or change the channel to something less real. I felt this way days later sitting upstairs at Charlie's Kitchen, almost crying into a beer as the import of what had really happened really hit me. (That night, I actually left without paying my bill. I mailed the restaurant a check for $9 because I wasn't able to get back before leaving for the 2001 CoF Roadshow. I've never ditched a bill before. Or since.)
And I feel this way now. It's a slightly different feeling because so much of the country's population isn't with Bush on this one. But it's frustrating to think that this is happening in America's name without the full support of America. We do this to ourselves. And the sociologist in me is curious. What impact does war have on the mood and emotions of the populace? Is there a war-time depression?
A lot of research has been done on war's impact on soldiers and veterans -- shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder -- but what of those who don't fight but still bear the psychological brunt of the fighting? Researchers have considered how the threat of war affects Iraqi children. Clinical psychologists offer advice on reacting to terrorist attacks on our soil. Economists analyze how war can influence economic activity. And experts line up to comment on the psychological effects of war.
But what about me? That's all a bit macro; let's go micro. Is war-time sadness and helplessness natural and normal? What toll does this take on us as military conflicts expand and continue?
How does this make you feel?
Technofetishism XXVIII
Mystery solved! What I thought was a smudge on my PowerBook screen -- and which I've tried to clean off to no avail using the iKlear Apple Polish Kit -- is in fact the luminous Apple on the lid of my laptop shining through the display. It's only visible when the sun is shining on the flip top of my PowerBook, and it's good to know that my laptop display doesn't have a permanent smudge worked into the screen. Mystery solved!
Mystery solved! What I thought was a smudge on my PowerBook screen -- and which I've tried to clean off to no avail using the iKlear Apple Polish Kit -- is in fact the luminous Apple on the lid of my laptop shining through the display. It's only visible when the sun is shining on the flip top of my PowerBook, and it's good to know that my laptop display doesn't have a permanent smudge worked into the screen. Mystery solved!
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Corollary: Magazine Me XXV
The 2003 National Magazine Awards finalists have now been officially announced. The full list is now available.
The 2003 National Magazine Awards finalists have now been officially announced. The full list is now available.
The Free-Range Comic Book Project II
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
Accelerate #1 (DC/Vertigo, August 2000). Writer: Richard Kadrey. Artists: The Pander Bros. Location: A bench in front of Pagliuca's.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
Event-O-Dex XLIII
There's a Blog Meetup that I can't make tonight, but it's exactly one week before the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash that I'm organizing, it's a good time for a reminder. Media Dieticians everywhere are invited.
There's a Blog Meetup that I can't make tonight, but it's exactly one week before the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash that I'm organizing, it's a good time for a reminder. Media Dieticians everywhere are invited.
Nervy, Pervy XII
My Suicide Girls membership has been deactivated. When I went to log in and catch up on the discussions last night, my username wasn't recognized. When I entered my email address to make sure I was using the right password, I was informed that I wasn't a member. So I emailed the customer service address. This is what I got in response:
So I emailed Spooky directly, and this is what's going on:
Phew! I was wondering what I might have said or done that would prompt an arbitrary deactivation, but it seems that SG is moving its billing in house -- and that the transition hasn't gone as well as it could have. For a minute, my conspiracy-filled mind was doing cartwheels.
My Suicide Girls membership has been deactivated. When I went to log in and catch up on the discussions last night, my username wasn't recognized. When I entered my email address to make sure I was using the right password, I was informed that I wasn't a member. So I emailed the customer service address. This is what I got in response:
i don't know what's up, i'm just a customer support lackey. you probably said something lame on the boards or something. sorry! happy trails.
So I emailed Spooky directly, and this is what's going on:
According to our records your last transaction did not go through at iBill, our old payment processor, due to a technical error on their part. If you would like to reactivate your account, simply go to join page and use the reactivation box to turn your account back on. In the future you will be billed directly by us, and these sort of errors should not repeat themselves.
I apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you decide to remain a member of suicidegirls.
Phew! I was wondering what I might have said or done that would prompt an arbitrary deactivation, but it seems that SG is moving its billing in house -- and that the transition hasn't gone as well as it could have. For a minute, my conspiracy-filled mind was doing cartwheels.
Magazine Me XXV
Judges for the American Society of Magazine Editors' National Magazine Awards gathered yesterday to select the finalists. To be announced later today, here are most of the finalists, hastily scribbled down during the judging:
General Excellence: Under 100,000
American Scholar
Chronicle of Higher Education
Foreign Policy
JD Jungle
STEP Inside Design
General Excellence: 100-250,000
Architectural Record
Harper's
Mother Jones
Nylon
[One more]
General Excellence: 250-500,000
National Geographic
Saveur
Skiing
W
[One more]
General Excellence: 500-1,000,000
Atlantic Monthly
Conde Nast Traveler
Esquire
House and Garden
New Yorker
General Excellence: 1-2,000,000
Entertainment Weekly
ESPN
Fortune
Real Simple
Vanity Fair
Discover
General Excellence: 2 million and up
Newsweek
O
Parenting
Sports Illustrated
[One more]
Web Site
Chronicle of Higher Education
National Geographic
Slate
Style.com
[One more]
Personal Service
Business Week
Money
My Generation
Newsweek
Outside
Reporting
Atlantic Monthly
Newsweek
New Yorker
Sports Illustrated
Public Interest
Golf for Women
Texas Monthly
Newsweek
National Review
Harper's
Atlantic Monthly
Feature Writing
GQ
New Yorker
Harper's
Men's Journal
Outside
Columns/Commentary
Fortune
The Nation
New York
New Yorker
Vanity Fair
Essays
American Scholar
Atlantic Monthly
New Yorker
Self
Vanity Fair
Reviews/Criticism
Atlantic Monthly
Harper's
New Yorker
Vanity Fair
Profiles
Atlantic Monthly
GQ
Harper's
Outside
Sports Illustrated
Photos
Conde Nast Traveler
Elegant Bride [?]
National Geographic
Vanity Fair
[One more]
Design
Details
Dwell
Esquire
Nest
Surface
Single Topic
GQ
Popular Science
Scientific American
Tech Review
Texas Monthly
Fiction
Book
Georgia Review
New Yorker
Leisure Interests
Esquire
Sports Illustrated
Vogue
National Geographic Adventure
Time Out New York
Judges for the American Society of Magazine Editors' National Magazine Awards gathered yesterday to select the finalists. To be announced later today, here are most of the finalists, hastily scribbled down during the judging:
General Excellence: Under 100,000
General Excellence: 100-250,000
General Excellence: 250-500,000
General Excellence: 500-1,000,000
General Excellence: 1-2,000,000
General Excellence: 2 million and up
Web Site
Personal Service
Reporting
Public Interest
Feature Writing
Columns/Commentary
Essays
Reviews/Criticism
Profiles
Photos
Design
Single Topic
Fiction
Leisure Interests
Tele-Phony III
Two cell phone models manufactured by Siemens can be disabled if the user opens a text message containing specific language. The two models affected are sold only in Europe.
This makes me wonder whether all cell phones have such back doors or ways phone makers, government and law officials, or other people can deactivate or limit our access to and use of our cell phones. Paranoid? Sure feels like it.
Thanks to Lost Remote.
Two cell phone models manufactured by Siemens can be disabled if the user opens a text message containing specific language. The two models affected are sold only in Europe.
The e-mails contain a single word, taken from the phone's language menu, surrounded by quote marks and preceded by an asterisk, such as "*English" or "*Deutsch," Siemens said.
This makes me wonder whether all cell phones have such back doors or ways phone makers, government and law officials, or other people can deactivate or limit our access to and use of our cell phones. Paranoid? Sure feels like it.
Thanks to Lost Remote.
Business Media Reportage Goes Bust, Now Boom? IV
BusinessWeek's working on a "dramatic" redesign that could hit the stands as early as this summer.
Hmm. I can barely wade through the thing every week. Maybe this'll help!
Thanks to Jim Romenesko's Media News.
BusinessWeek's working on a "dramatic" redesign that could hit the stands as early as this summer.
"It has a lot more pop," said one person who has seen the work. "It gets rid of the spindly, spinster look."
Hmm. I can barely wade through the thing every week. Maybe this'll help!
Thanks to Jim Romenesko's Media News.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Event-O-Dex XLII
What is up with March 29 this year? Regardless of where you might find yourself, chances are good that there's a good independent media gathering afoot. Here are just a few:
Boston: Beantown Zinetown 6
San Francisco: 8th Annual Anarchist Book Fair
Toronto: Toronto Comic Arts Festival
Sheesh. Do I stay home? No. I'll be heading up to Toronto to hang out with Jim Munroe of No Media Kings and to check out the fest. The Highwater Books hoi polloi -- Marc Bell, Tom Devlin, Megan Kelso, Brian Ralph, and Ron Rege, Jr. -- will also be present. Should be a fun time. Perhaps I'll even blog it like I did SXSW.
What is up with March 29 this year? Regardless of where you might find yourself, chances are good that there's a good independent media gathering afoot. Here are just a few:
Boston: Beantown Zinetown 6
San Francisco: 8th Annual Anarchist Book Fair
Toronto: Toronto Comic Arts Festival
Sheesh. Do I stay home? No. I'll be heading up to Toronto to hang out with Jim Munroe of No Media Kings and to check out the fest. The Highwater Books hoi polloi -- Marc Bell, Tom Devlin, Megan Kelso, Brian Ralph, and Ron Rege, Jr. -- will also be present. Should be a fun time. Perhaps I'll even blog it like I did SXSW.
Among the Literati XXVIII
Jeffrey LeRoy Boison recently stepped down as editor of the hip-lit journal Pindeldyboz "to raise his heir so that the Boison name might someday rule all of the earth." Whitney Pastorek will replace him as editor. Big shoes to fill, given that Boison founded Pindeldyboz and all. Best of luck, Whittlz!
Jeffrey LeRoy Boison recently stepped down as editor of the hip-lit journal Pindeldyboz "to raise his heir so that the Boison name might someday rule all of the earth." Whitney Pastorek will replace him as editor. Big shoes to fill, given that Boison founded Pindeldyboz and all. Best of luck, Whittlz!
Workaday World XXIII
With the overcast skies and turn toward the cold in Boss Town today, I was feeling pretty down and mopey earlier today. I was feeling sad, even. Then I talked with Seth Godin on the phone for awhile, and our conversation picked me right up. New directions, new ideas, new people. I've got my twitch on again. Woohoo!
With the overcast skies and turn toward the cold in Boss Town today, I was feeling pretty down and mopey earlier today. I was feeling sad, even. Then I talked with Seth Godin on the phone for awhile, and our conversation picked me right up. New directions, new ideas, new people. I've got my twitch on again. Woohoo!
Workaday World XXII
Lately, I've become fast friends with Chuck, the current security guard for the Scotch & Sirloin building. Since we learned each others' names, he's greeted me by name every single time he's seen me. Having worked in the security and building management industry for 14 years, Chuck's working here to get out of the house -- and "away from my wife during the day." He's retired military, and he's organized his work load so he's busy for six of the eight hours on the job. Most of the time, security work might be four hours of work during an eight-hour day. He reads when he has free time, and if his wife weren't out of work, he'd go back to school in political science and history. He's only got 18 credits left, he says.
But the excitement today is that they're fixing the windows in the Scotch & Sirloin building. The building management company spent the last five months securing a contractor for the project, and it looks like it's about to start. In the building, there are two kinds of windows. An older, single-pane style, and a newer, double-pane style. They're going to replace all of the single-pane windows and make sure that the new windows are up to snuff. Of the 380-odd windows in the building, about 160-plus are old. On our floor, there are about 45 old windows. I just checked my window now, and it's a new window, double paned with a 3/4-inch silver strip in between the panes. So they won't be climbing all over my desk.
How many windows per floor? I'm glad you asked because I wanted to do the math. If there are 380 windows in the building, with nine floors, that's about 92 windows per floor. If 45 windows in our office are old, that means that they'll replacing about half of them. That's quite an undertaking.
And I wouldn't have known about it were it not for my new friend Chuck.
Lately, I've become fast friends with Chuck, the current security guard for the Scotch & Sirloin building. Since we learned each others' names, he's greeted me by name every single time he's seen me. Having worked in the security and building management industry for 14 years, Chuck's working here to get out of the house -- and "away from my wife during the day." He's retired military, and he's organized his work load so he's busy for six of the eight hours on the job. Most of the time, security work might be four hours of work during an eight-hour day. He reads when he has free time, and if his wife weren't out of work, he'd go back to school in political science and history. He's only got 18 credits left, he says.
But the excitement today is that they're fixing the windows in the Scotch & Sirloin building. The building management company spent the last five months securing a contractor for the project, and it looks like it's about to start. In the building, there are two kinds of windows. An older, single-pane style, and a newer, double-pane style. They're going to replace all of the single-pane windows and make sure that the new windows are up to snuff. Of the 380-odd windows in the building, about 160-plus are old. On our floor, there are about 45 old windows. I just checked my window now, and it's a new window, double paned with a 3/4-inch silver strip in between the panes. So they won't be climbing all over my desk.
How many windows per floor? I'm glad you asked because I wanted to do the math. If there are 380 windows in the building, with nine floors, that's about 92 windows per floor. If 45 windows in our office are old, that means that they'll replacing about half of them. That's quite an undertaking.
And I wouldn't have known about it were it not for my new friend Chuck.
The Free-Range Comic Book Project
This is the first installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
This is the first installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project.
100 Bullets #13 (DC/Vertigo, August 2000). Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Eduardo Risso. Location: A park bench in the North End.
For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry.
Monday, March 17, 2003
March Is the Month of the Prominent Crotch
You might already know that March is Women's History Month. And if you read advertising circulars in the Sunday newspaper, you might also know that March is Frozen Food Month. But if you take some time to flip through the March 2003 issue of Interview magazine, it quickly becomes clear that March is also the Month of the Prominent Crotch. Let's spread ourselves out and take a look, shall we?
Not too far into the book, we come across a two-page Prada spread. Here, a male model wearing an awkward knit sweater, lei, and almost-tartan skirt ensemble raises his left knee to the sky and bunches his eyebrows forward in a glower as if to say, "Look at me! You lookin' at me?" A mere eight pages later, we have a two-page Donna Karan spread in which a well-dressed and high-heeled model with no undershirt demurely knocks her knees while she reads what appears to be an academic journal or book of scientific abstracts. This is perhaps the most tasteful and teasing shot of the crotch in this issue, softcore for randy R&D kids.
On the following page, an oiled-up Dior model flashes the swell of her breast while swooning against a blood-red rubber wall, clutching at her pelvic region with the hand not holding her steady. Eyes closed and lips parted, the model seems to be losing consciousness: "I should eat," she thinks. Six more pages in, Dolce & Gabbana goes ga-ga glancing at a full-frontal crotch shot of a woman spreading her legs for a handheld video camera. Surrounded by no fewer than 10 monitors and two cameras, this is self-mediated crotch prominence at its best. Another showing swell of breast hints that this model is much more than just a crotch. Let's not pigeonhole these people, please.
On p. 70, a 1990 Herb Ritts photograph shows Madonna clutching at her crotch, indicating that the crotch knows no class boundaries. Everyone's got a crotch. P. 77 sports a Matthew Barney advertisement in which a pale-skinned, bee-hived model spreads her legs for the camera's eye too, demurely and delicately crossing her unringed and uncalloused hands in front of her bared crotch. "Don't go there! Oh, whatever, come on," her eyes seem to beckon tiredly. On p. 94, a slightly out-of-focus tennis ball hovers in front of -- and partially obscuring -- Buddhist athlete Paradorn Srichaphan's crotch. A Bebe advert on p. 109 displays another full-frontal crotch shot. And on p. 167, a fashion shoot by Kelly Klein highlights yet another full-frontal, spread-legged male crotch rocket. Clad in a silk robe, our near-prone hero has dangled a string of pearls over his midriff. "Barbara Bush has got nothing on me."
But it is the Gucci ad placed just one page before the magazine's masthead that has brows a-sweating, angry pens a-writing, and tongues a-wagging. It is also this advert that successfully secures March's position as the Month of the Prominent Crotch. The Guardian has yawned at the ad's daring and slightly dangerous display of pubic hair shaved into the shape of a capital "g." MarketingWeb's Kim Penstone has asked whether Gucci has gone too far. And Adland has also addressed the controversy surrounding the ad.
It's interesting that this advert hit the stands just before wannabe Boston brahmin began to bawl about a barely bawdlerized FCUK advert insert in the Boston Globe this Sunday. In today's newspaper, the Globe's ombudsman -- or woman, as the case may be -- Christine Chinlund takes it on the chin and collapses under the weight of reader complaint faster than any of the lingerie-clad models would have fallen for one of their male (or female) counterparts. I have no problem with FCUK's naming or branding strategy -- as long as they fess up to the value and vigor of the probable pun.
But Gucci. Whither Gucci? When I first heard about the ad, I was shocked. Shocked. Pubic hair on parade in a newsstand magazine? Then I saw the ad. And you know what? I have no problems with it whatsover. It's hardly titillating, and the male model kneeling before the G-shaved girly girl seems more bemused and confused than aroused. There's little sense of what comes next. So the fantasy hangs in the air and we are left to turn the page and our attention elsewhere -- and to other prominent crotches. Counter to Chinlund's unnecessary concession that the Boston Globe is a family publication -- what daily newspaper shouldn't strive to be so? -- Interview has no such limitation. While a pale shadow of what I think Andy Warhol envisioned, Interview is quite similar to the previous iteration of Details magazine, a periodical focusing on gloss, fashion, and celebrities -- all the while embracing an intriguing queer angle to everything it does.
I think instituting March as the Month of the Prominent Crotch is a fine idea. And I salute Interview for holding the banner so high. Because that way, we can see people's pelvises more prominently.
You might already know that March is Women's History Month. And if you read advertising circulars in the Sunday newspaper, you might also know that March is Frozen Food Month. But if you take some time to flip through the March 2003 issue of Interview magazine, it quickly becomes clear that March is also the Month of the Prominent Crotch. Let's spread ourselves out and take a look, shall we?
Not too far into the book, we come across a two-page Prada spread. Here, a male model wearing an awkward knit sweater, lei, and almost-tartan skirt ensemble raises his left knee to the sky and bunches his eyebrows forward in a glower as if to say, "Look at me! You lookin' at me?" A mere eight pages later, we have a two-page Donna Karan spread in which a well-dressed and high-heeled model with no undershirt demurely knocks her knees while she reads what appears to be an academic journal or book of scientific abstracts. This is perhaps the most tasteful and teasing shot of the crotch in this issue, softcore for randy R&D kids.
On the following page, an oiled-up Dior model flashes the swell of her breast while swooning against a blood-red rubber wall, clutching at her pelvic region with the hand not holding her steady. Eyes closed and lips parted, the model seems to be losing consciousness: "I should eat," she thinks. Six more pages in, Dolce & Gabbana goes ga-ga glancing at a full-frontal crotch shot of a woman spreading her legs for a handheld video camera. Surrounded by no fewer than 10 monitors and two cameras, this is self-mediated crotch prominence at its best. Another showing swell of breast hints that this model is much more than just a crotch. Let's not pigeonhole these people, please.
On p. 70, a 1990 Herb Ritts photograph shows Madonna clutching at her crotch, indicating that the crotch knows no class boundaries. Everyone's got a crotch. P. 77 sports a Matthew Barney advertisement in which a pale-skinned, bee-hived model spreads her legs for the camera's eye too, demurely and delicately crossing her unringed and uncalloused hands in front of her bared crotch. "Don't go there! Oh, whatever, come on," her eyes seem to beckon tiredly. On p. 94, a slightly out-of-focus tennis ball hovers in front of -- and partially obscuring -- Buddhist athlete Paradorn Srichaphan's crotch. A Bebe advert on p. 109 displays another full-frontal crotch shot. And on p. 167, a fashion shoot by Kelly Klein highlights yet another full-frontal, spread-legged male crotch rocket. Clad in a silk robe, our near-prone hero has dangled a string of pearls over his midriff. "Barbara Bush has got nothing on me."
But it is the Gucci ad placed just one page before the magazine's masthead that has brows a-sweating, angry pens a-writing, and tongues a-wagging. It is also this advert that successfully secures March's position as the Month of the Prominent Crotch. The Guardian has yawned at the ad's daring and slightly dangerous display of pubic hair shaved into the shape of a capital "g." MarketingWeb's Kim Penstone has asked whether Gucci has gone too far. And Adland has also addressed the controversy surrounding the ad.
It's interesting that this advert hit the stands just before wannabe Boston brahmin began to bawl about a barely bawdlerized FCUK advert insert in the Boston Globe this Sunday. In today's newspaper, the Globe's ombudsman -- or woman, as the case may be -- Christine Chinlund takes it on the chin and collapses under the weight of reader complaint faster than any of the lingerie-clad models would have fallen for one of their male (or female) counterparts. I have no problem with FCUK's naming or branding strategy -- as long as they fess up to the value and vigor of the probable pun.
But Gucci. Whither Gucci? When I first heard about the ad, I was shocked. Shocked. Pubic hair on parade in a newsstand magazine? Then I saw the ad. And you know what? I have no problems with it whatsover. It's hardly titillating, and the male model kneeling before the G-shaved girly girl seems more bemused and confused than aroused. There's little sense of what comes next. So the fantasy hangs in the air and we are left to turn the page and our attention elsewhere -- and to other prominent crotches. Counter to Chinlund's unnecessary concession that the Boston Globe is a family publication -- what daily newspaper shouldn't strive to be so? -- Interview has no such limitation. While a pale shadow of what I think Andy Warhol envisioned, Interview is quite similar to the previous iteration of Details magazine, a periodical focusing on gloss, fashion, and celebrities -- all the while embracing an intriguing queer angle to everything it does.
I think instituting March as the Month of the Prominent Crotch is a fine idea. And I salute Interview for holding the banner so high. Because that way, we can see people's pelvises more prominently.
Music to My Ears XXX
A three-pack of new record reviews!
The Hardwood Brothers "Hardwoods on Humpnight" (Hardwood)
This is a pre-release version of a live recording made at the Dutchman Inn in Houston. Why pre-release? "We're still trying to figure out the names of some of these tunes, who wrote them, and how to pay royalties!" What we have here are 27 songs performed by the Hardwood Brothers, a five piece playing acoustic guitar, upright bass, harmonica, baritone saxophone, and fiddle. Some of the pieces are covers, and some are originals, and the overall effect is one of Lady and the Mant by way of Harmonious Wail or the Gomers if they were into bluegrass and country swing. While the band comes off as primarily a joke band, their playing is surprisingly adept, and I'm curious where they could go if they took themselves just a little more seriously. Regardless, the CD captures an extremely enjoyable 80 minutes of what must be a great live show. Highlights include Lennon and McCartney's "I've Just Seen a Face," Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home," the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil," and the silly song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E.E." The on-stage banter is friendly, and the Hardwoods' interaction with the crowd is playful. Worth catching live if you can, for sure!
The Movielife Selections from "Forty Hour Train Back to Penn" (Drive-Thru)
I usually avoid reviewing samplers because labels really should send full releases to get a proper review, but this is impressive enough to warrant comment. This "limited edition" CD comprises four songs from the Movielife's new album: "Face or Kneecaps," "Jamestown," "Spanaway," and "Takin' It Out and Choppin' It Up." Based in Long Island, the band suffered a setback in a near-fatal van accident a couple of years ago, and these four songs recorded after the wreck indicate that they haven't broken stride one bit. The first track is an earnest, melodic number that eschews emo leanings for energy and some nice angular guitar work. "Jamestown," the source of the album's title, chronicles the band's almost unfortunate end. The third song features some interesting multi-tracked harmonies by lyricist and vocalist Vinnie Caruana, as well as some subtle piano work. We'll see what the liner notes share, but the press release that accompanied this promotional mailing serves up sone of the positive aftermath of the accident -- a benefit concert featuring the Reunion Show and support from the label to get up and running again. And run Movielife does. The closing track is a fast-paced pleaser with an infectiously humorous chorus. Well done, and way to recover. It's good to see such survival and support in the scene. And if the full length is as solid as this four-song teaser, it should be a great record. But who knows? These could be the four best songs.
Terror "Lowest of the Low" (Bridge 9)
Featuring former members of Buried Alive and Carry On, this aggro hardcore five piece has done recent tour duty with Biohazard and Madball. So their shouted, mosh-tinged hardcore comes as no surprise. What does come as a surprise is how angry Terror is. Oh, plenty of metal-influenced hardcore bands are angry, but what is Terror so angry about? Nailing their frustration down is a challenge because Terror's expression of anger is largely an exercise in negative self-definition. Terror takes a stand against pretense, insincere assistance, unrequested support, and, well, a lot of things. At the same time, Terror takes no stands for anything, and their message is mostly one of reaction in a vacuum. This makes the record somewhat sad rather than empowering. Every song expresses frustration and displeasure with how things are, contends that the primary speaker in the songs is alone and has no support -- while avoiding statements of helplessness, however -- and paints a bleak picture of the lyricist's self-esteem and -image -- despite his self-sufficiency. So there's no hope here. Perhaps Terror reflects the isolation and dissatifaction of others, but in the end, if you stand against everything, what do you stand for? Hopefully Terror will tire of tearing everything down and refusing to take the responsibility to create their own future. Then, perhaps, we can build something more positive and productive in its place. As things are, this record is good background music for the disaffected. But it's far from a call to arms.
A three-pack of new record reviews!
The Hardwood Brothers "Hardwoods on Humpnight" (Hardwood)
This is a pre-release version of a live recording made at the Dutchman Inn in Houston. Why pre-release? "We're still trying to figure out the names of some of these tunes, who wrote them, and how to pay royalties!" What we have here are 27 songs performed by the Hardwood Brothers, a five piece playing acoustic guitar, upright bass, harmonica, baritone saxophone, and fiddle. Some of the pieces are covers, and some are originals, and the overall effect is one of Lady and the Mant by way of Harmonious Wail or the Gomers if they were into bluegrass and country swing. While the band comes off as primarily a joke band, their playing is surprisingly adept, and I'm curious where they could go if they took themselves just a little more seriously. Regardless, the CD captures an extremely enjoyable 80 minutes of what must be a great live show. Highlights include Lennon and McCartney's "I've Just Seen a Face," Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home," the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil," and the silly song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E.E." The on-stage banter is friendly, and the Hardwoods' interaction with the crowd is playful. Worth catching live if you can, for sure!
The Movielife Selections from "Forty Hour Train Back to Penn" (Drive-Thru)
I usually avoid reviewing samplers because labels really should send full releases to get a proper review, but this is impressive enough to warrant comment. This "limited edition" CD comprises four songs from the Movielife's new album: "Face or Kneecaps," "Jamestown," "Spanaway," and "Takin' It Out and Choppin' It Up." Based in Long Island, the band suffered a setback in a near-fatal van accident a couple of years ago, and these four songs recorded after the wreck indicate that they haven't broken stride one bit. The first track is an earnest, melodic number that eschews emo leanings for energy and some nice angular guitar work. "Jamestown," the source of the album's title, chronicles the band's almost unfortunate end. The third song features some interesting multi-tracked harmonies by lyricist and vocalist Vinnie Caruana, as well as some subtle piano work. We'll see what the liner notes share, but the press release that accompanied this promotional mailing serves up sone of the positive aftermath of the accident -- a benefit concert featuring the Reunion Show and support from the label to get up and running again. And run Movielife does. The closing track is a fast-paced pleaser with an infectiously humorous chorus. Well done, and way to recover. It's good to see such survival and support in the scene. And if the full length is as solid as this four-song teaser, it should be a great record. But who knows? These could be the four best songs.
Terror "Lowest of the Low" (Bridge 9)
Featuring former members of Buried Alive and Carry On, this aggro hardcore five piece has done recent tour duty with Biohazard and Madball. So their shouted, mosh-tinged hardcore comes as no surprise. What does come as a surprise is how angry Terror is. Oh, plenty of metal-influenced hardcore bands are angry, but what is Terror so angry about? Nailing their frustration down is a challenge because Terror's expression of anger is largely an exercise in negative self-definition. Terror takes a stand against pretense, insincere assistance, unrequested support, and, well, a lot of things. At the same time, Terror takes no stands for anything, and their message is mostly one of reaction in a vacuum. This makes the record somewhat sad rather than empowering. Every song expresses frustration and displeasure with how things are, contends that the primary speaker in the songs is alone and has no support -- while avoiding statements of helplessness, however -- and paints a bleak picture of the lyricist's self-esteem and -image -- despite his self-sufficiency. So there's no hope here. Perhaps Terror reflects the isolation and dissatifaction of others, but in the end, if you stand against everything, what do you stand for? Hopefully Terror will tire of tearing everything down and refusing to take the responsibility to create their own future. Then, perhaps, we can build something more positive and productive in its place. As things are, this record is good background music for the disaffected. But it's far from a call to arms.
The Movie I Watched Last Night LX
Saturday: The Twilight Zone
In "A Passage for Trumpet," which originally aired May 20, 1960, Jack Klugman plays a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic trumpet player who waits in the back alley of a nightclub to persuade an old friend to let him play. His character's monologue on the meaning of his music and how half of his language is inside his horn is wonderful. But the scene in which he notices that the trumpet he just sold for $8.50 is now in the pawn shop window priced $25 is quite sad. While the purgatory sequence is fun, the ending is slightly disappointing. Still, a good episode with an interesting Angel Gabriel cameo. "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" originally aired March 3, 1955, and is a silly twist on the Willy Loman story. Burgess Meredith plays an inept, cowardly vacuum cleaner salesman who is embued with superhuman strength by two horribly costumed aliens. Meredith's stutter contradicts his strength well, but all in all, the episode isn't that great. Still, it's neat to see Meredith tear a phonebook in half. The dramatic and fey TV announcer with the unplugged but oft-used microphone is a highlight, as is Meredith's growing confidence until his anticlimactic end. Don Rickles' presence is appreciated. The third episode on the DVD, "Two," which originally aired Sept. 15, 1961, has a great opening line: "This is a jungle, a monument built by nature commemorating disuse." After a slightly more interesting title sequence, we are presented with the story of a city that's been abandoned for five years after enemy foot troops land on Earth. Two survivors, one male, one female -- including a young Charles Bronson -- have to determine the future of both of their races. "There are no longer any armies, just rags of different colors that were once uniforms." A good episode to watch on the day the Stand up for Peace rally was held along Massachusetts Avenue. Lastly, "The Four of Us Are Dying" originally aired Jan. 1, 1960. Perhaps the darkest and most twisted take on the human condition on this DVD, the episode features a man who can change his facial features at will. He impersonates several people who have disappeared, tinkering with the lives and loves of those who remain behind. Then he adopts the persona of a boxer to escape some thugs in an alley -- only to encounter the boxer's estranged father, and his own strange end. Rod Serling-era Twilight Zone episodes rock.
Sunday: Sneakers
Movies like this give me hope that Dan Aykroyd isn't a washed-up has been. In fact, for a movie about computer hacking and cryptography, this movie's cast comprises a surprising number of stars: Aykroyd, Robert Redford, a young River Phoenix, and Sidney Poitier. A Ghostbusters-like clutch of cryptographers, hackers, and cat burglars are enlisted to recover a little black box that can break any code. Redford's character has a countercultural past from his days at Harvard (That was the Widener Library, wasn't it?), and the team quickly learns that they were hired by people who weren't as they claimed. So they decide to try to reclaim the box. It's a fun movie that casts security hacking in a surprisingly sensitive light circa 1992, and the mystery is convoluted enough that you're kept guessing for much of the movie. In the end, the hackers win, of course, but it's sure fun getting there. Ben Kingsley plays a wonderful misguided, evil genius. And the scene in which the blind Whistler -- played by David Strathairn -- commandeers a van to save the day is a one to root for. Surprisingly good, and it's held up well for the last 10-plus years.
Saturday: The Twilight Zone
In "A Passage for Trumpet," which originally aired May 20, 1960, Jack Klugman plays a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic trumpet player who waits in the back alley of a nightclub to persuade an old friend to let him play. His character's monologue on the meaning of his music and how half of his language is inside his horn is wonderful. But the scene in which he notices that the trumpet he just sold for $8.50 is now in the pawn shop window priced $25 is quite sad. While the purgatory sequence is fun, the ending is slightly disappointing. Still, a good episode with an interesting Angel Gabriel cameo. "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" originally aired March 3, 1955, and is a silly twist on the Willy Loman story. Burgess Meredith plays an inept, cowardly vacuum cleaner salesman who is embued with superhuman strength by two horribly costumed aliens. Meredith's stutter contradicts his strength well, but all in all, the episode isn't that great. Still, it's neat to see Meredith tear a phonebook in half. The dramatic and fey TV announcer with the unplugged but oft-used microphone is a highlight, as is Meredith's growing confidence until his anticlimactic end. Don Rickles' presence is appreciated. The third episode on the DVD, "Two," which originally aired Sept. 15, 1961, has a great opening line: "This is a jungle, a monument built by nature commemorating disuse." After a slightly more interesting title sequence, we are presented with the story of a city that's been abandoned for five years after enemy foot troops land on Earth. Two survivors, one male, one female -- including a young Charles Bronson -- have to determine the future of both of their races. "There are no longer any armies, just rags of different colors that were once uniforms." A good episode to watch on the day the Stand up for Peace rally was held along Massachusetts Avenue. Lastly, "The Four of Us Are Dying" originally aired Jan. 1, 1960. Perhaps the darkest and most twisted take on the human condition on this DVD, the episode features a man who can change his facial features at will. He impersonates several people who have disappeared, tinkering with the lives and loves of those who remain behind. Then he adopts the persona of a boxer to escape some thugs in an alley -- only to encounter the boxer's estranged father, and his own strange end. Rod Serling-era Twilight Zone episodes rock.
Sunday: Sneakers
Movies like this give me hope that Dan Aykroyd isn't a washed-up has been. In fact, for a movie about computer hacking and cryptography, this movie's cast comprises a surprising number of stars: Aykroyd, Robert Redford, a young River Phoenix, and Sidney Poitier. A Ghostbusters-like clutch of cryptographers, hackers, and cat burglars are enlisted to recover a little black box that can break any code. Redford's character has a countercultural past from his days at Harvard (That was the Widener Library, wasn't it?), and the team quickly learns that they were hired by people who weren't as they claimed. So they decide to try to reclaim the box. It's a fun movie that casts security hacking in a surprisingly sensitive light circa 1992, and the mystery is convoluted enough that you're kept guessing for much of the movie. In the end, the hackers win, of course, but it's sure fun getting there. Ben Kingsley plays a wonderful misguided, evil genius. And the scene in which the blind Whistler -- played by David Strathairn -- commandeers a van to save the day is a one to root for. Surprisingly good, and it's held up well for the last 10-plus years.
Games People Play VII
Just in time for St. Patrick's Day: LepreKong 2!
Just in time for St. Patrick's Day: LepreKong 2!
Music to My Eyes XIII
Handstand Command now offers the entire Unstoppable Records' back catalog at a glance online. As the collective's third anniversary -- and the CD release party for the Anchormen's forthcoming CD, "Nation of Interns" -- nears, we're fondly recalling our collective past. Catch up with some of the Handstand history and take a short walk down memory lane with us.
Handstand Command now offers the entire Unstoppable Records' back catalog at a glance online. As the collective's third anniversary -- and the CD release party for the Anchormen's forthcoming CD, "Nation of Interns" -- nears, we're fondly recalling our collective past. Catch up with some of the Handstand history and take a short walk down memory lane with us.
Interlude: South by Southwest 2003 XXI
Some found text from Aus-Town:
My welcome to Rick's house
Found on the sidewalk in front of the convention center
On the flip side
Some found text from Aus-Town:
My welcome to Rick's house
Found on the sidewalk in front of the convention center
On the flip side
Friday, March 14, 2003
Workaday World XXI
What a day! I stayed up not too late last night -- but definitely too lively. A bunch of us went out to the Drummer and Paddy Burke's, and while I was home by 11:30 last night, I was a little slow and mopey this morning. Following the relaunch of the CoF Web at the end of January, today was the deadline for members to confirm their involvement. I emailed the people who haven't yet confirmed their memberships a deactivation notice earlier today, and I've been working on customer service emails as a result for a large part of the day.
I also spent time researching and considering the entries for this year's Webby Awards. As the Communitt category chair, I worked with a qualified team of nominating judges. It's not been as tightly connected or collaborative a team as we've had for the last few years, but I'm pleased with my final five suggestions for nominees. We'll see what the others vote on for the final mix!
It''s 5:40, and the sun's still out. Spring's a poppin'!
I hope.
What a day! I stayed up not too late last night -- but definitely too lively. A bunch of us went out to the Drummer and Paddy Burke's, and while I was home by 11:30 last night, I was a little slow and mopey this morning. Following the relaunch of the CoF Web at the end of January, today was the deadline for members to confirm their involvement. I emailed the people who haven't yet confirmed their memberships a deactivation notice earlier today, and I've been working on customer service emails as a result for a large part of the day.
I also spent time researching and considering the entries for this year's Webby Awards. As the Communitt category chair, I worked with a qualified team of nominating judges. It's not been as tightly connected or collaborative a team as we've had for the last few years, but I'm pleased with my final five suggestions for nominees. We'll see what the others vote on for the final mix!
It''s 5:40, and the sun's still out. Spring's a poppin'!
I hope.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 XXI
I have two more SXSW Interactive-related entries left in me. Then I need to let it go, get it behind me, and get back to Media Diet's usual business. One of the entries will be my wrapup of and commentary on the entire event's discussions, in which I'll draw connections between the different sessions I sat in on and try to make some conclusions.
This is not that. This entry is a quick explanation of what I was trying to do, how it felt -- and how I think it went. These thoughts aren't fully formed, but I wanted to share a little glimpse of the process behind my SXSW reports. This is that.
I've long been interested in what I consider Immediate Journalism. The Web reports I've filed during the last four annual Company of Friends Roadshows for Fast Company magazine are the outcome of my first experiments with Immediate Journalism.
For the last four years, I've taken six weeks out of the office to cut a swath across part of the world. I stay with Fast Company readers in their homes. I visit two or three companies and organizations during the day. I gather with members of the local CoF groups in the evening. And I document everything I do, experience, and learn in almost-daily diary entries on the Web. People can follow me as I travel, and when I finally get back home after the six weeks, I write an essay highlighting the major themes that arose over the course of the trip.
This experiment was slightly different. Highly inspired by Cory Doctorow's conference and panel reports in Boing Boing, I wanted to see how else this Immediate Journalism could be done. Cory's reports are relatively impressionistic compilations of what he considers the major points, ideas, and concepts of a given talk. I didn't want to copycat Cory, and I didn't want to compete with Cory, had he planned to file SXSW reports as he's done for other gatherings. So I could either go shorter. Or longer.
I chose longer. I type really, really fast, so I was able to capture almost verbatim transcripts of what went on. Oh, I didn't catch everything, but I'm pretty sure I caught almost everything. But why go so long? Why strive to be such a completist? Many conference organizers opt to audio record the event's keynote speakers and breakout sessions. SXSW does not. And if we look at projects such as DharmaNet (for whom I've transcribed Buddhist texts in the past), the Open Pamphlet Series, and Big Sur tapes, the Left and counterculture has a long history of making talk transcripts, audio recordings, and interview-driven pamphlets widely available. The world of technology culture has no such parallel. If people are going to publish a pamphlet every time Noam Chomsky spits up soup, why aren't talks given by people such as Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Sterling, and others similarly captured, published, and distributed -- online or offline? We're losing an important part of our industry and culture's conversation and history. (That's not a slag on Chomsky, by the way.)
Similarly, I just wanted to see if I could do it. And making such an effort to transcribe everything, typing real-time transcripts as the speakers spoke, lightly editing them, and publishing them -- most of the time -- mere minutes after a session ended really changed my experience of the event. While I like to think I was present and engaged with my friends outside of sessions, inside the breakout rooms, it was just me, what I heard, my head, my hands, and my PowerBook. It was kind of neat when I'd really get in the zone and almost fall away so I was typing automatically. I almost wasn't paying attention to what was being said. I wasn't ascribing any meaning to the sounds and words I was entering into the blank Word document. I wasn't really there.
But it wasn't easy. While I'm not a trained stenographer -- lots of SXSW participants have asked -- and while my hands didn't really hurt at the ends of the days, my head did kind of hurt. When you're trying not to be present or actively engaged in a given situation, when you're only trying to document, project, and reflect what's happening, you get this thin feeling. You're fragile. Light like balsa wood. And it took some effort to come out of the near-fugue state to be present and in the moment again. For much of the conference I was distracted and inattentive. That was a weird state for me to be in -- actually, that's not totally true because I'm pretty hyper -- and if any of the people I hung out noticed or were bothered by it, I apologize.
So. How'd it go? Great. I'll do it again. Response on site was amazing, and word quickly spread throughout the conference that I was documenting the talks so thoroughly. Some people made decisions on what sessions to go to based on what session I was going to go to. If I was going to publish a transcript of a given panel, people felt free to go elsewhere. That brings up some interesting traffic flow and attendance questions. I hope I didn't gut people's headcounts because I was there in the room. I also hope that Cory, who didn't report on much at SXSW -- but who has said he was busy in his own panels and sessions -- didn't choose not to take notes because I was. I have him and Boing Boing to thank for most of the people coming to Media Diet to read my SXSW reports. Boing Boing far and away drove more traffic to Media Diet over the last week than the other folks I've given shouts out to. That speaks well of Boing Boing's readership and influence.
How was Media Diet traffic affected? Let's go to the traffic logs. Since I started doing Media Diet in June 2001, I've averaged about 100 readers -- unique visitors -- a day. Thank you, faithful Media Dieticians! But let's look at the last handful of days:
Hopefully, some of y'all will decide to stick around. I've gotten several emails from people who weren't able to make it to Austin for the conference thanking me for the reports, and I think that response to date goes to show that if your blog or journalism is of widespread interest, extremely timely, and not replicated elsewhere, readers will follow. That's part of why I don't regularly blog stuff that's already hit Boing Boing, Blogdex, or Daypop. Don't just mimic the memes that are already reveling in the blogosphere. Do the new. People will pick up on it.
What would I do differently? I'd let the speakers know what I wanted to do -- and get their verbal permission. A couple of people were slightly surprised that what they'd just said showed up on the Web so quickly after they finished saying it, and I apologize for the surprise. The good thing is that everyone felt like I accurately captured their remarks, so the concern of misreporting their comments was relatively low.
OK. I think that's enough. I would like to thank some of the people who really made my SXSW Interactive experience worthwhile. This, then, is a potentially incomplete alphabetical thank-you list.
Thank you: The 15 bus, Lauri Apple, Lane Becker, BookPeople, Ben Brown, Heather Champ, Joe Clark, Viki Collier, Michael Cruftbox, Cory Doctorow, Dudley Dog, Dan Gillmor, Heather Gold, Adam Greenfield, Scott Heiferman, Hiromi Hiraoka, James Hong, Don Jarrell, Kyle Johnson, Pableaux Johnson, Morris Johnston, Philip Kaplan, Will Kreth, Eric Lawrence, Jon Lebkowsky, Gordon Meyer, Monkeywrench, Jim Munroe, Jason Nolan, David Nunez, Anitra Pavka, Derek Powazek, Melissa Quackenbush, Theresa Quintanilla, Dana Robinson, Ana Sisnett, Kevin Smokler, Molly Steenson, Bruce Sterling, Sandy Stone, Toy Joy, Don Turnbull, Mike Wasylik, David Weinberger, Rick Weller, Nancy White, Evan Williams, and Amy Yan. If I forgot anyone, let me know. You all rock me like a hurricane.
I have two more SXSW Interactive-related entries left in me. Then I need to let it go, get it behind me, and get back to Media Diet's usual business. One of the entries will be my wrapup of and commentary on the entire event's discussions, in which I'll draw connections between the different sessions I sat in on and try to make some conclusions.
This is not that. This entry is a quick explanation of what I was trying to do, how it felt -- and how I think it went. These thoughts aren't fully formed, but I wanted to share a little glimpse of the process behind my SXSW reports. This is that.
I've long been interested in what I consider Immediate Journalism. The Web reports I've filed during the last four annual Company of Friends Roadshows for Fast Company magazine are the outcome of my first experiments with Immediate Journalism.
For the last four years, I've taken six weeks out of the office to cut a swath across part of the world. I stay with Fast Company readers in their homes. I visit two or three companies and organizations during the day. I gather with members of the local CoF groups in the evening. And I document everything I do, experience, and learn in almost-daily diary entries on the Web. People can follow me as I travel, and when I finally get back home after the six weeks, I write an essay highlighting the major themes that arose over the course of the trip.
This experiment was slightly different. Highly inspired by Cory Doctorow's conference and panel reports in Boing Boing, I wanted to see how else this Immediate Journalism could be done. Cory's reports are relatively impressionistic compilations of what he considers the major points, ideas, and concepts of a given talk. I didn't want to copycat Cory, and I didn't want to compete with Cory, had he planned to file SXSW reports as he's done for other gatherings. So I could either go shorter. Or longer.
I chose longer. I type really, really fast, so I was able to capture almost verbatim transcripts of what went on. Oh, I didn't catch everything, but I'm pretty sure I caught almost everything. But why go so long? Why strive to be such a completist? Many conference organizers opt to audio record the event's keynote speakers and breakout sessions. SXSW does not. And if we look at projects such as DharmaNet (for whom I've transcribed Buddhist texts in the past), the Open Pamphlet Series, and Big Sur tapes, the Left and counterculture has a long history of making talk transcripts, audio recordings, and interview-driven pamphlets widely available. The world of technology culture has no such parallel. If people are going to publish a pamphlet every time Noam Chomsky spits up soup, why aren't talks given by people such as Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Sterling, and others similarly captured, published, and distributed -- online or offline? We're losing an important part of our industry and culture's conversation and history. (That's not a slag on Chomsky, by the way.)
Similarly, I just wanted to see if I could do it. And making such an effort to transcribe everything, typing real-time transcripts as the speakers spoke, lightly editing them, and publishing them -- most of the time -- mere minutes after a session ended really changed my experience of the event. While I like to think I was present and engaged with my friends outside of sessions, inside the breakout rooms, it was just me, what I heard, my head, my hands, and my PowerBook. It was kind of neat when I'd really get in the zone and almost fall away so I was typing automatically. I almost wasn't paying attention to what was being said. I wasn't ascribing any meaning to the sounds and words I was entering into the blank Word document. I wasn't really there.
But it wasn't easy. While I'm not a trained stenographer -- lots of SXSW participants have asked -- and while my hands didn't really hurt at the ends of the days, my head did kind of hurt. When you're trying not to be present or actively engaged in a given situation, when you're only trying to document, project, and reflect what's happening, you get this thin feeling. You're fragile. Light like balsa wood. And it took some effort to come out of the near-fugue state to be present and in the moment again. For much of the conference I was distracted and inattentive. That was a weird state for me to be in -- actually, that's not totally true because I'm pretty hyper -- and if any of the people I hung out noticed or were bothered by it, I apologize.
So. How'd it go? Great. I'll do it again. Response on site was amazing, and word quickly spread throughout the conference that I was documenting the talks so thoroughly. Some people made decisions on what sessions to go to based on what session I was going to go to. If I was going to publish a transcript of a given panel, people felt free to go elsewhere. That brings up some interesting traffic flow and attendance questions. I hope I didn't gut people's headcounts because I was there in the room. I also hope that Cory, who didn't report on much at SXSW -- but who has said he was busy in his own panels and sessions -- didn't choose not to take notes because I was. I have him and Boing Boing to thank for most of the people coming to Media Diet to read my SXSW reports. Boing Boing far and away drove more traffic to Media Diet over the last week than the other folks I've given shouts out to. That speaks well of Boing Boing's readership and influence.
How was Media Diet traffic affected? Let's go to the traffic logs. Since I started doing Media Diet in June 2001, I've averaged about 100 readers -- unique visitors -- a day. Thank you, faithful Media Dieticians! But let's look at the last handful of days:
March 7: 100
March 8: 223
March 9: 450
March 10: 686
March 11: 400
March 12: 375
March 13: 599 (as of 5:08 p.m.)
Hopefully, some of y'all will decide to stick around. I've gotten several emails from people who weren't able to make it to Austin for the conference thanking me for the reports, and I think that response to date goes to show that if your blog or journalism is of widespread interest, extremely timely, and not replicated elsewhere, readers will follow. That's part of why I don't regularly blog stuff that's already hit Boing Boing, Blogdex, or Daypop. Don't just mimic the memes that are already reveling in the blogosphere. Do the new. People will pick up on it.
What would I do differently? I'd let the speakers know what I wanted to do -- and get their verbal permission. A couple of people were slightly surprised that what they'd just said showed up on the Web so quickly after they finished saying it, and I apologize for the surprise. The good thing is that everyone felt like I accurately captured their remarks, so the concern of misreporting their comments was relatively low.
OK. I think that's enough. I would like to thank some of the people who really made my SXSW Interactive experience worthwhile. This, then, is a potentially incomplete alphabetical thank-you list.
Thank you: The 15 bus, Lauri Apple, Lane Becker, BookPeople, Ben Brown, Heather Champ, Joe Clark, Viki Collier, Michael Cruftbox, Cory Doctorow, Dudley Dog, Dan Gillmor, Heather Gold, Adam Greenfield, Scott Heiferman, Hiromi Hiraoka, James Hong, Don Jarrell, Kyle Johnson, Pableaux Johnson, Morris Johnston, Philip Kaplan, Will Kreth, Eric Lawrence, Jon Lebkowsky, Gordon Meyer, Monkeywrench, Jim Munroe, Jason Nolan, David Nunez, Anitra Pavka, Derek Powazek, Melissa Quackenbush, Theresa Quintanilla, Dana Robinson, Ana Sisnett, Kevin Smokler, Molly Steenson, Bruce Sterling, Sandy Stone, Toy Joy, Don Turnbull, Mike Wasylik, David Weinberger, Rick Weller, Nancy White, Evan Williams, and Amy Yan. If I forgot anyone, let me know. You all rock me like a hurricane.
Corollary: Mention Me! XXXIV
One more shout out, then I'll stop eyeing my reference logs.
Die Puny Humans
Phew!
One more shout out, then I'll stop eyeing my reference logs.
Phew!
South by Southwest 2003 XX
One last batch of SXSW Interactive reports. Nancy White took some great notes on Cliff Figallo's session Tuesday morning, which I missed. Here's Nancy's report, barely edited:
Cliff Figallo: Putting Online Conversation to Work
Attention is energy. If a small child is acting out, giving them attention gives energy to those behaviors. Online you have to pay attention to whom you are paying attention. Pay attention to negative behaviors, you "feed the energy creature."
These are concepts we’ve put to work. Having a conversation you want to get things out of consider:
Who’s talking
Intentions
Commitment
Tolerance
Traction
A productive conversation can only happen under certain conditions. Forcing people who don’t exhibit the right intention, commitment, tolerance -- sometimes you have to be selective as to who you invite. The Well said anyone with a modem, money and could navigate on, they could join. Everything else was up for grabs. Stuart Brand thought it would be good to have people with communal experience managing this thing rather than business or technological experience. There were tradeoffs there, but we did understand what it took for a community to be productive. In this case, be functional. We went through quite a learning phase in the first 5 years. Some people could inhibit others from participating in an online conversation. How can we make these things work when people who are more willing to join the conversation could dominate a conversation and send it off in directions that chase people away.
We’ve learned a lot over the years. Now millions online who have experienced chat, online communities. Seen how they can work and be a total pain in the ass. It would keep people up at night on the well because there was such hope that people would join this group, writers, consultants who did not work with a team on a day by day basis. They had a hope that the well would thrive as a community. When someone came and tried to crash the party, they wanted us to throw them off, but we did not want to be the despots, the cops. We wanted the community to sort out it’s own problems. There were cases where we had to remove people because they were detractors from the conversation. It’s important to know who’s talking
Intentional Community
If you have an intention about a conversation in an organization or business. Shared sense of mission, purpose, ethos. It is then easier to solve problems. All aimed in the same direction and willing to tolerate each other. To listen as well as talk.
Nardi, Whittaker and Schwarz called them "Intentional Networks’ PERSONAL Social networks. "We chose the term intentional to reflect the effort and deliberateness with which people construct and manage personal networks.
In a conversation in NY last Fall, Listening to the City, a conversation about what to do with the site around ground zero. WHT TO do with that neighborhood, how to redevelop Manhattan. They had a 1 day F2F LARGE Meeting with tables of ten with facilitators and laptops who collected the conversational themes and feelings and fed them back to the larger group. Briefly they formed an intentional conversational community. All of their aims were tom come up with a good solution for where the WTC had been blown up. Even though they did not agree- some were strongly opinionated that it be a symbolic building that NY will not be defeated, we’ll put up something bigger. The final design is taller.
We took this online the week after in groups of 30. Half with facilitators and half without facilitator. All could read each other’s conversations. Most of the groups that did not have an assigned facilitator, one rose from the ranks and took on that role to lead the conversation. It was quite and emotional couple of weeks. Some had lost close relatives, friends, involved in recover efforts, had seen the towers collapsed. Everyone had a strong emotion around it and willing to engage in the conversation. But there were differences between groups. Some people were tying to shout their positions down the throats of other people. We call them the tall towers people. Bu t there were other people who were victims family who said the memorial was most important. There were complaints that they were getting more than their representative voice. It wasn’t
fair that their emotions were going to sway how things would developed.
Mostly people were concerned about the trust that their input would be part of the decision. They hoped to have some effect on the decision makers. As it turned out it really did. The F2f conversation was widely reported as expressing strong disapproval to the initial plans. Based on that the publicity of getting this strong disapproval and sent everyone back to the drawing board. The online conversations contributed that yes it was important that the towers be tall and there be a memorial. And the chose design reflects this.
Trust, Identity, Reputation
These are concepts you see being talked about on the web. Software is being developed and put in to portal software. I was associated with a company called RealCommunities which had a flexible database where people could establish identity and a reputation management module. A lot of this stuff operates in our daily life according to where we trust people, what we know of their identity and reputation. When engaging in online conversations with people online you rely on many other factors to determine if it is worthwhile in engaging in the conversation. You are investing your time. Don’t want to feel like you’ve wasted it.
What we found on the Well when we all came together, a bunch of people who didn’t know each other with just a bunch of words on a screen connecting. Came to a point when Howard Rheingold and Howard Mandel started a conference called "True Confessions." It was basically a place where people could write stories about themselves. Up until them people learned just what they learned about each other in conversations about politics, news, sports. That was valuable especially if you engaged in conversations across topics. A person in politics might be a flaming liberal and you were conservative, but in the parenting conference both have kids and shared experiences. A multidimensional relationship, the way it is in real life, we know each other from at least two different contexts. Helps us get a sense of what these people are. IN True CONFESSIONAS once they saw a bit more about each other’s background, it opened up the community. They knew this person was what they stood for, what they’d been through, why they were what they were.
Leadership
When you start a conversational community you will find different kinds of leaders. Founders who understand the mission, where the conversation is supposed to go, who was invited and why. The Implementers who actually start the conversations, comfortable with the tools, recognize what to do with the vision provided by the founders. The Sustainers hang in there. The facilitators, the challengers who keep volatility in the conversation and attract more people to it because conversations generally want to expand.
Power Imbalances Destabilize
Make it difficult for people to trust. Today’s world situation. People don’t necessarily want to go along. They don’t want the US to say not only are we the most wealthy, but powerful, military strength, democracy – and thus our vision is the most powerful vision. But will we be kept in our place. Will other nations keep their validity. France is digging in it’s heels. Other countries are digging in their heels.
The Truth Will Out
The internet has lent this whole other side to propaganda. You can’t keep a lid on things anymore. There will be other visions represented. Blogging, even though its in principle the same internet publishing model, we’re probably being blogged as we speak -- this element was not there when Berners-Lee put up the initial web pages. Blogging is now a medium, or an application of the medium, that allows many viewpoints to come together, cross represent each other, disagree with each other. A wide conversation that when used well in communities in trust -- which does nto mean you necessarily agree, but you understand where they are coming from, but as long as you believe they are speaking from the heart, you have a level of trust that they are a known element, not a maverick, one who spoofs you.
In a conversation if the truth doesn’t out, if people don’t agree to speak truthfully, not a balance of weight in the conversation, and least everyone going in the same direction of having a productive conversation rather than shouting each other out. On the well we had "subtext" you could read a conversation and tell if there was dissatisfaction or lack of cred under the surface. People might not say it, but a vibe, of argument running below the surface. In an online discussion that happens on a company’s intranet you will find a lot of that. People are afraid to really express what they believe because their jobs at stake. If the company does not have a culture that encourage people to say what they believe, if people don’t’ feel they can say what they believe, it will still come across in refusal to participate or what you can read between the lines. People’s subconscious. Belief system at work that they did not want to express because it would create a hassle, an argument. But their subconscious will still come through in how they talked.
This is part of the problem with business culture and how it’s developed through the years. In the first couple of chapters of Building the KM Network, we run through a quick history of civilization and how we got through the industrial age, how orgs formed in a hierarchical sense built on a military model. Was not important what the lower ranks thought. Whoever was running the place held all the knowledge and wisdom, hired lower ranks with wisdom and now power. The net has broken into distributed non hierarchical model. Business has not caught up. They go through team building sessions and OD trying to enable a more open and distributed conversation, but still that power balance exists if the upper levels of management don’t participate in conversations that cut across the layers. At the Well it mattered that Steward Brand as founder of the Well participated. But he was sort of thin skinned. If anyone criticized his vision or suggestions, he didn’t stick around very long. We always wished that he would. He was initially a very vocal participant but when the hard questions started he did not feel it was necessary to answer them. That’s when the leadership model has to move on. When the founders and CEOS aren’t going to participate… now the customers are much more powered. They can talk to each other. They can talk about products through boards such as Epinions, online gatherings like on Edmonds.com about their cars, and if the company is not going to be part of this conversation, its going to suffer from not getting, taking and using that feedback. I think not being a CEO and not choosing to work within a company as an employee, throwing rocks from over the wall as a consultant, my council is that companies have to evolve. Look at Enron and all these scandals. If these conversations aren’t enabled with in the company all kinds of things can take place. If they aren’t talking about it they see how it gets out of control. Companies, careers, 401Ks ruined. It’s hard to visualize what its like working in a co with tens of thousands of employees and how you get them started. But conversations start incrementally and can spread within organizations.
What do you do about power imbalances? First acknowledge it. That there is that difference between the person who is operating from a higher rung on the ladder One of the people I worked with on the LTC forum came up with the idea of a "Full Value Contract." When a conversation is engaged, in this case online, that going into it everyone agrees that they are going to give full value to the conversation. They make an agreement going in that they are gong to listen, respect, do what they can to encourage each other to speak, not dominate the conversation, do everything they can to make the conversation as useful for ist purpose as they can. It’s a very important idea that you have an agreement, which formalizes the conversation more than they usually are. Usually more ad hoc. People set up a forum, invite people, a topic. But as far as any kind of social contract they have to evolve over time. On the Well we had "you own your own words" which was formulated to protect the well from liability but adopted as a rallying cry for personal copyright issues. Social contracts evolved by trial and error. When you go into a conversation you set up for a purpose, presenting everyone with some sort of contractually worded agreement can really help, especially where there is a power imbalance so everyone assumes an equal role, even with different levels of responsibility. If a biz is going to have an online discussion w/ CEO and higher folks, that they declare this is the way it is going to be. Not a George Bush press conf where you have to ask the right questions to get picked on.
I don’t that’s really what you are looking for. You are looking for true identity. If you use an alias that allows the person with the higher power position to act like a fly on wall, Joe Everyman and speak. It might be useful for them, but for everyone else, fi they don’t know this.
I was thinking more of a person with some dominant power enters the conversation; it tends to polarize the conversation by dint of their identity. If you wanted exchange of content, not identity, it would make it a more level playing field.
[Cliff asked Nancy what she thought. She talked about unintended consequences of anonymity and the importance of treating root issues at the root. Organizational warts just appear even bigger online.]
It’s (anonymity) tempting. Does it create a false sense of security? What is the organization is about? An organization that does not operating to certain ideals in the offline world, online they have to be based in reality. We are proposing to do work with a company that is promoting the idea of the democratic workplace. They have models and theories and they want to start online discussion. There are plusses and minuses to the democratic workplace.
Gonna rip through the rest of the presentation (clock ticking)
Looping
Getting into an argument …saying if we oust Sadam Hussein it’s going to reduce terrorism and the others say increase and it goes around and around. You don’t’ want to spend time doing that. We’re in a loop and shoot for common ground. Sorting, looking for the exit point to looping conversations. Diplomacy, as we’re seeing, does not work all that great when it is relegated to national PR> What are the conversations that are really happening. People being diplomatic can lead to beating around the bush. Talk about the real stuff even if it is hard. You shouldn’t have to have to use diplomacy. Spit it out and say what you mean.
Not getting Work Done
Diplomacy -- communications out of network
Politics and movingon.org
Gaming and competition (winners and losers is not what getting work done is about. It’s about achieving and cooperating
Gratuitous complexity -- run in to it a lot. With intranet development. We’ve done this and this -- really good business for software consulting development, but it delays getting conversations done via email lists or simple discussion tools. A lot of companies are seeing people use IMs because they need it and it works
Summary
Reveal all motives
Agree on a vision
Share the floor (keep posts to reasonable length)
No praise, no blame (comes out of the communal era -- don’t heap praise on people all the time. When you praise one and others don’t get it, this creates difference much like blame. Keep even keep for appreciating and thanking for contributions. Don’t get excessive.
No free riders -- people should not benefit from a conversation if they don’t’ support it. Tom, we see 80% are readers but they benefit from it. IN an online health support community, they want to see what other people are saying. That is a different context. To solve something then they should all be contributing.
Hooray for progress -- praise the progress you have all made. Make sure everybody notes it to encourage continued participation.
Questions
What’s the best tool for online conversations?
I began with asynchronous message boards and certain features of these boards were key. You could always look up who people were. ON well you could always look up people. Have seen effective email lists, newsgroups, and today blogs are incredibly powerful, especially if Dave Weinberger, who was here earlier, is a model of how somebody who has attained credibility, a very good interesting entertaining writer, connected with other people and they quote and point -- has created this huge, expanded conversation. Blogs can be used by companies, CoPs, as a very powerful medium for linking in not only other peoples comments, but current information. I read Dave’s Blog like I read the NYTimes on the web. Sometimes he’s talking about his family, a convergence, an idea. He forms a core of a specialize conversation that’s happening across many areas. He’s an integrator. Serving as a great model. Bruce Sterling has his Viridian list about global warming. He calls himself the Pope of the list, sole publisher, but includes many people who are related and creates a distributed conversation. Our approach as we get more sophisticated we have a range of tools, skills and publishing models that are happening.
Q: I work for a national nonprofit and part of the charter is to create an online community, but there’s difficulty because there is a Federally project there tends to be a lot of moderator censoring. Difficult to get the free flowing conversations going. Before things are even put online. Self defeating situation
A: That’s the thing about getting funding. If part of the funding proposal does not specify that censorship is not part of the people, once people realize if they say something that crosses the power, then the funding disappears. You have to question how much you are going to accomplish. There’s a lot of power in open discussions.
One last batch of SXSW Interactive reports. Nancy White took some great notes on Cliff Figallo's session Tuesday morning, which I missed. Here's Nancy's report, barely edited:
Cliff Figallo: Putting Online Conversation to Work
Attention is energy. If a small child is acting out, giving them attention gives energy to those behaviors. Online you have to pay attention to whom you are paying attention. Pay attention to negative behaviors, you "feed the energy creature."
These are concepts we’ve put to work. Having a conversation you want to get things out of consider:
A productive conversation can only happen under certain conditions. Forcing people who don’t exhibit the right intention, commitment, tolerance -- sometimes you have to be selective as to who you invite. The Well said anyone with a modem, money and could navigate on, they could join. Everything else was up for grabs. Stuart Brand thought it would be good to have people with communal experience managing this thing rather than business or technological experience. There were tradeoffs there, but we did understand what it took for a community to be productive. In this case, be functional. We went through quite a learning phase in the first 5 years. Some people could inhibit others from participating in an online conversation. How can we make these things work when people who are more willing to join the conversation could dominate a conversation and send it off in directions that chase people away.
We’ve learned a lot over the years. Now millions online who have experienced chat, online communities. Seen how they can work and be a total pain in the ass. It would keep people up at night on the well because there was such hope that people would join this group, writers, consultants who did not work with a team on a day by day basis. They had a hope that the well would thrive as a community. When someone came and tried to crash the party, they wanted us to throw them off, but we did not want to be the despots, the cops. We wanted the community to sort out it’s own problems. There were cases where we had to remove people because they were detractors from the conversation. It’s important to know who’s talking
Intentional Community
If you have an intention about a conversation in an organization or business. Shared sense of mission, purpose, ethos. It is then easier to solve problems. All aimed in the same direction and willing to tolerate each other. To listen as well as talk.
Nardi, Whittaker and Schwarz called them "Intentional Networks’ PERSONAL Social networks. "We chose the term intentional to reflect the effort and deliberateness with which people construct and manage personal networks.
In a conversation in NY last Fall, Listening to the City, a conversation about what to do with the site around ground zero. WHT TO do with that neighborhood, how to redevelop Manhattan. They had a 1 day F2F LARGE Meeting with tables of ten with facilitators and laptops who collected the conversational themes and feelings and fed them back to the larger group. Briefly they formed an intentional conversational community. All of their aims were tom come up with a good solution for where the WTC had been blown up. Even though they did not agree- some were strongly opinionated that it be a symbolic building that NY will not be defeated, we’ll put up something bigger. The final design is taller.
We took this online the week after in groups of 30. Half with facilitators and half without facilitator. All could read each other’s conversations. Most of the groups that did not have an assigned facilitator, one rose from the ranks and took on that role to lead the conversation. It was quite and emotional couple of weeks. Some had lost close relatives, friends, involved in recover efforts, had seen the towers collapsed. Everyone had a strong emotion around it and willing to engage in the conversation. But there were differences between groups. Some people were tying to shout their positions down the throats of other people. We call them the tall towers people. Bu t there were other people who were victims family who said the memorial was most important. There were complaints that they were getting more than their representative voice. It wasn’t
fair that their emotions were going to sway how things would developed.
Mostly people were concerned about the trust that their input would be part of the decision. They hoped to have some effect on the decision makers. As it turned out it really did. The F2f conversation was widely reported as expressing strong disapproval to the initial plans. Based on that the publicity of getting this strong disapproval and sent everyone back to the drawing board. The online conversations contributed that yes it was important that the towers be tall and there be a memorial. And the chose design reflects this.
Trust, Identity, Reputation
These are concepts you see being talked about on the web. Software is being developed and put in to portal software. I was associated with a company called RealCommunities which had a flexible database where people could establish identity and a reputation management module. A lot of this stuff operates in our daily life according to where we trust people, what we know of their identity and reputation. When engaging in online conversations with people online you rely on many other factors to determine if it is worthwhile in engaging in the conversation. You are investing your time. Don’t want to feel like you’ve wasted it.
What we found on the Well when we all came together, a bunch of people who didn’t know each other with just a bunch of words on a screen connecting. Came to a point when Howard Rheingold and Howard Mandel started a conference called "True Confessions." It was basically a place where people could write stories about themselves. Up until them people learned just what they learned about each other in conversations about politics, news, sports. That was valuable especially if you engaged in conversations across topics. A person in politics might be a flaming liberal and you were conservative, but in the parenting conference both have kids and shared experiences. A multidimensional relationship, the way it is in real life, we know each other from at least two different contexts. Helps us get a sense of what these people are. IN True CONFESSIONAS once they saw a bit more about each other’s background, it opened up the community. They knew this person was what they stood for, what they’d been through, why they were what they were.
Leadership
When you start a conversational community you will find different kinds of leaders. Founders who understand the mission, where the conversation is supposed to go, who was invited and why. The Implementers who actually start the conversations, comfortable with the tools, recognize what to do with the vision provided by the founders. The Sustainers hang in there. The facilitators, the challengers who keep volatility in the conversation and attract more people to it because conversations generally want to expand.
Power Imbalances Destabilize
Make it difficult for people to trust. Today’s world situation. People don’t necessarily want to go along. They don’t want the US to say not only are we the most wealthy, but powerful, military strength, democracy – and thus our vision is the most powerful vision. But will we be kept in our place. Will other nations keep their validity. France is digging in it’s heels. Other countries are digging in their heels.
The Truth Will Out
The internet has lent this whole other side to propaganda. You can’t keep a lid on things anymore. There will be other visions represented. Blogging, even though its in principle the same internet publishing model, we’re probably being blogged as we speak -- this element was not there when Berners-Lee put up the initial web pages. Blogging is now a medium, or an application of the medium, that allows many viewpoints to come together, cross represent each other, disagree with each other. A wide conversation that when used well in communities in trust -- which does nto mean you necessarily agree, but you understand where they are coming from, but as long as you believe they are speaking from the heart, you have a level of trust that they are a known element, not a maverick, one who spoofs you.
In a conversation if the truth doesn’t out, if people don’t agree to speak truthfully, not a balance of weight in the conversation, and least everyone going in the same direction of having a productive conversation rather than shouting each other out. On the well we had "subtext" you could read a conversation and tell if there was dissatisfaction or lack of cred under the surface. People might not say it, but a vibe, of argument running below the surface. In an online discussion that happens on a company’s intranet you will find a lot of that. People are afraid to really express what they believe because their jobs at stake. If the company does not have a culture that encourage people to say what they believe, if people don’t’ feel they can say what they believe, it will still come across in refusal to participate or what you can read between the lines. People’s subconscious. Belief system at work that they did not want to express because it would create a hassle, an argument. But their subconscious will still come through in how they talked.
Weinberger: Typical in business that there is an imbalance in power. What do you do to accommodate conversations?
This is part of the problem with business culture and how it’s developed through the years. In the first couple of chapters of Building the KM Network, we run through a quick history of civilization and how we got through the industrial age, how orgs formed in a hierarchical sense built on a military model. Was not important what the lower ranks thought. Whoever was running the place held all the knowledge and wisdom, hired lower ranks with wisdom and now power. The net has broken into distributed non hierarchical model. Business has not caught up. They go through team building sessions and OD trying to enable a more open and distributed conversation, but still that power balance exists if the upper levels of management don’t participate in conversations that cut across the layers. At the Well it mattered that Steward Brand as founder of the Well participated. But he was sort of thin skinned. If anyone criticized his vision or suggestions, he didn’t stick around very long. We always wished that he would. He was initially a very vocal participant but when the hard questions started he did not feel it was necessary to answer them. That’s when the leadership model has to move on. When the founders and CEOS aren’t going to participate… now the customers are much more powered. They can talk to each other. They can talk about products through boards such as Epinions, online gatherings like on Edmonds.com about their cars, and if the company is not going to be part of this conversation, its going to suffer from not getting, taking and using that feedback. I think not being a CEO and not choosing to work within a company as an employee, throwing rocks from over the wall as a consultant, my council is that companies have to evolve. Look at Enron and all these scandals. If these conversations aren’t enabled with in the company all kinds of things can take place. If they aren’t talking about it they see how it gets out of control. Companies, careers, 401Ks ruined. It’s hard to visualize what its like working in a co with tens of thousands of employees and how you get them started. But conversations start incrementally and can spread within organizations.
Weinberger: Short of changing the ethos of the org, a big challenge, many companies would rather die than do that. Experience on the well, someone gets on where the power imbalance is wrecking the conversation, the answer to Brand is not step down from your role, but change your conversational behavior. Do you have advice or help for working within the conversation itself, short of changing the way businesses work?
Tom: All the things you talk about operate in my world of online support groups. If you put a doctor in a conversation it changes the conversation. Just breast cancer survivors the conversation is more open and wide-ranging. In these communities you do not have the flames. A built in "we’re in this together and we need to help each other." Similar response to a disaster when you work with people you had not worked with before.
What do you do about power imbalances? First acknowledge it. That there is that difference between the person who is operating from a higher rung on the ladder One of the people I worked with on the LTC forum came up with the idea of a "Full Value Contract." When a conversation is engaged, in this case online, that going into it everyone agrees that they are going to give full value to the conversation. They make an agreement going in that they are gong to listen, respect, do what they can to encourage each other to speak, not dominate the conversation, do everything they can to make the conversation as useful for ist purpose as they can. It’s a very important idea that you have an agreement, which formalizes the conversation more than they usually are. Usually more ad hoc. People set up a forum, invite people, a topic. But as far as any kind of social contract they have to evolve over time. On the Well we had "you own your own words" which was formulated to protect the well from liability but adopted as a rallying cry for personal copyright issues. Social contracts evolved by trial and error. When you go into a conversation you set up for a purpose, presenting everyone with some sort of contractually worded agreement can really help, especially where there is a power imbalance so everyone assumes an equal role, even with different levels of responsibility. If a biz is going to have an online discussion w/ CEO and higher folks, that they declare this is the way it is going to be. Not a George Bush press conf where you have to ask the right questions to get picked on.
Question: Would you advocate to people with power to use an alias to make it a more egalitarian environment?
I don’t that’s really what you are looking for. You are looking for true identity. If you use an alias that allows the person with the higher power position to act like a fly on wall, Joe Everyman and speak. It might be useful for them, but for everyone else, fi they don’t know this.
I was thinking more of a person with some dominant power enters the conversation; it tends to polarize the conversation by dint of their identity. If you wanted exchange of content, not identity, it would make it a more level playing field.
[Cliff asked Nancy what she thought. She talked about unintended consequences of anonymity and the importance of treating root issues at the root. Organizational warts just appear even bigger online.]
It’s (anonymity) tempting. Does it create a false sense of security? What is the organization is about? An organization that does not operating to certain ideals in the offline world, online they have to be based in reality. We are proposing to do work with a company that is promoting the idea of the democratic workplace. They have models and theories and they want to start online discussion. There are plusses and minuses to the democratic workplace.
Gonna rip through the rest of the presentation (clock ticking)
Looping
Getting into an argument …saying if we oust Sadam Hussein it’s going to reduce terrorism and the others say increase and it goes around and around. You don’t’ want to spend time doing that. We’re in a loop and shoot for common ground. Sorting, looking for the exit point to looping conversations. Diplomacy, as we’re seeing, does not work all that great when it is relegated to national PR> What are the conversations that are really happening. People being diplomatic can lead to beating around the bush. Talk about the real stuff even if it is hard. You shouldn’t have to have to use diplomacy. Spit it out and say what you mean.
Not getting Work Done
Summary
Questions
Corollary: Mention Me! XXXIV
Another shout out to
IdeaFlow
for picking up on my SXSW writing. Renee just sent me the nicest email.
Another shout out to
for picking up on my SXSW writing. Renee just sent me the nicest email.
Corollary: Mention Me! XXXIV
Shouts out to
Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Pure Content
for mentioning my SXSW coverage. Thanks!
Shouts out to
for mentioning my SXSW coverage. Thanks!
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Mention Me! XXXIV
My South by Southwest 2003 reports got good response this past weekend, and I'll follow up soon with some commentary on the event -- as well as some insight on what the immediate journalism experiment felt like. This is the first time I've confblogged, and it went over well enough to do it again in the future. Thanks to the folks who've linked to the Media Diet coverage to date:
Anil Dash
Ben Bailey
Boing Boing
JD's New Media Musings
Just Differently Intelligent
Lawrence Lessig
Stingy Kids
If I've missed anyone, let me know. I'm just going off references today.
My South by Southwest 2003 reports got good response this past weekend, and I'll follow up soon with some commentary on the event -- as well as some insight on what the immediate journalism experiment felt like. This is the first time I've confblogged, and it went over well enough to do it again in the future. Thanks to the folks who've linked to the Media Diet coverage to date:
If I've missed anyone, let me know. I'm just going off references today.
South by Southwest 2003 XIX
Bruce Sterling and Derek Woodgate: Tomorrow Now
Introductions
Sterling: I'm an author. My most recent book is actually a futurist book. After I did this book, I got this really sweet gig writing for Wired, writing this monthly futurist column. That explains what the heck I'm doing here.
Derek and I are going to start ripping on six major league change drivers. Were just going to ping pong some things back and forth.
Woodgate: I'm principal of the futures lab here in Austin. We work with major corporations looking for what we call future potential for them. We really look to provide them with what a strategic plan or R&D company can't. I'm a political economist by profession.
Open Spectrum
Sterling: Topic No. 1: Open spectrum. This baby's come completely out of left field. People are suggesting that you could divvy up the spectrum and rain it down on people's homes. I've got it right here in my machine. I'm running off Cory Doctorow's groovy little 802.11 thing. This is just the baby verson. I'm interested in the struggle because it a microcosm of a bigger one. It's a struggle between the pigopolis and the pirates. Or law and order and the multitudes. In the world of open spectrum, it's very open. No one knows what its good for. The people who are in charge of the spectrum allocation are very worried about it. After the '90s it's very clear that you can bring a lot of capital to stuff, make it widely available, and still lose your ass. You can go down in flames by bringing people access to information.
Here we've got my favorite version, Motorola Canopy. What your talking about is a really big antenna, kind of a moonlight tower. Everyone pitches in a couple of bucks. It's no big deal. The thing is, this is just a small range of spectrum that’s good for microwaving chickens. If we can get just one tiny chunk of Clearchannel's empire, one wasted classic rock station, we could cover the country in 18 months. There would be no last mile problem.
Woodgate: We've been following the spectrum thing, too. We're looking for a tipping point, and I'm not really sure we're there. The car seems to be the tipping point. People much more believe in the local area network than in mesh. The thought is that putting these standards in cars by 2007 means that Ford and Daimler are all in this together. If it really gets commercialized in that way it’s a very consumer-oriented way. We've seen the death of satellites. Other than moving heavy data, where open spectrum's better, we're probably going to see more of the local area networks in the short term.
From a business pojnt of view it’s a little different.
Bubble Money
Sterling: Let's talk about the business side. That’s Topic No. 2: Where's the bubble money? Where's the economic activity? Where's the business model? So much glass was put in the ground and so much human energy was expended for something that doesn’t have a business model. The death of portals is a problem. The death of ISP's is a problem. If something like Canopy takes off, there go the ISP's. Its interesting to me that the biggest thing going right now is Google. Google isn't a portal. It's all about getting right into the database. Get me right into the database.
Who is this poor guy from Red Herring? I saw him on CNN this morning. He says, "I was googling it. I was bloggering it." I was blog dancing him. He says, "Yeah, the enthusiasts usually start it and then someone like me comes in to finance it." I was, like, "Where's your magazine dude?" How many times do these guys need to be punished? How much money do they need to lose? When will they learn that the Internet is a product of the sciences and the military. Those aren't profit-motive ventures.
CNN doesn't have any money to send anyone to Baghdad this time around. Fox lost heaps of money, enough money to build entire cities from the ground up. There's no money. There's no money in Blogger. There's no money in the corporate media. Money has to come from somewhere. Unless information wants to be worthless. Unless we just want to be worse informed from machines that work worse and worse. That’s the trend I'm looking at, and it's bugging me.
Woodgate: I agree with you, but I think there are some places where there is some bubble money. Don't throw it all out. If you look at the drivers, you can see some trends. Things like escapism and maximum pleasure are really quite important. In things like entertainment or really serious stuff, there may not be any money. But in things like experience collecting, cultural diffusion, there may be money.
We are seeing some real creepage in a whole host of environmental issues. Where there is going to be real money is in security and in self-preservation. As a futurist, I usually never try to guess where I should put my money, but security is one of those areas. In addition, I think we need to look at biotech. Another thing ubiquitous computing.
Ubiquitous Computing
Sterling: Let's move right into that. Topic No. 3: Ubicomp. You're beginning to see some of this popping up. When you start having these little gizmos, you know you're moving in the right direction from where it goes from hand waving to where it really hurts people. Ubiciomp bites man.
I think that the first area is traffic monitoring and traffic rings. The mayor of London OK'd the installation of traffic monitoring cameras that take snapshots of your license plate. You get a ticket. That's OK. We don’t want to run people down. But what worries me is ubicomp mission creep. Now you’ve got a database of everybody and her sister's license plate and what they're doing downtown. I don’t know if any of you Austinites have noticed the bloom of video cameras. What is our city doing with this video? How do you leave town without them knowing? How do you really know when you're driving across town to have a little rendezvous with your boyfriend that your husband wont call up and ask where did my wife's license plate go? It's a ubicomp problem. Its an Orwellian ubicomp problem.
It's sexy. The upcoming war between palm tops and cell phone gadgets will be interesting. It's weird. I'ts one of the most exciting places of concurrent technological development: Handhelds trying to become phones and phones trying to become palm tops.
Woodgate: Every project that we've been working on for the last 2-3 years, ubicomp has been a really critical aspect. There are two sides: the everywhere and the nowhere. The likely thing is that the suit is most likely going to be an office. Given heads-up displays, you can really customize them. Having personal wireless area networks is going to be pretty exciting. MIT is working on that. So are a lot of companies, particularly companies making wear ware.
Sterling: You’ve got to love a term like "wear ware." Then GPS can be where wear ware.
Woodgate: What we're seeing is a tremendous number of new polymers with circuitry embedded in them.
Sterling: I love Materials Connection. Their job is to go to Italy and buy all the weirdest shit. They put it in a cubby hole and people pay just to come and handle the stuff. I could make a fork out of this! It takes a while for new materials to become adopted. They’ve been at it for a long time. I ran into this one guy. And he gave me a chunk of foamed aluminum. It's froth. That stuff just smells like the future.
Woodgate: It's good from the sense that you can really understand how you can build anything. That’s important from a sensory perspective. It's really important that it felt good. The technology really has to be invisible. We're looking for, even with ubiquitous computing, things that really do something formless. One interesting point you made is about the handheld vs. the cell phone. I don’t see the future of the screen being between the handheld vs. the cell phone but a piece of plastic.
Sterling: One aspect of this that’s being underplayed is ubijunk. The first wave of ubicomp isnt going to work very well. Then you end up with stuff that's just waiting to be turned off or picked up or thrown out. What happens if you walk into a room that’s experienced the blue screen of death? What if there are buggy rooms? Who do you call? The difficulty of cars has always been the planned obsolescence of cars. What happens when you try to drive an obsolete smart vehicle? It still thinks it's smarter than you, and it's been in a couple of wrecks. Its GPS map is 18 months out of date and you drive right over the edge at 80 miles an hour. Bad maps cause you to blow up the Chinese embassy. What if it's in your clothes? I have an ID tag in my underwear, and I wash it one too many times. There's a whole Philip K. Dick world of hilarity here.
Industry
Sterling: Let's move onto Topic No. 4: Influence on industry. The thing that impressed me with the foamed aluminum wasn’t the thing itself but the amount of sensing. You almost need aluminum moussing. Just the right temperature. What happens when that crashes? What happens when it's no longer under the control of experts? What if I can go down to Kinko's and foam me some aluminum?
It’s the Linux model for physical objects. It's a really intriguing organizational problem that our society has that no else seems to have. What happens to General Motors if people can build cars? What if you could just download the stats to build a Model T? That can't be that hard. Henry Ford wasn't that big a guy. What if you built one out of foamed aluminum and chopped bamboo? How much would it really cost? Maybe a couple of million dollars? A Model T cost $400 bucks new. And there was no one in particular making them.
It's a Red Hat automobile. There's no digital rights management. When it wore out you'd just make another. How would we fit that into the litigation structure? Who do you sue? What are we going to do when kids are making stuff -- stuff -- not drivers, but actual stuff? We have a major military problem over it. The terrorist spread of mass destruction is basically a Linux model for nuclear weapons. That’s why were going to take out Iraq. It used to be that only governments could afford weapons of mass destruction. Now small groups of networked activists can get their hands on the stuff.
They're only weapons. And weapons have a manufacturing aspect. You just have to make the stuff. Aluminum stuff is suddenly contraband. Walk around downtown Austin and see how many aluminum tubes you find. It concerns me. We don’t really have methods to deal with this stuff. People's attitudes are becoming polarized. At the top end its becoming more and more ferocious, and at the bottom it's becoming more and more corrupt. We need a middle here.
Woodgate: We're seeing some of the modeling techniques that are allowing people to make things like little toys. But it's beyond us to work out the distribution problems,. Fabbing's going to be an important part of some community aspects. But the whole issue of community structures is part of society. If you look at the changing nature of work, we are seeing a real breakdown of traditional structures, particularly in knowledge work. There's no real need for these big organizations. You can come in and do what you need to do at any time.
We're starting to see what we call community companies. They're not just profit-making companies but communities of profitable individuals. In Europe, we're seeing already that people are negotiating their own contracts on a very different basis. They're looking for a retirement lifestyle all the way through their entire career. I'm also looking at that from the fabbing point of view.
Sterling: I wonder how you make those structures accountable. And how you can plan that lifestyle when you have no idea how long you're going to live.
Biotech
Sterling: Maybe we should move onto topic No. 5: Biotech. I'm concerned about the structure of the American healthcare system. There's a not so slow crisis brewing there. One of the worst aspects of this I've seen is a revolt on the part of healthcare workers on insurance rates. They're refusing to heal sick people because they can't afford the healthcare premiums. This is a sign of a breakdown in the social order. You can't maintain that drain on the insurance companies.
We've tried. The US has struggled with this for many years, to find a balance between socialized medicine and the high-tech treatment we’ve been aiming for. It doesn’t matter if you can get four heart transplants if the guy next to you at the bus station coughs antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis on you. I belong to the generation where it's sort of a given that healthcare will continue to improve and lifespans will continue to expand. But you see life expectancies crashing in large parts of the world. The World Health Organization used to think that the population was on it's way to 11 billion. Where is it now? 8.3 billion. Where'd all those people go? AIDS, mostly, actually. AIDS and a crashing birth rate. When people don't have sex carefully, we get AIDS. And when people have sex carefully, we get crashing birth rates. We don’t treat our public health as though we all share the same species. The low end and a certain number of people are going to die from this. It's not going to be pretty
Some things are pretty. We have a much better sense of cellular development at this point. I'd be pretty concerned about the degree of antibiotic resistance. We're going to be domesticating microbes, figuring out what they do and how they work. Whereas we used to have home pregnancy tests, we're going to have home everything tests. You're going to have microbe sniffers on towers. Bad cloud today. You're going to have microbe sniffers on every water faucet. There's a potential there for non-commercial health monitoring activity where we can actually see what's eating us. It's a no brainer for domestic offense because it's a bio-war defense. You can see this in elk wasting and West Nile virus. Out of this crisis better things will come.
Woodgate: Other than the UK, compared to other healthcare systems, yours is probably the worse. With new bio materials, tissues, and genetics, we're going to see massive growth in that area which will counterbalance what we see happening. Particularly with an aging population, the costs are up. All those things cost money, and it's going to be even more difficult to keep the system running.
We're going to see more prevention techniques. The air that’s inside your house is 2-3 times worse than the air outside your house. We're going to see a lot of things pumped into the air at home for therapy. Equally, were going to see new soaps and other materials.
Sterling: Instead of home fire things, why don’t we have home cold germs things? People are used to paying a lot of money for medicine, but prevention is more of a hobby. Why can't I see the inside of my head every morning? Why can't I scan my body head to toe and have that as my start page so I can see how much calcium I've lost in my spine? Why do I have to go to an expert and pay them to tell me?
The mechanisms of decay in the human body, there are probably eight or nine of them. We might beat one or two of them in pretty short order. You could have fresh dewy young skin but still be going blind or deaf. Life extension isn't going to be like this fountain of youth crap. You'll have life extension in your nose. You'll spend all your time patching things up while you're Chernobyling somewhere else. I think the first people to do it are going to really suffer. Don’t ever be the alpha test for a biotech upgrade. Let the junkies do it. Let RU Sirius do it. Let the extropians do it.
Globalization
Sterling: We're done to our last topic here: Globalizatioon, Americanization, anti-Americanization. The war. Movement in the street. NATO, the UN, the scene, baby!
Woodgate: Is globalization Americanization? It's really China-ization. The factory of the world is in China. The way globalization spreads is more about timing than anything else. It's perceived as Americanization because there's a complete gap between the ideology of America and the ideology of the rest of the world. In most of Europe and in Japan, you don't have ultra-capitalism like you have in the US. Look at what's important to people's lives. That makes it really different and difficult.
You have the same problem internally between states and federalization. States are going their own way. There's a massive change that’s going to go on. If it doesn’t, the US is going to go through a really difficult period. That might not be the end of the world. Go back 100 years and you have two world wars and tens of wars elsewhere. And we're still here. 10 years from now the US will be very different in its attitudes. It has to be if it's going to sustain any kind of growth.
Sterling: I think a lot of people mistook globalization for Americanization because for a long time Americans held the megaphone. During the '90s there was kind of a period of quiescence. People in the rest of the world expect Americans to behave the way the Washington Consensus would have us act. But now we've got more of a Serbian or South African-style regime in power that’s trying to shift foreign policy away from here. It's a large continental, militarized superpower with a population under surveillance and punishment.
That’s not the way America was when it was globalizing. Other countries are globalizing better now. ??? Al jazira ??? has the vitality of CNN during the first Gulf War. I would expect this second Gulf War to make them. They're a global newsmaking organization. They're breaking a lot of stories, people. The non-resident Indians have had a huge impact on their home country. Al Qaeda are globalized Arabs. They're guys with western educations and engineering degrees. They're globalized Arabs and they're angry about it.
I think it's about time the globe woke up that 4% of the people in the world can't do all the damn heavy lifting. If you're Brazil, you need your own damn government. The idea that the UN becomes irrelevant because the Bush administration says so is ridicuolous. It's not like the Chinese prime minister is going to stop talking to the Indian prime minister because they shut down a building in New York. The future is people in Belgrade talking to people in Latvia.
This too shall pass. The clock will not stop ticking. Armageddon never lives up to its hype. Things change and they change for the better, the worse, and the indifferent. Let's all go to my house and have a beer this evening.
Bruce Sterling and Derek Woodgate: Tomorrow Now
Do I really need to introduce Sterling? Woodgate is the principal partner of the Futures Lab. Here is a rough transcript of the discussion:
Introductions
Sterling: I'm an author. My most recent book is actually a futurist book. After I did this book, I got this really sweet gig writing for Wired, writing this monthly futurist column. That explains what the heck I'm doing here.
Derek and I are going to start ripping on six major league change drivers. Were just going to ping pong some things back and forth.
Woodgate: I'm principal of the futures lab here in Austin. We work with major corporations looking for what we call future potential for them. We really look to provide them with what a strategic plan or R&D company can't. I'm a political economist by profession.
Open Spectrum
Sterling: Topic No. 1: Open spectrum. This baby's come completely out of left field. People are suggesting that you could divvy up the spectrum and rain it down on people's homes. I've got it right here in my machine. I'm running off Cory Doctorow's groovy little 802.11 thing. This is just the baby verson. I'm interested in the struggle because it a microcosm of a bigger one. It's a struggle between the pigopolis and the pirates. Or law and order and the multitudes. In the world of open spectrum, it's very open. No one knows what its good for. The people who are in charge of the spectrum allocation are very worried about it. After the '90s it's very clear that you can bring a lot of capital to stuff, make it widely available, and still lose your ass. You can go down in flames by bringing people access to information.
Here we've got my favorite version, Motorola Canopy. What your talking about is a really big antenna, kind of a moonlight tower. Everyone pitches in a couple of bucks. It's no big deal. The thing is, this is just a small range of spectrum that’s good for microwaving chickens. If we can get just one tiny chunk of Clearchannel's empire, one wasted classic rock station, we could cover the country in 18 months. There would be no last mile problem.
Woodgate: We've been following the spectrum thing, too. We're looking for a tipping point, and I'm not really sure we're there. The car seems to be the tipping point. People much more believe in the local area network than in mesh. The thought is that putting these standards in cars by 2007 means that Ford and Daimler are all in this together. If it really gets commercialized in that way it’s a very consumer-oriented way. We've seen the death of satellites. Other than moving heavy data, where open spectrum's better, we're probably going to see more of the local area networks in the short term.
From a business pojnt of view it’s a little different.
Bubble Money
Sterling: Let's talk about the business side. That’s Topic No. 2: Where's the bubble money? Where's the economic activity? Where's the business model? So much glass was put in the ground and so much human energy was expended for something that doesn’t have a business model. The death of portals is a problem. The death of ISP's is a problem. If something like Canopy takes off, there go the ISP's. Its interesting to me that the biggest thing going right now is Google. Google isn't a portal. It's all about getting right into the database. Get me right into the database.
Who is this poor guy from Red Herring? I saw him on CNN this morning. He says, "I was googling it. I was bloggering it." I was blog dancing him. He says, "Yeah, the enthusiasts usually start it and then someone like me comes in to finance it." I was, like, "Where's your magazine dude?" How many times do these guys need to be punished? How much money do they need to lose? When will they learn that the Internet is a product of the sciences and the military. Those aren't profit-motive ventures.
CNN doesn't have any money to send anyone to Baghdad this time around. Fox lost heaps of money, enough money to build entire cities from the ground up. There's no money. There's no money in Blogger. There's no money in the corporate media. Money has to come from somewhere. Unless information wants to be worthless. Unless we just want to be worse informed from machines that work worse and worse. That’s the trend I'm looking at, and it's bugging me.
Woodgate: I agree with you, but I think there are some places where there is some bubble money. Don't throw it all out. If you look at the drivers, you can see some trends. Things like escapism and maximum pleasure are really quite important. In things like entertainment or really serious stuff, there may not be any money. But in things like experience collecting, cultural diffusion, there may be money.
We are seeing some real creepage in a whole host of environmental issues. Where there is going to be real money is in security and in self-preservation. As a futurist, I usually never try to guess where I should put my money, but security is one of those areas. In addition, I think we need to look at biotech. Another thing ubiquitous computing.
Ubiquitous Computing
Sterling: Let's move right into that. Topic No. 3: Ubicomp. You're beginning to see some of this popping up. When you start having these little gizmos, you know you're moving in the right direction from where it goes from hand waving to where it really hurts people. Ubiciomp bites man.
I think that the first area is traffic monitoring and traffic rings. The mayor of London OK'd the installation of traffic monitoring cameras that take snapshots of your license plate. You get a ticket. That's OK. We don’t want to run people down. But what worries me is ubicomp mission creep. Now you’ve got a database of everybody and her sister's license plate and what they're doing downtown. I don’t know if any of you Austinites have noticed the bloom of video cameras. What is our city doing with this video? How do you leave town without them knowing? How do you really know when you're driving across town to have a little rendezvous with your boyfriend that your husband wont call up and ask where did my wife's license plate go? It's a ubicomp problem. Its an Orwellian ubicomp problem.
It's sexy. The upcoming war between palm tops and cell phone gadgets will be interesting. It's weird. I'ts one of the most exciting places of concurrent technological development: Handhelds trying to become phones and phones trying to become palm tops.
Woodgate: Every project that we've been working on for the last 2-3 years, ubicomp has been a really critical aspect. There are two sides: the everywhere and the nowhere. The likely thing is that the suit is most likely going to be an office. Given heads-up displays, you can really customize them. Having personal wireless area networks is going to be pretty exciting. MIT is working on that. So are a lot of companies, particularly companies making wear ware.
Sterling: You’ve got to love a term like "wear ware." Then GPS can be where wear ware.
Woodgate: What we're seeing is a tremendous number of new polymers with circuitry embedded in them.
Sterling: I love Materials Connection. Their job is to go to Italy and buy all the weirdest shit. They put it in a cubby hole and people pay just to come and handle the stuff. I could make a fork out of this! It takes a while for new materials to become adopted. They’ve been at it for a long time. I ran into this one guy. And he gave me a chunk of foamed aluminum. It's froth. That stuff just smells like the future.
Woodgate: It's good from the sense that you can really understand how you can build anything. That’s important from a sensory perspective. It's really important that it felt good. The technology really has to be invisible. We're looking for, even with ubiquitous computing, things that really do something formless. One interesting point you made is about the handheld vs. the cell phone. I don’t see the future of the screen being between the handheld vs. the cell phone but a piece of plastic.
Sterling: One aspect of this that’s being underplayed is ubijunk. The first wave of ubicomp isnt going to work very well. Then you end up with stuff that's just waiting to be turned off or picked up or thrown out. What happens if you walk into a room that’s experienced the blue screen of death? What if there are buggy rooms? Who do you call? The difficulty of cars has always been the planned obsolescence of cars. What happens when you try to drive an obsolete smart vehicle? It still thinks it's smarter than you, and it's been in a couple of wrecks. Its GPS map is 18 months out of date and you drive right over the edge at 80 miles an hour. Bad maps cause you to blow up the Chinese embassy. What if it's in your clothes? I have an ID tag in my underwear, and I wash it one too many times. There's a whole Philip K. Dick world of hilarity here.
Industry
Sterling: Let's move onto Topic No. 4: Influence on industry. The thing that impressed me with the foamed aluminum wasn’t the thing itself but the amount of sensing. You almost need aluminum moussing. Just the right temperature. What happens when that crashes? What happens when it's no longer under the control of experts? What if I can go down to Kinko's and foam me some aluminum?
It’s the Linux model for physical objects. It's a really intriguing organizational problem that our society has that no else seems to have. What happens to General Motors if people can build cars? What if you could just download the stats to build a Model T? That can't be that hard. Henry Ford wasn't that big a guy. What if you built one out of foamed aluminum and chopped bamboo? How much would it really cost? Maybe a couple of million dollars? A Model T cost $400 bucks new. And there was no one in particular making them.
It's a Red Hat automobile. There's no digital rights management. When it wore out you'd just make another. How would we fit that into the litigation structure? Who do you sue? What are we going to do when kids are making stuff -- stuff -- not drivers, but actual stuff? We have a major military problem over it. The terrorist spread of mass destruction is basically a Linux model for nuclear weapons. That’s why were going to take out Iraq. It used to be that only governments could afford weapons of mass destruction. Now small groups of networked activists can get their hands on the stuff.
They're only weapons. And weapons have a manufacturing aspect. You just have to make the stuff. Aluminum stuff is suddenly contraband. Walk around downtown Austin and see how many aluminum tubes you find. It concerns me. We don’t really have methods to deal with this stuff. People's attitudes are becoming polarized. At the top end its becoming more and more ferocious, and at the bottom it's becoming more and more corrupt. We need a middle here.
Woodgate: We're seeing some of the modeling techniques that are allowing people to make things like little toys. But it's beyond us to work out the distribution problems,. Fabbing's going to be an important part of some community aspects. But the whole issue of community structures is part of society. If you look at the changing nature of work, we are seeing a real breakdown of traditional structures, particularly in knowledge work. There's no real need for these big organizations. You can come in and do what you need to do at any time.
We're starting to see what we call community companies. They're not just profit-making companies but communities of profitable individuals. In Europe, we're seeing already that people are negotiating their own contracts on a very different basis. They're looking for a retirement lifestyle all the way through their entire career. I'm also looking at that from the fabbing point of view.
Sterling: I wonder how you make those structures accountable. And how you can plan that lifestyle when you have no idea how long you're going to live.
Biotech
Sterling: Maybe we should move onto topic No. 5: Biotech. I'm concerned about the structure of the American healthcare system. There's a not so slow crisis brewing there. One of the worst aspects of this I've seen is a revolt on the part of healthcare workers on insurance rates. They're refusing to heal sick people because they can't afford the healthcare premiums. This is a sign of a breakdown in the social order. You can't maintain that drain on the insurance companies.
We've tried. The US has struggled with this for many years, to find a balance between socialized medicine and the high-tech treatment we’ve been aiming for. It doesn’t matter if you can get four heart transplants if the guy next to you at the bus station coughs antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis on you. I belong to the generation where it's sort of a given that healthcare will continue to improve and lifespans will continue to expand. But you see life expectancies crashing in large parts of the world. The World Health Organization used to think that the population was on it's way to 11 billion. Where is it now? 8.3 billion. Where'd all those people go? AIDS, mostly, actually. AIDS and a crashing birth rate. When people don't have sex carefully, we get AIDS. And when people have sex carefully, we get crashing birth rates. We don’t treat our public health as though we all share the same species. The low end and a certain number of people are going to die from this. It's not going to be pretty
Some things are pretty. We have a much better sense of cellular development at this point. I'd be pretty concerned about the degree of antibiotic resistance. We're going to be domesticating microbes, figuring out what they do and how they work. Whereas we used to have home pregnancy tests, we're going to have home everything tests. You're going to have microbe sniffers on towers. Bad cloud today. You're going to have microbe sniffers on every water faucet. There's a potential there for non-commercial health monitoring activity where we can actually see what's eating us. It's a no brainer for domestic offense because it's a bio-war defense. You can see this in elk wasting and West Nile virus. Out of this crisis better things will come.
Woodgate: Other than the UK, compared to other healthcare systems, yours is probably the worse. With new bio materials, tissues, and genetics, we're going to see massive growth in that area which will counterbalance what we see happening. Particularly with an aging population, the costs are up. All those things cost money, and it's going to be even more difficult to keep the system running.
We're going to see more prevention techniques. The air that’s inside your house is 2-3 times worse than the air outside your house. We're going to see a lot of things pumped into the air at home for therapy. Equally, were going to see new soaps and other materials.
Sterling: Instead of home fire things, why don’t we have home cold germs things? People are used to paying a lot of money for medicine, but prevention is more of a hobby. Why can't I see the inside of my head every morning? Why can't I scan my body head to toe and have that as my start page so I can see how much calcium I've lost in my spine? Why do I have to go to an expert and pay them to tell me?
The mechanisms of decay in the human body, there are probably eight or nine of them. We might beat one or two of them in pretty short order. You could have fresh dewy young skin but still be going blind or deaf. Life extension isn't going to be like this fountain of youth crap. You'll have life extension in your nose. You'll spend all your time patching things up while you're Chernobyling somewhere else. I think the first people to do it are going to really suffer. Don’t ever be the alpha test for a biotech upgrade. Let the junkies do it. Let RU Sirius do it. Let the extropians do it.
Globalization
Sterling: We're done to our last topic here: Globalizatioon, Americanization, anti-Americanization. The war. Movement in the street. NATO, the UN, the scene, baby!
Woodgate: Is globalization Americanization? It's really China-ization. The factory of the world is in China. The way globalization spreads is more about timing than anything else. It's perceived as Americanization because there's a complete gap between the ideology of America and the ideology of the rest of the world. In most of Europe and in Japan, you don't have ultra-capitalism like you have in the US. Look at what's important to people's lives. That makes it really different and difficult.
You have the same problem internally between states and federalization. States are going their own way. There's a massive change that’s going to go on. If it doesn’t, the US is going to go through a really difficult period. That might not be the end of the world. Go back 100 years and you have two world wars and tens of wars elsewhere. And we're still here. 10 years from now the US will be very different in its attitudes. It has to be if it's going to sustain any kind of growth.
Sterling: I think a lot of people mistook globalization for Americanization because for a long time Americans held the megaphone. During the '90s there was kind of a period of quiescence. People in the rest of the world expect Americans to behave the way the Washington Consensus would have us act. But now we've got more of a Serbian or South African-style regime in power that’s trying to shift foreign policy away from here. It's a large continental, militarized superpower with a population under surveillance and punishment.
That’s not the way America was when it was globalizing. Other countries are globalizing better now. ??? Al jazira ??? has the vitality of CNN during the first Gulf War. I would expect this second Gulf War to make them. They're a global newsmaking organization. They're breaking a lot of stories, people. The non-resident Indians have had a huge impact on their home country. Al Qaeda are globalized Arabs. They're guys with western educations and engineering degrees. They're globalized Arabs and they're angry about it.
I think it's about time the globe woke up that 4% of the people in the world can't do all the damn heavy lifting. If you're Brazil, you need your own damn government. The idea that the UN becomes irrelevant because the Bush administration says so is ridicuolous. It's not like the Chinese prime minister is going to stop talking to the Indian prime minister because they shut down a building in New York. The future is people in Belgrade talking to people in Latvia.
This too shall pass. The clock will not stop ticking. Armageddon never lives up to its hype. Things change and they change for the better, the worse, and the indifferent. Let's all go to my house and have a beer this evening.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 XVIII
Richard Florida: The Rise of the Creative Class
Kirk Watson: Welcome, everyone. I'm pleased to see such a crowd. As the former mayor of Austin and someone who tried to pay attention to why regions flourish, I have been enamored with Dr. Florida's work for some time. It is difficult to be a rock star when you talk about economic development and regionalism. Richard Florida is a rock star. Many of you already know that he's the author of The Rise of the Creative Class. If you have not picked up that book, you should do so. In Austin, Texas, we debate creativity all the time. It's stirring debate all around the country.
Richard Florida: When you callled me up, it was a long time ago. When you said, "Will you do South by Southwest?", I jumped out of my chair. I said, "Sure, I'll do South by Southwest!" It's great to be here.
After writing this book I've gotten to be interviewed by lots of journalists. The book couldn’t have been written without two places, Newark, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I teach at a place called Carnegie-Mellon. If you know anything about Carnegie-Mellon you know it’s a pretty technologically oriented place.
When I was recruited there in 1987, Pittsburgh was going through a bit of a transformation. They recruited me and the whole idea was to turn Pittsburgh into a high-tech place. The steel mills were closing. We would develop small business incubators, high-tech councils, and spur economic development. I used to come to Austin and talk to people in entrepreneurship. The idea was that we could do some of that in Pittsburgh.
You might not be aware that one of the Carnegie-Mellon spin-offs is Sun Microsystems. Carnegie-Mellon was spinning off companies, but for some reason they weren't rooting in Pittsburgh. In 1991 and 1992 we thought we'd hit a major home run. We'd landed a big Internet search company, Lycos. Everyone thought that that was the company that would change Pittsburgh. 1994 came along. It was my seventh year, so I got to go on sabbatical. I went to teach at Harvard.
I opened up the paper one morning, and it said Lycos to move to Boston. That was a surprise. This was the company that was supposed to transform Pittsburgh. And it was moving to Boston.
People move to the place that has the best jobs. You will do anything in your community regardless of what it takes to lure those jobs. Here was the bizarre thing. The people weren't moving to the jobs. Jobs were moving to the people. When I called the people at Carnegie-Mellon to see why Lycos was moving to Boston, it wasn't that Boston was offering economically incentives. Lycos was moving because it wanted to be closer to the people that were in Boston.
That's when the lightbulb turned on in my head. Companies don't lead economic growth, people do. People move inexorably to the highest paying jobs. Maybe, just maybe, the biggest driver to economic growth was where people choose to go. When I looked back over the entire field I found not one paper about this question. No one had even bothered too ask.
We did all sorts of research. We talked to waiters and waitresses. We talked to people in bars. We talked to students. Students are interesting because they're making location decisions. And we did some statistical research.
The first thing we figured out was that most people have belief that what generates economic growth and wealth is technological progress. Some people criticize my notion off the creative class as elitist. Generally speaking, the field of economics says if you want to grow your field you need to invest in technology. My simple-minded notion was that that was far too narrow of a conceptualization. Technology is a very narrow sliver of something called human creativity.
Where you get real cycles of economic growth is where the different kinds of creativity come together. When hippie culture and universities come together, centers of economic growth have always been centers of creativity. Where in the hell is Silicon Valley? It may be nerdy, but it's equidistant between the Haight-Ashbury and the Monterey peninsula. Before the Grateful Dead, there was John Steinbeck. It has always been a place of creativity.
In the Bay Area, when Apple when to Valentine to ask for money, he didn't care what they looked like. Creativity is the source of innovation, not technology. The argument in the book is that creativity is involved in and integral to everything we do, every good we make, and every service we provide. I learned that from my father.
My dad's glasses cost $8 or $9. I'm not going to tell you how much these bad boys cost, but they cost a lot more than that, and I got them for 50% off. I didn't just buy the glasses, I bought the creative content. Whether its eyeglasses or textiles or CD's or music or architecture, everything is valued increasingly it’s the creative content of goods rather than the physical content.
Creativity is the economic force. Where does creativity come from? This is the point that many of the critics of the book criticize. Isn't the idea of the creative class elitist? Every single human being is creative. That's what the book says. Creativity is the great leveler. It defies race, gender, ethnicity, appearance, and sexual orientation. You can't hand creativity down to your children no matter how rich you are. If you suck at playing guitar, you suck. It comes from real live people who defy type.
People are the critical economic resource, not the raw materials, gold, or oil. Those places that can attract creative people because they provide the environment, they're going to be the economic winners. Because people are fickle. What do people want? People want to be themselves. All the other stuff give signals that a place will let people be themselves.
If creativity is the economic force and creativity comes from people and people are the real thing that matters, we come to the third thin. That's the role of place, of community, or region. Geographic place and community have become the essential organizing building block. Geographic place and community have supplanted the corporation. That makes our job a heck of a lot harder. We, all of us, have become stewards of the essential economic building block of the creativity age.
It's not just the Internet. This has been going on for 100 years. The great story of the 20th century was that the Internet was going to make place irrelevant. What is a corporation? What is a company? Well, the company pays dividends, salaries, and wages. It provides a base of people to participate in the company. How does a company do that? The company takes a person, a human being, and matches them up with a task. In the age of the Company Man, companies matched lots of people to lots of jobs, and it worked relatively well. Anyone remember what IBM used to stand for? I've been moved. Your company was your life.
What's the average length of a job today? Three years. What is the mechanism of matching people to work? The geographic place. For a company, the geographic place provides a thick pool of potential people who can come to work or leave work to do more interesting things. People told us we won't move to a place for a job. We want to move to places with lots of jobs. We want to move to a place where there's a vibrant labor market. Place provides this critical economic organizing function.
We began to ask people why do you move. Jobs weren't high on the list. Economists believe that people move according to economic incentives. If you're a 22 year old and you're graduating from college, and there's a great job there but no boys or girls, where are you going to go? People go to other people. Creativity people have always wanted to live in creative environments. There weren't a lot of people who are paid to be creative, so you had these little pockets of people. According to our research, there are 38 million people paid to be creative as part of their job. That's a third of the workforce.
People wanted to be in exciting places with lots of stimli. They wanted outdoors stuff. They wanted to be able to do what they wanted to do. It's not just about the high arts. The things that came through was what we call the informal arts, the independent arts, or street-level culture. Artistic and cultural and music scenes. We associate a place with its audio identity. We had do develop an indicator, right? Can we make up a bohemian index? We counted the people who were paid to be bohemian. It's an admittedly crude, flawed measure. But when you test across 300 metro cities, places that score high on this bohemian measure have high rates of innovation and economic growth.
Places also need to be open, accepting, inclusive, and tolerant. Places that are exlusionary and segregationist, creative people move away. Then other people move away. What would be an indicator that a place is open? We build a measure of foreign-born people and called it the Melting Pot Index. Canada's gone one better. They call it a mosaic. We accept people to melt and become assimilated. The Canadians say it's a mosaic. Come, whoever you are, bring your cultural heritage, and you can be a Canadian.
It's bogus bullshit that creativity is American. 30% of the companies in Silicon Valley were founded by a non-American. The places that are open are the economic winners. Then I met Gary Gates. I was studying the high-tech stuff, and Gary was studying gay people. We met, and we put our lists together, and the high-tech cities were also the gayest cities. I named my five favorite cities, and they were the top five gay cities.
Places that are open to diversity, places where anyone can come and plug in, those are the places that are going to get economic advantage. It wasn't so much that gays or the bohemians drove or attracted economic growth, but that the place attracted people and creativity bubbled up from the people who were there.
Lastly, what people gravitate to in a world with high levels of transience is history and authenticity. Pittsburgh might have a lot more history and authenticity than Austin, but we want to eradicate it. We knock down the Homestead Works and put up a mall because we were afraid o our past. Austin has leveraged its history.
I grew up in a Leave it to Beaver family. My dad went to work, my mom stayed at home, and there were two boys. You know how many Americans live in a family like that today? 7%. Between 93% and 75% live in some other kind of different setup. It's not one or the other. It's not about recruiting families, gays, or singles. It's about having cities that have something for everyone.
Richard Florida: The Rise of the Creative Class
Florida is a professor of economic development at Carnegie-Mellon Universiy and author of The Rise of the Creative Class. Here is a rough transcript of his remarks:
Kirk Watson: Welcome, everyone. I'm pleased to see such a crowd. As the former mayor of Austin and someone who tried to pay attention to why regions flourish, I have been enamored with Dr. Florida's work for some time. It is difficult to be a rock star when you talk about economic development and regionalism. Richard Florida is a rock star. Many of you already know that he's the author of The Rise of the Creative Class. If you have not picked up that book, you should do so. In Austin, Texas, we debate creativity all the time. It's stirring debate all around the country.
Richard Florida: When you callled me up, it was a long time ago. When you said, "Will you do South by Southwest?", I jumped out of my chair. I said, "Sure, I'll do South by Southwest!" It's great to be here.
After writing this book I've gotten to be interviewed by lots of journalists. The book couldn’t have been written without two places, Newark, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I teach at a place called Carnegie-Mellon. If you know anything about Carnegie-Mellon you know it’s a pretty technologically oriented place.
When I was recruited there in 1987, Pittsburgh was going through a bit of a transformation. They recruited me and the whole idea was to turn Pittsburgh into a high-tech place. The steel mills were closing. We would develop small business incubators, high-tech councils, and spur economic development. I used to come to Austin and talk to people in entrepreneurship. The idea was that we could do some of that in Pittsburgh.
You might not be aware that one of the Carnegie-Mellon spin-offs is Sun Microsystems. Carnegie-Mellon was spinning off companies, but for some reason they weren't rooting in Pittsburgh. In 1991 and 1992 we thought we'd hit a major home run. We'd landed a big Internet search company, Lycos. Everyone thought that that was the company that would change Pittsburgh. 1994 came along. It was my seventh year, so I got to go on sabbatical. I went to teach at Harvard.
I opened up the paper one morning, and it said Lycos to move to Boston. That was a surprise. This was the company that was supposed to transform Pittsburgh. And it was moving to Boston.
People move to the place that has the best jobs. You will do anything in your community regardless of what it takes to lure those jobs. Here was the bizarre thing. The people weren't moving to the jobs. Jobs were moving to the people. When I called the people at Carnegie-Mellon to see why Lycos was moving to Boston, it wasn't that Boston was offering economically incentives. Lycos was moving because it wanted to be closer to the people that were in Boston.
That's when the lightbulb turned on in my head. Companies don't lead economic growth, people do. People move inexorably to the highest paying jobs. Maybe, just maybe, the biggest driver to economic growth was where people choose to go. When I looked back over the entire field I found not one paper about this question. No one had even bothered too ask.
We did all sorts of research. We talked to waiters and waitresses. We talked to people in bars. We talked to students. Students are interesting because they're making location decisions. And we did some statistical research.
The first thing we figured out was that most people have belief that what generates economic growth and wealth is technological progress. Some people criticize my notion off the creative class as elitist. Generally speaking, the field of economics says if you want to grow your field you need to invest in technology. My simple-minded notion was that that was far too narrow of a conceptualization. Technology is a very narrow sliver of something called human creativity.
Where you get real cycles of economic growth is where the different kinds of creativity come together. When hippie culture and universities come together, centers of economic growth have always been centers of creativity. Where in the hell is Silicon Valley? It may be nerdy, but it's equidistant between the Haight-Ashbury and the Monterey peninsula. Before the Grateful Dead, there was John Steinbeck. It has always been a place of creativity.
In the Bay Area, when Apple when to Valentine to ask for money, he didn't care what they looked like. Creativity is the source of innovation, not technology. The argument in the book is that creativity is involved in and integral to everything we do, every good we make, and every service we provide. I learned that from my father.
My dad's glasses cost $8 or $9. I'm not going to tell you how much these bad boys cost, but they cost a lot more than that, and I got them for 50% off. I didn't just buy the glasses, I bought the creative content. Whether its eyeglasses or textiles or CD's or music or architecture, everything is valued increasingly it’s the creative content of goods rather than the physical content.
Creativity is the economic force. Where does creativity come from? This is the point that many of the critics of the book criticize. Isn't the idea of the creative class elitist? Every single human being is creative. That's what the book says. Creativity is the great leveler. It defies race, gender, ethnicity, appearance, and sexual orientation. You can't hand creativity down to your children no matter how rich you are. If you suck at playing guitar, you suck. It comes from real live people who defy type.
People are the critical economic resource, not the raw materials, gold, or oil. Those places that can attract creative people because they provide the environment, they're going to be the economic winners. Because people are fickle. What do people want? People want to be themselves. All the other stuff give signals that a place will let people be themselves.
If creativity is the economic force and creativity comes from people and people are the real thing that matters, we come to the third thin. That's the role of place, of community, or region. Geographic place and community have become the essential organizing building block. Geographic place and community have supplanted the corporation. That makes our job a heck of a lot harder. We, all of us, have become stewards of the essential economic building block of the creativity age.
It's not just the Internet. This has been going on for 100 years. The great story of the 20th century was that the Internet was going to make place irrelevant. What is a corporation? What is a company? Well, the company pays dividends, salaries, and wages. It provides a base of people to participate in the company. How does a company do that? The company takes a person, a human being, and matches them up with a task. In the age of the Company Man, companies matched lots of people to lots of jobs, and it worked relatively well. Anyone remember what IBM used to stand for? I've been moved. Your company was your life.
What's the average length of a job today? Three years. What is the mechanism of matching people to work? The geographic place. For a company, the geographic place provides a thick pool of potential people who can come to work or leave work to do more interesting things. People told us we won't move to a place for a job. We want to move to places with lots of jobs. We want to move to a place where there's a vibrant labor market. Place provides this critical economic organizing function.
We began to ask people why do you move. Jobs weren't high on the list. Economists believe that people move according to economic incentives. If you're a 22 year old and you're graduating from college, and there's a great job there but no boys or girls, where are you going to go? People go to other people. Creativity people have always wanted to live in creative environments. There weren't a lot of people who are paid to be creative, so you had these little pockets of people. According to our research, there are 38 million people paid to be creative as part of their job. That's a third of the workforce.
People wanted to be in exciting places with lots of stimli. They wanted outdoors stuff. They wanted to be able to do what they wanted to do. It's not just about the high arts. The things that came through was what we call the informal arts, the independent arts, or street-level culture. Artistic and cultural and music scenes. We associate a place with its audio identity. We had do develop an indicator, right? Can we make up a bohemian index? We counted the people who were paid to be bohemian. It's an admittedly crude, flawed measure. But when you test across 300 metro cities, places that score high on this bohemian measure have high rates of innovation and economic growth.
Places also need to be open, accepting, inclusive, and tolerant. Places that are exlusionary and segregationist, creative people move away. Then other people move away. What would be an indicator that a place is open? We build a measure of foreign-born people and called it the Melting Pot Index. Canada's gone one better. They call it a mosaic. We accept people to melt and become assimilated. The Canadians say it's a mosaic. Come, whoever you are, bring your cultural heritage, and you can be a Canadian.
It's bogus bullshit that creativity is American. 30% of the companies in Silicon Valley were founded by a non-American. The places that are open are the economic winners. Then I met Gary Gates. I was studying the high-tech stuff, and Gary was studying gay people. We met, and we put our lists together, and the high-tech cities were also the gayest cities. I named my five favorite cities, and they were the top five gay cities.
Places that are open to diversity, places where anyone can come and plug in, those are the places that are going to get economic advantage. It wasn't so much that gays or the bohemians drove or attracted economic growth, but that the place attracted people and creativity bubbled up from the people who were there.
Lastly, what people gravitate to in a world with high levels of transience is history and authenticity. Pittsburgh might have a lot more history and authenticity than Austin, but we want to eradicate it. We knock down the Homestead Works and put up a mall because we were afraid o our past. Austin has leveraged its history.
I grew up in a Leave it to Beaver family. My dad went to work, my mom stayed at home, and there were two boys. You know how many Americans live in a family like that today? 7%. Between 93% and 75% live in some other kind of different setup. It's not one or the other. It's not about recruiting families, gays, or singles. It's about having cities that have something for everyone.
South by Southwest 2003 XVII
Paul Bausch, Anil Dash, Justin Hall, Ben Trott, and Mena Trott: Beyond the Blog
Mena: Welcome to the Beyond the Blog panel. I'm one of the co-creators of Moveable Type and co-founder of TK which is the company that releases Moveable Type. I also have a personal blog called a A Day Late and a Dollar Short.
Das: My name's Anil Dash, and I live in New York City. Until recently I worked for Village Voice Media. Before that I worked in the music promotion industry. And now I'm freelancing about Web logs to see if there's a possibility of making a living in this area.
Bausch: I was one of the co-creators and developers of Blogger. Recently I helped write a book about Web logs.
Ben: I'm co-creator of Moveable Type as well. I have the exact same bio as Mena except my site isnt A Dollar Short, it's Stupid Fool.
Hall: In 1994 I got really jazzed about making pages on the Web using Simpletext and Emacs. I did that for 9 years. I kinda fell into freelance journalism because it’s the thing closest to writing on the Web and getting paid for it.
Mena: We want to talk about how the different elements of a Web log are going to evolve. Basically, we see a Web log as a reverse chronological, permalink-filled sort of mess. It's open to question whether the chronology is important.
Hall: Personal Web sites were a big topic of conversation at SXSW four years ago. Today we talk about Web logs. If everyone organizes their thoughts in reverse chronology, there are other ways to organize our thoughts. There's something being broken about the Web sites being so strictly controlled. What possibly could be better?
Bausch: I have to defend reverse chronology because I helped put that in there. It adds a hint of structure to something that might not have structure.
Mena: I agree with Justin that we shouldn't be limited to reading Web logs in day order. Part of it is that we expect it, but if you find somebody's Web logs six months after they started, you don't care about the date, you care about the content.
Bausch: We need a way to get a sense of how ideas evolve and how memes move throughout communities. Before Web logs put that structure into the Web, there was no shared time. Web logs provide that.
Dash: One of the things I think is valuable about having time in your Web log is that there's a contract. There's a social contract. You want to know when there's going to be something new. If it's ordered by date, I can scroll down to what I've already read and get a sense of completion. The contract has been fulfilled.
Mena: It isn't so much the date but the expectation that they're going to be publishing.
Hall: It's like commitment.
Mena: It's commitment. It's weird. When I see a regular Web site it's weird. What is this? They haven't updated this in six months?
Hall: Even with personal Web sites, there's no sense of immediacy. The convenience of Web logs is neat because people can make their own personal newspaper. That’s great. But now that we've got personal newspapers down, what else can we do?
Dash: I want to be able to view by category or by author or by topic or by arbitrary category, not the ones that they've assigned.
Mena: PB [Paul Bausch] has a lot to say about where the content is. We have personal newsletters. We want to publish our thoughts, own our thoughts, and be responsible for them.
Bausch: As people get the taste of controlling their own information, it's going to be harder and harder for centralized sites to get people to contribute there. We contribute to the Web in lots of different ways. It's not just about posting to our Web logs. We post to other sites. We post via email. We IM. It's just one big text box. All of these applications can talk to each other. You can post a review to Amazon.com but why can't you also post it to your Web log?
Ben: This comes back to identity and ownership. How do you feel like you have control over your information on these other sites? Your URL is your identity in a sense. You have the control over where it flows.
Mena: I think that’s why Web logs have take off. We have our identities. And we like that control.
Hall: That predates Web logs in a way.
Dash: Part of what interests me is this entry form, though. There is one entry that works. You have our URL, your identiy, your entry form. I want blogs to look the same. I want to know how they work. I want it to be a desktop application. I want anything I do in Word on the desktop to be available to all of these media.
Hall: I was talking to a guy whose working on a universal gaming system. The game scales to fit the client. The direction you're moving with blogs is happening in other areas of electronics.
Mena: This is Matt Haughey's Web log.
Bausch: He realized that he's contributing to many different places across the Web. He didn't have a place to aggregate all of this information together. If you don't know Matt personally, you might not know that he contributes to all these different sites. It's sort of a next step of taking information that’s distributed.
Mena: if you post a comment on Amazon, you don’t want it to be limited to Amazon.
Dash: I almost resent that someone else control swhat I've written. The tools need to evolve so I post to this one place, and it's posted somewhere else.
Bausch: The interfaces are so similar, why can't they just talk to each other?
Dash: Can't we all just get along?
Hall: I was in Japan taking pictures with a cell phone, and I decided I would only post in Japanese. It's hard to write in these shrunk-down devices. People are also hacking audio blogs.
Dash: Audio blogs suck.
Hall: No, it doesn't fit into your rational Web log structure, Anil.
Dash: How many people here have had a crush on someone just from reading their Web log? You fill in the blanks just like you do in a book.
Hall: Do you like pictures?
Mena: He doesn't even like pictures. He likes straight text.
Dash: I want binary. I want to be able to fill in the blanks myself. Because you know what it is.
Hall: What you really want is video blogs. Is that what I'm hearing?
Mena: Let's play devil's advocate. I have a similar feeling about audio blogging, but I think it'll work as supplementary content. Not every post needs to be audio. Maybe it would work in a disaster.
Hall: Matt Haughey at the bottom of his blog said that he wished he had a recording of the sound of the forks hitting the plates in the restaurant he was in because it was so dinny.
Dash: If we look at what Ben and Mena and Paul have done with moblogs, or little photos that they've taken somewhere, that is interesting to me. It is a snapshot of their life. Audio could be supplementary content. But photos and text are less intrusive and work better for me.
Hall: They're less captivating. You can multitask more easily just with text and pictures.
Mena: In Japan, they're not really allowed to use their cell phones on the train -- as though to speak. So they're IM'ing.
Hall: They're also checking their stock quotes and getting their fortunes told.
Mena: We should talk about identity.
Ben: I guess identity as your identity is your URL.
Mena: In the sense of your reputation, how do we see the blogroll changing?
Ben: I don’t think we'll see it change much in terms of how it looks, but the back end will change. Like the Friend of a Friend thing in XML. You have data in interchangeable formats that you can make sense of. You can graph relationships.
Bausch: Blogrolls are used for several different things. These are the people I fit in with.
Dash: Or want to fit in with.
Bausch: Yeah. This is my community. These are the people I trust. We need tools. No one is going to write Friend of a Friend files by hand. It's just like RSS. The tool should handle the creation of it and the consumption of it. It's moving beyond what tools can currently do. You're going to need semantic search engines. You're going to need to be able to traverse the tools. And these tools aren't here now.
Dash: The number of Web logs I track has gone up exponentially. I know a lot of people who keep active track of 20 and then through an aggregator keep up with 100 Web logs.
Hall: Those aggregators increase Web log consumption.
Dash: The next threshold is 10,000. If you use an aggregator and all this stuff, I honestly think that a lot of people will actively track 150 and passively track 10,000.
Mena: The day we have no jobs.
Dash: You may not know everybody by name. If you take everything your immediate friends have posted in a given day and then go out two degrees, you've got Metafilter. It looks like Metafilter.
Mena: We're evolving to each of us having our own Metafilter.
Hall: What's the Lafayette Project?
Dash: As far as I know it's what Nick Denton and Meg Hourihan in New York are working on, some sort of content aggregator.
Bausch: I don’t know that RSS readers are the best way to read personal publishing.
Dash: Is this because of the amateur thing?
Bausch: We're all designers.
Mena: That’s just part of the personal publishing thing. There's a bigger part. Are we just aggregating text? If I was writing about design, I want people to see my site to maybe think I know what I'm talking about.
Hall: If you look at what the newspapers now, they've got hundreds of reporters. They take Ap and Reuters stories, and AP and Reuters have 10,000 reporters. So the New York Times is basically 10,000 reporters. Anil's tool is people's amateur, non-professional, non-corporate news sources.
Mena: We assume that when we get to 10,000, we will read them differently.
Hall: If we read them like we do now, we'll need to buy a new mouse every two days.
Dash: For me, it's because I don't watch TV. I would rather have 10,000 people's real realities than one B-list celebrity on a desert island.
Hall: Or 10.
Paul Bausch, Anil Dash, Justin Hall, Ben Trott, and Mena Trott: Beyond the Blog
Bausch co-created Blogger. Dash used to write for the Village Voice. Hall has a long and storied history that you can check at Justin's Links. The Trotts co-created Moveable Type. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Mena: Welcome to the Beyond the Blog panel. I'm one of the co-creators of Moveable Type and co-founder of TK which is the company that releases Moveable Type. I also have a personal blog called a A Day Late and a Dollar Short.
Das: My name's Anil Dash, and I live in New York City. Until recently I worked for Village Voice Media. Before that I worked in the music promotion industry. And now I'm freelancing about Web logs to see if there's a possibility of making a living in this area.
Bausch: I was one of the co-creators and developers of Blogger. Recently I helped write a book about Web logs.
Ben: I'm co-creator of Moveable Type as well. I have the exact same bio as Mena except my site isnt A Dollar Short, it's Stupid Fool.
Hall: In 1994 I got really jazzed about making pages on the Web using Simpletext and Emacs. I did that for 9 years. I kinda fell into freelance journalism because it’s the thing closest to writing on the Web and getting paid for it.
Mena: We want to talk about how the different elements of a Web log are going to evolve. Basically, we see a Web log as a reverse chronological, permalink-filled sort of mess. It's open to question whether the chronology is important.
Hall: Personal Web sites were a big topic of conversation at SXSW four years ago. Today we talk about Web logs. If everyone organizes their thoughts in reverse chronology, there are other ways to organize our thoughts. There's something being broken about the Web sites being so strictly controlled. What possibly could be better?
Bausch: I have to defend reverse chronology because I helped put that in there. It adds a hint of structure to something that might not have structure.
Mena: I agree with Justin that we shouldn't be limited to reading Web logs in day order. Part of it is that we expect it, but if you find somebody's Web logs six months after they started, you don't care about the date, you care about the content.
Bausch: We need a way to get a sense of how ideas evolve and how memes move throughout communities. Before Web logs put that structure into the Web, there was no shared time. Web logs provide that.
Dash: One of the things I think is valuable about having time in your Web log is that there's a contract. There's a social contract. You want to know when there's going to be something new. If it's ordered by date, I can scroll down to what I've already read and get a sense of completion. The contract has been fulfilled.
Mena: It isn't so much the date but the expectation that they're going to be publishing.
Hall: It's like commitment.
Mena: It's commitment. It's weird. When I see a regular Web site it's weird. What is this? They haven't updated this in six months?
Hall: Even with personal Web sites, there's no sense of immediacy. The convenience of Web logs is neat because people can make their own personal newspaper. That’s great. But now that we've got personal newspapers down, what else can we do?
Dash: I want to be able to view by category or by author or by topic or by arbitrary category, not the ones that they've assigned.
Mena: PB [Paul Bausch] has a lot to say about where the content is. We have personal newsletters. We want to publish our thoughts, own our thoughts, and be responsible for them.
Bausch: As people get the taste of controlling their own information, it's going to be harder and harder for centralized sites to get people to contribute there. We contribute to the Web in lots of different ways. It's not just about posting to our Web logs. We post to other sites. We post via email. We IM. It's just one big text box. All of these applications can talk to each other. You can post a review to Amazon.com but why can't you also post it to your Web log?
Ben: This comes back to identity and ownership. How do you feel like you have control over your information on these other sites? Your URL is your identity in a sense. You have the control over where it flows.
Mena: I think that’s why Web logs have take off. We have our identities. And we like that control.
Hall: That predates Web logs in a way.
Dash: Part of what interests me is this entry form, though. There is one entry that works. You have our URL, your identiy, your entry form. I want blogs to look the same. I want to know how they work. I want it to be a desktop application. I want anything I do in Word on the desktop to be available to all of these media.
Hall: I was talking to a guy whose working on a universal gaming system. The game scales to fit the client. The direction you're moving with blogs is happening in other areas of electronics.
Mena: This is Matt Haughey's Web log.
Bausch: He realized that he's contributing to many different places across the Web. He didn't have a place to aggregate all of this information together. If you don't know Matt personally, you might not know that he contributes to all these different sites. It's sort of a next step of taking information that’s distributed.
Mena: if you post a comment on Amazon, you don’t want it to be limited to Amazon.
Dash: I almost resent that someone else control swhat I've written. The tools need to evolve so I post to this one place, and it's posted somewhere else.
Bausch: The interfaces are so similar, why can't they just talk to each other?
Dash: Can't we all just get along?
Hall: I was in Japan taking pictures with a cell phone, and I decided I would only post in Japanese. It's hard to write in these shrunk-down devices. People are also hacking audio blogs.
Dash: Audio blogs suck.
Hall: No, it doesn't fit into your rational Web log structure, Anil.
Dash: How many people here have had a crush on someone just from reading their Web log? You fill in the blanks just like you do in a book.
Hall: Do you like pictures?
Mena: He doesn't even like pictures. He likes straight text.
Dash: I want binary. I want to be able to fill in the blanks myself. Because you know what it is.
Hall: What you really want is video blogs. Is that what I'm hearing?
Mena: Let's play devil's advocate. I have a similar feeling about audio blogging, but I think it'll work as supplementary content. Not every post needs to be audio. Maybe it would work in a disaster.
Hall: Matt Haughey at the bottom of his blog said that he wished he had a recording of the sound of the forks hitting the plates in the restaurant he was in because it was so dinny.
Dash: If we look at what Ben and Mena and Paul have done with moblogs, or little photos that they've taken somewhere, that is interesting to me. It is a snapshot of their life. Audio could be supplementary content. But photos and text are less intrusive and work better for me.
Hall: They're less captivating. You can multitask more easily just with text and pictures.
Mena: In Japan, they're not really allowed to use their cell phones on the train -- as though to speak. So they're IM'ing.
Hall: They're also checking their stock quotes and getting their fortunes told.
Mena: We should talk about identity.
Ben: I guess identity as your identity is your URL.
Mena: In the sense of your reputation, how do we see the blogroll changing?
Ben: I don’t think we'll see it change much in terms of how it looks, but the back end will change. Like the Friend of a Friend thing in XML. You have data in interchangeable formats that you can make sense of. You can graph relationships.
Bausch: Blogrolls are used for several different things. These are the people I fit in with.
Dash: Or want to fit in with.
Bausch: Yeah. This is my community. These are the people I trust. We need tools. No one is going to write Friend of a Friend files by hand. It's just like RSS. The tool should handle the creation of it and the consumption of it. It's moving beyond what tools can currently do. You're going to need semantic search engines. You're going to need to be able to traverse the tools. And these tools aren't here now.
Dash: The number of Web logs I track has gone up exponentially. I know a lot of people who keep active track of 20 and then through an aggregator keep up with 100 Web logs.
Hall: Those aggregators increase Web log consumption.
Dash: The next threshold is 10,000. If you use an aggregator and all this stuff, I honestly think that a lot of people will actively track 150 and passively track 10,000.
Mena: The day we have no jobs.
Dash: You may not know everybody by name. If you take everything your immediate friends have posted in a given day and then go out two degrees, you've got Metafilter. It looks like Metafilter.
Mena: We're evolving to each of us having our own Metafilter.
Hall: What's the Lafayette Project?
Dash: As far as I know it's what Nick Denton and Meg Hourihan in New York are working on, some sort of content aggregator.
Bausch: I don’t know that RSS readers are the best way to read personal publishing.
Dash: Is this because of the amateur thing?
Bausch: We're all designers.
Mena: That’s just part of the personal publishing thing. There's a bigger part. Are we just aggregating text? If I was writing about design, I want people to see my site to maybe think I know what I'm talking about.
Question: Why do you even want to keep track of 10,000 web logs? How much information can you assimilate even with 20 or 30?
Hall: If you look at what the newspapers now, they've got hundreds of reporters. They take Ap and Reuters stories, and AP and Reuters have 10,000 reporters. So the New York Times is basically 10,000 reporters. Anil's tool is people's amateur, non-professional, non-corporate news sources.
Mena: We assume that when we get to 10,000, we will read them differently.
Hall: If we read them like we do now, we'll need to buy a new mouse every two days.
Dash: For me, it's because I don't watch TV. I would rather have 10,000 people's real realities than one B-list celebrity on a desert island.
Hall: Or 10.
South by Southwest 2003 XVI
Po Bronson: What Should You Do with Your Life?
What should I do with my life? Often, we don't like having to answer that question. It's itchy and confusing. We feel about destiny the same way we feel about inheritance. We want it to come easy. We feel that if it doesn't come easy, it's wrong.
We know the text and the subtext. The text is never enough money, never enough time. The subtext is psychological hurdles. Some people feel the question is self-indulgent. What is freedom if not the chance to live for yourself? In farming, success doesn't come at the expense of another man.
We equate money with freedom. True economic freedom is the confidence that you can live within the means of something you're passionate about. It's a dangerous thought that you're environment won't get to you. Academia compared to Hollywood is like bathing in altruism.
It's wrong to assume that it's in good times that we can change our lives. It's the bad times that force us to change. Sometimes the answers aren't out there. They're in here. How many events in our lives do we just ignore? Learn to love what you get, not just get what you love.
If you're open to strangers, willing to be empathetic and willing to learn from their stories, you can have a new life every day.
Po Bronson: What Should You Do with Your Life?
Author Bronson wrote the books Bombardiers and What Should I Do with My Life?. Here is an extremely abbreviated transcript of his remarks:
What should I do with my life? Often, we don't like having to answer that question. It's itchy and confusing. We feel about destiny the same way we feel about inheritance. We want it to come easy. We feel that if it doesn't come easy, it's wrong.
We know the text and the subtext. The text is never enough money, never enough time. The subtext is psychological hurdles. Some people feel the question is self-indulgent. What is freedom if not the chance to live for yourself? In farming, success doesn't come at the expense of another man.
We equate money with freedom. True economic freedom is the confidence that you can live within the means of something you're passionate about. It's a dangerous thought that you're environment won't get to you. Academia compared to Hollywood is like bathing in altruism.
It's wrong to assume that it's in good times that we can change our lives. It's the bad times that force us to change. Sometimes the answers aren't out there. They're in here. How many events in our lives do we just ignore? Learn to love what you get, not just get what you love.
If you're open to strangers, willing to be empathetic and willing to learn from their stories, you can have a new life every day.
Interlude: South by Southwest 2003 XV
After the sessions ended yesterday, I headed over to the Film Threat party at B.D. Riley's. There, I met up with Jim Munroe and David from MP4. We talked about punk rock, filmmaking, and road trips before Jim and I left to meet my friend Amy so we could sit down and get some food. After dinner on the deck at Iron Cactus, we made our way to Texture for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cyberorganic Jam. Remember Cyborganic? Ahhh.
The party was fun. Cory gave a rousing talk about the ongoing erosion of our offline and online rights. Sandy Stone, founder of UT-Austin's ActLab gave a short welcome and then lapsed into an extremely interesting spoken-word performance piece about cats, RF, and the fragility of life. We stayed almost until the very end, and my night last night was not as late or as crazy as Sunday. Still, I've taken this morning a little easy. Migas and a smoothie for breakfast with Rick, the 15 bus downtown, and more impressionistic note taking during Po Bronson's morning session. We'll turn our attention there now.
After the sessions ended yesterday, I headed over to the Film Threat party at B.D. Riley's. There, I met up with Jim Munroe and David from MP4. We talked about punk rock, filmmaking, and road trips before Jim and I left to meet my friend Amy so we could sit down and get some food. After dinner on the deck at Iron Cactus, we made our way to Texture for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cyberorganic Jam. Remember Cyborganic? Ahhh.
The party was fun. Cory gave a rousing talk about the ongoing erosion of our offline and online rights. Sandy Stone, founder of UT-Austin's ActLab gave a short welcome and then lapsed into an extremely interesting spoken-word performance piece about cats, RF, and the fragility of life. We stayed almost until the very end, and my night last night was not as late or as crazy as Sunday. Still, I've taken this morning a little easy. Migas and a smoothie for breakfast with Rick, the 15 bus downtown, and more impressionistic note taking during Po Bronson's morning session. We'll turn our attention there now.
Monday, March 10, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 XV
Mikela Tarlow and Philip Tarlow: Digital Aboriginals
Philip: Digital Abroiginals is the name of a book we wrote.
Mikela: I was working on a proposal for our second book, Charting Your Career in a World Without Rules. The proposal was kind of bogging down. I was talking to our agent, and I said I was getting a little bored. He said, "What do you want to do?" I said I'd write a book called Digital Aboriginals.
10 years ago I was in a museum. I've always had a passion for aboriginal paintings. We were in the Museum of Modern Art, and there was a new show getting hung. They were paintings of circuit boards. It began this journey of what was encoded in those images that could lead to a deeper understanding of what was happening in the digital landscape.
What we do when were not writing books is consulting to corporations. We walk into places like Coca-Cola and Philip Morris and play stuff like this. We do consulting on future trends and the big picture.
Philip: Mikela's background is in anthropology. My background is in the fine art. I'm a painter. We're both interested in trends but in different ways.
Mikela: What you see there is a picture we took last year at SXSW.
Philip: And up in the upper left-hand corner is a segment of a tribe of aboriginals from north Australia. They were just having a meeting, sitting around. There is some connection and relationship betwene these two photographs.
Mikela: The aboriginal photograph just shows men. Women participated in those circles, but the women are very shy. As we put those two images together, even the number of people was identical. The ideal number for small group work is no more than 12. When you put together more than 12, it becomes difficult to do complex tasks. And if you look at the distance, its about the right distance for sitting around a fire.
There's another number that begins to appear. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the number 200. That number 200 is interesting because it's about as large as a tribe ever got. Once they got bigger than 200, a power struggle would occur and the tribe would break apart. 12 is the family unit. And 200 is the economic unit. It's just the last couple hundred years that were tryign to work in these mega-corporations. We're going against our biology almost.
Philip: Another level of talking about these photographs is that these aboriginals assumed that they were connected, connected in a way that’s hard for us to understand because of their connection to the earth, to plants, and to animals. Digital aboriginals means that we're coming full circle. We're relearning what it means to be connected.
Mikela: A lot of what's happening in the digital landscape, like blogging, is triggering this biological memory.
This is where our research is. Is there something happening in our culture that's very similar to what's happening in the business landscape and in our journey of consciousness? How we describe that centerpiece is with four platforms. The first one is Who Owns the Wind, which has to do with the dissolution of ownership as we know it. Ownership is not working. The second piece has to do with the return of the storytellers and the collapse of traditional advertising. Advertising people say that as soon as Tivo households hit 10 million they're going to stop doing TV advertisements. Even people who listen to the ads don't remember where they heard what. What does that mean if advertisers can't reach you with traditional advertising? The only way to connect with us is authentic stories.
Philip: Authentic and compelling. Our feeling is that this is just the beginning. You can't fool the public.
Mikela: The third platform is Tribal Mind, which has to do with collaborative work structures. And the fourth platform is Riding the Songlines, or the capacity of new models of leadership and consciousness.
When the dialogue space is transformed the power relationship is transformed. Whenever the power relationship is transformed we must change our perception of what is important. When Matt Damon was in Japan, teenage girls held up their cell phones to stream video to their friends. The traditional media was also there. Who is more important in that equation, the teenagers or the media? Those teenagers are the ones who are going to create the buzz about the movie, not the article in Teen People. Now you have to consider how to connect with the teenagers. A traditional press release is not going to connect with them.
Philip: Gere are some of the things that go along with storytelling. They're all ages. Nobody's bored. And nobody, I can assure you, is asking whether this is his original story. This is a story that has been told since time immemorial.
Mikela: This is how the big stories happen. When stories were conveyed by oral tradition, storytellers revised stories when people looked away. The oral tradition gives you tremendous feedback. These stories become fully tweaked.
Philip: It was also considered a work in progress. It was never a finished product.
Mikela: You were not allowed to create an original work until you had copied all of the masters.
Philip: Original work was not a concept. Copyright? There was no question about that
Mikela: What Lessig is describing is the way things have been since the beginning of time. We're returning to an oral culture. I think we're the last generation that's going to write the way we write. The average person use to know 50,000 words. Kids today know about 25,000 words. When was the last time you said "I sauntered across the room?" You don't. That's a written word, not a spoken word. If we're approaching the characteristics and number of words of an oral tradition, what does that mean? In an oral tradition, reputation is extremely important. Relationships are extremely important. Intimacy is extremely important.
I grew up in a strange household where we had a lot of books about Zen tradition. There was a story about a teacup that I used to hear all the time. When we began telling these stories in corporations, we decided we needed a story that communicated the importance to open your mind.
Philip: This is the story of a student who had been wanting his entire adult life to visit with the master and watch the master perform the traditional tea ceremony. Finally, the opportunity arose. As he watched the master pouring the tea, he felt privileged to be in the presence of the master. He noticed that the tea was getting dangerously close to the top of the cup. Before he knew it, the tea had overflowed and was staining the table. He continued to pour. At a certain point, he couldn't hold back any more. "Master, the tea is overflowing! The cup is full! It can't take any more!" And the master said, "Yes, just like your mind."
Mikela: I heard this story many times. It wasn't until we started telling this story until we discovered the meaning of it. The reason why he gained enlightenment? There are two reasons. One is that the tea ceremony is a profound part of their cultural context. It's a metaphor for all life. In anthropology, it’s the difference between a high-content culture and a high-context culture. The second thing is his relationship with the teacher. He had such profound intimacy and trust with the teacher that everything the teacher said was like a pebble in a pond.
Philip: He was listening differently.
Mikela: The story used to just be a stupid story, but when I began to think about it in a different way, it came to life. We don't spend a lot of time doing things over and over and over and over and over and looking for deeper meaning in things. I think blogging is going to shift our society, and it's because of the storytelling.
Something happens when you go deeper and deeper and deeper. These core archetypes have formed in every culture of the world. As storytelling is being introduced not just into the cultural space but also the corporate space, the ancient creative is being tapped into in ourselves.
These are some of the things you would learn if you studied with a mystic. You're not your personality. Everything is connected. You are the storyteller. Does that seem familiar? Is it something that you kind of know at some level? We came up with this phrase: digital sutras. Those are statements designed to shift your consciousness in a certain way.
Philip: They're sounds. They're like a scientific experiments.
Mikela: What are our big predictions for the future? Virtually enhanced real-life events are going to be more and more where the artistry is going to exist. We're also in an age where complexity is going to reclaim control. The third is established redundancies. The capacity to utilize social networks will be the work of the next generation.
In an information dense world the unrepeatable present moment will become a highly valued event.
Mikela Tarlow and Philip Tarlow: Digital Aboriginals
Mikela and Philip are corporate consultants and the co-authors of Digital Aboriginals. Here is a rough transcript of their talk.
Philip: Digital Abroiginals is the name of a book we wrote.
Mikela: I was working on a proposal for our second book, Charting Your Career in a World Without Rules. The proposal was kind of bogging down. I was talking to our agent, and I said I was getting a little bored. He said, "What do you want to do?" I said I'd write a book called Digital Aboriginals.
10 years ago I was in a museum. I've always had a passion for aboriginal paintings. We were in the Museum of Modern Art, and there was a new show getting hung. They were paintings of circuit boards. It began this journey of what was encoded in those images that could lead to a deeper understanding of what was happening in the digital landscape.
What we do when were not writing books is consulting to corporations. We walk into places like Coca-Cola and Philip Morris and play stuff like this. We do consulting on future trends and the big picture.
Philip: Mikela's background is in anthropology. My background is in the fine art. I'm a painter. We're both interested in trends but in different ways.
Mikela: What you see there is a picture we took last year at SXSW.
Philip: And up in the upper left-hand corner is a segment of a tribe of aboriginals from north Australia. They were just having a meeting, sitting around. There is some connection and relationship betwene these two photographs.
Mikela: The aboriginal photograph just shows men. Women participated in those circles, but the women are very shy. As we put those two images together, even the number of people was identical. The ideal number for small group work is no more than 12. When you put together more than 12, it becomes difficult to do complex tasks. And if you look at the distance, its about the right distance for sitting around a fire.
There's another number that begins to appear. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the number 200. That number 200 is interesting because it's about as large as a tribe ever got. Once they got bigger than 200, a power struggle would occur and the tribe would break apart. 12 is the family unit. And 200 is the economic unit. It's just the last couple hundred years that were tryign to work in these mega-corporations. We're going against our biology almost.
Philip: Another level of talking about these photographs is that these aboriginals assumed that they were connected, connected in a way that’s hard for us to understand because of their connection to the earth, to plants, and to animals. Digital aboriginals means that we're coming full circle. We're relearning what it means to be connected.
Mikela: A lot of what's happening in the digital landscape, like blogging, is triggering this biological memory.
This is where our research is. Is there something happening in our culture that's very similar to what's happening in the business landscape and in our journey of consciousness? How we describe that centerpiece is with four platforms. The first one is Who Owns the Wind, which has to do with the dissolution of ownership as we know it. Ownership is not working. The second piece has to do with the return of the storytellers and the collapse of traditional advertising. Advertising people say that as soon as Tivo households hit 10 million they're going to stop doing TV advertisements. Even people who listen to the ads don't remember where they heard what. What does that mean if advertisers can't reach you with traditional advertising? The only way to connect with us is authentic stories.
Philip: Authentic and compelling. Our feeling is that this is just the beginning. You can't fool the public.
Mikela: The third platform is Tribal Mind, which has to do with collaborative work structures. And the fourth platform is Riding the Songlines, or the capacity of new models of leadership and consciousness.
When the dialogue space is transformed the power relationship is transformed. Whenever the power relationship is transformed we must change our perception of what is important. When Matt Damon was in Japan, teenage girls held up their cell phones to stream video to their friends. The traditional media was also there. Who is more important in that equation, the teenagers or the media? Those teenagers are the ones who are going to create the buzz about the movie, not the article in Teen People. Now you have to consider how to connect with the teenagers. A traditional press release is not going to connect with them.
Philip: Gere are some of the things that go along with storytelling. They're all ages. Nobody's bored. And nobody, I can assure you, is asking whether this is his original story. This is a story that has been told since time immemorial.
Mikela: This is how the big stories happen. When stories were conveyed by oral tradition, storytellers revised stories when people looked away. The oral tradition gives you tremendous feedback. These stories become fully tweaked.
Philip: It was also considered a work in progress. It was never a finished product.
Mikela: You were not allowed to create an original work until you had copied all of the masters.
Philip: Original work was not a concept. Copyright? There was no question about that
Mikela: What Lessig is describing is the way things have been since the beginning of time. We're returning to an oral culture. I think we're the last generation that's going to write the way we write. The average person use to know 50,000 words. Kids today know about 25,000 words. When was the last time you said "I sauntered across the room?" You don't. That's a written word, not a spoken word. If we're approaching the characteristics and number of words of an oral tradition, what does that mean? In an oral tradition, reputation is extremely important. Relationships are extremely important. Intimacy is extremely important.
I grew up in a strange household where we had a lot of books about Zen tradition. There was a story about a teacup that I used to hear all the time. When we began telling these stories in corporations, we decided we needed a story that communicated the importance to open your mind.
Philip: This is the story of a student who had been wanting his entire adult life to visit with the master and watch the master perform the traditional tea ceremony. Finally, the opportunity arose. As he watched the master pouring the tea, he felt privileged to be in the presence of the master. He noticed that the tea was getting dangerously close to the top of the cup. Before he knew it, the tea had overflowed and was staining the table. He continued to pour. At a certain point, he couldn't hold back any more. "Master, the tea is overflowing! The cup is full! It can't take any more!" And the master said, "Yes, just like your mind."
Mikela: I heard this story many times. It wasn't until we started telling this story until we discovered the meaning of it. The reason why he gained enlightenment? There are two reasons. One is that the tea ceremony is a profound part of their cultural context. It's a metaphor for all life. In anthropology, it’s the difference between a high-content culture and a high-context culture. The second thing is his relationship with the teacher. He had such profound intimacy and trust with the teacher that everything the teacher said was like a pebble in a pond.
Philip: He was listening differently.
Mikela: The story used to just be a stupid story, but when I began to think about it in a different way, it came to life. We don't spend a lot of time doing things over and over and over and over and over and looking for deeper meaning in things. I think blogging is going to shift our society, and it's because of the storytelling.
Something happens when you go deeper and deeper and deeper. These core archetypes have formed in every culture of the world. As storytelling is being introduced not just into the cultural space but also the corporate space, the ancient creative is being tapped into in ourselves.
These are some of the things you would learn if you studied with a mystic. You're not your personality. Everything is connected. You are the storyteller. Does that seem familiar? Is it something that you kind of know at some level? We came up with this phrase: digital sutras. Those are statements designed to shift your consciousness in a certain way.
Philip: They're sounds. They're like a scientific experiments.
Mikela: What are our big predictions for the future? Virtually enhanced real-life events are going to be more and more where the artistry is going to exist. We're also in an age where complexity is going to reclaim control. The third is established redundancies. The capacity to utilize social networks will be the work of the next generation.
In an information dense world the unrepeatable present moment will become a highly valued event.
South by Southwest 2003 XIV
Karl Deckard, Cory Doctorow, Maitresse Elise, and Jim Munroe: Why I Dig Working in the Cultural Gutter
Munroe: My name's Jim Munroe. I've written three novels. One of them is about another guy who goes to another planet to teach English. But when I'm at parties, I find myself saying I write novels. And I say it's science fiction-influenced stuff. I'm interested in my own tendency to sidestep that sort of stuff. I'm very interested in people who are involved in things that are not terribly highly regarded by society in terms of the arts.
Doctorow: I'm Cory Doctorow. I'm a blogger, a science-fiction writer, and I work for a nonprofit organziation called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I write science fiction, and not just science fiction, but science fiction for Slashdot readers that will get published on the Internet. That can be seen as one step below self-publishing. It's considered scraping the bottom of the barrel. But if there's hope, it's in the trolls. Will someone care about the poor Slashdot reader? I write for them. You need to be involved in Internet culture to understand it. I'm fairly unapologetic about using terms and jargon that comes out of that milieu. I get surrounded by people at science-fiction conventions by people who wonder what I'm smoking.
Science-fiction writing doesn’t pay for shit. Roald Dahl sold his short stories one at a time for enough money to feed his family of four for a month. Asimov's pays about enough to feed a family of four for a meal. But occasionally, the New York Times discovers you and what you do. Fuck you gutter, the New York Times thinks I'm cool
Elise: Ive done a lot of things in the adult entertainment. I'm on this panel as a porn actress. I've done four adult videos. Two were bi and two were lesbian. I've done stripping. I write erotica. I've done the modeling. I've done the Internet.
I also have a Ph.D. in romance linguistics. The adult entertainment industry got me through school. When people ask me what I do, I say translation. That is one of my jobs. But that pays nothing. If someone's truly interested, I'll go into detail about what I do, but if it's just anyone, I'll say I'm a writer. If they ask what I'm writing, I'll say true-life adventure stories. I'm not ashamed, but sometimes you do have to protect yourself.
Deckard: I design video games. I worked on the PC game Half-Life and a game for Nintendo's console Metroid Prime. What is this gutter? Who are these people who look down on all of the careers were talking about today? And why do we care?
Munroe: The cultural gutter is just something I made up. I made up this idea of there being gutter genres. I've always been attracted to science fiction, but people generally remember the crappy science-fiction movie that they saw and stigmatize the genre as a whole. I'm drawn to the genre with the interest in defusing that as much as I can.
When I got involved in video games and started talking about video games, talking about them as art, I realized that I'm drawn to these genres because they have a basis that keeps drawing people back to them. Because I like violating these cultural norms, it’s a perfect place for me. For unconventional thinkers like Elise, instead of following a traditional writing career with a smattering of erotica, she did what she did.
When I write a science-fiction novel, I feel free. You get to write about robots, for Christ's sake. There's a fundamental fun element that draws me to it. I have a lot more freedom in terms of what I can do.
Elise: I've really been enjoying the BDS&M I've been seeing in the mass media lately. I don't mind the lesser stigma. My sister understands what I'm doing a little more. My parents appreciate some of the writing I've done, but they don’t know everything I'm doing.
It's a huge fantasy being a porn star. It's fantasy being a stripper or a dominatrix. You get to be a schoolgirl, a teacher, a nurse. My life is not boring.
Doctorow: Who are the people looking down their nose? And why does it matter? It only matters when it matters. I used to work at a science-fiction bookstore, and I used to hang out at the science-fiction library. "Speculative fiction" is one of those shame words. "It's not a comic, it's a graphic novel!"
When I was 12, it was a great place to hang out. But when I was 20 and applying to a writing program at York University, saying I wanted to write science fiction was fairly embarrassing. In Canada, much of the writing is supported by arts grants. And they don't award grants to genre writers. That can mean the difference between a writer having time to finish writing a novel or not having the time.
I like having the freedom to write about the things that excite me. You guys are my tribe, and it's not necessarily the case that this is weird. But in the larger world, there's a bit of disdain for such unbridled technology-related enthusiasm. Not having to be apologetic about being enthusiastic about technology is good and refreshing. The rewards of fiction writing are so slim that if you didn't love it there'd be no reason to do it. I'm glad to be in the gutter to write like I feel like writing.
Deckard: The kind of work I do I don’t necessarily want it to be talked about at dinner parties. I want people in cool smoky lounges and subway stations to talk about my work. That's my tribe. That's who you should be doing your art for: the people like you. There've been a lot of times in my life where I've noticed that there is definitely a "them" spoiling things for me. I don't know who they are.
I've worked in Seattle and in record stores for a lot of my time. When the Nirvana record "Bleach" came out, we all loved it. Then some jerk at Rolling Stone dubbed it the Seattle grunge scene. We were wearing flannel because it's cold and wet in Seattle. It's hard to keep creativity when you have to filter it through so many people.
Doctorow: Working in the gutter is working out of scrutiny. William Gibson got an honorary Ph.D. from the Rhode Island School of Design. William Gibson's start in the genre is actually pretty interesting. He used to draw single-panel comic strips for fanzines. We are all geeks under the sin. It's nice to avoid the scrutiny.
Elise: What we have in common is that we enjoy extreme fantasy. In the leather world, there's a huge crossover between the leather community, science fiction, games, and Ren fair. I consider myself to be a big geek in a big way. Put me in a costume and I'm happy. Is there a bigger stigma being a sci-fi geek or being a porn enthusiast?
Doctorow: Do we really need to measure? My pain is like… [He gestures with his hands.]
Elise: This isn’t about pain.
Munroe: If you're at a rock concert, it's cooler to know a lot about porn than it is about science fiction. Fantasy is an interesting thing. It's assumed that they're immature. A lot of people's enthusiasm for it and dismissed. Everyone has that inside them. We go on a binge/purge thing. We watch a couple of Hollywood movies and then we read a very important novel. You know how there are writers who are light, but filling? I like to think of myself as the falafel of science fiction readers. I enjoy it when someone says, "I don’t like science fiction, but I like your books."
Doctorow: I thought you were science fiction influenced!
Munroe: I'm over that. I've come to terms with that. The fantasy of it is its strength. The media is heaping attention on, say, Grand Theft Auto. But I feel like it's like it was with comics 10 years ago when Watchmen came out. 10 years later, people don't really think about comics the same way. The stigma remains. Because these genres are fantasy based, they slip towards the gutter. They may have a moment in the spotlight, but then they fade away. I think that's a good thing.
Deckard: It's not interesting to me that these people are pushing these things back into the gutter. That’s being driven by people who might not understand any of these genres. If you've never seen this film that you say is so bad, how do you know it's so bad?
Elise: you know how they say if you're going to smoke pot, then you start heroin? If you become a stripper, the next step is porn. I didn't have any stripper friends, but being in the leather community, I was very comfortable. And I didn't start stripping under I was 31. My leather friends thought it was great. When I started doing movies, I had huge support. I don’t know if I'd want to move to Southern California and just do them with anyone.
Doctorow: Science-fiction writers in Toronto are really lucky. When I was 12, I was hanging out at the Spaced Out Library. By the time I was 16 and got to alternative school, I was in a writing workshop.
Munroe: I just met Cory a few years ago. I didn’t really have any contacts with the science-fiction community. I grew up making zines in the punk-rock community. I started self-publishing and ended up with a full-length novel. I published my first novel with Harper Collins, and it didn't work out that great, so I decided to self-publish my second novel. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren't for zines. Self-publishing is OK.
Deckard: I basically grew up my whole life playing video games. I knew it was something I wanted to get into. In college I studied graphic design. It was a natural step to get into game design. I moved out to Seattle to work for Nintendo and did graphic design for their magazine and players guides. And then I got a job in game design.
Munroe: The economics are just an indicator for the appetites that exists for these things. The guilt that I'm performing is just a mirror of how socially as a society we aren't comfortable acting out these fantasies. We cordon it off.
Doctorow: If the gutter is just right, you have no scrutiny, and there's vibrant economic activity.
Elise: The money is a driving factor in the adult entertainment industry. But a lot of people go into it just out of curiosity.
Deckard: When my wife and I were talking about this, she said, "Haven't you already stepped up onto the curb?" Because video games do sell well.
Doctorow: The urge to transgress is the urge to step back into the gutter. They've mainstreamed Grand Theft Auto, but can they mainstream Journey Through the Cancerous Colon?
Deckard: Games are a much more family thing in Japan. It's not just little Timmy buying games. It's mom. And it's a bunch of games. It's the same for comics and porn. One section of the gutter that's not included here today is board games. Board games are huge in Germany. I end up having to import games and translate them so I can play them.
Elise: I would still do it, but less often.
Doctorow: I started submitting science-fiction stories when I was 16, and I didn’t get accepted until I was 26. When I got my advance for the novel, I got a check for a three-paragraph piece in Wired. The check from Wired was $100 less than my advance.
Munroe: People aren't in this for the money.
Elise: There are people in it for the money in my field, and they're not happy.
Doctorow: William Gibson writes about denuding the counter culture landscape. The last scene he saw get co-opted was punk. That took 18 months. Then came grunge. That took three weeks. Staying on the transgressive edge makes it harder to participate in the denuding of the counter culture landscape.
Doctorow: I think people wear Star Trek tunics because they're proud. The signifier of a Star Trek tunic is "I am incredibly proud of being distant from your pop culture. Screw y'all."
Munroe: It's also a matter of not having a clue and not caring. There's nothing secret or attractive about the secret society of Star Trek.
Deckard: A lot of times, people don't care what those other people's opinions are. I've been a big skate punk since I was a little kid. People kind of look at us weird when we come up on our skateboards. I don't care what they think. It's kind of sad to see that lost. Just as grunge got big, you start seeing cheap skateboards in K-Mart and Target. All of a sudden it becomes less us. You do everything you can to make that not happen.
Doctorow: Then some bastard came along and made Tony Hawk Skating. Those bastard video game makers sucked out all the life out of skating.
Karl Deckard, Cory Doctorow, Maitresse Elise, and Jim Munroe: Why I Dig Working in the Cultural Gutter
Deckard is a senior game designer who has worked on Metroid Prime for Nintendo and Half-Life. Doctorow is outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a contributor to Boing Boing, and author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Elise is an adult actress and writer of erotica. And Munroe was managing editor of Adbusters before writing novels and making video games. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Munroe: My name's Jim Munroe. I've written three novels. One of them is about another guy who goes to another planet to teach English. But when I'm at parties, I find myself saying I write novels. And I say it's science fiction-influenced stuff. I'm interested in my own tendency to sidestep that sort of stuff. I'm very interested in people who are involved in things that are not terribly highly regarded by society in terms of the arts.
Doctorow: I'm Cory Doctorow. I'm a blogger, a science-fiction writer, and I work for a nonprofit organziation called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I write science fiction, and not just science fiction, but science fiction for Slashdot readers that will get published on the Internet. That can be seen as one step below self-publishing. It's considered scraping the bottom of the barrel. But if there's hope, it's in the trolls. Will someone care about the poor Slashdot reader? I write for them. You need to be involved in Internet culture to understand it. I'm fairly unapologetic about using terms and jargon that comes out of that milieu. I get surrounded by people at science-fiction conventions by people who wonder what I'm smoking.
Science-fiction writing doesn’t pay for shit. Roald Dahl sold his short stories one at a time for enough money to feed his family of four for a month. Asimov's pays about enough to feed a family of four for a meal. But occasionally, the New York Times discovers you and what you do. Fuck you gutter, the New York Times thinks I'm cool
Elise: Ive done a lot of things in the adult entertainment. I'm on this panel as a porn actress. I've done four adult videos. Two were bi and two were lesbian. I've done stripping. I write erotica. I've done the modeling. I've done the Internet.
I also have a Ph.D. in romance linguistics. The adult entertainment industry got me through school. When people ask me what I do, I say translation. That is one of my jobs. But that pays nothing. If someone's truly interested, I'll go into detail about what I do, but if it's just anyone, I'll say I'm a writer. If they ask what I'm writing, I'll say true-life adventure stories. I'm not ashamed, but sometimes you do have to protect yourself.
Deckard: I design video games. I worked on the PC game Half-Life and a game for Nintendo's console Metroid Prime. What is this gutter? Who are these people who look down on all of the careers were talking about today? And why do we care?
Munroe: The cultural gutter is just something I made up. I made up this idea of there being gutter genres. I've always been attracted to science fiction, but people generally remember the crappy science-fiction movie that they saw and stigmatize the genre as a whole. I'm drawn to the genre with the interest in defusing that as much as I can.
When I got involved in video games and started talking about video games, talking about them as art, I realized that I'm drawn to these genres because they have a basis that keeps drawing people back to them. Because I like violating these cultural norms, it’s a perfect place for me. For unconventional thinkers like Elise, instead of following a traditional writing career with a smattering of erotica, she did what she did.
When I write a science-fiction novel, I feel free. You get to write about robots, for Christ's sake. There's a fundamental fun element that draws me to it. I have a lot more freedom in terms of what I can do.
Elise: I've really been enjoying the BDS&M I've been seeing in the mass media lately. I don't mind the lesser stigma. My sister understands what I'm doing a little more. My parents appreciate some of the writing I've done, but they don’t know everything I'm doing.
It's a huge fantasy being a porn star. It's fantasy being a stripper or a dominatrix. You get to be a schoolgirl, a teacher, a nurse. My life is not boring.
Doctorow: Who are the people looking down their nose? And why does it matter? It only matters when it matters. I used to work at a science-fiction bookstore, and I used to hang out at the science-fiction library. "Speculative fiction" is one of those shame words. "It's not a comic, it's a graphic novel!"
When I was 12, it was a great place to hang out. But when I was 20 and applying to a writing program at York University, saying I wanted to write science fiction was fairly embarrassing. In Canada, much of the writing is supported by arts grants. And they don't award grants to genre writers. That can mean the difference between a writer having time to finish writing a novel or not having the time.
I like having the freedom to write about the things that excite me. You guys are my tribe, and it's not necessarily the case that this is weird. But in the larger world, there's a bit of disdain for such unbridled technology-related enthusiasm. Not having to be apologetic about being enthusiastic about technology is good and refreshing. The rewards of fiction writing are so slim that if you didn't love it there'd be no reason to do it. I'm glad to be in the gutter to write like I feel like writing.
Deckard: The kind of work I do I don’t necessarily want it to be talked about at dinner parties. I want people in cool smoky lounges and subway stations to talk about my work. That's my tribe. That's who you should be doing your art for: the people like you. There've been a lot of times in my life where I've noticed that there is definitely a "them" spoiling things for me. I don't know who they are.
I've worked in Seattle and in record stores for a lot of my time. When the Nirvana record "Bleach" came out, we all loved it. Then some jerk at Rolling Stone dubbed it the Seattle grunge scene. We were wearing flannel because it's cold and wet in Seattle. It's hard to keep creativity when you have to filter it through so many people.
Doctorow: Working in the gutter is working out of scrutiny. William Gibson got an honorary Ph.D. from the Rhode Island School of Design. William Gibson's start in the genre is actually pretty interesting. He used to draw single-panel comic strips for fanzines. We are all geeks under the sin. It's nice to avoid the scrutiny.
Elise: What we have in common is that we enjoy extreme fantasy. In the leather world, there's a huge crossover between the leather community, science fiction, games, and Ren fair. I consider myself to be a big geek in a big way. Put me in a costume and I'm happy. Is there a bigger stigma being a sci-fi geek or being a porn enthusiast?
Doctorow: Do we really need to measure? My pain is like… [He gestures with his hands.]
Elise: This isn’t about pain.
Munroe: If you're at a rock concert, it's cooler to know a lot about porn than it is about science fiction. Fantasy is an interesting thing. It's assumed that they're immature. A lot of people's enthusiasm for it and dismissed. Everyone has that inside them. We go on a binge/purge thing. We watch a couple of Hollywood movies and then we read a very important novel. You know how there are writers who are light, but filling? I like to think of myself as the falafel of science fiction readers. I enjoy it when someone says, "I don’t like science fiction, but I like your books."
Doctorow: I thought you were science fiction influenced!
Munroe: I'm over that. I've come to terms with that. The fantasy of it is its strength. The media is heaping attention on, say, Grand Theft Auto. But I feel like it's like it was with comics 10 years ago when Watchmen came out. 10 years later, people don't really think about comics the same way. The stigma remains. Because these genres are fantasy based, they slip towards the gutter. They may have a moment in the spotlight, but then they fade away. I think that's a good thing.
Deckard: It's not interesting to me that these people are pushing these things back into the gutter. That’s being driven by people who might not understand any of these genres. If you've never seen this film that you say is so bad, how do you know it's so bad?
Question: When you got into what it is you do now, did you have a community there to begin with that you felt supported by?
Elise: you know how they say if you're going to smoke pot, then you start heroin? If you become a stripper, the next step is porn. I didn't have any stripper friends, but being in the leather community, I was very comfortable. And I didn't start stripping under I was 31. My leather friends thought it was great. When I started doing movies, I had huge support. I don’t know if I'd want to move to Southern California and just do them with anyone.
Doctorow: Science-fiction writers in Toronto are really lucky. When I was 12, I was hanging out at the Spaced Out Library. By the time I was 16 and got to alternative school, I was in a writing workshop.
Munroe: I just met Cory a few years ago. I didn’t really have any contacts with the science-fiction community. I grew up making zines in the punk-rock community. I started self-publishing and ended up with a full-length novel. I published my first novel with Harper Collins, and it didn't work out that great, so I decided to self-publish my second novel. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren't for zines. Self-publishing is OK.
Deckard: I basically grew up my whole life playing video games. I knew it was something I wanted to get into. In college I studied graphic design. It was a natural step to get into game design. I moved out to Seattle to work for Nintendo and did graphic design for their magazine and players guides. And then I got a job in game design.
Question: There's a good deal of economic force behind what you do. Yet you perceive it as being in the gutter?
Munroe: The economics are just an indicator for the appetites that exists for these things. The guilt that I'm performing is just a mirror of how socially as a society we aren't comfortable acting out these fantasies. We cordon it off.
Doctorow: If the gutter is just right, you have no scrutiny, and there's vibrant economic activity.
Elise: The money is a driving factor in the adult entertainment industry. But a lot of people go into it just out of curiosity.
Deckard: When my wife and I were talking about this, she said, "Haven't you already stepped up onto the curb?" Because video games do sell well.
Doctorow: The urge to transgress is the urge to step back into the gutter. They've mainstreamed Grand Theft Auto, but can they mainstream Journey Through the Cancerous Colon?
Deckard: Games are a much more family thing in Japan. It's not just little Timmy buying games. It's mom. And it's a bunch of games. It's the same for comics and porn. One section of the gutter that's not included here today is board games. Board games are huge in Germany. I end up having to import games and translate them so I can play them.
Question: I would argue that you're doing this to indulge yourselves. If you make money, great. But if you didn't make money, would you still be doing it?
Elise: I would still do it, but less often.
Doctorow: I started submitting science-fiction stories when I was 16, and I didn’t get accepted until I was 26. When I got my advance for the novel, I got a check for a three-paragraph piece in Wired. The check from Wired was $100 less than my advance.
Munroe: People aren't in this for the money.
Elise: There are people in it for the money in my field, and they're not happy.
Question: What do you guys think is the difference between the cultural gutter and the cultural leading edge? Historically, it's always been such. Bright interesting people find bright interesting things and then the broader culture caught on.
Doctorow: William Gibson writes about denuding the counter culture landscape. The last scene he saw get co-opted was punk. That took 18 months. Then came grunge. That took three weeks. Staying on the transgressive edge makes it harder to participate in the denuding of the counter culture landscape.
Question: Why are some things, like being a fantasy football player, accepted, while other things are scary?
Doctorow: I think people wear Star Trek tunics because they're proud. The signifier of a Star Trek tunic is "I am incredibly proud of being distant from your pop culture. Screw y'all."
Munroe: It's also a matter of not having a clue and not caring. There's nothing secret or attractive about the secret society of Star Trek.
Deckard: A lot of times, people don't care what those other people's opinions are. I've been a big skate punk since I was a little kid. People kind of look at us weird when we come up on our skateboards. I don't care what they think. It's kind of sad to see that lost. Just as grunge got big, you start seeing cheap skateboards in K-Mart and Target. All of a sudden it becomes less us. You do everything you can to make that not happen.
Doctorow: Then some bastard came along and made Tony Hawk Skating. Those bastard video game makers sucked out all the life out of skating.
Interlude: South by Southwest 2003 XIV
After last night's Fray Cafe and the last two days of active transcribing, I'm feeling a little burnt out. While I went to the "Computers vs. Blackboards: Net Learning or Not Learning?" panel discussion this morning after meeting Scott Heiferman for breakfast, I did email for work instead of taking notes. Then, after lunch with Don Jarrell, the coordinator of the Austin Company of Friends group, I skipped Joshua Davis' keynote entirely in order to meet deadline for the May CoF events calendar. If anyone comes across any notes or transcripts for these two events, let me know. I'll at least link to them. Sorry I couldn't keep this up the whole conference.
After last night's Fray Cafe and the last two days of active transcribing, I'm feeling a little burnt out. While I went to the "Computers vs. Blackboards: Net Learning or Not Learning?" panel discussion this morning after meeting Scott Heiferman for breakfast, I did email for work instead of taking notes. Then, after lunch with Don Jarrell, the coordinator of the Austin Company of Friends group, I skipped Joshua Davis' keynote entirely in order to meet deadline for the May CoF events calendar. If anyone comes across any notes or transcripts for these two events, let me know. I'll at least link to them. Sorry I couldn't keep this up the whole conference.
South by Southwest 2003 XIII
Carrie Bickner, Ben Brown, and Kevin Smokler: Book Culture
Smokler: Please address all publishing questions to the publishing panel at 5 o'clock this afternoon. Thank you.
Brown: Bling bling.
Bickner: Happy happy.
Smokler: Joy joy. Good morning, everybody. My name's Kevin Smokler, and I'll be your moderator this morning. We'll be talking about books and the Web. Are they friends or enemies? Friends or lovers? Friends with benefits?
When I came to South by Southwest in 2000, I was a failed writer and looking for something literary. I was looking for something book related, and they had an e-books panel. That was three years ago. The e-book issue has largely been put to rest. It's more or less considered a failure in publishing circles.
We never think now about publishing and the Web in terms of the Web supplanting books. We're looking at how the two relate rather than will one dominate the other.
Bickner: I am with the New Your Public Library digital library program as the assistant director for digital information and system design.
Smokler: Ben Brown is a Web rock star, personality, and all-around good guy. But for our purposes today, he's the co-publisher of So New Media, an exciting, interesting new model of publishing. The very definition of being published has changed thanks to the Web.
Bickner: I am by training a librarian, but I'm also a writer. How I got into librarianship, initially I thought I'd be a special collections librarian, an archivist. It turned out that I actually knew a lot about technology. Now that I'm in the digital library program, my job is almost what I started out to do. It's preservation. How do we preserve our digital cultural heritage? 50 years from now, how are we going to be able to find these objects?
Brown: I'm a Perl programmer by trade, but I have a creative writing degree. When I started doing a lot of writing and looking for places to publish, it's not a great market for the kind of stuff I write. I was living in New Zealand at the time and I pitched a lot of articles about book culture. Magazines there just weren't interested. So I started a magazine. I did it myself. I did it punk-rock style, and we sold several hundreds of copies. When I got back, my partner and I started So New Media to primarily focus on writers who mostly publish online.
Smokler: I'm a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and until last week was working on Central Booking. We also used that forum format and software interface to have authors come visit. Our readers would post questions and the authors would answer them.
Where should we start? The four main areas we've brought up in terms of where books and the Web intersect in interesting ways are promotion, dissemination, preservation, and selection vs. publishing. Three years ago, there was a lot of talk about print on demand. Before we could do that, seeing your book was some mark of quality, some mark that you had in fact made it as a writer. Your book had passed through some sort of selection process no matter how good or bad it was.
The Web has turned that entirely on its head. What does that mean? Now that everybody can be published, what does it mean to be published? Now the question isn't who can get published and is that worth reading, but, as a reader, how do we select what's worth reading?
Brown: We have a pretty rigorous selection process. We get hundreds and hundreds -- OK, many many -- submissions every week. We've done 12 books or something. We can't read all of the submissions that we get already. One of the major things we evaluate is: Does this author already have somewhat of an online following? Beyond that, it is very much my personal tastes in books. My hope is that the people in our audience will have tastes similar to what I have and just buy everything we put out. We've done everything from personal narrative to science fiction. But they all fall in moderny categories.
Another thing is dealing with the authors and how enthusiastic about the book. Some people are like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll put out a book." And other people are like, "Yeah! I'll go on a world tour, I'll visit 200 cities and put on a circus act in every city." Those are the people we publish.
The first people we published were members of the high-click personal Web site community. They had a decent audience. Our goal was not to sell books to viewers of the Web sites. The goal was to get writing on the Web already into the hands of people who buy books at the bookstore.
It's not new, but there are thousands and thousands of books being released every week into the bookstores. There's no distinguishing between your book and another. You've got to get out there and do a little song and dance for people.
One of the first people we did was Greg Knauss. He did a 40 Web log tour. Every day he'd do a virtual reading and write a piece for all these different sites. He got a lot of press because nobody had ever done that before. It was a tremendous promotional vehicle, and Greg could stay at home with his kids.
Smokler: that’s a more creative promotional effort than 90% of New York publishers have thought of. Until the last year and a half, very few publishers' Web sites had anything other than the season's catalog. If you've ever been to a reading, you know that readers just salivate over any information about the writing process. The Web is able to hone in on that in ways that other media cannot.
Neil Gaiman did a blog while he was writing American Gods. Robert Olen Butler wrote a short story live on a Web cam. The science fiction community has embraced that first for obvious reasons, but it's only the beginning.
We know how the Web has changed how books are made. Let's talk about the reverse.
Bickner: One of the most exciting things that happened in my career took place at the New York Public Library. We took in a box of papers from Malcolm X after his trip to Mecca when he rethought a lot of his ideas. These ideas have been unexplored because of a lack of material. This box was found in a storage locker in Florida. The storage owner sold the stuff, and it eventually ended up on Ebay. Through a lot of negotiation and other work, the New York Public Library acquired the collection.
That the box survived was an accident of the stuff the material was written on. Once we got the collection, we started getting calls from people who also had boxes of Malcolm X materials. I began looking for the analogous accidents and the analogous materials in the Web world and it's not there.
Let's say Josh Davis has a flood in his basement. Does someone save his CPU? We're not taking steps now to preserve digital materials. 20 years from now, how are we going to understand Cory Doctorow's editorial process?
Smokler: The way authors compose their books is changing. The number of authors who compose their books with pencil and paper is shrinking. There's a group of people called the Pencil and Paper Society, but those writers are rare.
Bickner: This is something that we just photographed at the New York Public Library to digitize. It's Walt Whitman's copy of Leaves of Grass. The pencil marks you see are his editing comments for the second edition. This physical object shows you what his process was like.
My own manuscript shows tracked changes in Microsoft Word. The Walt Whitman book is physical. With this, it's not just about saving the Microsoft Word file, it's about having the technology to read these tracked changes. 20 years from now, is someone going to want to see the email that I sent Tanya, a friend who helped me with the book? What do you save? What part do you save? Do you really want to save it for later? What is the digital object?
Smokler: In the future, will a rare books library be a collection of G4's? What if its format isn't compatible? What if Microsoft Word doesn't exist? Pens and pencils doesn't get evolved out of existence.
Brown: You're going to kill me. We do one print proof of our books. We delete all the changes and then we use that file to publish the book. That's all there is.
Smokler: Do people like Ben, Carrie, have the resources to do this sort of thing?
Bickner: Some of the resources are less expensive than you might think. Publishers do have a responsibility to preserve a part of their cultural heritage. Publishers print books on acid-free paper. Open standards are a pretty good bet. It's difficult. If you have to exchange with people working in proprietary software like Microsoft Word, it can be difficult to collaborate.
Brown: We just have to start saving everything instead of emptying our trash every morning
Bickner: Or find someone to save it for you. The collectors are the people who are going to have this stuff. Josh Davis puts out a CD-ROM every year. You know someone is collecting those.
Smokler: History is an incomplete story. We save what is most illuminating and most helpful. Ben, 20 years from now you may not want the first few books published by So New MMedia.
Brown: This is one of our first books. It was done by my partner James, who co-founded the company. It's a collection of short stories, and it's bound by a used envelope that he found at the office he worked at. He made photocopies at work and stapled them at his desk. That one's wrapped in plastic.
This one is one of the later ones we did. We upgraded to having our own expensive laser printer in our house. We bought a fancy-pants German saddle stapler. The most recent books, we've finally upgraded and are doing perfect bound real books. We just send them off to printers.
Smokler: That’s Neal Pollackl
Brown: his first book was put out by McSweeney's, and he's got a novel coming out at Harper Collins.
Bickner: It's interesting to me that someone who's on both sides of the publishing world thinks that putting something in print is a way of exalting the work.
Brown: I have been publishing my work online for many, many years. It doesn't compare to holding the book in your hands or selling your book to someone. The micropayment future never showed up. We sell a book for $6, and we send the author $2 or $3. I don't make any money at all. I just sent Adam Rakunas several hundred dollars so he could pay his rent.
Smokler: We still have a bias that things printed on paper are more worthy than publishing online. We don't have the New York Times Book Review for people who publish online. It's seen as a haven for people who can't cut it in the real world.
Brown: Most of the people we publish will probably get book deals in the future. The fact that I'm willing to put the money up indicates that I at least think the writing is quality.
Smokler: I hope we're nearing a day where writers see the Web as a viable way to promote their work. Publishers just now are starting to clue into that. Publicists at most publishing houses are young, terribly ambitious, horribly overworked people. They've got 30-40 books under their tutelage, and a lot of books get swept away by the tide.
Brown: And promotional budgets are about 10% of the overall budget. Let's say your advance is $12,000. That means your promotional budget is $1,000.
Smokler: The attention to promotion needs to come from you. The Web allows writers to promote themselves.
Brown: Neal Pollack's first book was promoted exclusively online. He did online promotion and went on tour. The tour was promoted only online. He did a tour diary on his Web site, and he sold a zillion copies of the book. This book is very much the same. The power of the Web as a promotional tool for books is underestimated by people even like myself.
Bickner: I have a non-literary example of how this might play out. There was a health information publisher who specialized in AIDS and HIV information to be distributed in African countries. The publisher's question was: How do we create the content, print it, and then get it where it needs to be? They decided to create the content in PDF's, send them where they needed to be, and then print them.
Smokler: We want to do Q&A, but does anyone have anything else to say?
Brown: I have a project I'd like to talk about. You don't write and you don't do Web logs because you're a socially adept person. You also don't spend years and years of your life writing a novel because you're partying every night. We're doing these events now where they force authors into the punk-rock or indie-rock musician role. We have a monthly series now in which writers perform with bands. It changes the way people think of our company. We don't just publish books. We entertain people. You're not just interacting with the author, you might even dance.
Smokler: We used to say that the production of literature happens in private and the celebration of literature happens in public.
Bickner: I haven't heard that term in such a long time now. It's not as costly. These alternate delivery mechanisms are getting more and more respect. We don't have those easy distinctions to make anymore. My worry about which of this stuff do we save is a confusing one.
Smokler: Most bookstores have a policy with publishers that whatever they can't sell they can return.
Brown: Or destroy.
Smokler: You have no such agreement with self-published authors.
Brown: We have run into a little about that. People say, "You publish your own books?" I say, "No, I publish other people's books." It's changing because there are a lot more independent presses. There is still a stigma. If someone comes up to me and says, "I published my own book. Will you look at it?" I'm sorry, I don't have enough time.
Also, I can't call up the newspaper and say, "Hey, I published this book by another guy." They won't talk to me. That's why I have a publicist. There's a stigma against promoting yourself in the literature world. The Onion gave us an insanely good review of Neal's new book, and it was available on Amazon yet. It is now on Amazon and in bookstores, but it was a panic.
Smokler: I get asked a lot by aspiring authors how do I get my book reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Book reviews are at best a questionable method for promoting your book. What if it's lousy?
There's still a place for experts on books. The space for those experts is underutilized. We have maybe a dozen book reviewers that a publisher would run out and slap for a jacket blurb. That is too few. Who is book blogging? The Amazon thing is a diffuse way of doing that.
Bickner: You might have one or two of your friends review your book on Amazon.
Brown: That's not an unusual thing. Log out as Michael Crichton, log back in as Joe.
Smokler: Where do you find out what to read next?
Bickner: I have to have a couple of people suggest something before I read it. It's gotta be, "Here, you really must read this." If I had more time I would probably read book reviews.
Brown: I have a pretty healthy network of people to recommend stuff. I also go to the Amazon recommendations. I do that "I have this book, and I like it," thing, so my recommendation list is a finely tuned machine. I also buy anything anyone recommends on their blog. I read Boing Boing. I read Heath Row's Media Diet. Shout out to Heath.
Kevin's already blogged about his panel experience. Carrie's posted her notes online.
Carrie Bickner, Ben Brown, and Kevin Smokler: Book Culture
Bickner works as assistant director for digital information and system design at the New York Public Library and runs Rogue Librarian. Brown co-founded So New Media. Smokler works as a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and runs Where There's Smoke. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Smokler: Please address all publishing questions to the publishing panel at 5 o'clock this afternoon. Thank you.
Brown: Bling bling.
Bickner: Happy happy.
Smokler: Joy joy. Good morning, everybody. My name's Kevin Smokler, and I'll be your moderator this morning. We'll be talking about books and the Web. Are they friends or enemies? Friends or lovers? Friends with benefits?
When I came to South by Southwest in 2000, I was a failed writer and looking for something literary. I was looking for something book related, and they had an e-books panel. That was three years ago. The e-book issue has largely been put to rest. It's more or less considered a failure in publishing circles.
We never think now about publishing and the Web in terms of the Web supplanting books. We're looking at how the two relate rather than will one dominate the other.
Bickner: I am with the New Your Public Library digital library program as the assistant director for digital information and system design.
Smokler: Ben Brown is a Web rock star, personality, and all-around good guy. But for our purposes today, he's the co-publisher of So New Media, an exciting, interesting new model of publishing. The very definition of being published has changed thanks to the Web.
Bickner: I am by training a librarian, but I'm also a writer. How I got into librarianship, initially I thought I'd be a special collections librarian, an archivist. It turned out that I actually knew a lot about technology. Now that I'm in the digital library program, my job is almost what I started out to do. It's preservation. How do we preserve our digital cultural heritage? 50 years from now, how are we going to be able to find these objects?
Brown: I'm a Perl programmer by trade, but I have a creative writing degree. When I started doing a lot of writing and looking for places to publish, it's not a great market for the kind of stuff I write. I was living in New Zealand at the time and I pitched a lot of articles about book culture. Magazines there just weren't interested. So I started a magazine. I did it myself. I did it punk-rock style, and we sold several hundreds of copies. When I got back, my partner and I started So New Media to primarily focus on writers who mostly publish online.
Smokler: I'm a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and until last week was working on Central Booking. We also used that forum format and software interface to have authors come visit. Our readers would post questions and the authors would answer them.
Where should we start? The four main areas we've brought up in terms of where books and the Web intersect in interesting ways are promotion, dissemination, preservation, and selection vs. publishing. Three years ago, there was a lot of talk about print on demand. Before we could do that, seeing your book was some mark of quality, some mark that you had in fact made it as a writer. Your book had passed through some sort of selection process no matter how good or bad it was.
The Web has turned that entirely on its head. What does that mean? Now that everybody can be published, what does it mean to be published? Now the question isn't who can get published and is that worth reading, but, as a reader, how do we select what's worth reading?
Brown: We have a pretty rigorous selection process. We get hundreds and hundreds -- OK, many many -- submissions every week. We've done 12 books or something. We can't read all of the submissions that we get already. One of the major things we evaluate is: Does this author already have somewhat of an online following? Beyond that, it is very much my personal tastes in books. My hope is that the people in our audience will have tastes similar to what I have and just buy everything we put out. We've done everything from personal narrative to science fiction. But they all fall in moderny categories.
Another thing is dealing with the authors and how enthusiastic about the book. Some people are like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll put out a book." And other people are like, "Yeah! I'll go on a world tour, I'll visit 200 cities and put on a circus act in every city." Those are the people we publish.
The first people we published were members of the high-click personal Web site community. They had a decent audience. Our goal was not to sell books to viewers of the Web sites. The goal was to get writing on the Web already into the hands of people who buy books at the bookstore.
It's not new, but there are thousands and thousands of books being released every week into the bookstores. There's no distinguishing between your book and another. You've got to get out there and do a little song and dance for people.
One of the first people we did was Greg Knauss. He did a 40 Web log tour. Every day he'd do a virtual reading and write a piece for all these different sites. He got a lot of press because nobody had ever done that before. It was a tremendous promotional vehicle, and Greg could stay at home with his kids.
Smokler: that’s a more creative promotional effort than 90% of New York publishers have thought of. Until the last year and a half, very few publishers' Web sites had anything other than the season's catalog. If you've ever been to a reading, you know that readers just salivate over any information about the writing process. The Web is able to hone in on that in ways that other media cannot.
Neil Gaiman did a blog while he was writing American Gods. Robert Olen Butler wrote a short story live on a Web cam. The science fiction community has embraced that first for obvious reasons, but it's only the beginning.
We know how the Web has changed how books are made. Let's talk about the reverse.
Bickner: One of the most exciting things that happened in my career took place at the New York Public Library. We took in a box of papers from Malcolm X after his trip to Mecca when he rethought a lot of his ideas. These ideas have been unexplored because of a lack of material. This box was found in a storage locker in Florida. The storage owner sold the stuff, and it eventually ended up on Ebay. Through a lot of negotiation and other work, the New York Public Library acquired the collection.
That the box survived was an accident of the stuff the material was written on. Once we got the collection, we started getting calls from people who also had boxes of Malcolm X materials. I began looking for the analogous accidents and the analogous materials in the Web world and it's not there.
Let's say Josh Davis has a flood in his basement. Does someone save his CPU? We're not taking steps now to preserve digital materials. 20 years from now, how are we going to understand Cory Doctorow's editorial process?
Smokler: The way authors compose their books is changing. The number of authors who compose their books with pencil and paper is shrinking. There's a group of people called the Pencil and Paper Society, but those writers are rare.
Bickner: This is something that we just photographed at the New York Public Library to digitize. It's Walt Whitman's copy of Leaves of Grass. The pencil marks you see are his editing comments for the second edition. This physical object shows you what his process was like.
My own manuscript shows tracked changes in Microsoft Word. The Walt Whitman book is physical. With this, it's not just about saving the Microsoft Word file, it's about having the technology to read these tracked changes. 20 years from now, is someone going to want to see the email that I sent Tanya, a friend who helped me with the book? What do you save? What part do you save? Do you really want to save it for later? What is the digital object?
Smokler: In the future, will a rare books library be a collection of G4's? What if its format isn't compatible? What if Microsoft Word doesn't exist? Pens and pencils doesn't get evolved out of existence.
Brown: You're going to kill me. We do one print proof of our books. We delete all the changes and then we use that file to publish the book. That's all there is.
Smokler: Do people like Ben, Carrie, have the resources to do this sort of thing?
Bickner: Some of the resources are less expensive than you might think. Publishers do have a responsibility to preserve a part of their cultural heritage. Publishers print books on acid-free paper. Open standards are a pretty good bet. It's difficult. If you have to exchange with people working in proprietary software like Microsoft Word, it can be difficult to collaborate.
Brown: We just have to start saving everything instead of emptying our trash every morning
Bickner: Or find someone to save it for you. The collectors are the people who are going to have this stuff. Josh Davis puts out a CD-ROM every year. You know someone is collecting those.
Smokler: History is an incomplete story. We save what is most illuminating and most helpful. Ben, 20 years from now you may not want the first few books published by So New MMedia.
Brown: This is one of our first books. It was done by my partner James, who co-founded the company. It's a collection of short stories, and it's bound by a used envelope that he found at the office he worked at. He made photocopies at work and stapled them at his desk. That one's wrapped in plastic.
This one is one of the later ones we did. We upgraded to having our own expensive laser printer in our house. We bought a fancy-pants German saddle stapler. The most recent books, we've finally upgraded and are doing perfect bound real books. We just send them off to printers.
Smokler: That’s Neal Pollackl
Brown: his first book was put out by McSweeney's, and he's got a novel coming out at Harper Collins.
Bickner: It's interesting to me that someone who's on both sides of the publishing world thinks that putting something in print is a way of exalting the work.
Brown: I have been publishing my work online for many, many years. It doesn't compare to holding the book in your hands or selling your book to someone. The micropayment future never showed up. We sell a book for $6, and we send the author $2 or $3. I don't make any money at all. I just sent Adam Rakunas several hundred dollars so he could pay his rent.
Smokler: We still have a bias that things printed on paper are more worthy than publishing online. We don't have the New York Times Book Review for people who publish online. It's seen as a haven for people who can't cut it in the real world.
Brown: Most of the people we publish will probably get book deals in the future. The fact that I'm willing to put the money up indicates that I at least think the writing is quality.
Smokler: I hope we're nearing a day where writers see the Web as a viable way to promote their work. Publishers just now are starting to clue into that. Publicists at most publishing houses are young, terribly ambitious, horribly overworked people. They've got 30-40 books under their tutelage, and a lot of books get swept away by the tide.
Brown: And promotional budgets are about 10% of the overall budget. Let's say your advance is $12,000. That means your promotional budget is $1,000.
Smokler: The attention to promotion needs to come from you. The Web allows writers to promote themselves.
Brown: Neal Pollack's first book was promoted exclusively online. He did online promotion and went on tour. The tour was promoted only online. He did a tour diary on his Web site, and he sold a zillion copies of the book. This book is very much the same. The power of the Web as a promotional tool for books is underestimated by people even like myself.
Bickner: I have a non-literary example of how this might play out. There was a health information publisher who specialized in AIDS and HIV information to be distributed in African countries. The publisher's question was: How do we create the content, print it, and then get it where it needs to be? They decided to create the content in PDF's, send them where they needed to be, and then print them.
Smokler: We want to do Q&A, but does anyone have anything else to say?
Brown: I have a project I'd like to talk about. You don't write and you don't do Web logs because you're a socially adept person. You also don't spend years and years of your life writing a novel because you're partying every night. We're doing these events now where they force authors into the punk-rock or indie-rock musician role. We have a monthly series now in which writers perform with bands. It changes the way people think of our company. We don't just publish books. We entertain people. You're not just interacting with the author, you might even dance.
Smokler: We used to say that the production of literature happens in private and the celebration of literature happens in public.
Question: How would you distinguish vanity publishing from what we're talking about?
Bickner: I haven't heard that term in such a long time now. It's not as costly. These alternate delivery mechanisms are getting more and more respect. We don't have those easy distinctions to make anymore. My worry about which of this stuff do we save is a confusing one.
Smokler: Most bookstores have a policy with publishers that whatever they can't sell they can return.
Brown: Or destroy.
Smokler: You have no such agreement with self-published authors.
Brown: We have run into a little about that. People say, "You publish your own books?" I say, "No, I publish other people's books." It's changing because there are a lot more independent presses. There is still a stigma. If someone comes up to me and says, "I published my own book. Will you look at it?" I'm sorry, I don't have enough time.
Also, I can't call up the newspaper and say, "Hey, I published this book by another guy." They won't talk to me. That's why I have a publicist. There's a stigma against promoting yourself in the literature world. The Onion gave us an insanely good review of Neal's new book, and it was available on Amazon yet. It is now on Amazon and in bookstores, but it was a panic.
Question: What is the place of the book critic?
Smokler: I get asked a lot by aspiring authors how do I get my book reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Book reviews are at best a questionable method for promoting your book. What if it's lousy?
There's still a place for experts on books. The space for those experts is underutilized. We have maybe a dozen book reviewers that a publisher would run out and slap for a jacket blurb. That is too few. Who is book blogging? The Amazon thing is a diffuse way of doing that.
Bickner: You might have one or two of your friends review your book on Amazon.
Brown: That's not an unusual thing. Log out as Michael Crichton, log back in as Joe.
Smokler: Where do you find out what to read next?
Bickner: I have to have a couple of people suggest something before I read it. It's gotta be, "Here, you really must read this." If I had more time I would probably read book reviews.
Brown: I have a pretty healthy network of people to recommend stuff. I also go to the Amazon recommendations. I do that "I have this book, and I like it," thing, so my recommendation list is a finely tuned machine. I also buy anything anyone recommends on their blog. I read Boing Boing. I read Heath Row's Media Diet. Shout out to Heath.
Kevin's already blogged about his panel experience. Carrie's posted her notes online.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 XII
Heather Champ, Jason Nolan, Katharine Parrish, and Ana Sisnett: Conceptual Firewalls
Parrish: We're going to limit our concerns today to blogs. Blogs are such a powerful symbol. Today we'll consider blog technologies, cultures, and communities to address these questions: Can anyone publish anything at any time? What aspects of accessibility might we be overlooking? Does anyone publish anything at any time? If we removed any limitations, would people blog anything? How much do we really know about the breadth and depth of experience communicated by blogs? What do we do with this information?
If we make the claim that everyone has access, it becomes our problem. Some of it is beyond our direct control. It's still incumbent to ask, are there things that we do that maintain inequities? If the revolution will be bloggerized, what will its impact be? We must be careful when we say "we." This is a very particular "we." Do we want to see everyone blogging? Do we want everyone to have access to some vehicle for voicing dissent? Is there something inherent in blogs or blog cultures that don't translate well to other cultures?
One of our panelists, Cameron Marlowe can't be with us today. But he sent us his comments, so I'm going to keep talking. If you're familiar with Blogdex, you're familiar with Cameron. I can't find it on my laptop. Maybe I won't deliver Cameron's comments.
Champ: My name is Heather Champ. My Web log is is Harrumph.
Nolan: I will just talk in teacher voice. This is a picture that you have in handout. What I'm talking about is the Null and Hidden Curriculum. I've written about the Null and Hidden Curriculum of the Internet. Curriculum speaks to how we learn in any environment. Most of my work is around the types of learning that go on in non-school environments, such as online communities.
The hidden curriculum looks at what goes on beyond what is explicit. You have to be acculturated. You have to know how to participate in that environment. The Nolan Curriculum is a little more insidious. It's based on the idea that learning involves opportunitites as well as lost opportunities. The Null curriculum is what you did or did not choose.
The tools that we use to create limit what is said as well as offer opportunities for new forms of expression. The tools we use and the language we use influences the way we think. We can express ourselves in a varity of different ways.
As big a fan of blogs as I am, blogs are also tools for silencing and othering. How can tehre be democracy without access and representation? Are blogs reporducing dominant cultural norms as well as taking steps to challenge them? Blogs, from my experience, don't always expand cultural horizons. There's a natural difficulty dealing with foreign languages and the immediacy of online communications. I can't set up Moveable Type in Japanese because the instructions are in Japanese.
There are usually multilingual plug-ins, but they always start with English. The Internet can do two languages at once: English and another language. I want to create technology-based environment that do not privelege first.
How do we overcome the English-ness that's built into the Internet itself? I don't think we can. If you send an email message in Russian, the message gets sent with this HELO from server to server to server. Imagine if you had to greet everyone in a foreign language. The letter "a" in ASCII stands for American.
I don't want everybody to be equal. But I want there to be equal access. I want to foster and ensure communication. Can we overcome bias? No, but we can be conscious of it in the tools we create. My facetious question would be: Why shouldn't everything on the Internet be tied to the American way of life?
We are very much interested in other cultures, and we very much want to interact with them.
Sisnett: Katharine has touched off what has become a big change in my life. Before she contacted me I had only visited one blog consciously. It was Dr. Tom Ferguson's blog, and he's sitting right here in the front of the room. Katharine wrote to me and asked for my participation in this panel basically as a reality check.
What keeps me in the room is the issue of community. There is so much time spent on blogging, I wonder do these people have jobs? As much as I write, I don't spend that much time writing about anything. But for the last few weeks or so, I have been blogging like crazy. What became as a potentially adversial relationship has now become a love affair.
I am someone who is on the other side f the frewall. I am in community technology. I build bridges to people who may may not know how to use computers, know how to type, know English. There's another layer of questioning that has to do with the political implications of putting one's information out there.
If you're considering using Web logs as part of training programs or as a community-building tool, you need to consider whether the people you're serving are interested in using the tools. How do people stay in touch with each other? Is it the ideal form of communications? A lot fo the people we work with would rather have a spaghetti lunch or a face-to-face discussion. Most of the people don't use these tools, don't use them efficiently.
Access becomes an issue. Access to information. Access to technology and training in the use of those tools isn't available. The Mirror Project was a great alternative because it's about photographs. Then the question becomes "Who's going to pay for the camera? Who's going to develop the film?"
There's also a fear factor. If someone's an immigrant, they're going to be concerned with what they say and how they say it online. Some other questions that were raised include: Do I have to sign up to see blogs? What about privacy? What tools do I have to know how to use? I haven't used HTML since Java came around. What's interesting is that it's come back around to a text-based tool like what I first used: Telnet and Pine. Who gets to access my blog? Can I password-protect my blog? What if somebody wants to hack my blog? Can I protect it? The last question is the reliability of the information. How do you know how to trust the information? How do you know the blog wasn't set up for another sinister reason?
The work that Jason and Katharine have done is very relevant to a friend of mine. She works for a black college with scant resources. It takes three weeks to set up an email. There aren't enough accounts for students. They're all setting Yahoo accounts. The letters are taped to the keyboards. Imagine going to a college without enough computers?
The level of critical thinking I've found on the Net is something I don't always have in my day to day. Even if I disagree with it, at least it's something I can bounce off of. But ultimately, is it useful? What am I going to do with it?
Parrish: I'm just going to briefly outline some of Cameron's thoughts. One of the reasons I was interested in having Cameron on this panel is that Blogdex is an index to blog content and communities. There doesn't really exist any scientific statistical information on the content of Web logs.
I validate each and every blog that's added to and indexed by the system. This past year was the year of the oppressed, with the largest increases in Iranian, Chinese, and American conservative populations. It might be interesting to unpack how new communities online can be quellef by the larger existing groups or become central to the online world.
We're dealing with a monster here when we start asking these questions. I hope you can see that these are interrelated questions. Please bear with us. We're eating away into time to respond. These questions are best answered over beer.
I would like to ask Heather. I never became conscious of myself as a gendered individual. I knew I was a girl. I knew I was performed as a girl. But I never really considered my gender until I began working with technology, when I realized that I behaved as culturally female. How conscious are you of your gender?
Champ: I want to back it up a step to conferences. In 1995 I went to Internet World and Mac World. The most strongly I feel the division is at conferences and in the materials that are handed out to me. Last year, when I came to SXSW, I felt like it was predominately a white male conference. It's so terrible. Look, it's Joshua Davis, but where are the women? This year, SXSW has made more of an effort to find a balance.
I'm concerned about women who are coming after me, who look at these materials, and who feel whether these events speak to them. Anil recently posted a photo of Dave Winer's recent panel at Harvard, and it struck me that it's white, it's male, and they have beards. There were two women there? Those people don't speak to me. Is this the face of blogging?
Sisnett: I think it's two different things, though. There needs to be energy put into diversifying the attendance of conferences. Advertising dollars have not gone to newspapers owned by people of color for SXSW. Is it assumed that people of color don't care about SXSW? There aren't a lot of women who look like me in this entire building. It's about racism. It's about sexism. We need to say that and deal with it if we want it to change.
Nolan: For educators, the goal is just to get people online and blogging. I ask my students, "Why is this useful to you?" I have a freat student who's going to eclipse me in 30 seconds, and she never touched technology before. She was very hostile to working with technology. She was very hostile to blogging. Now she wants to work with women to blog to each other in a network segregated from the Internet. These are women who might live 50 meters away from each other, but they may never see each other. And the men don't want them to get online, because they know what the Web is for: porn. We've got a lot of great opportunities when we engage people who don't think it's important to be blogging.
Nolan: I teach mostly grad students, engineers and technology people. They're afraid of expressing themselves. I think they need to experience using technology before they can develop and design tools for others to use.
Nolan: You could say the same thing about Moveable Type. I can't speak to whether the genesis of a given tool based on gender has a role in their success.
Parrish: Teachers, particularly English teachers, are always forcing their students to journal and then interrogate them. There haven't been enough good thinking behind that. Most of my lack of sleep I've experienced in my teaching practice stems from forcing my students to journal. With blogging in the classroom, you're forcing people to bring something that is private into the public.
The way that we culturally think about out private thoughts and what happens when they're brought into the public space has a tremendous effect on how people perceive blogging. My students see blogging as a threat. The very concept was not enjoyable at all.
Nolan: You kept bringing up the notion of journal writing as being a specifically female-centered form of writing. In English and Japanese culture, men aren't diarists. But novel writing was very hard for women. They could get diaries published, however.
Sisnett: My first attempt searching blogs based on race ended up finding angry white men blogging about affirmative action. I was pretty underwhelmed by what I found to begin with. It didn't stop me, but it wasn't a welcoming effort. It turned out that two white men answered my questions in very thoughtful ways.
How do I bring all this great stuff back into my communities. And is it my responsibility? We don't tell people what to do. We let people know what tools are out there and leave the decision up to them.
Heather Champ, Jason Nolan, Katharine Parrish, and Ana Sisnett: Conceptual Firewalls
Champ is creator of the Mirror Project. Nolan co-edited the forthcoming International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments. Parrish researches the use of multimedia environments as spaces for non-narrative literary expression. Sisnett is executive director for Austin Free-Net. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Parrish: We're going to limit our concerns today to blogs. Blogs are such a powerful symbol. Today we'll consider blog technologies, cultures, and communities to address these questions: Can anyone publish anything at any time? What aspects of accessibility might we be overlooking? Does anyone publish anything at any time? If we removed any limitations, would people blog anything? How much do we really know about the breadth and depth of experience communicated by blogs? What do we do with this information?
If we make the claim that everyone has access, it becomes our problem. Some of it is beyond our direct control. It's still incumbent to ask, are there things that we do that maintain inequities? If the revolution will be bloggerized, what will its impact be? We must be careful when we say "we." This is a very particular "we." Do we want to see everyone blogging? Do we want everyone to have access to some vehicle for voicing dissent? Is there something inherent in blogs or blog cultures that don't translate well to other cultures?
One of our panelists, Cameron Marlowe can't be with us today. But he sent us his comments, so I'm going to keep talking. If you're familiar with Blogdex, you're familiar with Cameron. I can't find it on my laptop. Maybe I won't deliver Cameron's comments.
Champ: My name is Heather Champ. My Web log is is Harrumph.
Nolan: I will just talk in teacher voice. This is a picture that you have in handout. What I'm talking about is the Null and Hidden Curriculum. I've written about the Null and Hidden Curriculum of the Internet. Curriculum speaks to how we learn in any environment. Most of my work is around the types of learning that go on in non-school environments, such as online communities.
The hidden curriculum looks at what goes on beyond what is explicit. You have to be acculturated. You have to know how to participate in that environment. The Nolan Curriculum is a little more insidious. It's based on the idea that learning involves opportunitites as well as lost opportunities. The Null curriculum is what you did or did not choose.
The tools that we use to create limit what is said as well as offer opportunities for new forms of expression. The tools we use and the language we use influences the way we think. We can express ourselves in a varity of different ways.
As big a fan of blogs as I am, blogs are also tools for silencing and othering. How can tehre be democracy without access and representation? Are blogs reporducing dominant cultural norms as well as taking steps to challenge them? Blogs, from my experience, don't always expand cultural horizons. There's a natural difficulty dealing with foreign languages and the immediacy of online communications. I can't set up Moveable Type in Japanese because the instructions are in Japanese.
There are usually multilingual plug-ins, but they always start with English. The Internet can do two languages at once: English and another language. I want to create technology-based environment that do not privelege first.
How do we overcome the English-ness that's built into the Internet itself? I don't think we can. If you send an email message in Russian, the message gets sent with this HELO from server to server to server. Imagine if you had to greet everyone in a foreign language. The letter "a" in ASCII stands for American.
I don't want everybody to be equal. But I want there to be equal access. I want to foster and ensure communication. Can we overcome bias? No, but we can be conscious of it in the tools we create. My facetious question would be: Why shouldn't everything on the Internet be tied to the American way of life?
We are very much interested in other cultures, and we very much want to interact with them.
Sisnett: Katharine has touched off what has become a big change in my life. Before she contacted me I had only visited one blog consciously. It was Dr. Tom Ferguson's blog, and he's sitting right here in the front of the room. Katharine wrote to me and asked for my participation in this panel basically as a reality check.
What keeps me in the room is the issue of community. There is so much time spent on blogging, I wonder do these people have jobs? As much as I write, I don't spend that much time writing about anything. But for the last few weeks or so, I have been blogging like crazy. What became as a potentially adversial relationship has now become a love affair.
I am someone who is on the other side f the frewall. I am in community technology. I build bridges to people who may may not know how to use computers, know how to type, know English. There's another layer of questioning that has to do with the political implications of putting one's information out there.
If you're considering using Web logs as part of training programs or as a community-building tool, you need to consider whether the people you're serving are interested in using the tools. How do people stay in touch with each other? Is it the ideal form of communications? A lot fo the people we work with would rather have a spaghetti lunch or a face-to-face discussion. Most of the people don't use these tools, don't use them efficiently.
Access becomes an issue. Access to information. Access to technology and training in the use of those tools isn't available. The Mirror Project was a great alternative because it's about photographs. Then the question becomes "Who's going to pay for the camera? Who's going to develop the film?"
There's also a fear factor. If someone's an immigrant, they're going to be concerned with what they say and how they say it online. Some other questions that were raised include: Do I have to sign up to see blogs? What about privacy? What tools do I have to know how to use? I haven't used HTML since Java came around. What's interesting is that it's come back around to a text-based tool like what I first used: Telnet and Pine. Who gets to access my blog? Can I password-protect my blog? What if somebody wants to hack my blog? Can I protect it? The last question is the reliability of the information. How do you know how to trust the information? How do you know the blog wasn't set up for another sinister reason?
The work that Jason and Katharine have done is very relevant to a friend of mine. She works for a black college with scant resources. It takes three weeks to set up an email. There aren't enough accounts for students. They're all setting Yahoo accounts. The letters are taped to the keyboards. Imagine going to a college without enough computers?
The level of critical thinking I've found on the Net is something I don't always have in my day to day. Even if I disagree with it, at least it's something I can bounce off of. But ultimately, is it useful? What am I going to do with it?
Parrish: I'm just going to briefly outline some of Cameron's thoughts. One of the reasons I was interested in having Cameron on this panel is that Blogdex is an index to blog content and communities. There doesn't really exist any scientific statistical information on the content of Web logs.
I validate each and every blog that's added to and indexed by the system. This past year was the year of the oppressed, with the largest increases in Iranian, Chinese, and American conservative populations. It might be interesting to unpack how new communities online can be quellef by the larger existing groups or become central to the online world.
We're dealing with a monster here when we start asking these questions. I hope you can see that these are interrelated questions. Please bear with us. We're eating away into time to respond. These questions are best answered over beer.
I would like to ask Heather. I never became conscious of myself as a gendered individual. I knew I was a girl. I knew I was performed as a girl. But I never really considered my gender until I began working with technology, when I realized that I behaved as culturally female. How conscious are you of your gender?
Champ: I want to back it up a step to conferences. In 1995 I went to Internet World and Mac World. The most strongly I feel the division is at conferences and in the materials that are handed out to me. Last year, when I came to SXSW, I felt like it was predominately a white male conference. It's so terrible. Look, it's Joshua Davis, but where are the women? This year, SXSW has made more of an effort to find a balance.
I'm concerned about women who are coming after me, who look at these materials, and who feel whether these events speak to them. Anil recently posted a photo of Dave Winer's recent panel at Harvard, and it struck me that it's white, it's male, and they have beards. There were two women there? Those people don't speak to me. Is this the face of blogging?
Nancy White: It's about exposure. I work with young women in high school in Seattle to think about themselves in technology work. Do blogs give us this opportuntiy to try out if we imagined ourselves to be in another way? Is this a safe place, an incubator? When we offer new technologis, can there be a safe place to see what the ramifications are? If we don't give them a chance to try it, we'll never see their faces. Is there a space in between public and private?
Sisnett: I think it's two different things, though. There needs to be energy put into diversifying the attendance of conferences. Advertising dollars have not gone to newspapers owned by people of color for SXSW. Is it assumed that people of color don't care about SXSW? There aren't a lot of women who look like me in this entire building. It's about racism. It's about sexism. We need to say that and deal with it if we want it to change.
Nolan: For educators, the goal is just to get people online and blogging. I ask my students, "Why is this useful to you?" I have a freat student who's going to eclipse me in 30 seconds, and she never touched technology before. She was very hostile to working with technology. She was very hostile to blogging. Now she wants to work with women to blog to each other in a network segregated from the Internet. These are women who might live 50 meters away from each other, but they may never see each other. And the men don't want them to get online, because they know what the Web is for: porn. We've got a lot of great opportunities when we engage people who don't think it's important to be blogging.
Question: You made a comment about dragging your students kicking and screaming into blogging. Why? Only a minority people find it worthwhile writing in the first place.
Nolan: I teach mostly grad students, engineers and technology people. They're afraid of expressing themselves. I think they need to experience using technology before they can develop and design tools for others to use.
Question: Blogger was originally created by a man and a woman. Do you think that attributes to its success?
Nolan: You could say the same thing about Moveable Type. I can't speak to whether the genesis of a given tool based on gender has a role in their success.
Parrish: Teachers, particularly English teachers, are always forcing their students to journal and then interrogate them. There haven't been enough good thinking behind that. Most of my lack of sleep I've experienced in my teaching practice stems from forcing my students to journal. With blogging in the classroom, you're forcing people to bring something that is private into the public.
The way that we culturally think about out private thoughts and what happens when they're brought into the public space has a tremendous effect on how people perceive blogging. My students see blogging as a threat. The very concept was not enjoyable at all.
Nolan: You kept bringing up the notion of journal writing as being a specifically female-centered form of writing. In English and Japanese culture, men aren't diarists. But novel writing was very hard for women. They could get diaries published, however.
Sisnett: My first attempt searching blogs based on race ended up finding angry white men blogging about affirmative action. I was pretty underwhelmed by what I found to begin with. It didn't stop me, but it wasn't a welcoming effort. It turned out that two white men answered my questions in very thoughtful ways.
How do I bring all this great stuff back into my communities. And is it my responsibility? We don't tell people what to do. We let people know what tools are out there and leave the decision up to them.
[At the end, Lisa asked a question about privacy that turned into a brief discussion of Nolan's work with Steve Mann on sousveillance. In fact, Nolan had set up his Webcam to capture footage of the panel audience -- and Lisa behind the camera -- during the session. Here's a snap from his footage.]
South by Southwest 2003 XI
Lawrence Lessig: Add Sanity
Last month, in February, this man, Jack Valenti, appeared at the Duke Law School and gave a lecture. We could call it a sermon. In this lecture, Jack told students about morality. This is what he said
democratic nation
greatness
moral compact
moral imperative
duty
honor
integrity
These values, Jack said, are corrupted. They are corrupted, he said, by the Enrons of society. Second, these values are being corrupted by "sharing." By "file-sharing." By the "terrorists." These are our children. These terrorists are sharing content on the Internet.
This, he said, much change, for "Man is the only animal … who understands the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be."
1998 was going to be a great year. Work from 1923 was going to enter the public domain 75 years after it was created. 75 years is an odd number because in 1923, copyright was for 56 years. 85% of copyright holders didn’t extend their copyrights.
Every time Congress extends public domain, it is in effect tolling the public. Of all the work produced in 1923, no more than 2% was commercially exploited. The rest of the works stay invisibly in that space because it wasn't commercially produced.
In 1930, 10,027 books were published. In 1998, 174 were still in print. That left 9,853 books out of print and invisible. The copyright system continued its control.
Between 1923 and 1946, 97.7% of books are no longer commercially availble. 93.2% of films are no longer commercially available. The commercial publishers basically give us 10% of what was produced.
1998 would change that. In 1998, that work would pass into the public domain and the situation would heal itself. Others could take it and build it by redistributing it or building on it with derivative works. [This would have affected] playwrights … archivists … researchers … music companies … and finally, a father.
A man named Eric Eldred. A man who, for the last few years, was developing works for his daughters who were bored with English. He began this career of building works on the Internet in the public domain, spreading knowledge. Works that were not easily available. They were building from the work in the public domain the way our framers intended it when they wrote that part of the Constitution that has now been erased.
This is nothing new. My favorite hero did this in 1928. My hero Walt created this heroic character Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie inspired Mickey Mouse. And from Mickey Mouse, we got the Disney empire.
Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., was explicitly ripped off by Walt when he created Steamboat Willie. This is creativity. It's a creativity we should embrace and praise. Walt Disney creativity takes and builds on what went before. It's a brilliant form of cultural expression. It was the birth of the cut and paste culture, the rip, mix, and burn culture that the Apple Corp. sells us.
More than parroting existing films, all of his works build on works that previously existed in the public domain. We should call this Walt Disney creativity We take and we express differently. This is the expression of what our culture is about. He had this freedom, and we don't.
In the next 20 years, 1 million patents will enter the public domain. Not one copyright will enter the public domain. We have 20 more years to wait to release this content that was built under the expectation that copyrights would expire.
They say something was stolen from them. They say that something was stolen from us. They say that in this bargain that was struck, this exchange of 75 years of protection, this promise has been broken because work that would have entered the public domain won't. Congress took this work and gave it to particular people who have green things that they give to campaigns.
Where was Jack when this theft happened? Where was Valenti when these values were stolen? Where were his ideals when money broke the promise? Where was Jack? Jack was on the hill arguing for the copyright extension act.
"It was our duty," he said, "to extend these copyrights." This is what he said
duty
service
honor
integrity
pity
pride
compassion
sacrifice
That wasn't their bargain. Their duty. What we struck was an exchange for a protection for a limited time. That deal has been taken from these creators.
Jack believes this is moral, this taking. Regardless of whether you believe this is moral for the 2%, I want you to consider the 98%. That 98% is locked up in copyright today with extraordinary cost to even identify the copyright holders for no productive reason at all just because this money bought an extension for 20 years for works that were supposed to be protected for a limited time.
Copyright law has been transformed to be an extreme. Originally intended to benefit authors, it no longer functions like this. It protects not authors, but publishers. It enables a control over the creative process that produces a homogenization of this culture.
This concentration is new. 80% of music is distributed by five companies. 80% of television comes from six firms. We have never had a history in our time when fewer interests created more of the creative process.
Does it make sense for creators?
Before the Internet, I don't think this change mattered much. What could you do except turn to commercial publishers? It didn't matter much to your production. After the Internet, this change matters lots. The kind of creativity enabled by the digital consumer is radically different. Millions now are in the position to be the creators and distributors of content. Before the Internet, this was simoly not possible.
What blocks this creativity is this kind of regulation. This digital creativity is Walt Disney creativity.
These guys are the beginning of what we'll be able to do. These guys are tiny. They don't have any money. In the world that we live in, in a world that's as defined by Disney and Coca-Cola as it is by George Bush, we have no freedom to take these expressions and ideas and build on them in the way that Walt could in 1928.
What explains removing those freedoms from us now? We can do it technically, but we can't do it legally. Why? We could do it legally if only we could get the law out of the way. We tried to get Congress to do something sensible, and that failed. I, the last naïve law professor in the country, went before the conservative Supreme Court. That ideal was given to us 210 years ago, and it was taken away from us today for no good reason at all.
It's time to try to do something new. Something new inspired by GNU. This is the space of the Creative Commons. There are three kinds of people out there. Some who believe that all of their rights need to be protected. Some who believe that none of their rights need to be protected. They just gave them away. And some who believe that some of their rights need to be protected -- but some can be given it away.
Most of the time, we look at the extremes. What I want is something in the middle. We need something here to get some sort of balance that leads the extremes back to the extremes. We need to stop solving for the extreme case and start building an architecture that recognizes the middle. That's the function of the Creative Commons.
The Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that will have thousands of ideas for how people can reasonably build on existing ideas.
I believe in something different than the extremes that Jack Valenti sings for. Here, some people talk about incentives. Here's one of my favorite guys who talks about incentives: Cory Doctorow. He sold many, many books in bookstores for a first novelist. But he had 70,000 people download his book from the Net.
The people who assume the law would be reasonable are people who don't know about the law. The layers that CC licenses enable are layers of expression. Tomorrow we're going to announce new versions of the license. One is a sampling license. One says explicitly that we don't want to oppose restrictions on people in developing nations. They don't even have money to buy things.
We've also talked about building more artists into this system. Davis Guggenheim has joined the board because he has a vision of how to best take film content that allows other to use content to build documentaries in the way that documentaries should be made.
Valenti is the third reason you should participate in this project. Whether you have a personal incentive, whether you want to enable innovation or not, in this world of extremists, we need a way to say "I believe in free." We need to express it so we can look out into this space and say that the world is not divided into those who believe in total control and those who believe in no control.
We can change the way this debate happens in Washington. We need to express the space in which creators operate. We need to enable other to build and mark a space in the middle. I feel an extraordinary frustration in my own world. The ideals that the legal tradition talks about in terms of balance have been exploited.
We can change that failure because we can succeed here. We can succeed in just the way Jack said. We are the animals that know the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be.
Artists do not control. Artists are not free. Culture is not free. This is where we are. We could be back in a world where culture is free. Not free where artists don't get paid but free in the way that speech is free. The only thing that stands in the way is the people I make for a living.
Let me tell you about us. We believe in control. We create structures of control. It makes us feel good. This ideology of control now permeates the law. This control is our security.
This control is not the environment of creativity. You know that. This extreme of control is not the environment in which creativity can flourish. You know that. You need to stand up and push us out of the room. You need to reclaim this space for you. We don't believe in this space. Our laws enable the most powerful in a way that will stifle and kill diverse, decentralized creativity.
We have ideals, too. We believe in a democratic nation. We believe that greatness is earned through respect and criticism. We believe in a moral compact in which people are free to express criticism. We believe in a moral imperative and duty to build this freedom back into our culture. The honor of our nation has been the honor of free people who can speak about freedom without calling their lawyer -- who can speak about integrity and mean it.
That freedom is at our fingertips. But that freedom has to be fought for. 210 years ago they gave it to us. We have lost it. Only if we build the revolution they gave us 210 years ago, can we reclaim it.
Lawrence Lessig: Add Sanity
Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's center for Internet and society. He is also Creative Commons' chairman of the board of directors. Here is a rough transcript of Lessig's remarks:
Last month, in February, this man, Jack Valenti, appeared at the Duke Law School and gave a lecture. We could call it a sermon. In this lecture, Jack told students about morality. This is what he said
These values, Jack said, are corrupted. They are corrupted, he said, by the Enrons of society. Second, these values are being corrupted by "sharing." By "file-sharing." By the "terrorists." These are our children. These terrorists are sharing content on the Internet.
This, he said, much change, for "Man is the only animal … who understands the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be."
1998 was going to be a great year. Work from 1923 was going to enter the public domain 75 years after it was created. 75 years is an odd number because in 1923, copyright was for 56 years. 85% of copyright holders didn’t extend their copyrights.
Every time Congress extends public domain, it is in effect tolling the public. Of all the work produced in 1923, no more than 2% was commercially exploited. The rest of the works stay invisibly in that space because it wasn't commercially produced.
In 1930, 10,027 books were published. In 1998, 174 were still in print. That left 9,853 books out of print and invisible. The copyright system continued its control.
Between 1923 and 1946, 97.7% of books are no longer commercially availble. 93.2% of films are no longer commercially available. The commercial publishers basically give us 10% of what was produced.
1998 would change that. In 1998, that work would pass into the public domain and the situation would heal itself. Others could take it and build it by redistributing it or building on it with derivative works. [This would have affected] playwrights … archivists … researchers … music companies … and finally, a father.
A man named Eric Eldred. A man who, for the last few years, was developing works for his daughters who were bored with English. He began this career of building works on the Internet in the public domain, spreading knowledge. Works that were not easily available. They were building from the work in the public domain the way our framers intended it when they wrote that part of the Constitution that has now been erased.
This is nothing new. My favorite hero did this in 1928. My hero Walt created this heroic character Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie inspired Mickey Mouse. And from Mickey Mouse, we got the Disney empire.
Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., was explicitly ripped off by Walt when he created Steamboat Willie. This is creativity. It's a creativity we should embrace and praise. Walt Disney creativity takes and builds on what went before. It's a brilliant form of cultural expression. It was the birth of the cut and paste culture, the rip, mix, and burn culture that the Apple Corp. sells us.
More than parroting existing films, all of his works build on works that previously existed in the public domain. We should call this Walt Disney creativity We take and we express differently. This is the expression of what our culture is about. He had this freedom, and we don't.
In the next 20 years, 1 million patents will enter the public domain. Not one copyright will enter the public domain. We have 20 more years to wait to release this content that was built under the expectation that copyrights would expire.
They say something was stolen from them. They say that something was stolen from us. They say that in this bargain that was struck, this exchange of 75 years of protection, this promise has been broken because work that would have entered the public domain won't. Congress took this work and gave it to particular people who have green things that they give to campaigns.
Where was Jack when this theft happened? Where was Valenti when these values were stolen? Where were his ideals when money broke the promise? Where was Jack? Jack was on the hill arguing for the copyright extension act.
"It was our duty," he said, "to extend these copyrights." This is what he said
That wasn't their bargain. Their duty. What we struck was an exchange for a protection for a limited time. That deal has been taken from these creators.
Jack believes this is moral, this taking. Regardless of whether you believe this is moral for the 2%, I want you to consider the 98%. That 98% is locked up in copyright today with extraordinary cost to even identify the copyright holders for no productive reason at all just because this money bought an extension for 20 years for works that were supposed to be protected for a limited time.
Copyright law has been transformed to be an extreme. Originally intended to benefit authors, it no longer functions like this. It protects not authors, but publishers. It enables a control over the creative process that produces a homogenization of this culture.
This concentration is new. 80% of music is distributed by five companies. 80% of television comes from six firms. We have never had a history in our time when fewer interests created more of the creative process.
Does it make sense for creators?
Before the Internet, I don't think this change mattered much. What could you do except turn to commercial publishers? It didn't matter much to your production. After the Internet, this change matters lots. The kind of creativity enabled by the digital consumer is radically different. Millions now are in the position to be the creators and distributors of content. Before the Internet, this was simoly not possible.
What blocks this creativity is this kind of regulation. This digital creativity is Walt Disney creativity.
[At this point, Lessig showed a snippet of Bush and Blair's rendition of "Endless Love."]
These guys are the beginning of what we'll be able to do. These guys are tiny. They don't have any money. In the world that we live in, in a world that's as defined by Disney and Coca-Cola as it is by George Bush, we have no freedom to take these expressions and ideas and build on them in the way that Walt could in 1928.
What explains removing those freedoms from us now? We can do it technically, but we can't do it legally. Why? We could do it legally if only we could get the law out of the way. We tried to get Congress to do something sensible, and that failed. I, the last naïve law professor in the country, went before the conservative Supreme Court. That ideal was given to us 210 years ago, and it was taken away from us today for no good reason at all.
It's time to try to do something new. Something new inspired by GNU. This is the space of the Creative Commons. There are three kinds of people out there. Some who believe that all of their rights need to be protected. Some who believe that none of their rights need to be protected. They just gave them away. And some who believe that some of their rights need to be protected -- but some can be given it away.
Most of the time, we look at the extremes. What I want is something in the middle. We need something here to get some sort of balance that leads the extremes back to the extremes. We need to stop solving for the extreme case and start building an architecture that recognizes the middle. That's the function of the Creative Commons.
The Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that will have thousands of ideas for how people can reasonably build on existing ideas.
I believe in something different than the extremes that Jack Valenti sings for. Here, some people talk about incentives. Here's one of my favorite guys who talks about incentives: Cory Doctorow. He sold many, many books in bookstores for a first novelist. But he had 70,000 people download his book from the Net.
The people who assume the law would be reasonable are people who don't know about the law. The layers that CC licenses enable are layers of expression. Tomorrow we're going to announce new versions of the license. One is a sampling license. One says explicitly that we don't want to oppose restrictions on people in developing nations. They don't even have money to buy things.
We've also talked about building more artists into this system. Davis Guggenheim has joined the board because he has a vision of how to best take film content that allows other to use content to build documentaries in the way that documentaries should be made.
Valenti is the third reason you should participate in this project. Whether you have a personal incentive, whether you want to enable innovation or not, in this world of extremists, we need a way to say "I believe in free." We need to express it so we can look out into this space and say that the world is not divided into those who believe in total control and those who believe in no control.
We can change the way this debate happens in Washington. We need to express the space in which creators operate. We need to enable other to build and mark a space in the middle. I feel an extraordinary frustration in my own world. The ideals that the legal tradition talks about in terms of balance have been exploited.
We can change that failure because we can succeed here. We can succeed in just the way Jack said. We are the animals that know the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be.
Artists do not control. Artists are not free. Culture is not free. This is where we are. We could be back in a world where culture is free. Not free where artists don't get paid but free in the way that speech is free. The only thing that stands in the way is the people I make for a living.
Let me tell you about us. We believe in control. We create structures of control. It makes us feel good. This ideology of control now permeates the law. This control is our security.
This control is not the environment of creativity. You know that. This extreme of control is not the environment in which creativity can flourish. You know that. You need to stand up and push us out of the room. You need to reclaim this space for you. We don't believe in this space. Our laws enable the most powerful in a way that will stifle and kill diverse, decentralized creativity.
We have ideals, too. We believe in a democratic nation. We believe that greatness is earned through respect and criticism. We believe in a moral compact in which people are free to express criticism. We believe in a moral imperative and duty to build this freedom back into our culture. The honor of our nation has been the honor of free people who can speak about freedom without calling their lawyer -- who can speak about integrity and mean it.
That freedom is at our fingertips. But that freedom has to be fought for. 210 years ago they gave it to us. We have lost it. Only if we build the revolution they gave us 210 years ago, can we reclaim it.
South by Southwest 2003 X
Doug Lenat: Understanding Common Sense
I'm going to tell you about the last 30 years of my life in 45 minutes. I'm going to tell you about building an artificial intelligence, how we're doing it, and why. In a way, this is a talk about the relationship between computers and common sense. It's an adversial relationship.
I got bitten by the bug to do this while watching the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. By far the most interesting character was Hal. Human beings would be more effective if only computers worked like that. If we could amplify the ways our brains work, we'd be smarter.
There'd be a qualitative change in how smart humanity is. You look at the last time there was a change like that, and it was the introduction of language. Let's go even further back to Alan Turing. In 1965, Joe Weizenbaum's work with a program called Doctor or Eliza took another step.
In the latest runs of these Turing type competitions, there's no trouble telling the human from the computer apart. If you ask "What color is a blue car?" there's a garbled Eliza-like response that's just parroting back what you just said. The programs are good at manipulating bits, but they're not really understanding what they're manipulating.
Intelligence requires immense knowledge about the world. Why does natural-language understanding require huge amounts of common sense? There are differences in the order of quantifiers hidden in the English language. Why is the Turing test so hard? Intelligence -- even just keeping up your end of a conversation well -- requires having lots of knowledge and applying it fast.
We forget things. We do arithmetic slowly. And we make mistakes that are random. There are dozens of these translogical phenomena that make it harder to simulate human thinking. Early hominids were pre-rational decision makers. Only the later hominids became rational. We are the early hominids.
The question is: Is artificial intelligence a dodo or a phoenix? 20 years ago, anyone who could spell A.I. was working on it. Nowadays, I'm optimistic about A.I. even though it's kind of rude to talk about it. Why am I optimistic? I knew we had to codify some of the common sense. We need to bridge the gap between people designing expert systems and fundamental philosophical questions about existence and time and space.
In terms of finding information by inference, I'm talking about asking a question like, "Find me a picture of someone smiling," and getting a picture of a man watching his daughter take her first step. That requires knowing that parents love their children and that taking your first step is an accomplishment.
It's not complicated reasoning. It's two- or three-step reasoning. Something called predicate calculus converts queries into their operative parts. Some things may not violate the date type of the relational database, but they violate common sense.
We also combine information from multiple sources. You can do fairly shallow reasoning and answer a question experts couldn't answer without drawing on those multiple sources.
How do we educate Cyc? The more you know, the more you can learn. To get to that crossover point, we'd have to follow the ugly duckling approach and cram knowledge into the program.
I'm going to skip the first seven lessons we learned and go straight to the eighth and last lesson. We had to give up global consistency. Inconsistency seems like a bad idea, but when you have hundred rules, they're hard to keep straight. And maintaining thousands of rules is humanly impossible.
We're not trying to make trying to make the knowledge base as large as possible, we're trying to make it trying it as small as possible. We've still had to add millions of pieces of information to the system by hand.
Our original motivating applications are still our motivating applications. We've been automating the white space instead of the black space. What did the author already know about the world?
We've gotten half of our money from government and half of it from commercial sources. Nowadays we get more from government because corporations are less interested in looking far ahead into the future.
The system is not done, but it's done enough that it can attend to its own growth. And you can help.
Doug Lenat: Understanding Common Sense
Lenat is founder of Cycorp. Here is a rough transcript of Lenat's remarks:
I'm going to tell you about the last 30 years of my life in 45 minutes. I'm going to tell you about building an artificial intelligence, how we're doing it, and why. In a way, this is a talk about the relationship between computers and common sense. It's an adversial relationship.
I got bitten by the bug to do this while watching the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. By far the most interesting character was Hal. Human beings would be more effective if only computers worked like that. If we could amplify the ways our brains work, we'd be smarter.
There'd be a qualitative change in how smart humanity is. You look at the last time there was a change like that, and it was the introduction of language. Let's go even further back to Alan Turing. In 1965, Joe Weizenbaum's work with a program called Doctor or Eliza took another step.
In the latest runs of these Turing type competitions, there's no trouble telling the human from the computer apart. If you ask "What color is a blue car?" there's a garbled Eliza-like response that's just parroting back what you just said. The programs are good at manipulating bits, but they're not really understanding what they're manipulating.
Intelligence requires immense knowledge about the world. Why does natural-language understanding require huge amounts of common sense? There are differences in the order of quantifiers hidden in the English language. Why is the Turing test so hard? Intelligence -- even just keeping up your end of a conversation well -- requires having lots of knowledge and applying it fast.
We forget things. We do arithmetic slowly. And we make mistakes that are random. There are dozens of these translogical phenomena that make it harder to simulate human thinking. Early hominids were pre-rational decision makers. Only the later hominids became rational. We are the early hominids.
The question is: Is artificial intelligence a dodo or a phoenix? 20 years ago, anyone who could spell A.I. was working on it. Nowadays, I'm optimistic about A.I. even though it's kind of rude to talk about it. Why am I optimistic? I knew we had to codify some of the common sense. We need to bridge the gap between people designing expert systems and fundamental philosophical questions about existence and time and space.
In terms of finding information by inference, I'm talking about asking a question like, "Find me a picture of someone smiling," and getting a picture of a man watching his daughter take her first step. That requires knowing that parents love their children and that taking your first step is an accomplishment.
It's not complicated reasoning. It's two- or three-step reasoning. Something called predicate calculus converts queries into their operative parts. Some things may not violate the date type of the relational database, but they violate common sense.
We also combine information from multiple sources. You can do fairly shallow reasoning and answer a question experts couldn't answer without drawing on those multiple sources.
How do we educate Cyc? The more you know, the more you can learn. To get to that crossover point, we'd have to follow the ugly duckling approach and cram knowledge into the program.
[At this point, Lenat's colleague Robert Kahlert demonstrated Cyc, running a scenario looking for ideas of how Lenat could use his new Segway while attending SXSW.]
I'm going to skip the first seven lessons we learned and go straight to the eighth and last lesson. We had to give up global consistency. Inconsistency seems like a bad idea, but when you have hundred rules, they're hard to keep straight. And maintaining thousands of rules is humanly impossible.
We're not trying to make trying to make the knowledge base as large as possible, we're trying to make it trying it as small as possible. We've still had to add millions of pieces of information to the system by hand.
Our original motivating applications are still our motivating applications. We've been automating the white space instead of the black space. What did the author already know about the world?
We've gotten half of our money from government and half of it from commercial sources. Nowadays we get more from government because corporations are less interested in looking far ahead into the future.
The system is not done, but it's done enough that it can attend to its own growth. And you can help.
South by Southwest 2003 IX
Josh Benton, Dan Gillmore, Matt Haughey, J.D. Lasica, and Evan Smith: Old Vs. New Journalism
Smith: This panel is misnamed. Blogs: Old Vs. New Journalism. I think we'll find that it's all journalism. I'm an editor for Texas Monthly. So I represent old media. What we're doing is nothing like what these four gentlemen are doing.
We're joined up here by four people. And rather than introduce them, I'll let them talk about their blogs, their philsophy of blogging, and how that reflects itself in their blogs, which might not be the same thing.
Down on the end is Josh Benton, who by day works for the Dallas Morning News. To his right is Dan Gillmore, who does a blog that's under the umbrella of the San Jose Mercury News. It's basically part of his work for the San Jose paper. To his right is J.D. Lasica, who writes for Online Journalism Review, but he does a blog that's independent of his work for the Online Journalism Review. Then there's Matt Haughey, who has no connection to traditional media.
Benton: I probably have the least connection between my blog and my day job, which is writing about education for the Dallas Morning News. Of the panelists, I might be the most pessimistic about the opportunities for news organizations have Web logs. When you think of Web logs as journalism, you probably think about the independent blogs online. I'm probably the least optimistic. I see the form of blogging as not being incredibly distinct about what journalism already does and has done for quite a long time. The old world of media is probably a lot more interactive than people give them credit for. When I write a story for the Dallas Morning News, I get a lot more feedback than I do when I write something for Crabwalk. The form of blogging is not really all that new.
Gillmor: I just came from a meeting of the East Coast Liberal Media Conspiracy, and I'm sorry you weren't invited. I love Web logs the way I loved talk radio when it started. I don't like a lot of what I hear on talk radio, and I don’t like a lot of what I read in Web logs. It's nice to have the Web log sponsored , bought, and paid for by my employer. I've been fortunate. People ask me what the business model for Web logs is, and I say it might be the same as community theater. There might not be one.
The most important thing about this is the transformation from the traditional lecture model in which someone is speaking to a group, and one in which people are talking to each other. In the end, we might end up with a better version of the truth. The collaborative filtering and conversational aspect is why I'm interested in this. My readers know more than I do. That's not a threat. That's an opportunity.
Lasica: [Walked into the audience to take a photo of Ben and Mena Trott, the creators of Moveable Type] The barrier between audience and panelists is really artificial. That's what's going on with old and new journalism. We're more part of a conversation, which is different than the traditional model of journalism, which is top down.
I do a blog called New Media Musings. I interviewed 30 people for an article about RSS feeds for Online Journalism Review, and I decided, why not publish the 30 transcripts in my blog?
How many bloggers are in the audience? How many are blogging right now? If you're doing something more than blogging transcripts, adding commentary or any kind of synthesis, you're engaged in a random act of journalism. I want to get away from the idea that there's a top-down approach that has to be done.
The folks up here are sort of concerned that blogging is journalism because there's so much bullshit out there. Not all bloggers are journalists. I don't even think some newspapers are journalism. You don't need to write for a professional publication to be a journalist. All you need to do is go out there and report something the best that you can, add some commentary and analysis, and you're a journalist.
Haughey: I'm Matt Haughey, and I do Metafilter. I never had any aspirations to do anything that was even remotely like journalism. New journalism and blogging tends to turn readers into writers. Old journalism is more like broadcast.
Metafilter has some journalistic tendencies. These are like story leads. People do research, domain experts might have something to say, but no one really gets around to writing an article and publishing. Old journalism is going to have to take on some of the qualities of new journalism.
Smith: Is this a case of new journalism becoming more like old journalism and old journalism becoming more like new journalism? You are setting the standards for some of the new sites that are out there. There are a lot of old media sites trying to add aspects of blogging. Even those extremely liberal democrats at the National Review [laughter] are starting to blog. Is the mountain coming to Mohammad or the reverse?
Lasica: I think it's both. In the next year or two, we're going to see an intersection of Web logs and old media. You've seen a little bit in terms of old media trying to co-opt the form, like Web blogs on MSNBC. It goes the other way, too. Web loggers who want to practice journalism can learn something from the old guard such as ethics and conflict of interest.
Haughey: You're starting to see Web loggers pick up the phone. They're trying to do their own kind of reporting. That's something we'll see more of.
Gillmore: Which has happened in one or two cases one or two years ago. One is the Casey Nicole story, which was the hoax of a young woman who died. Web loggers thought this seemed awfully strange and started doing reporting. One Web logger went to the county seat in Kansas. They ended up breaking a story that the mainstream media only picked up after the Web community had done all of the reporting.
You mentioned the National Review. The Right wing has been far ahead of the Left in terms of using technology as long as I've been using technology. They were the first on bulletin boards in the '80s. Talk radio is dominated by the Right. And most of the best political Web logs, in terms of quality and quantity, are on the Right. Web logs attract people who feel like outsiders even if they're not.
Smith: Do you consider Matt Drudge a Web logger?
Benton: I would say that Matt Drudge is a journalist, but I don't think he follows the Web log form. I would argue that he might not be a particularly good journalist, but he is a journalist. It's much easier for someone to do what a journalist does than it was 10 years ago. I get more than 100 emails every week from people who want to talk to me about what I do in journalism. You don't need a Web log to get that interactivity.
Smith: To what extent do you feel torn between the day job that pays your bills and the Web log that might claim your attention?
Benton: I've rethought the wisdom of attacking my employer. I'm supposed to be completely objective in what I do. I'm in a slightly different situation than Dan, who's a columnist. Whatever opinions I have I need to keep to myself. There was an error in a Dallas Morning News story that I posted something about, and an editor, who's an active reader of Crabwalk, scarily enough, emailed me saying there might be a better way to deal with this.
Gillmor: The reason that attacking a competitor is an issue is that journalism does a really lousy job covering journalism. Media doesn't do a very good job covering media. That's a shame.
It's true that I have a lot more freedom because I'm a columnist. I'm encouraged to say what I think. I have considerable leeway in what I write. Are there things that I won't do? Sure. While I have attacked my company in print on an issue that I thought raised serious ethical questions, there are things that I won't write about. It’s not that it's filthy laundry, but it just feels like it's not my place. If I saw something that made me feel sick to my stomach, I would either quit or do something different. I wouldn't work for an organization I considered unethical.
Haughey: In terms of these newspaper-attached blogs, there are definitely conflict of interest issues. There were two law suits this year that involved posts that were borderline libel or slander. On independent sites, you need to quiesion people's motivations for saying what they're saying and doing what they're doing. Is it self-promotion?
I always have to talk to the lawyer. There are no real laws. People are starting to work on blogging ethics, just throwing out ideas about we should do that we should do this. I've tried to pave the way by saying Yahoo message boards are just opinion. It's not speech that's actionable.
Lasica: I think a bigger issue is credibility. How do you know what to trust, what to believe online? A writer for the Washington Post said that people are never going to turn to blogs for news and information in great numbers because bloggers don't have the same standards and values. I think she's wrong about that. There are webs of trust. People build up brands just like a traditional news organization. All of our Web logs, if you visit long enough, you'll know what you can get.
Too many people believe what they read on a Web log. They're just not that skeptical. People believe what the believe. We just need to edit ourself.
Gillmore: When someone gets burned by what they read, there will be the same bullshit filters that we have with people that we meet. With some sites, there will be a confidence that a fair amount of time, effort, and money went into making something correct.
Smith: Is there a New York Times of blogs?
Gillmore: There are a number of blogs that I find credible within their realm. Glenn Fleischman writes a blog about 80211 wireless networking, and it's the best source to go to for information about that. They tend to be more niche. Nick Denton and his folks in New York are doing a lot f niched blogs like Gizmodo and Gawker.
Haughey: Web logs are transparent, I think. Especially when there are comments or a community, people will say what about these links that contradict what you say?
Lasica: There's not just one ultimate blog out there. All of us have our blog rolls. You can discover all these niche sites.
Benton: It seems in a way reflective of something that's happened in the broader journalism world. People are looking for sources of news that's more in line with what they already believe. That's a potential problem with Web logs. Anything that takes away editing, you can get caught in a world that just focuses on their side of their question. You can hear just your own voice.
Lasica: I don't think any of us are saying that Web logs should supplant other journalism. But if you're looking for news and information, the mainstream media isn't the only place for you to go.
Benton: I would disagree with that. There's a myth that there was a golden age of journalism. Go look at a newspaper from 30 years ago. Look at the archives. There was a lot of crap out there. I agree with you that it's great to have a granular voice. That's terriffic.
Smith: There are a lot of shitty Web logs with no ads. And there are a lot of shitty newspapers with ads. I don't think advertising is the problem.
Josh Benton, Dan Gillmore, Matt Haughey, J.D. Lasica, and Evan Smith: Old Vs. New Journalism
Benton is an education reporter for the Dallas Morning News and maintains Crabwalk. Gillmore is technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and writes a blog for SiliconValley.com . Haughey founded Metafilter. Lasica is senior editor of the Online Journalism Review. And Smith is editor and executive vice president of Texas Monthly. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Smith: This panel is misnamed. Blogs: Old Vs. New Journalism. I think we'll find that it's all journalism. I'm an editor for Texas Monthly. So I represent old media. What we're doing is nothing like what these four gentlemen are doing.
We're joined up here by four people. And rather than introduce them, I'll let them talk about their blogs, their philsophy of blogging, and how that reflects itself in their blogs, which might not be the same thing.
Down on the end is Josh Benton, who by day works for the Dallas Morning News. To his right is Dan Gillmore, who does a blog that's under the umbrella of the San Jose Mercury News. It's basically part of his work for the San Jose paper. To his right is J.D. Lasica, who writes for Online Journalism Review, but he does a blog that's independent of his work for the Online Journalism Review. Then there's Matt Haughey, who has no connection to traditional media.
Benton: I probably have the least connection between my blog and my day job, which is writing about education for the Dallas Morning News. Of the panelists, I might be the most pessimistic about the opportunities for news organizations have Web logs. When you think of Web logs as journalism, you probably think about the independent blogs online. I'm probably the least optimistic. I see the form of blogging as not being incredibly distinct about what journalism already does and has done for quite a long time. The old world of media is probably a lot more interactive than people give them credit for. When I write a story for the Dallas Morning News, I get a lot more feedback than I do when I write something for Crabwalk. The form of blogging is not really all that new.
Gillmor: I just came from a meeting of the East Coast Liberal Media Conspiracy, and I'm sorry you weren't invited. I love Web logs the way I loved talk radio when it started. I don't like a lot of what I hear on talk radio, and I don’t like a lot of what I read in Web logs. It's nice to have the Web log sponsored , bought, and paid for by my employer. I've been fortunate. People ask me what the business model for Web logs is, and I say it might be the same as community theater. There might not be one.
The most important thing about this is the transformation from the traditional lecture model in which someone is speaking to a group, and one in which people are talking to each other. In the end, we might end up with a better version of the truth. The collaborative filtering and conversational aspect is why I'm interested in this. My readers know more than I do. That's not a threat. That's an opportunity.
Lasica: [Walked into the audience to take a photo of Ben and Mena Trott, the creators of Moveable Type] The barrier between audience and panelists is really artificial. That's what's going on with old and new journalism. We're more part of a conversation, which is different than the traditional model of journalism, which is top down.
I do a blog called New Media Musings. I interviewed 30 people for an article about RSS feeds for Online Journalism Review, and I decided, why not publish the 30 transcripts in my blog?
How many bloggers are in the audience? How many are blogging right now? If you're doing something more than blogging transcripts, adding commentary or any kind of synthesis, you're engaged in a random act of journalism. I want to get away from the idea that there's a top-down approach that has to be done.
The folks up here are sort of concerned that blogging is journalism because there's so much bullshit out there. Not all bloggers are journalists. I don't even think some newspapers are journalism. You don't need to write for a professional publication to be a journalist. All you need to do is go out there and report something the best that you can, add some commentary and analysis, and you're a journalist.
Haughey: I'm Matt Haughey, and I do Metafilter. I never had any aspirations to do anything that was even remotely like journalism. New journalism and blogging tends to turn readers into writers. Old journalism is more like broadcast.
Metafilter has some journalistic tendencies. These are like story leads. People do research, domain experts might have something to say, but no one really gets around to writing an article and publishing. Old journalism is going to have to take on some of the qualities of new journalism.
Smith: Is this a case of new journalism becoming more like old journalism and old journalism becoming more like new journalism? You are setting the standards for some of the new sites that are out there. There are a lot of old media sites trying to add aspects of blogging. Even those extremely liberal democrats at the National Review [laughter] are starting to blog. Is the mountain coming to Mohammad or the reverse?
Lasica: I think it's both. In the next year or two, we're going to see an intersection of Web logs and old media. You've seen a little bit in terms of old media trying to co-opt the form, like Web blogs on MSNBC. It goes the other way, too. Web loggers who want to practice journalism can learn something from the old guard such as ethics and conflict of interest.
Haughey: You're starting to see Web loggers pick up the phone. They're trying to do their own kind of reporting. That's something we'll see more of.
Gillmore: Which has happened in one or two cases one or two years ago. One is the Casey Nicole story, which was the hoax of a young woman who died. Web loggers thought this seemed awfully strange and started doing reporting. One Web logger went to the county seat in Kansas. They ended up breaking a story that the mainstream media only picked up after the Web community had done all of the reporting.
You mentioned the National Review. The Right wing has been far ahead of the Left in terms of using technology as long as I've been using technology. They were the first on bulletin boards in the '80s. Talk radio is dominated by the Right. And most of the best political Web logs, in terms of quality and quantity, are on the Right. Web logs attract people who feel like outsiders even if they're not.
Smith: Do you consider Matt Drudge a Web logger?
Benton: I would say that Matt Drudge is a journalist, but I don't think he follows the Web log form. I would argue that he might not be a particularly good journalist, but he is a journalist. It's much easier for someone to do what a journalist does than it was 10 years ago. I get more than 100 emails every week from people who want to talk to me about what I do in journalism. You don't need a Web log to get that interactivity.
Smith: To what extent do you feel torn between the day job that pays your bills and the Web log that might claim your attention?
Benton: I've rethought the wisdom of attacking my employer. I'm supposed to be completely objective in what I do. I'm in a slightly different situation than Dan, who's a columnist. Whatever opinions I have I need to keep to myself. There was an error in a Dallas Morning News story that I posted something about, and an editor, who's an active reader of Crabwalk, scarily enough, emailed me saying there might be a better way to deal with this.
Gillmor: The reason that attacking a competitor is an issue is that journalism does a really lousy job covering journalism. Media doesn't do a very good job covering media. That's a shame.
It's true that I have a lot more freedom because I'm a columnist. I'm encouraged to say what I think. I have considerable leeway in what I write. Are there things that I won't do? Sure. While I have attacked my company in print on an issue that I thought raised serious ethical questions, there are things that I won't write about. It’s not that it's filthy laundry, but it just feels like it's not my place. If I saw something that made me feel sick to my stomach, I would either quit or do something different. I wouldn't work for an organization I considered unethical.
Haughey: In terms of these newspaper-attached blogs, there are definitely conflict of interest issues. There were two law suits this year that involved posts that were borderline libel or slander. On independent sites, you need to quiesion people's motivations for saying what they're saying and doing what they're doing. Is it self-promotion?
I always have to talk to the lawyer. There are no real laws. People are starting to work on blogging ethics, just throwing out ideas about we should do that we should do this. I've tried to pave the way by saying Yahoo message boards are just opinion. It's not speech that's actionable.
Lasica: I think a bigger issue is credibility. How do you know what to trust, what to believe online? A writer for the Washington Post said that people are never going to turn to blogs for news and information in great numbers because bloggers don't have the same standards and values. I think she's wrong about that. There are webs of trust. People build up brands just like a traditional news organization. All of our Web logs, if you visit long enough, you'll know what you can get.
Too many people believe what they read on a Web log. They're just not that skeptical. People believe what the believe. We just need to edit ourself.
Gillmore: When someone gets burned by what they read, there will be the same bullshit filters that we have with people that we meet. With some sites, there will be a confidence that a fair amount of time, effort, and money went into making something correct.
Smith: Is there a New York Times of blogs?
Gillmore: There are a number of blogs that I find credible within their realm. Glenn Fleischman writes a blog about 80211 wireless networking, and it's the best source to go to for information about that. They tend to be more niche. Nick Denton and his folks in New York are doing a lot f niched blogs like Gizmodo and Gawker.
Haughey: Web logs are transparent, I think. Especially when there are comments or a community, people will say what about these links that contradict what you say?
Lasica: There's not just one ultimate blog out there. All of us have our blog rolls. You can discover all these niche sites.
Benton: It seems in a way reflective of something that's happened in the broader journalism world. People are looking for sources of news that's more in line with what they already believe. That's a potential problem with Web logs. Anything that takes away editing, you can get caught in a world that just focuses on their side of their question. You can hear just your own voice.
[At this point, my PowerBook froze, and I needed to restart. I didn't lose a lot of the conversation, but lesson: Save often.]
Lasica: I don't think any of us are saying that Web logs should supplant other journalism. But if you're looking for news and information, the mainstream media isn't the only place for you to go.
Question: As media becomes bigger, it becomes more general because you can't piss off your advertisers. Web logs work well because they are small. Journalists have let us down because they've stopped covering niched things. They're not covering the library down the street.
Benton: I would disagree with that. There's a myth that there was a golden age of journalism. Go look at a newspaper from 30 years ago. Look at the archives. There was a lot of crap out there. I agree with you that it's great to have a granular voice. That's terriffic.
Smith: There are a lot of shitty Web logs with no ads. And there are a lot of shitty newspapers with ads. I don't think advertising is the problem.
South by Southwest 2003 VIII
Brad Fitzpatrick, Scott Heiferman, and James Hong: Trends in How the Internet Connects People
Heiferman: The guy who organized the panel, Hugh, emailed me and asked if I wanted to be on a panel. I said sure, and he said, "What do you think should be about?" And in half a second, I said "How the Internet connects people." I thought that we would enter into a lengthy process to work out the topic, but then I later saw it in print: How the Internet involves people. We don't really know what this panel is going to be, but we'll start by sharing the properties we're involved in.
Meetup is a platfrom that organizes real-world gatherings about anything anywhere. It's about eight months old. It's very user powered. A user creates a topic, say Buffy Fans. The system allows people anywhere in the world to meet locally about Buffy. Meetups can happen in 500 cities in 34 countries. Nearly 200,000 people have signed up for Meetups.
Supporters of Howard Dean took to us like flies on something. Dean supporters organized Meetups in something like 80 cities. In my hometown, New York, 400 people got together, and even Dean showed up. Now the Dean campaign is paying Meetup to help support their organizing efforts. They're using Meetup to grassroots organize. Meetups are on a cycle, a monthly cycle. Dean happens to be the first Wednesday of every month.
It's not just about New York, Boston, and San Francisco, it's about St. Louis, Charlotte, and Fort Dodge, Iowa. That's Meetup 101 basics.
Fitzpatrick: Basically LiveJournal is like a blogging tool or something. The interesting thing about LiveJournal is who your friends are and who you want to read. People can leave comments on things. That's the addictive nature of it. That's my experience with social networks.
Heiferman: If you're a good hype person, you can sign up as Brad's hype person.
Fitzpatrick: I'm not business minded at all. That will probably be my demise. But I don't really care about that.
Hong: I run a Web site called Hot or Not. I started it with my roommate as a joke about two and a half years ago. I had this theory about the two-way Web, which is people communicating through the Web in more than a one-way publishing model. My roommate and I built this site. We had the idea on a Monday. We launched it the following week. And then we were in Salon, every newspaper in Europe, and then People magazine.
This person, she's pretty hot. I'll give her a 9. She's got a rating of 8.3, and she last checked her score 10 hours ago. It's not a communication tool to foster communication, really. It's a communication of "Here I am." And then it's a communication of "You're hot" -- or not. We took that a step further and added Meet Me at Hot or Not. You can add a profile and add a Do You Want to Meet Me? If I click Yes on someone, you can only write the people who click Yes to you if you click Yes to them. We call it a double match list. And one person has to be a paid member for them to talk to each other. It's like being in a bar. Clicking Yes is like smiling at a girl.
We don't really call it a dating site because most people don't use it for dating. They use it for finding friends. The Meet Me is like a superset.
Heiferman: We all agree that the heart of the Internet is about connecting people. It's not just about the computers being connected. Whether it's buyers finding sellers on Ebay or job hunters finding job listings on job sites, blogging isn't just about people publishing, it's about connecting people and the links. There's a difference in writing something and writing something for all the world to see so connections can happen.
What are the trends that we're seeing?
Fitzpatrick: In the last couple yers, it's become more accepted. When I started LiveJournal, my mom said That's stupid, who's going to want to write about themselves online? Now she says that she's wrong because it's so mainstream.
Hong: How many people in the room have met someone online that they've met offline later. Pretty much everyone. Society is changing. Society doesn't really change by new technology. Sometimes everyone adopts it really quickly, but sometimes it's something the younger generation grew up with. It was always there. When they grow up, the things that were once novel become mainstream. It was always there for them.
It's very clear for me. I'm 29 years old. I run a Web site where the average user is maybe 20. The attitude of using the Web to meet people is very different for the younger crowd than even for me.
Heiferman: I don't think it's generational or age based. This is a critical mass medium. The nature of the network effect is that meeting people online is OK because there's a critical mass of people out there. Our little experience with Meetup is that it's all organic growth to 200,000 users. It's growing really fast right now. If you're some Buffy fan in London, if there are 20 people signed up, you're willing to go. A crowd attracts a crowd. You hit that exponential curve of acceptability and usability.
Fitzpatrick: There's a bunch of LiveJournal clone sites using our code base. People went there for awhile, but they found that the community was so small. Those people came back to LiveJournal because we have more people. Friends attract friends.
Hong: There are also more people interested in publishing about themselves online. But because we're a dating site, maybe we attract younger people because they're looking for love. Also, younger people are more apt to put a photo of themselves online. That form of content is accessible to people. The opportunity to get involved with each other is a connection.
Heiferman: The idea of the Internet connecting people goes beyond the dating thing. The whole idea behind the anti-war and anti-globalization activism is totally organized through technology. That's a whole new thing in the last few years. Howard Rheingold wrote a book called "Smart Mobs." A mob gets smarter because it's organized through technology.
I showed up at this Howard Dean Meetup and there were 400 people in a New York bar. It was fully acknowledged that no one would be there if the idea hadn't spread through the viral nature of the Web. The fact that we're thinking about the 2004 campaign in March 2003 and organizing so quickly shows that this stuff is really changing the face of politics. It wasn't just young people showing up at these Meetups. Democracy happens through people connecting regardless of whether it's face to face. Seeing this Dean thing was like All Your Base Goes Real.
Fitzpatrick: For the first Meetup for LiveJournal in Portland, so many people signed up that the Meetup system broke everyone up into multiple venues.
Heiferman: Sorry.
Fitzpatrick: It was supposed to be really popular, but because some venues didn't work, it took awhile to become popular again.
Hong: For dating, almost everyone in the world has gone on a bad date before. I don't think that has anything to do with online dating.
Heiferman: Let's look at War in Iraq in Toronto. If you google that, the first listing is No War in Iraq Meetups. Brad and I did something interesting. I don't know why we're slow [online]. Let's do something easier that we know exists. Like Buffy. Brad built in something where people who list Buffy as an interest, there's a link to Buffy Meetups. And in the Buffy Meetup area, we link to Buffy fans on LiveJournal.
Hong: Brad and I talked about that a long time ago, something about hosting photos.
Fitzpatrick: It's basically done.
Hong: I just did a Google search for "hot girl" and Salinger, because I like Salinger, and the first link is people in Hot or Not who like Salinger. The back end of Hot or Not is entirely done using a Web services architecture. We have everything done in Soap, so if we want to do an integration with someone, it's very easy to do. We have a Web service that's "Show me a picture of someone who likes Salinger," and that very easily pops up.
Fitzpatrick: With LiveJournal, I just used it myself. When Scott told me about Meetup, I said, um, good luck. Meetup depends on a lot of people using it. LiveJournal's not really the same way. Blogger doesn't have a friends list. But LiveJournal grew a lot because of people's friends lists.
Heiferman: We knew we were getting ourselves into a hairy situation. We needed serious numbers before people in Spokane or Tallahassee who are breast cancer survivors or Harry Potter fans can meet up. We've never spent a dime on advertising. But in our first three weeks, there were three key events: Bloggers took to us, LiveJournal users took to us, and Slashdot took to us.
Slashdotters were into the idea of having the Slashdot Effect in the real world. They loved the idea of all showing up at a bar and having the Slashdot Effect in real life. The groups that you think would be least interested in it are actually more interested in being "meaty."
Hong: I've been to some Meetups where there are 30 people, and I've been to some where there are three. At Hot or Not, very few people need to submit to service new people. Someone might only look at 30-40 pictures. All I really need are 30-40 new pictures a day.
With regard to Hot or Not getting a lot of press, that's what we did to defend ourselves. There are a lot of Hot or Not copy cats. We don't mind. We spent the first two or three months getting press so everyone who writes about these sites knows that Hot or Not came first. You won't see an article about rating systems without seeing a mention of Hot or Not.
Fitzpatrick: I can't really speak for Blogger, but Evan said that Google bought them because they thought was cool.
Heiferman: I think it means that Google becomes more real time and personal. When Google is smarter about space and time, and your blog is better cataloged than Google, rather that just catalog the Chihuahua sites, Google will be able to make the Web more alive and timely.
Hong: A lot of people have been talking about the Google/Blogger thing. Larry Page once said that they really sucked at getting timely content into the system. At the very least, this deal gives them access by more of a push basic than a pull basis. They don't need to crawl.
Fitzpatrick: I don't think they have a problem crawling. I write something, and it's in there the next day.
Hong: That's because you're popular. If I started a blog today and wrote something, it might be a month before they crawl me. Google has an impact on people meeting because people can more easily make connections by finding people online.
Heiferman: What happened with the 400 people? We had the NYPD wondering why there were 400 people there -- and why there was a line outside.
Heiferman: If you get people in a room who are passionate about a cause or a candidate, the Meetup isn't just a social event. It's mobilization. These people who support this candidate, they're going to figure out what they need to do locally. All you need to do is get them into a room.
Hong: That's all the Internet is: One big room. All Meetup or LiveJournal or Hot or Not is are corners of that room. Another reason Google bought Blogger has nothing to do with search results. They are trying to improve their ad words capability to determine what ad words to put on a page.
If you go to Google Groups, their interface to Usenet, do a search for Windows administration. They have these sponsored links. You can look at a post, but they have ads at the top. They're not just ads, they're specific to the content of the page. They look at the content of the message. They're talking about Citrix in this post, so here's an ad for Citrix. Basically Google is turning into Overture. They're very into this ad word thing. They're an ad site.
Heiferman: I'm going to highjack this for 30 seconds to show you guys something. Some friends and I do a site called Fotolog. It's small, maybe a couple thousand people who post photos. There's a fotologger Brooklyn and one in France who met and they just announced that they're having a baby. Talk about connecting people.
Fitzpatrick: I'm always getting wedding invitations.
Hong: Three days after we launched Meet Me, we had a woman fly from Iowa to LA. They'd talked on the phone for a few days, and then they were in Las Vegas getting married. I don't know if they're still married.
Brad Fitzpatrick, Scott Heiferman, and James Hong: Trends in How the Internet Connects People
Fitzpatrick founded LiveJournal. Heiferman co-founded Meetup. Hong co-founded Hot or Not. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Heiferman: The guy who organized the panel, Hugh, emailed me and asked if I wanted to be on a panel. I said sure, and he said, "What do you think should be about?" And in half a second, I said "How the Internet connects people." I thought that we would enter into a lengthy process to work out the topic, but then I later saw it in print: How the Internet involves people. We don't really know what this panel is going to be, but we'll start by sharing the properties we're involved in.
Meetup is a platfrom that organizes real-world gatherings about anything anywhere. It's about eight months old. It's very user powered. A user creates a topic, say Buffy Fans. The system allows people anywhere in the world to meet locally about Buffy. Meetups can happen in 500 cities in 34 countries. Nearly 200,000 people have signed up for Meetups.
Supporters of Howard Dean took to us like flies on something. Dean supporters organized Meetups in something like 80 cities. In my hometown, New York, 400 people got together, and even Dean showed up. Now the Dean campaign is paying Meetup to help support their organizing efforts. They're using Meetup to grassroots organize. Meetups are on a cycle, a monthly cycle. Dean happens to be the first Wednesday of every month.
It's not just about New York, Boston, and San Francisco, it's about St. Louis, Charlotte, and Fort Dodge, Iowa. That's Meetup 101 basics.
Fitzpatrick: Basically LiveJournal is like a blogging tool or something. The interesting thing about LiveJournal is who your friends are and who you want to read. People can leave comments on things. That's the addictive nature of it. That's my experience with social networks.
Heiferman: If you're a good hype person, you can sign up as Brad's hype person.
Fitzpatrick: I'm not business minded at all. That will probably be my demise. But I don't really care about that.
Hong: I run a Web site called Hot or Not. I started it with my roommate as a joke about two and a half years ago. I had this theory about the two-way Web, which is people communicating through the Web in more than a one-way publishing model. My roommate and I built this site. We had the idea on a Monday. We launched it the following week. And then we were in Salon, every newspaper in Europe, and then People magazine.
This person, she's pretty hot. I'll give her a 9. She's got a rating of 8.3, and she last checked her score 10 hours ago. It's not a communication tool to foster communication, really. It's a communication of "Here I am." And then it's a communication of "You're hot" -- or not. We took that a step further and added Meet Me at Hot or Not. You can add a profile and add a Do You Want to Meet Me? If I click Yes on someone, you can only write the people who click Yes to you if you click Yes to them. We call it a double match list. And one person has to be a paid member for them to talk to each other. It's like being in a bar. Clicking Yes is like smiling at a girl.
We don't really call it a dating site because most people don't use it for dating. They use it for finding friends. The Meet Me is like a superset.
Heiferman: We all agree that the heart of the Internet is about connecting people. It's not just about the computers being connected. Whether it's buyers finding sellers on Ebay or job hunters finding job listings on job sites, blogging isn't just about people publishing, it's about connecting people and the links. There's a difference in writing something and writing something for all the world to see so connections can happen.
What are the trends that we're seeing?
Fitzpatrick: In the last couple yers, it's become more accepted. When I started LiveJournal, my mom said That's stupid, who's going to want to write about themselves online? Now she says that she's wrong because it's so mainstream.
Hong: How many people in the room have met someone online that they've met offline later. Pretty much everyone. Society is changing. Society doesn't really change by new technology. Sometimes everyone adopts it really quickly, but sometimes it's something the younger generation grew up with. It was always there. When they grow up, the things that were once novel become mainstream. It was always there for them.
It's very clear for me. I'm 29 years old. I run a Web site where the average user is maybe 20. The attitude of using the Web to meet people is very different for the younger crowd than even for me.
Heiferman: I don't think it's generational or age based. This is a critical mass medium. The nature of the network effect is that meeting people online is OK because there's a critical mass of people out there. Our little experience with Meetup is that it's all organic growth to 200,000 users. It's growing really fast right now. If you're some Buffy fan in London, if there are 20 people signed up, you're willing to go. A crowd attracts a crowd. You hit that exponential curve of acceptability and usability.
Fitzpatrick: There's a bunch of LiveJournal clone sites using our code base. People went there for awhile, but they found that the community was so small. Those people came back to LiveJournal because we have more people. Friends attract friends.
Hong: There are also more people interested in publishing about themselves online. But because we're a dating site, maybe we attract younger people because they're looking for love. Also, younger people are more apt to put a photo of themselves online. That form of content is accessible to people. The opportunity to get involved with each other is a connection.
Heiferman: The idea of the Internet connecting people goes beyond the dating thing. The whole idea behind the anti-war and anti-globalization activism is totally organized through technology. That's a whole new thing in the last few years. Howard Rheingold wrote a book called "Smart Mobs." A mob gets smarter because it's organized through technology.
I showed up at this Howard Dean Meetup and there were 400 people in a New York bar. It was fully acknowledged that no one would be there if the idea hadn't spread through the viral nature of the Web. The fact that we're thinking about the 2004 campaign in March 2003 and organizing so quickly shows that this stuff is really changing the face of politics. It wasn't just young people showing up at these Meetups. Democracy happens through people connecting regardless of whether it's face to face. Seeing this Dean thing was like All Your Base Goes Real.
Question: I've attended a couple of different people who only know each other online meet face to face. If you get the critical mass, it can continue. But if it ever fails, it's viewed forever more as it's not going to work. If you go on a bad online date, you might not try online dating again. How do you see the impact of negative stuff?
Fitzpatrick: For the first Meetup for LiveJournal in Portland, so many people signed up that the Meetup system broke everyone up into multiple venues.
Heiferman: Sorry.
Fitzpatrick: It was supposed to be really popular, but because some venues didn't work, it took awhile to become popular again.
Hong: For dating, almost everyone in the world has gone on a bad date before. I don't think that has anything to do with online dating.
Question: You all have popular Web sites and applications. There seem to be a lot of synergies. What's on your radar in terms of how you integrate your services and features? The LiveJournal groups are the biggest groups on Meetup.
Heiferman: Let's look at War in Iraq in Toronto. If you google that, the first listing is No War in Iraq Meetups. Brad and I did something interesting. I don't know why we're slow [online]. Let's do something easier that we know exists. Like Buffy. Brad built in something where people who list Buffy as an interest, there's a link to Buffy Meetups. And in the Buffy Meetup area, we link to Buffy fans on LiveJournal.
Hong: Brad and I talked about that a long time ago, something about hosting photos.
Fitzpatrick: It's basically done.
Hong: I just did a Google search for "hot girl" and Salinger, because I like Salinger, and the first link is people in Hot or Not who like Salinger. The back end of Hot or Not is entirely done using a Web services architecture. We have everything done in Soap, so if we want to do an integration with someone, it's very easy to do. We have a Web service that's "Show me a picture of someone who likes Salinger," and that very easily pops up.
Question: How did each of you address the first mover problem?
Fitzpatrick: With LiveJournal, I just used it myself. When Scott told me about Meetup, I said, um, good luck. Meetup depends on a lot of people using it. LiveJournal's not really the same way. Blogger doesn't have a friends list. But LiveJournal grew a lot because of people's friends lists.
Heiferman: We knew we were getting ourselves into a hairy situation. We needed serious numbers before people in Spokane or Tallahassee who are breast cancer survivors or Harry Potter fans can meet up. We've never spent a dime on advertising. But in our first three weeks, there were three key events: Bloggers took to us, LiveJournal users took to us, and Slashdot took to us.
Slashdotters were into the idea of having the Slashdot Effect in the real world. They loved the idea of all showing up at a bar and having the Slashdot Effect in real life. The groups that you think would be least interested in it are actually more interested in being "meaty."
Hong: I've been to some Meetups where there are 30 people, and I've been to some where there are three. At Hot or Not, very few people need to submit to service new people. Someone might only look at 30-40 pictures. All I really need are 30-40 new pictures a day.
With regard to Hot or Not getting a lot of press, that's what we did to defend ourselves. There are a lot of Hot or Not copy cats. We don't mind. We spent the first two or three months getting press so everyone who writes about these sites knows that Hot or Not came first. You won't see an article about rating systems without seeing a mention of Hot or Not.
Question: What happened when those 400 people showed up at the bar? And what do you think Google's purchase of Blogger means for what the three of you do?
Fitzpatrick: I can't really speak for Blogger, but Evan said that Google bought them because they thought was cool.
Heiferman: I think it means that Google becomes more real time and personal. When Google is smarter about space and time, and your blog is better cataloged than Google, rather that just catalog the Chihuahua sites, Google will be able to make the Web more alive and timely.
Hong: A lot of people have been talking about the Google/Blogger thing. Larry Page once said that they really sucked at getting timely content into the system. At the very least, this deal gives them access by more of a push basic than a pull basis. They don't need to crawl.
Fitzpatrick: I don't think they have a problem crawling. I write something, and it's in there the next day.
Hong: That's because you're popular. If I started a blog today and wrote something, it might be a month before they crawl me. Google has an impact on people meeting because people can more easily make connections by finding people online.
Heiferman: What happened with the 400 people? We had the NYPD wondering why there were 400 people there -- and why there was a line outside.
Question: Was it a political thing? Was it a meeting thing?
Heiferman: If you get people in a room who are passionate about a cause or a candidate, the Meetup isn't just a social event. It's mobilization. These people who support this candidate, they're going to figure out what they need to do locally. All you need to do is get them into a room.
Hong: That's all the Internet is: One big room. All Meetup or LiveJournal or Hot or Not is are corners of that room. Another reason Google bought Blogger has nothing to do with search results. They are trying to improve their ad words capability to determine what ad words to put on a page.
If you go to Google Groups, their interface to Usenet, do a search for Windows administration. They have these sponsored links. You can look at a post, but they have ads at the top. They're not just ads, they're specific to the content of the page. They look at the content of the message. They're talking about Citrix in this post, so here's an ad for Citrix. Basically Google is turning into Overture. They're very into this ad word thing. They're an ad site.
Heiferman: I'm going to highjack this for 30 seconds to show you guys something. Some friends and I do a site called Fotolog. It's small, maybe a couple thousand people who post photos. There's a fotologger Brooklyn and one in France who met and they just announced that they're having a baby. Talk about connecting people.
Fitzpatrick: I'm always getting wedding invitations.
Hong: Three days after we launched Meet Me, we had a woman fly from Iowa to LA. They'd talked on the phone for a few days, and then they were in Las Vegas getting married. I don't know if they're still married.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 VII
Jon Lebkowsky, Adina Levin, and Nancy White: Effective Social Networks
Lebkowsky: The thing with online communities is that they work really well for conversation and exchanging knowledge to some extent, but when it comes to actually getting something done, it's a little more difficult. One of the things we've been doing is giving some thought to how these things work, what their real value is, and whether you can transcend geography. Traditionally we've said that the real value of online communities in business is that you can bring people together online. It's a different way of working together. It's more agile. You can add layers of connectivity. You're building networks that are big and multi-dimensional.
However, this can bring challenges. The one we're probably most familiar with is the control challenge. It's not hierarchical. Everything goes flat.
White: I see networks as a container. It's moveable and squishy. It kid of floats out there. If I had to play charades and give a physical representation of a network, I would be stumped. There's some point of gravity in a network that's a node where things can happen and groups can form. When I look at a network as a group, there's a whole. But when I look at it as a whole, it gets squishy.
One of the amazing things about networks is their ability to contain and facilitate reciprocity. Everything can be flowing in the same direction, or everything can be flowing in different directions. I want to share with you what happened to me in Central Asia. I got an email from a guy who'd seen something I'd written on my Web site. He told me that he'd been given the job to build online communities in post-Soviet Union republics.
We entered into a dialog and came up with a plan to look at the power of the network. We introduced what online interaction can do. The next phase of our our work was to set up a face-to-face interaction. Two of the guys involved were using Hotmail to arrange informal prisoner exchanges. They legitimized the relationships that they had online.
There was no network before. We pulled the people together to create the network. Recognizing that this medium allowed them to cross the physical boundaries that they weren't allowed to cross helped them realize that this medium had potential. Some people were catalysts and were willing to take leadership. The Internet can have power even in a highly disconnected community.
They didn't really trust the aysnchronous tools at first. But the synchronous tools like instant messaging gave them the sense that they weren't alone when they really needed help. It hasn't supplanted face to face, but it's really expanded what they can do in their countries.
Levin: You said something interesting when we were preparing about how the people used the network in a way that was consistent with the hierarchical nature of how they worked otherwise.
White: This medium allows power to spread out to members of the network. One of the things we started with was building groups through networking. Then we moved into facilitating.
We were very severely limited by bandwidth. We tried to move people outside of email to make visible the work of the group. Email is very one to one. We used WebCrossing and IM, and we let people use any language they were comfortable using. Helping people move their ideas about processes from offline to online was really useful. We need to make our patterns explicit so we can move them online.
Lebkowsky: Adina has been working with her own company SocialText to build their network.
Levin: Nancy talked a little bit apologetically about the simplicity about the tools that the teams were working with. Part of the tradition of groupware is to build a complicated set of tools. If you look at what people have used over the years, even in the orgs that have a lot of money, people use email more than anything else. The simple tools often work the best.
I also want to talk about the idea of how groups form out of a network. SocialText grew out of a group of people who met through a quasi-professional network. That group is a networking group that doesn't have any particular goal or purpose. But a member sent a message to the group about a business opportunity that involved using blogs within corporations. Blogs are the simplest way for an individual to publish online. We also looked at how people could use Wikis. Wikis are one of the simplest way to collaborate online. We run SocialText using the tools that we're researching for our clients.
The place I worked before, Vignette, was a very whiteboard-centric culture. People would take turns writing on the wall, and by the end of the meeting, we'd have made a decision, and the writing would be on the wall. The Wiki enables us to collaborate on just-in-time documents wherever we might be. We're also able to have a living library of what we're working on.
Part of the point here isn't one specific tool but that there's a set of processes you can use for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration.
We see a set of concentric circles around SocialText. There are the employees. We have a board of advisors. Then there's a broader community with which we use the SocialText Workspace to keep in touch with people. That broader network is extremely valuable. Your closest network you already know -- and already know what they're thinking. If you want new ideas, you need to look at the broader network.
Lebkowsky: There's not so much competition as there is collaboration.
White: When you all work in the same building, you get to think the same way. When your organization lives in network, there's more creative abrasion.
Lebkowsky: Clay Shirky wrote a piece in which he talked about the A list of bloggers. What's going to happen? Is there going to be a group of bloggers that everyone reads and the others sink to the bottom?
White: Bloggers for president!
Lebkowsky: Joichi Ito also wrote a paper about emergent democracy to start talking about how bloggers relate to each other. At some point, there was going to be a teleconference, a telephone call. I don't really get excited about teleconferences. You get the audio cues, but I want to type at people. What Adina's people came up with was a Happening, a multimodal event that was a combination of the teleconference, a chat space, and a voting or polling tool involving green, yellow, and red cards.
A lot of times, you never have a sense of whether people are there or paying attention. We knew just was going on. If someone stopped doing their cards, you got the sense that they were paying attention to something else. We also established a Wiki, where we could plant things and store things after the fact. I even transcribed the telephone call because I'd taped it.
We also used QuickTopic. QuickTopic is a very cool little tool that allows you to start a little discussion thread ad hoc. It also involves a document review tool. You can post documents, and people can comment on them. It was almost more effective than the Wiki because it was easier to keep track of comments.
The Emergent Democracy paper was written. It's in version 1.2. But we haven't continued to work. There's not much activity on the mailing list. People have gotten distracted. And there's the question about emergent leadership. Joi was kind of the emergent leadership, but he turned his attention elsewhere.
White: We haven't quite figured out how to take that vision and translate worker bee energy online. There's a thing we struggle with offline, and when we put it online, the warts become apparent.
Lebkowsky: If we're only going to have a democracy of clueful intelligent people who communicate well online, that's not going to work.
White: It depends on how you define heirarchy. There's a question of consistent standards. Are we attracted to this environment because we want to take ownership of our work and other people don't?
Jon Lebkowsky, Adina Levin, and Nancy White: Effective Social Networks
White is founder of Full Circle Associates and has been researching and practicing online facilitation since 1996. Levin is in charge of strategic marketing and product planning for SocialText. Lebkowsky, founder of Polycot Consulting, has been involved in online communities since 1990. Here is a rough transcript of the panel discussion:
Lebkowsky: The thing with online communities is that they work really well for conversation and exchanging knowledge to some extent, but when it comes to actually getting something done, it's a little more difficult. One of the things we've been doing is giving some thought to how these things work, what their real value is, and whether you can transcend geography. Traditionally we've said that the real value of online communities in business is that you can bring people together online. It's a different way of working together. It's more agile. You can add layers of connectivity. You're building networks that are big and multi-dimensional.
However, this can bring challenges. The one we're probably most familiar with is the control challenge. It's not hierarchical. Everything goes flat.
White: I see networks as a container. It's moveable and squishy. It kid of floats out there. If I had to play charades and give a physical representation of a network, I would be stumped. There's some point of gravity in a network that's a node where things can happen and groups can form. When I look at a network as a group, there's a whole. But when I look at it as a whole, it gets squishy.
One of the amazing things about networks is their ability to contain and facilitate reciprocity. Everything can be flowing in the same direction, or everything can be flowing in different directions. I want to share with you what happened to me in Central Asia. I got an email from a guy who'd seen something I'd written on my Web site. He told me that he'd been given the job to build online communities in post-Soviet Union republics.
We entered into a dialog and came up with a plan to look at the power of the network. We introduced what online interaction can do. The next phase of our our work was to set up a face-to-face interaction. Two of the guys involved were using Hotmail to arrange informal prisoner exchanges. They legitimized the relationships that they had online.
There was no network before. We pulled the people together to create the network. Recognizing that this medium allowed them to cross the physical boundaries that they weren't allowed to cross helped them realize that this medium had potential. Some people were catalysts and were willing to take leadership. The Internet can have power even in a highly disconnected community.
They didn't really trust the aysnchronous tools at first. But the synchronous tools like instant messaging gave them the sense that they weren't alone when they really needed help. It hasn't supplanted face to face, but it's really expanded what they can do in their countries.
Levin: You said something interesting when we were preparing about how the people used the network in a way that was consistent with the hierarchical nature of how they worked otherwise.
White: This medium allows power to spread out to members of the network. One of the things we started with was building groups through networking. Then we moved into facilitating.
We were very severely limited by bandwidth. We tried to move people outside of email to make visible the work of the group. Email is very one to one. We used WebCrossing and IM, and we let people use any language they were comfortable using. Helping people move their ideas about processes from offline to online was really useful. We need to make our patterns explicit so we can move them online.
Lebkowsky: Adina has been working with her own company SocialText to build their network.
Levin: Nancy talked a little bit apologetically about the simplicity about the tools that the teams were working with. Part of the tradition of groupware is to build a complicated set of tools. If you look at what people have used over the years, even in the orgs that have a lot of money, people use email more than anything else. The simple tools often work the best.
I also want to talk about the idea of how groups form out of a network. SocialText grew out of a group of people who met through a quasi-professional network. That group is a networking group that doesn't have any particular goal or purpose. But a member sent a message to the group about a business opportunity that involved using blogs within corporations. Blogs are the simplest way for an individual to publish online. We also looked at how people could use Wikis. Wikis are one of the simplest way to collaborate online. We run SocialText using the tools that we're researching for our clients.
The place I worked before, Vignette, was a very whiteboard-centric culture. People would take turns writing on the wall, and by the end of the meeting, we'd have made a decision, and the writing would be on the wall. The Wiki enables us to collaborate on just-in-time documents wherever we might be. We're also able to have a living library of what we're working on.
Part of the point here isn't one specific tool but that there's a set of processes you can use for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration.
We see a set of concentric circles around SocialText. There are the employees. We have a board of advisors. Then there's a broader community with which we use the SocialText Workspace to keep in touch with people. That broader network is extremely valuable. Your closest network you already know -- and already know what they're thinking. If you want new ideas, you need to look at the broader network.
Lebkowsky: There's not so much competition as there is collaboration.
White: When you all work in the same building, you get to think the same way. When your organization lives in network, there's more creative abrasion.
Lebkowsky: Clay Shirky wrote a piece in which he talked about the A list of bloggers. What's going to happen? Is there going to be a group of bloggers that everyone reads and the others sink to the bottom?
White: Bloggers for president!
Lebkowsky: Joichi Ito also wrote a paper about emergent democracy to start talking about how bloggers relate to each other. At some point, there was going to be a teleconference, a telephone call. I don't really get excited about teleconferences. You get the audio cues, but I want to type at people. What Adina's people came up with was a Happening, a multimodal event that was a combination of the teleconference, a chat space, and a voting or polling tool involving green, yellow, and red cards.
A lot of times, you never have a sense of whether people are there or paying attention. We knew just was going on. If someone stopped doing their cards, you got the sense that they were paying attention to something else. We also established a Wiki, where we could plant things and store things after the fact. I even transcribed the telephone call because I'd taped it.
We also used QuickTopic. QuickTopic is a very cool little tool that allows you to start a little discussion thread ad hoc. It also involves a document review tool. You can post documents, and people can comment on them. It was almost more effective than the Wiki because it was easier to keep track of comments.
The Emergent Democracy paper was written. It's in version 1.2. But we haven't continued to work. There's not much activity on the mailing list. People have gotten distracted. And there's the question about emergent leadership. Joi was kind of the emergent leadership, but he turned his attention elsewhere.
White: We haven't quite figured out how to take that vision and translate worker bee energy online. There's a thing we struggle with offline, and when we put it online, the warts become apparent.
Lebkowsky: If we're only going to have a democracy of clueful intelligent people who communicate well online, that's not going to work.
White: It depends on how you define heirarchy. There's a question of consistent standards. Are we attracted to this environment because we want to take ownership of our work and other people don't?
Corollary: Blogging About Blogging LII
Earlier this month, Anil Dash offered an interesting commentary on Project Blogger that considers the positive aspects as well as the negative. It's one of the first balanced analyses I've seen. Kudos.
Earlier this month, Anil Dash offered an interesting commentary on Project Blogger that considers the positive aspects as well as the negative. It's one of the first balanced analyses I've seen. Kudos.
South by Southwest 2003 VI
Dana Robinson: User Not Found
Nobody else wanted to be on a panel about dying and death, so it's just me. When we talk about experiencing the death of our online friends, we have to go into it believing that these friends are real and legitimate. I don't want to go into the whole Ripper/IRC/Webcam suicide thing. While it's unclear whether what he did was suicide, the fact is he did die. He took huge doses of Methadone and Oxycontin while he was on a Webcam and on IRC. There was a huge debate whether it was a suicide or whether he was just being dumb with drugs.
I'm also not trained to treat grieving. I'm wanting to learn from you as much as I want you to learn from the conversation. I decided to do this project not because I'm gothic. Although I do wear black and have black hair. It started back in 1994. I was using a Telnet-based, Mud-like chat system. I became friends with this guy David who was chronically ill. He was popular within the community, and one day he just stopped coming in. One guy called his parents, and they told him that he had passed away. He wanted the Mud to know that he'd passed away, but his parents didn't know who to call.
I decided to write an essay about it for a journalism class, and I called a bunch of sociologists. They didn't even know what email was so I couldn't do the project. Two years ago I started talking to this guy in Chicago named Timothy. He was 34 and had cystic fibrosis. We talked on the phone a few times, and then he stopped answering his phone. Then the phone number went away. I wondered what was going on.
Online, relationships can be anonymous. You can know a lot about someone, but you might not know how to reach them in real life. Then I got interested in the topic again because of the work I do for Starbright. We hook terminally sick kids up online. Not a lot of kids living with sickle cell [anemia] live in Iowa. Online, they can find other kids with sickle cell, talk online, and feel like they're not alone. One of the kids we got really close with was Bianca. She was dealing with her third bout of cancer, and she'd call us every day to talk to our staff. She was online 7-8 hours every day. When she passed away, I didn't really think I'd feel emotionally invested in one of our users. Her mother told us that my boss and I were in her last thoughts. It was really, really rough.
Our relationships are really getting more intense online, and we need to know more about how to deal with death. User Not Found is my site where I post essays while I'm doing research. The killing off of the persona is another thing I'm looking into. There aren't a lot of people doing this research. There's nothing that's been written. So it's really weird.
In doing my research I've found that online communities in a couple of different ways. They may keep the account up so nobody else can use that ID. And if there are profiles, they may keep the profile available, maybe marking it with a RIP and the years they were alive. They might also set up memorial pages, living obituaries that talk about what they did, how they remembered. And a lot of the gaming communities may have annual memorial events where they have their own little events where they have a memorial avatar. They put down their weapons, come to a central meeting place, and mourn the loss of one of their users.
And some online communities don't do anything. They take no action. And that's unfortunate. With Starbright, we need to be careful. You can't step on parents' toes. Some parents want their children to learn about death in a more controlled way. We're looking into having some sort of a memorial garden that would be online as well offline. They could plant a virtual tree online and write some words about their friend who died. And we could send them a packet of seeds so they could plant a real tree of their own.
At my job, we handle the taboos around death by making jokes around it. That can be even worse. If we don't make jokes, there's no way we can make it through our days. People need to start talking about this and having these sorts of conversations. Clearly it's an issue. The more we interact with people online, experiences like this will become more and more relevant. Now more and more people are accepting the fact that the friendships are legitimate. They have real feelings of grief and mourning. They feel like these feelings aren't legitimate. I would argue the opposite. You probably know them better because you have this veil of anonymity. It may be more impactful if the friends are online.
Some ISPs have policies in place where they require proof of death certificates. It's hit or miss company to company.
Now let's talk about the online cries for help and the community's responsibility to react to those cries for help. Sometimes the intent is not to die but to get some attention. In one instance, a woman took too many pills to be well, and a community member called 911. They tracked down her phone number and were able to get their in time.
The community was able to rally together and were interested in saving her. If you read the chat transcripts from Ripper on IRC, people thought he was fooling around and didn't really want to kill himself. As he was passing out, people started saying maybe they should call someone. If they'd called somebody, they could have sent someone over quite easily. They had ways of getting ahold of him. But because of their not gettign involved stance, he ended up dying.
Is it overstepping the bounds of the online relationship to bring in the authorities? One of the problems is the hoaxes that have been covered. Because of all the publicized hoaxes, people don't take real situations seriously. The reality is that there aren't many hoaxes. There are more realities than hoaxes. Community managers have a responsibility to investigate further. In the community that I manage, if a kid even mentions suicide, we call their parents and bring in a specialist.
How Americans deal with death is so unhealthy compared to a lot of cultures. And how children deal with death compared to adults is even more different. Children deal with death so healthily. Everyone could learn a lot by talking to these kids.
If you over-memorialize kids, and kids view suicide as a way to escape from their illness, you have to be careful how kids take those memorials. You don't want to over-romanticize it.
Another thing I'd like to talk about is when people who aren't really that active in a community die and the community rises up to recognize them. On Fark, there was a guy who didn't post much at all, but when he died in a car accident, the community rose up. There were so many posts about this kid, and nobody knew him. It made me start thinking: Does a person's usage in a given community correlate with how the death is received. Do accoladed users receive more memorials? I think that's how it happens in communities. The community feels a definite impact from that loss. But it's sort of disappointed when someone who's not a big user passes away.
Smaller users can make deeper connections with individuals, but it impacts the community in a different way. Active users impact the entire community. On Starbright world, the kids are much more willing to talk about it than the adults are willing to ask them to talk about it. Adults kind of present barriers where there don't need to be barriers.
If you thought that one of your online friends died, how far would you go? Where would you draw the line between doing your own personal research and overstepping the bounds to impose on someone's privacy? Would you contact the family? When we contacted David's family in 1994, most families would have been closed to being contacted by strangers in their time of grieving. For you, as a person, to be able to move on, you kind of have to know what's going on.
There's a service called Died Online. You register. And you choose the increments on which you check in on the site. If you fail to check in twice based on your increments, the service contacts people you've listed to let them know that you haven't checked in for awhile and they might want to check in with you.
For my job, we're working in prevention as well as what to do if it's already happened. It's tough. You have to take it on a situation by situation basis. It's hard to come up with a protocol that you'd follow consistently because if you know the individual. It can be different in every case.
Only now are we even really at a point where we can have these conversations. Things change so rapidly. Maybe a year from now we'll have this conversation and it will be totally different.
That's one of the healthier things I've seen. It's grieving. It's sharing. And it brings the community together so people don't have to deal with it themselves. The only deaths I've experienced have been online. Friends, family. I've only experienced death online. That might be why I'm so interested in this.
Dana Robinson: User Not Found
Robinson is online community manager for a nonprofit called Starbright that provides media-based products to seriously ill children. She is currently developing a Web site devoted to the death of online friends. Here is a rough transcript of the discussion:
Nobody else wanted to be on a panel about dying and death, so it's just me. When we talk about experiencing the death of our online friends, we have to go into it believing that these friends are real and legitimate. I don't want to go into the whole Ripper/IRC/Webcam suicide thing. While it's unclear whether what he did was suicide, the fact is he did die. He took huge doses of Methadone and Oxycontin while he was on a Webcam and on IRC. There was a huge debate whether it was a suicide or whether he was just being dumb with drugs.
I'm also not trained to treat grieving. I'm wanting to learn from you as much as I want you to learn from the conversation. I decided to do this project not because I'm gothic. Although I do wear black and have black hair. It started back in 1994. I was using a Telnet-based, Mud-like chat system. I became friends with this guy David who was chronically ill. He was popular within the community, and one day he just stopped coming in. One guy called his parents, and they told him that he had passed away. He wanted the Mud to know that he'd passed away, but his parents didn't know who to call.
I decided to write an essay about it for a journalism class, and I called a bunch of sociologists. They didn't even know what email was so I couldn't do the project. Two years ago I started talking to this guy in Chicago named Timothy. He was 34 and had cystic fibrosis. We talked on the phone a few times, and then he stopped answering his phone. Then the phone number went away. I wondered what was going on.
Online, relationships can be anonymous. You can know a lot about someone, but you might not know how to reach them in real life. Then I got interested in the topic again because of the work I do for Starbright. We hook terminally sick kids up online. Not a lot of kids living with sickle cell [anemia] live in Iowa. Online, they can find other kids with sickle cell, talk online, and feel like they're not alone. One of the kids we got really close with was Bianca. She was dealing with her third bout of cancer, and she'd call us every day to talk to our staff. She was online 7-8 hours every day. When she passed away, I didn't really think I'd feel emotionally invested in one of our users. Her mother told us that my boss and I were in her last thoughts. It was really, really rough.
Our relationships are really getting more intense online, and we need to know more about how to deal with death. User Not Found is my site where I post essays while I'm doing research. The killing off of the persona is another thing I'm looking into. There aren't a lot of people doing this research. There's nothing that's been written. So it's really weird.
In doing my research I've found that online communities in a couple of different ways. They may keep the account up so nobody else can use that ID. And if there are profiles, they may keep the profile available, maybe marking it with a RIP and the years they were alive. They might also set up memorial pages, living obituaries that talk about what they did, how they remembered. And a lot of the gaming communities may have annual memorial events where they have their own little events where they have a memorial avatar. They put down their weapons, come to a central meeting place, and mourn the loss of one of their users.
And some online communities don't do anything. They take no action. And that's unfortunate. With Starbright, we need to be careful. You can't step on parents' toes. Some parents want their children to learn about death in a more controlled way. We're looking into having some sort of a memorial garden that would be online as well offline. They could plant a virtual tree online and write some words about their friend who died. And we could send them a packet of seeds so they could plant a real tree of their own.
At my job, we handle the taboos around death by making jokes around it. That can be even worse. If we don't make jokes, there's no way we can make it through our days. People need to start talking about this and having these sorts of conversations. Clearly it's an issue. The more we interact with people online, experiences like this will become more and more relevant. Now more and more people are accepting the fact that the friendships are legitimate. They have real feelings of grief and mourning. They feel like these feelings aren't legitimate. I would argue the opposite. You probably know them better because you have this veil of anonymity. It may be more impactful if the friends are online.
Some ISPs have policies in place where they require proof of death certificates. It's hit or miss company to company.
Now let's talk about the online cries for help and the community's responsibility to react to those cries for help. Sometimes the intent is not to die but to get some attention. In one instance, a woman took too many pills to be well, and a community member called 911. They tracked down her phone number and were able to get their in time.
Brad Fitzpatrick: I'm Brad from LiveJournal. I had to deal with a lot of those emails saying there had to be a way we could track her down. We were able to get her address from a payment she'd made via check or something like that.
The community was able to rally together and were interested in saving her. If you read the chat transcripts from Ripper on IRC, people thought he was fooling around and didn't really want to kill himself. As he was passing out, people started saying maybe they should call someone. If they'd called somebody, they could have sent someone over quite easily. They had ways of getting ahold of him. But because of their not gettign involved stance, he ended up dying.
Is it overstepping the bounds of the online relationship to bring in the authorities? One of the problems is the hoaxes that have been covered. Because of all the publicized hoaxes, people don't take real situations seriously. The reality is that there aren't many hoaxes. There are more realities than hoaxes. Community managers have a responsibility to investigate further. In the community that I manage, if a kid even mentions suicide, we call their parents and bring in a specialist.
Cory Doctorow: When Google wrote its algorithm for what comes up when you type suicide, they put a lot of thought into it. Right now, the top results are suicide hotlines. But sometimes, when the algorithms aren't working right, it's pages of people telling each other how to kill themselves.
Matt Haughey: It's interesting that when attempts are visible -- there's a Webcam -- they're taken more seriously because you can actually see it happen.
How Americans deal with death is so unhealthy compared to a lot of cultures. And how children deal with death compared to adults is even more different. Children deal with death so healthily. Everyone could learn a lot by talking to these kids.
Paul Bausch: I think it was in the Tipping Point, but if someone dies because they committed suicide and newspapers put it on the front page, it can be seen as permission to kill yourself.
If you over-memorialize kids, and kids view suicide as a way to escape from their illness, you have to be careful how kids take those memorials. You don't want to over-romanticize it.
Another thing I'd like to talk about is when people who aren't really that active in a community die and the community rises up to recognize them. On Fark, there was a guy who didn't post much at all, but when he died in a car accident, the community rose up. There were so many posts about this kid, and nobody knew him. It made me start thinking: Does a person's usage in a given community correlate with how the death is received. Do accoladed users receive more memorials? I think that's how it happens in communities. The community feels a definite impact from that loss. But it's sort of disappointed when someone who's not a big user passes away.
Question:I think it's important to look at the quality of someone's activity. Some people might not post much, but they post well.
Smaller users can make deeper connections with individuals, but it impacts the community in a different way. Active users impact the entire community. On Starbright world, the kids are much more willing to talk about it than the adults are willing to ask them to talk about it. Adults kind of present barriers where there don't need to be barriers.
If you thought that one of your online friends died, how far would you go? Where would you draw the line between doing your own personal research and overstepping the bounds to impose on someone's privacy? Would you contact the family? When we contacted David's family in 1994, most families would have been closed to being contacted by strangers in their time of grieving. For you, as a person, to be able to move on, you kind of have to know what's going on.
There's a service called Died Online. You register. And you choose the increments on which you check in on the site. If you fail to check in twice based on your increments, the service contacts people you've listed to let them know that you haven't checked in for awhile and they might want to check in with you.
For my job, we're working in prevention as well as what to do if it's already happened. It's tough. You have to take it on a situation by situation basis. It's hard to come up with a protocol that you'd follow consistently because if you know the individual. It can be different in every case.
Only now are we even really at a point where we can have these conversations. Things change so rapidly. Maybe a year from now we'll have this conversation and it will be totally different.
Brad Fitzpatrick: Whenever someone dies on LiveJournal, and it's happened maybe a dozen times now, the last post will get hundreds of comments.
That's one of the healthier things I've seen. It's grieving. It's sharing. And it brings the community together so people don't have to deal with it themselves. The only deaths I've experienced have been online. Friends, family. I've only experienced death online. That might be why I'm so interested in this.
South by Southwest 2003 V
David Weinberger: Why the Web Matters
The Web does matter. Every time you hear somebody say, "The bubble is over," what they're really saying is that the Internet doesn't matter. They're just wrong. I want to go through seven or eight ways in which the Web really matters.
The first is that I have 10 times as many friends than I used to have. There are 100 times as many people than I knew before. There are 1,000 times as many people that I can call. Every imaginable interest has its spot on the Web. Anybody can find a set of people who are interested in the same sorts of things.
We take for granted that we can get more information about anything. If you don't like Cheerios and their marketing messages, there's a world out there online that can give you a perspective and the information that you're looking for. Truth doesn't have to have the voice stripped out of it. That link is gone. It's not just happening in Web logs. It's happening in the adult journalism world, too.
Every day I get a link to stuff that matters to me. And it comes from young people who are 18 steps removed from me. When I was growing up, to learn meant to be on a one-to-one relationship with a book. When my kids are on a computer using a word processor, they have nine IM sessions going, and they're working together. The teachers probably think it's cheating. It's not. It's learning.
The Web matters because if you're a 13 year old in Hong Kong or a 12 year old in Florence, you take it for granted that you can speak and the world will listen. I grew up believing that the world consisted of countries separated by borders.
The Web matters. I don't know why people dismiss it. They want to take something that's impressive and make it dull.
The Web is like Michael Jackson. The more you see and the more you know, it gets weirder and weirder. The weirdest thing about the Web is its success. What is the Web for? 600 million people don't know what it's for. Something big is happening. It's weird because we're looking at a 2-D screen, yet we talk about it as though it's spatial.
The Web is also familiar. But what does the Web remind of us? The spoiler here is that there's a default philosophy. What does it mean to be a human among other humans? We live in an age of deep alienation. Our ideas of what it means to be a human are deeply out of whack with the way we live our lives. Your understanding of what you are determines who you are.
My motto for today is: Our attraction to the Web is proportional to the depth of our alienation. I'm going to look at this in two ways. The first has to do with Ray Kurzweil's "Age of the Spiritual Machine." If we can move ourselves into silicon, we can escape our bodies. There's nothing magical about silicon. It's just fast and cheap. What if we didn't do it with computers. What if we did it with beer cans?
I was in a wheat field last summer. Take the motions of the wind and the movement of animals. If you kept track of left-leaning stalks as off and right-leaning as on, there's Ray again.
It's an odd idea that we can take brain states, model them in another material, and have something that resembles human consciousness. Why spend so much time knocking the highly intelligent doer of good deeds Raymond Kurzweil? We're really alienated in our beliefs if we think this makes any amount of sense.
Has anyone worked for an organization whose tag line was "We deliver the right information to the right people at the right time"? The idea that good input leads to good outcomes is fine if you're a robot. What does making a decision consist of? It consists of making a decision which inputs to make sense of. We had the causality backwards. We're not software. We've got time backwards.
What I want to suggest is that that's not the way information appears on the Web, and that that's extremely appealing to us. How does information look on the Web? Most commercial Web sites are valueless marketing crap. When I was looking for a washer and a drier, I googled Kenmore, Maytag, and discussion, and I got this site, which is extremely ugly. But I found exactly the model I was looking for. I posted a question, and within a couple of hours, a guy named Jim replied. Jim wouldn't lie to me. If I went into Sears to look at a Kenmore, the salespeople wouldn't tell me about the buzzer being too lous. On the Web, it's contextual. There's a physicist of lint hanging out on the Web waiting to answer someone's questions.
What do we get out of this knowledge? Smarter customers? That's not really the goal here. Knowledge used to be fat and chewy. Over time, that evolved into a quest for certainty. We started looking for the certain and knowable based on the statements themselves. That's the skinniest approach to knowledge. We've become anorexic in our knowledge. We've also become a cult of precision. That helps explain our obsession with bits. What's really important is that atoms and the analog world are messy and sloppy, and bits and the digital world are extremely sharp and precise. We're missing ambiguity. The world is not precise. The Web is the counter to the overly precise world of bits.
We also seem to have the idea that the world is perfectly precise and that's it's just our measuring devices are lacking. If I ask you what's real, you're going to give me a rock. A rock doesn't change. It changes very, very slowly. If I were to say to you that three rocks make up a triangle, you would say the rocks were more real. If you move the rocks, the triangle goes away, but the rocks remain. The triangle is dependent, and dependence is weak. Our default philosophy is individualism, but without groups, we cannot be individuals. Individuals don't come first. We only become individuals because of gifts from groups.
Relationships among humans are not obvious, but they are on the Web because relationships are links. Here's Doc Searls. Here's his blogroll. To be on the Web means to be linked. The Web is made up of links. Would you rather be well linked or well read?
You often hear about the abundance of the Web. 20 billion pages, 100 billion links. I can't find an attribution for the 20 billion pages, and I made up the 100 billion. But it's not about the abundance, it's about the generosity. The people who made the Web, and the people who make the pages. The Web's architecture is about links. Every time I put a link on my page, I'm telling people to go somewhere else. Every link is an expression of selflessness. The Web is an architecture of generosity.
When are humans at our best? We're at our best when we're out of ourselves and involved with others. When we're being generous. That's reflected inevitably in the Web. Every time we're on the Web, we're engaged in that.
What does the Web remind us of? It reminds us of our selves, and of ourselves at our best.
David Weinberger: Why the Web Matters
Weinberger is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a contributor to World of Ends, and author of Small Pieces, Loosely Joined. Here is a rough transcript of Weinberger's remarks:
The Web does matter. Every time you hear somebody say, "The bubble is over," what they're really saying is that the Internet doesn't matter. They're just wrong. I want to go through seven or eight ways in which the Web really matters.
The first is that I have 10 times as many friends than I used to have. There are 100 times as many people than I knew before. There are 1,000 times as many people that I can call. Every imaginable interest has its spot on the Web. Anybody can find a set of people who are interested in the same sorts of things.
We take for granted that we can get more information about anything. If you don't like Cheerios and their marketing messages, there's a world out there online that can give you a perspective and the information that you're looking for. Truth doesn't have to have the voice stripped out of it. That link is gone. It's not just happening in Web logs. It's happening in the adult journalism world, too.
Every day I get a link to stuff that matters to me. And it comes from young people who are 18 steps removed from me. When I was growing up, to learn meant to be on a one-to-one relationship with a book. When my kids are on a computer using a word processor, they have nine IM sessions going, and they're working together. The teachers probably think it's cheating. It's not. It's learning.
The Web matters because if you're a 13 year old in Hong Kong or a 12 year old in Florence, you take it for granted that you can speak and the world will listen. I grew up believing that the world consisted of countries separated by borders.
The Web matters. I don't know why people dismiss it. They want to take something that's impressive and make it dull.
The Web is like Michael Jackson. The more you see and the more you know, it gets weirder and weirder. The weirdest thing about the Web is its success. What is the Web for? 600 million people don't know what it's for. Something big is happening. It's weird because we're looking at a 2-D screen, yet we talk about it as though it's spatial.
The Web is also familiar. But what does the Web remind of us? The spoiler here is that there's a default philosophy. What does it mean to be a human among other humans? We live in an age of deep alienation. Our ideas of what it means to be a human are deeply out of whack with the way we live our lives. Your understanding of what you are determines who you are.
My motto for today is: Our attraction to the Web is proportional to the depth of our alienation. I'm going to look at this in two ways. The first has to do with Ray Kurzweil's "Age of the Spiritual Machine." If we can move ourselves into silicon, we can escape our bodies. There's nothing magical about silicon. It's just fast and cheap. What if we didn't do it with computers. What if we did it with beer cans?
I was in a wheat field last summer. Take the motions of the wind and the movement of animals. If you kept track of left-leaning stalks as off and right-leaning as on, there's Ray again.
It's an odd idea that we can take brain states, model them in another material, and have something that resembles human consciousness. Why spend so much time knocking the highly intelligent doer of good deeds Raymond Kurzweil? We're really alienated in our beliefs if we think this makes any amount of sense.
Has anyone worked for an organization whose tag line was "We deliver the right information to the right people at the right time"? The idea that good input leads to good outcomes is fine if you're a robot. What does making a decision consist of? It consists of making a decision which inputs to make sense of. We had the causality backwards. We're not software. We've got time backwards.
What I want to suggest is that that's not the way information appears on the Web, and that that's extremely appealing to us. How does information look on the Web? Most commercial Web sites are valueless marketing crap. When I was looking for a washer and a drier, I googled Kenmore, Maytag, and discussion, and I got this site, which is extremely ugly. But I found exactly the model I was looking for. I posted a question, and within a couple of hours, a guy named Jim replied. Jim wouldn't lie to me. If I went into Sears to look at a Kenmore, the salespeople wouldn't tell me about the buzzer being too lous. On the Web, it's contextual. There's a physicist of lint hanging out on the Web waiting to answer someone's questions.
What do we get out of this knowledge? Smarter customers? That's not really the goal here. Knowledge used to be fat and chewy. Over time, that evolved into a quest for certainty. We started looking for the certain and knowable based on the statements themselves. That's the skinniest approach to knowledge. We've become anorexic in our knowledge. We've also become a cult of precision. That helps explain our obsession with bits. What's really important is that atoms and the analog world are messy and sloppy, and bits and the digital world are extremely sharp and precise. We're missing ambiguity. The world is not precise. The Web is the counter to the overly precise world of bits.
We also seem to have the idea that the world is perfectly precise and that's it's just our measuring devices are lacking. If I ask you what's real, you're going to give me a rock. A rock doesn't change. It changes very, very slowly. If I were to say to you that three rocks make up a triangle, you would say the rocks were more real. If you move the rocks, the triangle goes away, but the rocks remain. The triangle is dependent, and dependence is weak. Our default philosophy is individualism, but without groups, we cannot be individuals. Individuals don't come first. We only become individuals because of gifts from groups.
Relationships among humans are not obvious, but they are on the Web because relationships are links. Here's Doc Searls. Here's his blogroll. To be on the Web means to be linked. The Web is made up of links. Would you rather be well linked or well read?
You often hear about the abundance of the Web. 20 billion pages, 100 billion links. I can't find an attribution for the 20 billion pages, and I made up the 100 billion. But it's not about the abundance, it's about the generosity. The people who made the Web, and the people who make the pages. The Web's architecture is about links. Every time I put a link on my page, I'm telling people to go somewhere else. Every link is an expression of selflessness. The Web is an architecture of generosity.
When are humans at our best? We're at our best when we're out of ourselves and involved with others. When we're being generous. That's reflected inevitably in the Web. Every time we're on the Web, we're engaged in that.
What does the Web remind us of? It reminds us of our selves, and of ourselves at our best.
Friday, March 07, 2003
South by Southwest 2003 IV
Richard Stallman: Copyright Vs. Community in the Age of the Computer Networks
Putting the Free in Freedom
This talk is not about free software. In 1983, I reached the conclusion that for people to use computers freely, they needed to have access to free software and be able to use it freely. You should have the freedom to use software once you've got a copy. There are three freedoms. Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program. Freedom 1 is the freedom to help yourself by studying the program and changing it to suit your needs. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help your neighbor by giving them a copy of the software. Freedom 3 is the freedom to help build your community by working together to build that software.
Cooks use recipes and have the same freedoms in using recipes. If you tell a cook that they can't change a recipe, they would probably be outraged. Some people say: Can these ideas extend to anything? What about tables and microphones and cars? That's a silly question. There are no copiers for tables and microphones and cars. It's a moot point. The only way to make more physical objects is to build more. But what about the freedom to modify? If you buy this microphone, you are free to modify it. If you buy a chair, you're free to modify it. You can weld on more legs, saw them off.
Our freedoms are restricted by copyright law. Should people feel a reason to obey? The history of copyright is connected with the history of copying technology. The basic principles of ethics can't be reached by changes in technology. But when we consider ethical questions, we judge alternatives based on their consequences. Change the context, and the same alternatives may have different consequences.
The History of Reproduction
Back in the '70s, it was fashionable to say that computers were causing problems for copyright. I would rather say that copyright causes problems for computers. In the ancient world, the copying of books was done with a pen. This technology had certain consequences. Any reader could do it. If you could read and write, you could copy a book just about as well as anybody else. There was no economy of scale. Making 10 copies of the same book took 10 times as long.
Books were copied wherever there were copies. There was no centralization. There was also no need for all copies to be identical. There was no gulf between writing a book and copying one. Writing a commentary was a useful thing to do. Writing a compendium was also appreciated and considered worthy.
As far as I can tell, there was no such thing as copyright in the ancient world. Then there was an advance in copying technology. The printing press made copying more efficient but not uniformly so. It takes a lot of work to set the type and comparatively little work to make many copies from that type. There was far more economy of scale. Another change was that you needed to have a printing press and type, which was fairly expensive and unusual material. Not everybody could make copies. This centralized the copies of any given book. Printing did not entirely replace hand copying. Very rich people and very poor people continued making copies by hand.
The Advent of Copyright
Most of the copies, however, were made by printing. Copyright came along with the printing press. Italy in the 1500s was apparently the first place there was copyright. You could go to the ruler and ask for a monopoly on printing a work. Rulers liked giving our monopolies. The nature of printing press technology had certain consequences for copyright. It was understood to only affect publication. Not copying. It was an industrial regulation. It restricted something only specialized businesses could do. It didn't restrict readers. It was painless, relatively easy to enforce, and arguably beneficial.
Copyright in England started out as a sort of a monopoly system for publishers that was relatively harmful. Then it was reformed and rewarded to authors. In the Constitution, there was thought given to copyright being an entitlement for authors. But what came out was a very different idea. It doesn't say that authors are entitled to exclusive use. It doesn't even say that there would be exclusive use. It just says that Congress should benefit progress. Any benefit for the authors is just a means to that end.
The Price That You Trade
The theory of this is that the public pays a price. The public trades away its natural right to copy things and in exchange gets the benefit of getting more things written. The thing we traded away wasn't a right we could use easily. Then printing press technology got more efficient. Printing presses around 1900 got cheaper. Even poor people stopped copying things by hand. People started forgetting that copies could be made by hand. Things went along more or less OK. But the age of the printing press is going away for the age of the computer. Not everybody wants this to be easy for you.
Digital information technology brings us back to a situation more like the ancient world. It's true that mass producing CD's is less expensive than making a one-off CD, but the difference isn't that great. Any computer user can make copies. There's no inherent reason for copies of things to be made centrally. Copyright law now affects every citizen. It no longer affects companies. It takes away freedoms from you and me. Copyright law is no longer painless, easy to enforce, or arguably beneficial. To stop you from sharing something with a friend, the police state needs to intrude into your house. We're no longer trading away something we don't have anyway. We need to renegotiate the deal.
That's the rational thing for the public to do. We need to hold onto the parts of the freedom we want to use and give up freedoms we can't use. That's what our federal government would do if it were democratic and representative of our interests. We have government of the people by the flunkies for the corporations. Our freedoms are being taken away to empower corporations.
What's Going Wrong
Copyright used to last 14 years. It's been extended over and over in the last century. The publishers have figured out a way to disregard what the Constitution says. If they keep on extending it, it's in effect perpetual copyright on the installment plan. Any given work is supposed to enter the public domain on a certain date. But their plan is for no work to enter the public domain ever again. They pay Congress to give it to them 20 years at a time.
In 1998, they passed the Mickey Mouse copyright act. It was basically to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain, and it was basically bought by Disney. It's actually called the Sonny Bono copyright act. Sonny Bono was a member of the Church of Scientology and a member of Congress. The Church of Scientology actively sues people based on infringement of copyright laws. The movie companies were saying that 75 years wasn't long enough. This is just something paid legislators can use to do what they're getting paid to do.
Another dimension of copyright is how much it covers. There are freedoms we have as readers. But they're freedoms publishers want to take away from us. You may have bought a used book. You may have lent a book to a friend. You may have bought a book anonymously using cash. You may have borrowed a book from the library. Or you may have owned a book for many years, reading it several times.
All of this adds up to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It's why the people who make DVD's want to insert ads that you have to watch. They don't want you to know how DVD's work. Linux programmers wrote a program so you can play these encoded DVD's. The right to play the DVD is lawful in this country, but using this software -- even linking to the software -- is illegal. They're doing the same thing with e-books. And the record companies are doing the same thing with their fake CD's. They look like CD's, but they can't be played on your computer. In one European country, they can't call them CD's because they don't meet the minimum standards.
Companies like this -- like EMI -- deserve to go broke. I hope you will help to make the record companies go out of business. There's nothing wrong with making records per se, but this infringement on our rights needs to be punished. Companies as arrogant as this do not deserve to exist.
A New Copyright Model
There's no reason why copyright should be the same for all kinds of work. If copyright policy is considered uniform, they can pick whichever narrow little area seems to justify copyright restrictions and then apply them uniformly. We also need to look at the various dimensions of copyright such as length of time. Most books are out of print in just a few years. They're remaindered after 18 months. A 10-year copyright would be perfectly adequate. People usually assume that authors love publishers and that copyright benefits them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Another dimension is what copyright covers. I have three basic categories of works, and they're not distinguished by media: functional works, documentaries and representational works, and artistic and aesthetic works.
Functional works are things that you use. Computer programs and recipes. Manuals and textbooks. Functional works should be free. When people are using this information, they may be able to improve it. If we give up the copyright bargain, would these works be written? We have half a million volunteers working on free software. We're starting to venture into other functional works as well. The Wikipedia is now the largest encyclopedia in the history of the world.
In the second category, works that represent the views of people, to change them is to misrepresent somebody's thoughts. There's no social imperative to publish modified versions of the works. You might envision a modified copyright that allows commercial reproduction of the works verbatim and nothing else.
The third category is aesthetic or artistic works. For these kinds of works, the hard problem is modification. These works have integrity and modification can destroy that integrity. Shakespeare took the plots of his plays from other plays. If copyright law existed then, they would have been illegal. We consider them masterpieces. For novels, maybe you can't make them better.
Another issue is Internet music sharing. We should simply legalize it now. The musicians and the public would be better off. Record labels treat musicians like dirt. The contracts that they impose on musicians are extremely cruel. When you buy a commercial CD, you fail to support the musicians. Concerts are how musicians make money. I want music that's made by artisans, not in factories.
Getting rid of the Hype Industrial Complex and moving toward Internet music sharing is one way to get there. Instead of having a public relations campaign saying that sharing is piracy -- sharing is like attacking a ship, which goes against human nature -- we could have a public relations campaign saying, "Have you sent $1 to your favorite band today?"
Richard Stallman: Copyright Vs. Community in the Age of the Computer Networks
Stallman was introduced in part by SXSW Interactive Event Director Hugh Forrest, who said that this was the first-ever programming event scheduled on the opening Friday night of SXSW Interactive. In the spirit of Stallman's work with the Free Software Foundation, the event was also SXSW Interactive's first free event. (The audience applauded at this point.) As former editor of The Austin Challenger, Forrest also introduced Doug Barnes, formerly of The Spark, The Hot Spot, and The Austin Weekly, and now on the board of EFF Austin. Barnes, then, introduced Stallman.
Even though Stallman is a brilliant and prolific programmer who launched a movement exploring the future of software and copyright, Barnes said Stallman is also a "pain in the ass." "Programmers are often honest to a fault," Barnes says. "If they weren't the world would collapse around us. According to Richard, it's the people that need to change, not the visions." Here is a rough transcript of Stallman's remarks:
Putting the Free in Freedom
This talk is not about free software. In 1983, I reached the conclusion that for people to use computers freely, they needed to have access to free software and be able to use it freely. You should have the freedom to use software once you've got a copy. There are three freedoms. Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program. Freedom 1 is the freedom to help yourself by studying the program and changing it to suit your needs. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help your neighbor by giving them a copy of the software. Freedom 3 is the freedom to help build your community by working together to build that software.
Cooks use recipes and have the same freedoms in using recipes. If you tell a cook that they can't change a recipe, they would probably be outraged. Some people say: Can these ideas extend to anything? What about tables and microphones and cars? That's a silly question. There are no copiers for tables and microphones and cars. It's a moot point. The only way to make more physical objects is to build more. But what about the freedom to modify? If you buy this microphone, you are free to modify it. If you buy a chair, you're free to modify it. You can weld on more legs, saw them off.
Our freedoms are restricted by copyright law. Should people feel a reason to obey? The history of copyright is connected with the history of copying technology. The basic principles of ethics can't be reached by changes in technology. But when we consider ethical questions, we judge alternatives based on their consequences. Change the context, and the same alternatives may have different consequences.
The History of Reproduction
Back in the '70s, it was fashionable to say that computers were causing problems for copyright. I would rather say that copyright causes problems for computers. In the ancient world, the copying of books was done with a pen. This technology had certain consequences. Any reader could do it. If you could read and write, you could copy a book just about as well as anybody else. There was no economy of scale. Making 10 copies of the same book took 10 times as long.
Books were copied wherever there were copies. There was no centralization. There was also no need for all copies to be identical. There was no gulf between writing a book and copying one. Writing a commentary was a useful thing to do. Writing a compendium was also appreciated and considered worthy.
As far as I can tell, there was no such thing as copyright in the ancient world. Then there was an advance in copying technology. The printing press made copying more efficient but not uniformly so. It takes a lot of work to set the type and comparatively little work to make many copies from that type. There was far more economy of scale. Another change was that you needed to have a printing press and type, which was fairly expensive and unusual material. Not everybody could make copies. This centralized the copies of any given book. Printing did not entirely replace hand copying. Very rich people and very poor people continued making copies by hand.
The Advent of Copyright
Most of the copies, however, were made by printing. Copyright came along with the printing press. Italy in the 1500s was apparently the first place there was copyright. You could go to the ruler and ask for a monopoly on printing a work. Rulers liked giving our monopolies. The nature of printing press technology had certain consequences for copyright. It was understood to only affect publication. Not copying. It was an industrial regulation. It restricted something only specialized businesses could do. It didn't restrict readers. It was painless, relatively easy to enforce, and arguably beneficial.
Copyright in England started out as a sort of a monopoly system for publishers that was relatively harmful. Then it was reformed and rewarded to authors. In the Constitution, there was thought given to copyright being an entitlement for authors. But what came out was a very different idea. It doesn't say that authors are entitled to exclusive use. It doesn't even say that there would be exclusive use. It just says that Congress should benefit progress. Any benefit for the authors is just a means to that end.
The Price That You Trade
The theory of this is that the public pays a price. The public trades away its natural right to copy things and in exchange gets the benefit of getting more things written. The thing we traded away wasn't a right we could use easily. Then printing press technology got more efficient. Printing presses around 1900 got cheaper. Even poor people stopped copying things by hand. People started forgetting that copies could be made by hand. Things went along more or less OK. But the age of the printing press is going away for the age of the computer. Not everybody wants this to be easy for you.
Digital information technology brings us back to a situation more like the ancient world. It's true that mass producing CD's is less expensive than making a one-off CD, but the difference isn't that great. Any computer user can make copies. There's no inherent reason for copies of things to be made centrally. Copyright law now affects every citizen. It no longer affects companies. It takes away freedoms from you and me. Copyright law is no longer painless, easy to enforce, or arguably beneficial. To stop you from sharing something with a friend, the police state needs to intrude into your house. We're no longer trading away something we don't have anyway. We need to renegotiate the deal.
That's the rational thing for the public to do. We need to hold onto the parts of the freedom we want to use and give up freedoms we can't use. That's what our federal government would do if it were democratic and representative of our interests. We have government of the people by the flunkies for the corporations. Our freedoms are being taken away to empower corporations.
What's Going Wrong
Copyright used to last 14 years. It's been extended over and over in the last century. The publishers have figured out a way to disregard what the Constitution says. If they keep on extending it, it's in effect perpetual copyright on the installment plan. Any given work is supposed to enter the public domain on a certain date. But their plan is for no work to enter the public domain ever again. They pay Congress to give it to them 20 years at a time.
In 1998, they passed the Mickey Mouse copyright act. It was basically to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain, and it was basically bought by Disney. It's actually called the Sonny Bono copyright act. Sonny Bono was a member of the Church of Scientology and a member of Congress. The Church of Scientology actively sues people based on infringement of copyright laws. The movie companies were saying that 75 years wasn't long enough. This is just something paid legislators can use to do what they're getting paid to do.
Another dimension of copyright is how much it covers. There are freedoms we have as readers. But they're freedoms publishers want to take away from us. You may have bought a used book. You may have lent a book to a friend. You may have bought a book anonymously using cash. You may have borrowed a book from the library. Or you may have owned a book for many years, reading it several times.
All of this adds up to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It's why the people who make DVD's want to insert ads that you have to watch. They don't want you to know how DVD's work. Linux programmers wrote a program so you can play these encoded DVD's. The right to play the DVD is lawful in this country, but using this software -- even linking to the software -- is illegal. They're doing the same thing with e-books. And the record companies are doing the same thing with their fake CD's. They look like CD's, but they can't be played on your computer. In one European country, they can't call them CD's because they don't meet the minimum standards.
Companies like this -- like EMI -- deserve to go broke. I hope you will help to make the record companies go out of business. There's nothing wrong with making records per se, but this infringement on our rights needs to be punished. Companies as arrogant as this do not deserve to exist.
A New Copyright Model
There's no reason why copyright should be the same for all kinds of work. If copyright policy is considered uniform, they can pick whichever narrow little area seems to justify copyright restrictions and then apply them uniformly. We also need to look at the various dimensions of copyright such as length of time. Most books are out of print in just a few years. They're remaindered after 18 months. A 10-year copyright would be perfectly adequate. People usually assume that authors love publishers and that copyright benefits them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Another dimension is what copyright covers. I have three basic categories of works, and they're not distinguished by media: functional works, documentaries and representational works, and artistic and aesthetic works.
Functional works are things that you use. Computer programs and recipes. Manuals and textbooks. Functional works should be free. When people are using this information, they may be able to improve it. If we give up the copyright bargain, would these works be written? We have half a million volunteers working on free software. We're starting to venture into other functional works as well. The Wikipedia is now the largest encyclopedia in the history of the world.
In the second category, works that represent the views of people, to change them is to misrepresent somebody's thoughts. There's no social imperative to publish modified versions of the works. You might envision a modified copyright that allows commercial reproduction of the works verbatim and nothing else.
The third category is aesthetic or artistic works. For these kinds of works, the hard problem is modification. These works have integrity and modification can destroy that integrity. Shakespeare took the plots of his plays from other plays. If copyright law existed then, they would have been illegal. We consider them masterpieces. For novels, maybe you can't make them better.
Another issue is Internet music sharing. We should simply legalize it now. The musicians and the public would be better off. Record labels treat musicians like dirt. The contracts that they impose on musicians are extremely cruel. When you buy a commercial CD, you fail to support the musicians. Concerts are how musicians make money. I want music that's made by artisans, not in factories.
Getting rid of the Hype Industrial Complex and moving toward Internet music sharing is one way to get there. Instead of having a public relations campaign saying that sharing is piracy -- sharing is like attacking a ship, which goes against human nature -- we could have a public relations campaign saying, "Have you sent $1 to your favorite band today?"
South by Southwest 2003 III
Just got back from dinner at Curra's with Ben and Laurie. The chicken mole enchiladas were wonderful, and I topped dinner off with a bottle of Shiner. Shiner Bock is one of my favorite beers, and it's not widely available outside of Texas. Tonight, our waiter tried to discourage me from having a Shiner so I could have a Newcastle of all things. Newcastle, I can get anywhere. Shiner? Austin.
Over dinner, we talked about the small-world and microstar nature of the self-publishing and Web communities, the importance of politics and urban planning, why people think Ben's a jerk, and the future of Ben's So New Media empire. I gave Ben the origami globe that came in the SXSW gear bag, and I decided that I might need to be less dependent on the 15 bus if I want to see everyone I want to see while I'm in town. In 30 minutes, Richard Stallman. I need to go upstairs to find a seat and a power plug. My battery just edged into the red.
Just got back from dinner at Curra's with Ben and Laurie. The chicken mole enchiladas were wonderful, and I topped dinner off with a bottle of Shiner. Shiner Bock is one of my favorite beers, and it's not widely available outside of Texas. Tonight, our waiter tried to discourage me from having a Shiner so I could have a Newcastle of all things. Newcastle, I can get anywhere. Shiner? Austin.
Over dinner, we talked about the small-world and microstar nature of the self-publishing and Web communities, the importance of politics and urban planning, why people think Ben's a jerk, and the future of Ben's So New Media empire. I gave Ben the origami globe that came in the SXSW gear bag, and I decided that I might need to be less dependent on the 15 bus if I want to see everyone I want to see while I'm in town. In 30 minutes, Richard Stallman. I need to go upstairs to find a seat and a power plug. My battery just edged into the red.
Music to My Eyes XII
The fellow who just sold me a large cafe latte for $3.50 has never been further northeast than Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But so far during South by Southwest, he's met people as far away from Austin as Boston (me), Philadelphia, and New Zealand. In October, he'll go to New York City for his honeymoon. Turns out that Mr. Coffee is also in a band, the Austin-based space rock band Spacetruck. I'll have to check out the MP3's later, but it seems that Mr. Coffee plays bass.
And, to add to your small world file, it appears that one of the women my friend Rick works with at Akins High School is the mother of Jordan, drummer for the Boston band Fooled by April. Can't go far enough to escape bands from Boss Town! They're playing SXSW at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Fox & Hound. Check 'em out if you're here, not there.
The fellow who just sold me a large cafe latte for $3.50 has never been further northeast than Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But so far during South by Southwest, he's met people as far away from Austin as Boston (me), Philadelphia, and New Zealand. In October, he'll go to New York City for his honeymoon. Turns out that Mr. Coffee is also in a band, the Austin-based space rock band Spacetruck. I'll have to check out the MP3's later, but it seems that Mr. Coffee plays bass.
And, to add to your small world file, it appears that one of the women my friend Rick works with at Akins High School is the mother of Jordan, drummer for the Boston band Fooled by April. Can't go far enough to escape bands from Boss Town! They're playing SXSW at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Fox & Hound. Check 'em out if you're here, not there.
South by Southwest 2003 II
For Austinites, a Harry Knowles sighting might be of relatively little import. But being from Boston, not Austin, I just had my first Web celeb fan moment, when I spotted the Ain't It Cool News founder sitting at a table near the registration area. Always a kick, almost more fun than sitting near Lyle Lovett at the Alamo.
For Austinites, a Harry Knowles sighting might be of relatively little import. But being from Boston, not Austin, I just had my first Web celeb fan moment, when I spotted the Ain't It Cool News founder sitting at a table near the registration area. Always a kick, almost more fun than sitting near Lyle Lovett at the Alamo.
South by Southwest 2003
I'm at the Austin Convention Center, with time to kill before South by Southwest Interactive officially begins at 7:30. Escaping the heavy snow in Boston, I was delayed getting out of Boston and finally arrived in town around 9 last night, catching a cab to Rick and Melissa's new house in Highland. I met their dog Dudley, and we stayed up a little catching up.
This morning, I caught the 15 bus downtown, getting off a hair too soon and walking down Trinity from 15th to the convention center. I registered, caught lunch at B.D. Riley's on Sixth, and got organized for the days ahead. The rain here has ended, and it's absolutely beautiful. Sunny, warm. In a couple of hours, I'll meet Ben Brown for dinner in South Austin before coming back here for Richard Stallman's talk.
Hello, Austin. I've missed you.
I'm at the Austin Convention Center, with time to kill before South by Southwest Interactive officially begins at 7:30. Escaping the heavy snow in Boston, I was delayed getting out of Boston and finally arrived in town around 9 last night, catching a cab to Rick and Melissa's new house in Highland. I met their dog Dudley, and we stayed up a little catching up.
This morning, I caught the 15 bus downtown, getting off a hair too soon and walking down Trinity from 15th to the convention center. I registered, caught lunch at B.D. Riley's on Sixth, and got organized for the days ahead. The rain here has ended, and it's absolutely beautiful. Sunny, warm. In a couple of hours, I'll meet Ben Brown for dinner in South Austin before coming back here for Richard Stallman's talk.
Hello, Austin. I've missed you.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Event-o-Dex XLI
No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
8 p.m.
Cambridgeport Saloon
300 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge
You are invited to the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash, the first in a series of occasional Boston-area blogger get-togethers.
Instead of sitting at our computers for 24 hours blogging about nothing to raise money for charity, instead of buying a plane ticket to Las Vegas for a conference featuring people you don't know and may never see again, and instead of worrying about whether your personal Web work makes you anti-social or depressed, come on out for the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash and meet scads of local bloggers. You've read their words. Now meet them live and in person!
We're inviting hundreds of Boston-area bloggers and Web writers, and you can freely transmit this invitation yourself. Who's invited initially? Readers of Media Diet, the blog run by co-organizer Heath Row; members of Boston Blogs, a project managed by co-organizer Shannon Okey, and participants in the Bostonites Unite! Web ring.
The Cambridgeport Saloon is a wonderful little bar between Central Square and MIT in Cambridge. Within easy walking distance from the Central Square T stop, the saloon sports video games (Golden Tee and Radikal Bikers, last we checked), pinball machines, a great juke box, pool tables, and darts. The bar also has history! Originally called Father's Fore, the bar has been in operation at least since the mid-'70s.
Be a part of history. Get in on the ground floor. Belly up to the bar and come out for the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash. And spread word.
(Apologies for those Boston-area bloggers too young to attend an event at a bar. We'll try to find all-ages venues for future Boston Blog Bashes, and, absolutely anyone and everyone is encouraged to convene their own blog gatherings.)
No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash
You are invited to the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash, the first in a series of occasional Boston-area blogger get-togethers.
Instead of sitting at our computers for 24 hours blogging about nothing to raise money for charity, instead of buying a plane ticket to Las Vegas for a conference featuring people you don't know and may never see again, and instead of worrying about whether your personal Web work makes you anti-social or depressed, come on out for the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash and meet scads of local bloggers. You've read their words. Now meet them live and in person!
We're inviting hundreds of Boston-area bloggers and Web writers, and you can freely transmit this invitation yourself. Who's invited initially? Readers of Media Diet, the blog run by co-organizer Heath Row; members of Boston Blogs, a project managed by co-organizer Shannon Okey, and participants in the Bostonites Unite! Web ring.
The Cambridgeport Saloon is a wonderful little bar between Central Square and MIT in Cambridge. Within easy walking distance from the Central Square T stop, the saloon sports video games (Golden Tee and Radikal Bikers, last we checked), pinball machines, a great juke box, pool tables, and darts. The bar also has history! Originally called Father's Fore, the bar has been in operation at least since the mid-'70s.
Be a part of history. Get in on the ground floor. Belly up to the bar and come out for the No. 1 Fun Boston Blog Bash. And spread word.
(Apologies for those Boston-area bloggers too young to attend an event at a bar. We'll try to find all-ages venues for future Boston Blog Bashes, and, absolutely anyone and everyone is encouraged to convene their own blog gatherings.)
Music to My Ears XXIX
Knowing that I'm heading to Aus-Town tomorrow, a co-worker brought in a CD by one her friend's bands, Kissinger. I'm listening to their "Charm" CD right now, and it's relatively interesting hard rock. Unfortunately, they're not playing while I'm in the area, but their Web site sports MP3's, music videos, and multimedia slideshows featuring photos taken at shows, including one at the Fort Worth International Raceway -- and the Cabaret Metro in Chicago. Not totally my cup of tea, but well done, and presented with a clear sense of humor. I bet they're fun live.
Knowing that I'm heading to Aus-Town tomorrow, a co-worker brought in a CD by one her friend's bands, Kissinger. I'm listening to their "Charm" CD right now, and it's relatively interesting hard rock. Unfortunately, they're not playing while I'm in the area, but their Web site sports MP3's, music videos, and multimedia slideshows featuring photos taken at shows, including one at the Fort Worth International Raceway -- and the Cabaret Metro in Chicago. Not totally my cup of tea, but well done, and presented with a clear sense of humor. I bet they're fun live.
Conferences and Community III
I leave for SXSW Interactive tomorrow afternoon, and I'm getting excited. It'll be nice to go back to Austin, where I almost moved in 2000. And I'm looking forward to catching up with a lot of friends I haven't seen for awhile.
Depending on the wireless network and other Net access on site and at my host's house, I hope to file frequent SXSW panel and speaker updates while at the conference. If that doesn't happen, Media Diet might be quiet until mid-next week. While I always hope to update Media Diet while traveling, if I don't, that doesn't mean that Media Diet is dead (long live Media Diet!). It just means that it's resting.
I leave for SXSW Interactive tomorrow afternoon, and I'm getting excited. It'll be nice to go back to Austin, where I almost moved in 2000. And I'm looking forward to catching up with a lot of friends I haven't seen for awhile.
Depending on the wireless network and other Net access on site and at my host's house, I hope to file frequent SXSW panel and speaker updates while at the conference. If that doesn't happen, Media Diet might be quiet until mid-next week. While I always hope to update Media Diet while traveling, if I don't, that doesn't mean that Media Diet is dead (long live Media Diet!). It just means that it's resting.
Corollary: Technofetishism XXVII
Sigh. Chris' car got hit while it was parked in front of a building. I'm here until 7 and walking to band practice anyway. I learned this via email.
Sigh. Chris' car got hit while it was parked in front of a building. I'm here until 7 and walking to band practice anyway. I learned this via email.
Blogging About Blogging LII
Say what you will about Richards Interactive's Project Blogger and its marketing move into the blogosphere, but I just filled out their application survey. We'll see whether Media Diet's 150 unique visitors a day and content mix passes muster -- and what the experience is like. It's official: Media Diet is selling out. I can always stop participating in the project if I'm chosen, no?
Say what you will about Richards Interactive's Project Blogger and its marketing move into the blogosphere, but I just filled out their application survey. We'll see whether Media Diet's 150 unique visitors a day and content mix passes muster -- and what the experience is like. It's official: Media Diet is selling out. I can always stop participating in the project if I'm chosen, no?
Business Reportage Goes Boom, Now Bust III
According to the New York Post's Keith Kelly, Jungle Media, publisher of MBA Jungle and JD Jungle is experiencing a series of top-level editorial exits. Three editors in almost as many weeks. It's clear that Jungle Media publishes stepping-stone magazines, in terms of staff as well as readers, as once you get your MBA or JD, the magazines are less relevant. The exiting editors have ended up at Popular Science, New York, and Ski. All steps up.
Thanks to I Want Media.
According to the New York Post's Keith Kelly, Jungle Media, publisher of MBA Jungle and JD Jungle is experiencing a series of top-level editorial exits. Three editors in almost as many weeks. It's clear that Jungle Media publishes stepping-stone magazines, in terms of staff as well as readers, as once you get your MBA or JD, the magazines are less relevant. The exiting editors have ended up at Popular Science, New York, and Ski. All steps up.
Thanks to I Want Media.
Technofetishism XXVII
In this ever-online, always-connected, widely distributed world of communications, it's good to know that there are still gaps in the system -- and steps that people can take to cross the voids. Earlier today, I emailed a couple of my bandmates to inquire about getting a ride to Anchormen practice tonight. I did so on my laptop, using Eudora.
Minutes ago, my cell phone beeped, indicating that I'd gotten an SMS. It was Chris, saying he could give me a lift. I replied via SMS, but I wonder: Does Chris get his email on his phone? Did he read my email and then decide that replying via SMS was more expedient? It was kind of nice not to get an email in response. Gaps to cross, voids to fill, steps to take.
In this ever-online, always-connected, widely distributed world of communications, it's good to know that there are still gaps in the system -- and steps that people can take to cross the voids. Earlier today, I emailed a couple of my bandmates to inquire about getting a ride to Anchormen practice tonight. I did so on my laptop, using Eudora.
Minutes ago, my cell phone beeped, indicating that I'd gotten an SMS. It was Chris, saying he could give me a lift. I replied via SMS, but I wonder: Does Chris get his email on his phone? Did he read my email and then decide that replying via SMS was more expedient? It was kind of nice not to get an email in response. Gaps to cross, voids to fill, steps to take.
North End Moment XXXV
I found this wallet photo from a junior high or high school formal dance this morning on the pavement in the back alley. It was face up, beaming at the grey skies of Boston, image surface speckled with the light rain we're getting this morning.
Oh, to be young and in love. She looks so pleased with herself: her dress, her hair. He looks so pleased to be with her. His suit is no match for her dress, and do you think he's almost hiding behind her so he doesn't look so wide? I don't know. What I do know is that if he really loved her, and she him, the photo wouldn't have found its way to the gutters behind the Scotch & Sirloin building. Just a little bittersweet welcome to the North End today.
I found this wallet photo from a junior high or high school formal dance this morning on the pavement in the back alley. It was face up, beaming at the grey skies of Boston, image surface speckled with the light rain we're getting this morning.
Oh, to be young and in love. She looks so pleased with herself: her dress, her hair. He looks so pleased to be with her. His suit is no match for her dress, and do you think he's almost hiding behind her so he doesn't look so wide? I don't know. What I do know is that if he really loved her, and she him, the photo wouldn't have found its way to the gutters behind the Scotch & Sirloin building. Just a little bittersweet welcome to the North End today.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Digesting the Daily IX
Recent editions of the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper of my alma mater, featured several media-, technology-, and activism-related items that might be of interest to Media Dieticians.
Alderman champions struggling Evanston skate park
Proposed budget calls for park to close; some say sport is bigger than baseball
(Feb. 18, 2003)
Twisted logic behind library's bizarre design
(Feb. 19, 2003)
Hip living
The Co-op has picked up a reputation as a "hippie commune," but tenants just call it home
(Feb. 24, 2003)
Weekend detention to Kellogg student Brady Busch, who was arrested Feb. 21 for pushing, grabbing, and insulting a female officer of the Evanston Police Department. Charged with battery, Busch reportedly shoved the officer, who was checking IDs, from behind so he could get past her. "Get out of the way, b-tch," he said. When arrested, the Kellogg student said, "F-ck you." Dude. You go to the Kellogg School of Management. What kind of business person do you want to be? What kind will you be? The kind that bruises the arms of police officers just so you can get into a bar? I am not impressed. Shame on you.
Recent editions of the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper of my alma mater, featured several media-, technology-, and activism-related items that might be of interest to Media Dieticians.
Alderman champions struggling Evanston skate park
Proposed budget calls for park to close; some say sport is bigger than baseball
(Feb. 18, 2003)
Twisted logic behind library's bizarre design
(Feb. 19, 2003)
Hip living
The Co-op has picked up a reputation as a "hippie commune," but tenants just call it home
(Feb. 24, 2003)
Weekend detention to Kellogg student Brady Busch, who was arrested Feb. 21 for pushing, grabbing, and insulting a female officer of the Evanston Police Department. Charged with battery, Busch reportedly shoved the officer, who was checking IDs, from behind so he could get past her. "Get out of the way, b-tch," he said. When arrested, the Kellogg student said, "F-ck you." Dude. You go to the Kellogg School of Management. What kind of business person do you want to be? What kind will you be? The kind that bruises the arms of police officers just so you can get into a bar? I am not impressed. Shame on you.
From the In Box: From the Reading Pile XVII
Thanks for the review on the "Nowhere Fast" deal. I have something for you to review further. I say that Jesus Christ rose from the dead 2000 years ago, and that the resrrection of Jesus Christ is an undeniable fact. What is your review on that? -- Simon Woodstock
The original manuscripts of the Bible are proven to be infallible. Besides the biblical account of the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, there is much evidence from first century non Christian historians that support the resurrection of Jesus Christ as well (i.e Pliny, Tacitus, Josephus etc.) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most historically verifiable event in all of ancient history.
Besides this, the Bible claims that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh. If a book claims that somebody is God, and they are in fact not God, that book is no source for any type of moral guidelines. That book would have to be considered to be the biggest lie of all history, and thus of no moral worth.
The Bible is infallible. The Bible claims that Jesus is God. Jesus rose from the dead, proving once and for all that this was so. The resurrection is not a theological/historical particular. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is either the most crucial event of all time, or it is absolutely nothing at all.
I respect any conclusion that you make, and I also respect you as a person, even if we disagree. Your review please.
Thanks for the review on the "Nowhere Fast" deal. I have something for you to review further. I say that Jesus Christ rose from the dead 2000 years ago, and that the resrrection of Jesus Christ is an undeniable fact. What is your review on that? -- Simon Woodstock
I would say that while I was raised Christian and read the Bible nearly every day, I don't think that the Bible is infallible. And that I would much rather concentrate on living in line with Christian morals and values than debating over theological-historical particulars. Live the change I want to make, I guess.
The original manuscripts of the Bible are proven to be infallible. Besides the biblical account of the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, there is much evidence from first century non Christian historians that support the resurrection of Jesus Christ as well (i.e Pliny, Tacitus, Josephus etc.) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most historically verifiable event in all of ancient history.
Besides this, the Bible claims that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh. If a book claims that somebody is God, and they are in fact not God, that book is no source for any type of moral guidelines. That book would have to be considered to be the biggest lie of all history, and thus of no moral worth.
The Bible is infallible. The Bible claims that Jesus is God. Jesus rose from the dead, proving once and for all that this was so. The resurrection is not a theological/historical particular. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is either the most crucial event of all time, or it is absolutely nothing at all.
I respect any conclusion that you make, and I also respect you as a person, even if we disagree. Your review please.
Monday, March 03, 2003
The Movie I Watched Last Night LIX
Fast Company's under a denial-of-service attack, so it's a challenge to work on our Web. I'm usually not this prolific with Media Diet, I promise. I've been trying to be productive at work otherwise, but here I am again.
For what it's worth, I've decided that it's not fair game for me to review movies I stumble across on the TV and watch with less than full attention -- "Ford Fairlane" and the 1977 "Island of Dr. Moreau" recently -- so I'm going to stick with movies I rent or watch on DVD. Maybe movies on channels like HBO, but definitely not commercially interrupted movies.
Battle Royale
Amazing. The concept alone behind this movie is intriguing, but its final execution is quite impressive. Because of an economic collapse and population explosion in the Japan of the future, a law is passed that allows the government to send one class of ninth graders to a deserted island for three days. The students are given weapons, food, and water; are instructed to kill each other; and the survivor at the end gets to return to the mainland. While one would think the plot would establish an unnecessarily gory, Friday the 13th-like slasher film, director Kinji Fukasaku did a brilliant job downplaying the violence, of which there is plenty, and making sure that the characters -- more than 40 at the movie's beginning -- are relatively distinguishable from the next. Takeshi Kitano sings as the subtly unstable former teacher overseeing the whole operation, and concept aside, there are some interesting developments and twists along the way -- including the boys who hack into the military's computer system and the Battle Royale alumnus who plays a role in the most satisfying plot surprise near the end of the movie. If you're a fan of Japanese or Hong Kong action and exploitation films, this is one to see for sure.
Dot
This is an independently produced mockumentary about a start-up company called Zectek. It's been billed as the Spinal Tap of the dotcom era and hailed by Business 2.0 as more realistic than Startup.com. While it's no Spinal Tap -- and while I've yet to see Startup.com (I just moved it up in my Netflix queue) -- it's an extremely funny, caustic, and biting satire of the Net Economy hype and hyperbole. Combining reality TV-styled footage with one-on-one candid interviews and voice-over news account narrative commenting on Netscape, Yahoo, and Boo.com, the movie slowly reveals the true leadership and character traits of the founders of Zectek, as well as those they hire later. What struck me hardest in this movie is that Zectek was a business founded on nothing: no ideas, no goals, and no business plan. The founders -- all of whom, outside of the technologist, perhaps, were full of hot air -- did everything necessary to run a startup business, from acquiring office space and hiring a receptionist to making T-shirts and raising millions of dollars in venture capital. In the end, the company never did anything, much less make a product or service. It reminded me of the band I was in in junior high. We opened a bank account, designed a logo, and bought sheet music for "Axel F" and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," but beyond one half-serious practice in the Methodist church's youth group room, we never did anything. We even researched our band name against existing trademarks, changing our name from Nitecap to Knightcap to avoid future litigation involving a hotel chain. A silly -- and slightly sad -- callback to the heyday of the Net Economy, when you didn't even need a business plan sketched on your cocktail napkin. All you needed was a napkin.
Freejack
How did this movie ever get made? Based on the Robert Sheckley s-f novel "Immortality Inc.," the film stars Emilio Estevez, of all people, as the protagonist -- and Mick Jagger as the bounty hunter antagonist. The story is pretty basic. Emilio's heroic character is a race-car driver who perishes in a fiery wreck -- and who is sucked into the future to serve as the body for a transplanted mind. The bulk of the movie is a series of Running Man-like chase scenes in which Emilio outpaces Mick; reconnects with his fiancee, played by Rene Russo, who's become a hard-edged business woman since his death; and tries to track down the wealthy business man who took out the bounty in the first place. That person turns out to be Anthony Hopkins' character, Russo's character's mentor and employer -- and outside of a visually stimulating final sequence in which we're drawn into Hopkins' character's preserved mind, the movie is devoid of value or interest. But the movie might be worth watching for the last scenes. And if you dig Sheckley, the movie might satisfy the completist in you.
Fast Company's under a denial-of-service attack, so it's a challenge to work on our Web. I'm usually not this prolific with Media Diet, I promise. I've been trying to be productive at work otherwise, but here I am again.
For what it's worth, I've decided that it's not fair game for me to review movies I stumble across on the TV and watch with less than full attention -- "Ford Fairlane" and the 1977 "Island of Dr. Moreau" recently -- so I'm going to stick with movies I rent or watch on DVD. Maybe movies on channels like HBO, but definitely not commercially interrupted movies.
Battle Royale
Amazing. The concept alone behind this movie is intriguing, but its final execution is quite impressive. Because of an economic collapse and population explosion in the Japan of the future, a law is passed that allows the government to send one class of ninth graders to a deserted island for three days. The students are given weapons, food, and water; are instructed to kill each other; and the survivor at the end gets to return to the mainland. While one would think the plot would establish an unnecessarily gory, Friday the 13th-like slasher film, director Kinji Fukasaku did a brilliant job downplaying the violence, of which there is plenty, and making sure that the characters -- more than 40 at the movie's beginning -- are relatively distinguishable from the next. Takeshi Kitano sings as the subtly unstable former teacher overseeing the whole operation, and concept aside, there are some interesting developments and twists along the way -- including the boys who hack into the military's computer system and the Battle Royale alumnus who plays a role in the most satisfying plot surprise near the end of the movie. If you're a fan of Japanese or Hong Kong action and exploitation films, this is one to see for sure.
Dot
This is an independently produced mockumentary about a start-up company called Zectek. It's been billed as the Spinal Tap of the dotcom era and hailed by Business 2.0 as more realistic than Startup.com. While it's no Spinal Tap -- and while I've yet to see Startup.com (I just moved it up in my Netflix queue) -- it's an extremely funny, caustic, and biting satire of the Net Economy hype and hyperbole. Combining reality TV-styled footage with one-on-one candid interviews and voice-over news account narrative commenting on Netscape, Yahoo, and Boo.com, the movie slowly reveals the true leadership and character traits of the founders of Zectek, as well as those they hire later. What struck me hardest in this movie is that Zectek was a business founded on nothing: no ideas, no goals, and no business plan. The founders -- all of whom, outside of the technologist, perhaps, were full of hot air -- did everything necessary to run a startup business, from acquiring office space and hiring a receptionist to making T-shirts and raising millions of dollars in venture capital. In the end, the company never did anything, much less make a product or service. It reminded me of the band I was in in junior high. We opened a bank account, designed a logo, and bought sheet music for "Axel F" and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," but beyond one half-serious practice in the Methodist church's youth group room, we never did anything. We even researched our band name against existing trademarks, changing our name from Nitecap to Knightcap to avoid future litigation involving a hotel chain. A silly -- and slightly sad -- callback to the heyday of the Net Economy, when you didn't even need a business plan sketched on your cocktail napkin. All you needed was a napkin.
Freejack
How did this movie ever get made? Based on the Robert Sheckley s-f novel "Immortality Inc.," the film stars Emilio Estevez, of all people, as the protagonist -- and Mick Jagger as the bounty hunter antagonist. The story is pretty basic. Emilio's heroic character is a race-car driver who perishes in a fiery wreck -- and who is sucked into the future to serve as the body for a transplanted mind. The bulk of the movie is a series of Running Man-like chase scenes in which Emilio outpaces Mick; reconnects with his fiancee, played by Rene Russo, who's become a hard-edged business woman since his death; and tries to track down the wealthy business man who took out the bounty in the first place. That person turns out to be Anthony Hopkins' character, Russo's character's mentor and employer -- and outside of a visually stimulating final sequence in which we're drawn into Hopkins' character's preserved mind, the movie is devoid of value or interest. But the movie might be worth watching for the last scenes. And if you dig Sheckley, the movie might satisfy the completist in you.
Rock Shows of Note LVI
Like the good 30-year-old I am, I stayed in Thursday and Friday nights so I could venture out in the drizzle Saturday for a solid show at the Abbey Lounge. I arrived around 9, about 20 minutes early for the start of the first set, a solo performance by the Brooklyn-based Jennifer O'Connor. O'Connor's been coming up from New York a lot lately, and I was impressed by her emotive singer-songwriter set. More indie rock than folk, her time on stage included several highlights. Her friend Kim joined her for a song on the melodica and played really well for her first time doing so. O'Connor played one of her friend's songs -- a pleasant little number musing about whether animals dream about zoos -- that stuck with me. And she seemed to nail the cover she said she tried to play in town last week -- but screwed up. You can catch her again April 10 at the Kendall Cafe with Eric Saulnier, whom I've mentioned here previously.
Next up, Soltero. I last saw them near the end of January, but I didn't really pay much attention. Saturday night, I did. And it was high time. Reminding me of what Papas Fritas might have sounded like in their earliest of days -- if they'd come from the Coctails school of self-taught bash pop -- they delighted with some delicious strained singing, off-key harmonies, and other antics -- such as clapping in the crowd and surprising "woo-hoo" yelps. Incorporating Johnny Cash-like baritone singing, several songs really hit me hard: "The Moment You Said Yes," "Autobahn," and "Fight Song for True Love." Lyrics blend the bittersweet and the banal. And the band had its own cheering section! Two tanktopped women on the left side of the club really whooped it up. Fun on stage, fun on the floor. I'll catch Soltero again.
Admittedly, Choo Choo la Rouge was who I was really there to see, however. While I've loved their shows in the past, while I love their CD, and while I'm sheepishly embarrassed that so many of the band members remember my name while all I can muster is Vincent, this show fell a little flat. They opened with a couple of new songs, which were good to hear, but I felt that their older songs were different -- either performed with less passion or slightly rewritten. With the past strength of their choruses and catchy hooks, I'd be surprised and disappointed if the band has expurgated some of my favorite sing-along parts. Maybe they didn't. Maybe my favorite songs just seemed to end too quickly.
Lastly, the In Out. Some sad news. They were supposed to have copies of their new CD on hand Saturday night. And the label had even shipped them several boxes of the disc. But some lame jerk stole the boxes from in front of where they'd been delivered, and the band arrived with only a few copies of the record. Now, what kind of person steals packages off of porches and whatnot? That's right, a bad, mean, stupid person. From what I gathered, the band called some local used record stores to warn folks that someone might be trying to sell them, but I shudder to think what fate befell those CD's. Did the thief just trash them? People, please don't steal. Despite that setback and letdown, the band put on a good show. Sure, I wish that they'd push what they do a little further. They are an extremely good Fall-like band, but I can't get past the comparison. They're not a tribute band, but sometimes they sound so much like the Fall that I get confused. I wish they'd grow beyond that focus and make the sound they're chasing a little more their own. Regardless, they had energy. They were relatively fun to watch. And the music is worth listening to. Can't wait until they get more copies of the record.
Like the good 30-year-old I am, I stayed in Thursday and Friday nights so I could venture out in the drizzle Saturday for a solid show at the Abbey Lounge. I arrived around 9, about 20 minutes early for the start of the first set, a solo performance by the Brooklyn-based Jennifer O'Connor. O'Connor's been coming up from New York a lot lately, and I was impressed by her emotive singer-songwriter set. More indie rock than folk, her time on stage included several highlights. Her friend Kim joined her for a song on the melodica and played really well for her first time doing so. O'Connor played one of her friend's songs -- a pleasant little number musing about whether animals dream about zoos -- that stuck with me. And she seemed to nail the cover she said she tried to play in town last week -- but screwed up. You can catch her again April 10 at the Kendall Cafe with Eric Saulnier, whom I've mentioned here previously.
Next up, Soltero. I last saw them near the end of January, but I didn't really pay much attention. Saturday night, I did. And it was high time. Reminding me of what Papas Fritas might have sounded like in their earliest of days -- if they'd come from the Coctails school of self-taught bash pop -- they delighted with some delicious strained singing, off-key harmonies, and other antics -- such as clapping in the crowd and surprising "woo-hoo" yelps. Incorporating Johnny Cash-like baritone singing, several songs really hit me hard: "The Moment You Said Yes," "Autobahn," and "Fight Song for True Love." Lyrics blend the bittersweet and the banal. And the band had its own cheering section! Two tanktopped women on the left side of the club really whooped it up. Fun on stage, fun on the floor. I'll catch Soltero again.
Admittedly, Choo Choo la Rouge was who I was really there to see, however. While I've loved their shows in the past, while I love their CD, and while I'm sheepishly embarrassed that so many of the band members remember my name while all I can muster is Vincent, this show fell a little flat. They opened with a couple of new songs, which were good to hear, but I felt that their older songs were different -- either performed with less passion or slightly rewritten. With the past strength of their choruses and catchy hooks, I'd be surprised and disappointed if the band has expurgated some of my favorite sing-along parts. Maybe they didn't. Maybe my favorite songs just seemed to end too quickly.
Lastly, the In Out. Some sad news. They were supposed to have copies of their new CD on hand Saturday night. And the label had even shipped them several boxes of the disc. But some lame jerk stole the boxes from in front of where they'd been delivered, and the band arrived with only a few copies of the record. Now, what kind of person steals packages off of porches and whatnot? That's right, a bad, mean, stupid person. From what I gathered, the band called some local used record stores to warn folks that someone might be trying to sell them, but I shudder to think what fate befell those CD's. Did the thief just trash them? People, please don't steal. Despite that setback and letdown, the band put on a good show. Sure, I wish that they'd push what they do a little further. They are an extremely good Fall-like band, but I can't get past the comparison. They're not a tribute band, but sometimes they sound so much like the Fall that I get confused. I wish they'd grow beyond that focus and make the sound they're chasing a little more their own. Regardless, they had energy. They were relatively fun to watch. And the music is worth listening to. Can't wait until they get more copies of the record.
Blogging About Blogging LI
Ever wonder where you might fall in the blogging food chain? Thanks to Truth Laid Bear's blogosphere ecosystem project, now you can find out.
Ever wonder where you might fall in the blogging food chain? Thanks to Truth Laid Bear's blogosphere ecosystem project, now you can find out.
Corollary: Business Reportage Goes Boom, Now Bust II
In a recent AlwaysOn column, Red Herring founder Tony Perkins says that the magazine may be down for now, but it's not out of the swimming yet. Perkins had just penned his editorial for the magazine's 10th anniversary issue when he himself heard the news about the magazine's impending dissolution. The two pieces make an interesting inside look at the last days -- for now, perhaps -- of one of the longer-running technology business magazines.
In a recent AlwaysOn column, Red Herring founder Tony Perkins says that the magazine may be down for now, but it's not out of the swimming yet. Perkins had just penned his editorial for the magazine's 10th anniversary issue when he himself heard the news about the magazine's impending dissolution. The two pieces make an interesting inside look at the last days -- for now, perhaps -- of one of the longer-running technology business magazines.
Books Worth a Look XII
These are the books I read in February 2003.
The Blizzard of '78 by Michael Tougias (On Cape, 2003)
Published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard of '78, which resulted in 27 inches of snow in Boston proper, as well as 54 deaths, hundreds of destroyed homes, and 125 arrests for looting in the city, this book largely comprised photographs documenting the storms impact. The text accompanying the photos is relatively scant and drawn on news accounts and some first-person interviews, and focuses on the storm's progression, its effects on the coastline, snow removal efforts, and the accompanying destruction. Tougias compares the blizzerd to the Blizzard of 1888, which hit hardest further west and wasn't as intense as the Blizzard of '78, providing a useful interesting context. Even more interesting, I read this on the eve of a heavy snowfall this year, a snowfall in which we almost rivaled the Blizzard of '78, in accumulated snow, if not the gale-force winds and destruction. Shades of the 30 inches that fell April 1, 1997, it was a good time to read this book, safely ensconced on the Big Blue Couch at Church Corner.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
The Bostonians by Henry James (Penguin, 1986)
First published in 1886, this classic novel is awesome on several levels. One, as an analysis of political thinking about the North and South just after the Reconstruction, James' portrayals of Basil Ransom, a Mississippi lawyer now living in Boston and New York, is extremely intriguing. Two, James' primary theme is the state of women's rights and social activism. His characters Verena Tarrant and Olive Chancellor provide wonderful foils and divergent examples of the new woman. And lastly, the novel's setting in Boston offers a lushly detailed snapshot of the city as it was in the late 1870s. James' descriptions of Harvard, the Back Bay, and even Cape Cod make me want to walk around, book in hand, to compare the landmarks as they are today with his imagery. A must read if you live in the Boston area. And the best book I've read in a long time.
Pages: 438. Days to read: 9. Rating: Excellent.
Boston's North End by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (Arcadia, 1997)
Despite this book's inclusion in Arcadia's Images of America series, Sammarco's visual history of the North End, one of Boston's most historic neighborhoods, doesn't quite hold up the level of excellence established by other volumes in the series. Perhaps because of the range of photographs archived by the North End Branch of the Boston Public Library and Pizzeria Regina (seems they have quite the extensive photography collection!), or perhaps because of the advent of photography, this book is limited primarily to the North End's Italian history. That's fine, but it eclipses the district's African-American and Boston brahmin past to a fault. Most of the pictures and accompanying historical text is of little note, concentrating on churches, businesses, and civic activities organized by the library, but there are a couple of notable aspects here. One, the book ably considers the neighborhood's proximity to the harbor, and there's some good maritime history included. Two, the section of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 helped me accurately the location of the tank that burst, and impressively documents the flood's wake of destruction, as well as the location of the elevated train line once trailing along Commercial Street. Worth getting for that chapter alone, but disappointing otherwise.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Fair.
Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree by Frank Cheney (Arcadia, 2002)
I love these Images of America books published by Arcadia Publishing in South Carolina. What a wonderful, wonderful concept. This edition concentrates on one line of the now-MBTA subway and trolley car system. Drawing heavily on photographs, as all of the Arcadia books do, the tome considers the history of transportation from Cambridge to Boston, William Bancroft's role in the construction of the Cambridge Tunnel, the expansion of the subway from Harvard Square to Park Street, rapid transit extension to Mattapan, and the rolling stock used on the Red Line. While many of the photographs aren't that interesting -- I'm not that interested in the cars themselves, much less which civic leaders were present at a dedication ceremony -- the image-driven representation of now-defunct train stations, stations houses, maintenance facilities, and what's replaced them on the urban landscape, offers a nice physical history of public transit in Cambridge and Boston.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Brain Candy: Boost Your Brain Power with Vitamins, Supplements, Drugs, and Other Substances by Theodore Lidsky and Jay Schneider (Fireside, 2001)
Written by a brain researcher and a neurology professor, this is as objective a guide as you can get to smart drugs and related substances. Concentrating on nootropics, amino acids, hormones, vitamins, and other substances that affect mental performance and memory, Lidsky and Schneider consider the research done on each substance, their possible benefits, and their risks. Their relatively strict science is highly appreciated. By lending credence primarily to double-blind studies in which a control group was present -- and by considering whether research has been done using healthy adults, not just the elderly or those suffering from Alzheimer's -- the two are able to weigh in on the hype and hyperbole surrounding many substances no approved by the FDA. I've already decided to stop taking choline and start taking piracetam. Useful if you're interested in smart drugs and vitamins.
Pages: 236. Days to read: 12. Rating: Good.
Con and Cthulu: Uberdub by Matt Howarth (Aeon, 1996)
Matt Howarth is one of my favorite comic book artists, and while I've missed most of his single-issue work, I'm always jazzed to come across collections of his miniseries. Featuring a real-life electronic musician, Conrad Schnitzler, and the old one Cthulhu, who's disguised himself as a shoggoth and changed the spelling of his name to hide from the Elder Gods. It's an interesting mix of Savage Henry adventure story, electronic music fandom, and Lovecraftiana. But beyond the story, what I simply adore about Howarth is his artwork. Bridging the styles of the underground comics from the '60s, the first wave of minicomics makers, and the independent comics of today, Howarth's work astounds. Extremely clean yet detailed, his work incorporates some of the best shading and hash-mark drawing I've ever seen. An unsung comics hero.
Pages: 80. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Deathlands: Skydark Spawn by James Axler (Gold Eagle, 2003)
Another of the men's adventure series published monthly by Gold Eagle, a division of Harlequin, this is one of the few series not ghostwritten by mulitple authors. As such, it's relatively true to the original vision of the series, which I first read while a teenager. Set in a post-apocalyptic America, the book details the adventures of a team of survivors. The team comprises stereotypical foils like most adventure team books (including Gold Eagle's former Able Team and Phoenix Force series), a neanderthalic albino, a time-traveling professor sort, and two romantically involved couples. There's also a father-son pairing, shades of Jonny Quest. Not as well-written as the Mack Bolan books, but better penned than the disappointing Destroyer series, this volume involves a factory farm for breeding children that ensnares our adventures -- and is eventually destroyed by them. Sexual festishism, the dangers of inbreeding, and an oddly comic band of mutants that follow a human female as their savior, are all worked into the story, which ends well, if not extremely quickly. I almost thought the book would be continued, but then Axler wrapped everything up in the last 20 pages. These are the Saltines of the book world, a real palette cleanser.
Pages: 349. Days to read: 22. Rating: Fair.
The Destroyer #131: Unnatural Selection by James Mullaney (Gold Eagle, 2003)
Originally created by Warren Murphy and Sapir, this men's adventure series is a counterpoint to Gold Eagle's Mack Bolan series, originally created by Don Pendleton. But it's nowhere near as interesting. The story of Remo Williams and Chiun, two comically paired masters of Sinanju, an uber-martial art, isn't quite in line with what I remember about Williams. Despite the dissatisfying lack of realism in the action scenes, the book has two redeeming features. One, the plot centers on genetics and nanotechnology -- interesting to see how that's rippling through popular culture. Two, there's an extremely silly and stereotypical celebrity cameo including Winona Ryder, Martha Stewart, Jimmy Buffet, and Mike Tyson. Ghost writer Mullaney caricatures them mercilessly. I appreciate the Mack Bolan books much, much more.
Page: 347. Days to read: 3. Rating: Poor.
Hellblazer: Haunted by Warren Ellis and John Higgins (DC, 2003)
Collecting Hellblazer #134-139 from 1999, this is one of the better Hellblazer story arcs, ably written by Ellis. The plot centers on John Constantine's haunting by an old friend, Isabel Bracknell, who was ritually murdered by an Aleister Crowley wannabe. By tracking down and defeating the ambitious dark magician, Constantine is able to release the spirit of Bracknell in the end. Ellis works in several innovative elements to the book. Constantine's magician friend Map wanders the tube tunnels beneath London to keep tabs on the city and its populace. I also enjoyed the recurring characters Sanjay, who sells Constantine his cigarettes; his undead advisors; Haine; and the bad cop Watford. Iconic characters -- and ideas -- might be what Ellis writes best.
Pages: 144. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Hopping Mad edited by Albert Feldstein (Signet, 1969)
Collecting material originally published in Mad magazine in 1964 and 1968, this is one of many anthology paperbacks published by Signet. Despite occasionally awkward layouts given the dimensions of the paperback pages, it's a good look at the magazine's better days. While the Mad books are rarely thematic or cohesive in their content, there are several threads running through the pieces collected here. Two of the most obvious involve comic strips -- Bob Clarke and Frank Jacobs' "Insecurity Is a Pair of Loose Swim Trunks" and "Comics for Publications That Don't Have Comics" -- and marketing -- "The Mad Plan for Fighting the War Against Junk Mail," "Watch That Price with the Asterisk," "The Great Filter Tip Cigarette War," "Fake-Out Record Jackets, and "The Long Range Effects of Products on People." The book also includes some classic artwork from Dave Berg and Don Martin.
Pages: 192. Days to read: 2. Rating: Good.
These are the books I read in February 2003.
The Blizzard of '78 by Michael Tougias (On Cape, 2003)
Published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard of '78, which resulted in 27 inches of snow in Boston proper, as well as 54 deaths, hundreds of destroyed homes, and 125 arrests for looting in the city, this book largely comprised photographs documenting the storms impact. The text accompanying the photos is relatively scant and drawn on news accounts and some first-person interviews, and focuses on the storm's progression, its effects on the coastline, snow removal efforts, and the accompanying destruction. Tougias compares the blizzerd to the Blizzard of 1888, which hit hardest further west and wasn't as intense as the Blizzard of '78, providing a useful interesting context. Even more interesting, I read this on the eve of a heavy snowfall this year, a snowfall in which we almost rivaled the Blizzard of '78, in accumulated snow, if not the gale-force winds and destruction. Shades of the 30 inches that fell April 1, 1997, it was a good time to read this book, safely ensconced on the Big Blue Couch at Church Corner.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
The Bostonians by Henry James (Penguin, 1986)
First published in 1886, this classic novel is awesome on several levels. One, as an analysis of political thinking about the North and South just after the Reconstruction, James' portrayals of Basil Ransom, a Mississippi lawyer now living in Boston and New York, is extremely intriguing. Two, James' primary theme is the state of women's rights and social activism. His characters Verena Tarrant and Olive Chancellor provide wonderful foils and divergent examples of the new woman. And lastly, the novel's setting in Boston offers a lushly detailed snapshot of the city as it was in the late 1870s. James' descriptions of Harvard, the Back Bay, and even Cape Cod make me want to walk around, book in hand, to compare the landmarks as they are today with his imagery. A must read if you live in the Boston area. And the best book I've read in a long time.
Pages: 438. Days to read: 9. Rating: Excellent.
Boston's North End by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (Arcadia, 1997)
Despite this book's inclusion in Arcadia's Images of America series, Sammarco's visual history of the North End, one of Boston's most historic neighborhoods, doesn't quite hold up the level of excellence established by other volumes in the series. Perhaps because of the range of photographs archived by the North End Branch of the Boston Public Library and Pizzeria Regina (seems they have quite the extensive photography collection!), or perhaps because of the advent of photography, this book is limited primarily to the North End's Italian history. That's fine, but it eclipses the district's African-American and Boston brahmin past to a fault. Most of the pictures and accompanying historical text is of little note, concentrating on churches, businesses, and civic activities organized by the library, but there are a couple of notable aspects here. One, the book ably considers the neighborhood's proximity to the harbor, and there's some good maritime history included. Two, the section of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 helped me accurately the location of the tank that burst, and impressively documents the flood's wake of destruction, as well as the location of the elevated train line once trailing along Commercial Street. Worth getting for that chapter alone, but disappointing otherwise.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Fair.
Boston's Red Line: Bridging the Charles from Alewife to Braintree by Frank Cheney (Arcadia, 2002)
I love these Images of America books published by Arcadia Publishing in South Carolina. What a wonderful, wonderful concept. This edition concentrates on one line of the now-MBTA subway and trolley car system. Drawing heavily on photographs, as all of the Arcadia books do, the tome considers the history of transportation from Cambridge to Boston, William Bancroft's role in the construction of the Cambridge Tunnel, the expansion of the subway from Harvard Square to Park Street, rapid transit extension to Mattapan, and the rolling stock used on the Red Line. While many of the photographs aren't that interesting -- I'm not that interested in the cars themselves, much less which civic leaders were present at a dedication ceremony -- the image-driven representation of now-defunct train stations, stations houses, maintenance facilities, and what's replaced them on the urban landscape, offers a nice physical history of public transit in Cambridge and Boston.
Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Brain Candy: Boost Your Brain Power with Vitamins, Supplements, Drugs, and Other Substances by Theodore Lidsky and Jay Schneider (Fireside, 2001)
Written by a brain researcher and a neurology professor, this is as objective a guide as you can get to smart drugs and related substances. Concentrating on nootropics, amino acids, hormones, vitamins, and other substances that affect mental performance and memory, Lidsky and Schneider consider the research done on each substance, their possible benefits, and their risks. Their relatively strict science is highly appreciated. By lending credence primarily to double-blind studies in which a control group was present -- and by considering whether research has been done using healthy adults, not just the elderly or those suffering from Alzheimer's -- the two are able to weigh in on the hype and hyperbole surrounding many substances no approved by the FDA. I've already decided to stop taking choline and start taking piracetam. Useful if you're interested in smart drugs and vitamins.
Pages: 236. Days to read: 12. Rating: Good.
Con and Cthulu: Uberdub by Matt Howarth (Aeon, 1996)
Matt Howarth is one of my favorite comic book artists, and while I've missed most of his single-issue work, I'm always jazzed to come across collections of his miniseries. Featuring a real-life electronic musician, Conrad Schnitzler, and the old one Cthulhu, who's disguised himself as a shoggoth and changed the spelling of his name to hide from the Elder Gods. It's an interesting mix of Savage Henry adventure story, electronic music fandom, and Lovecraftiana. But beyond the story, what I simply adore about Howarth is his artwork. Bridging the styles of the underground comics from the '60s, the first wave of minicomics makers, and the independent comics of today, Howarth's work astounds. Extremely clean yet detailed, his work incorporates some of the best shading and hash-mark drawing I've ever seen. An unsung comics hero.
Pages: 80. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Deathlands: Skydark Spawn by James Axler (Gold Eagle, 2003)
Another of the men's adventure series published monthly by Gold Eagle, a division of Harlequin, this is one of the few series not ghostwritten by mulitple authors. As such, it's relatively true to the original vision of the series, which I first read while a teenager. Set in a post-apocalyptic America, the book details the adventures of a team of survivors. The team comprises stereotypical foils like most adventure team books (including Gold Eagle's former Able Team and Phoenix Force series), a neanderthalic albino, a time-traveling professor sort, and two romantically involved couples. There's also a father-son pairing, shades of Jonny Quest. Not as well-written as the Mack Bolan books, but better penned than the disappointing Destroyer series, this volume involves a factory farm for breeding children that ensnares our adventures -- and is eventually destroyed by them. Sexual festishism, the dangers of inbreeding, and an oddly comic band of mutants that follow a human female as their savior, are all worked into the story, which ends well, if not extremely quickly. I almost thought the book would be continued, but then Axler wrapped everything up in the last 20 pages. These are the Saltines of the book world, a real palette cleanser.
Pages: 349. Days to read: 22. Rating: Fair.
The Destroyer #131: Unnatural Selection by James Mullaney (Gold Eagle, 2003)
Originally created by Warren Murphy and Sapir, this men's adventure series is a counterpoint to Gold Eagle's Mack Bolan series, originally created by Don Pendleton. But it's nowhere near as interesting. The story of Remo Williams and Chiun, two comically paired masters of Sinanju, an uber-martial art, isn't quite in line with what I remember about Williams. Despite the dissatisfying lack of realism in the action scenes, the book has two redeeming features. One, the plot centers on genetics and nanotechnology -- interesting to see how that's rippling through popular culture. Two, there's an extremely silly and stereotypical celebrity cameo including Winona Ryder, Martha Stewart, Jimmy Buffet, and Mike Tyson. Ghost writer Mullaney caricatures them mercilessly. I appreciate the Mack Bolan books much, much more.
Page: 347. Days to read: 3. Rating: Poor.
Hellblazer: Haunted by Warren Ellis and John Higgins (DC, 2003)
Collecting Hellblazer #134-139 from 1999, this is one of the better Hellblazer story arcs, ably written by Ellis. The plot centers on John Constantine's haunting by an old friend, Isabel Bracknell, who was ritually murdered by an Aleister Crowley wannabe. By tracking down and defeating the ambitious dark magician, Constantine is able to release the spirit of Bracknell in the end. Ellis works in several innovative elements to the book. Constantine's magician friend Map wanders the tube tunnels beneath London to keep tabs on the city and its populace. I also enjoyed the recurring characters Sanjay, who sells Constantine his cigarettes; his undead advisors; Haine; and the bad cop Watford. Iconic characters -- and ideas -- might be what Ellis writes best.
Pages: 144. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good.
Hopping Mad edited by Albert Feldstein (Signet, 1969)
Collecting material originally published in Mad magazine in 1964 and 1968, this is one of many anthology paperbacks published by Signet. Despite occasionally awkward layouts given the dimensions of the paperback pages, it's a good look at the magazine's better days. While the Mad books are rarely thematic or cohesive in their content, there are several threads running through the pieces collected here. Two of the most obvious involve comic strips -- Bob Clarke and Frank Jacobs' "Insecurity Is a Pair of Loose Swim Trunks" and "Comics for Publications That Don't Have Comics" -- and marketing -- "The Mad Plan for Fighting the War Against Junk Mail," "Watch That Price with the Asterisk," "The Great Filter Tip Cigarette War," "Fake-Out Record Jackets, and "The Long Range Effects of Products on People." The book also includes some classic artwork from Dave Berg and Don Martin.
Pages: 192. Days to read: 2. Rating: Good.
From the Reading Pile XVII
Bear with Me: A 24-Hour Comic
Reminding me slightly of the work of Andy Ristaino and Woodrow Phoenix, this 28-page 24-hour comic was created by Mason between 8:05 p.m., Aug. 15, and 8:04 p.m., Aug. 16, 2001. Drawn in an at-times overly abstract animation-influenced style, the wordless comic tells the tale of a door-to-door salesman who tries to introduce a bear to the pleasures of city living. Mason's slow-paced cinematic timing on pp. 4-5, the Kochalka-like affection on p. 11, and the ending -- p. 24 is basically a mirror of p. 2, only with a change of setting -- indicate that Mason put a lot of thought into his work. Better than most 24-hour comics I've seen, writing wise. But the stark lines and wordless nature of this mini make me wonder what else Mason can do. $2 to Joey Mason, Young American Comics.
Deadbeat #5 (November 2002)
Sent to me by Matt Johnson, the incarcerated publisher of the zine Poor and Forgotten, Deadbeat is published by his friend Mike S. Clocking in at 40 pages, Deadbeat is a well-printed, amateurishly laid out, stereotypical punk zine. Mike's opening editorial on the foibles of punk fashion neglects the fact that British punk was fashionable from the start. His quick history of the Dead Kennedys is a fun rundown of the band's legal crises and Jello Biafra's political ambitions. The MC5 piece is basically a track-by-track listening guide to "Kick Out the Jams," accompanied by a discography. There's also a brief piece on Teengenerate, an interview with Death Becomes You, and record reviews. Equal parts local fanzine, personal zine, and punk-rock history lesson, Deadbeat is a worthy effort deserving further development. While slightly naïve and self-analytical like so many young punk zines, Mike's attention to the past shows that he's trying to understand what formed the basis of the music he loves so much. I'd like to see more local scene commentary, however. Mike's quips about emo and skate parks made me grin. Free from Deadbeat, P.O. Box 460106, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33346.
Divocorp
I'm not quite sure where I picked this up, but I'm quite impressed by Frey's comic work. Artistically, this 40-page minicomic blends the cartoony simplicity of Herge (p. 5, panel 1) with the hyperreal attention to architectural detail of Jeff Zenick (p. 7, panel 3, and p. 33, panel 1). The story, then, is a postmodern mystery. An employee of Divocorp, Ike makes a connection between his employer and a man from the future who came back with a special message. After receiving a mysterious package, a cinematic "dream" in which he kills his boss, and a trip to a rave with the receptionist at work, we are left thinking Ike's swum to his death at sea. Frey's callbacks to earlier story details is extremely impressive, and I'm still not sure whether the murder was a dream, Ike's boss' head isn't in the box, the rave wasn't a ruse, and Natalie the receptionist isn't the author of Ike's death. But it's a wonderful story, and the cartooning is delightful, especially the back and forth on p. 14. Wonderful! I can't wait to see more. Sebastian Frey.
Genetic Disorder #16
It's been a couple of years since the previous issue of Genetic Disorder, and now that Larry's no longer running with the Kill Zinesters of Bunnyhop and Ben Is Dead, he's been living in a van, running from the law, and writing for pornographic magazines and Canadian children's TV commercials. This 76-page issue, done up in the old Flipside production style, only comic book-sized, makes me miss those halcyon days of 1996. Zines were kings then! And Larry's long-awaited re-emergence reminds me of what we've lost. I hope he's able to get work for magazines other than Hustler and Barely Legal because Genetic Disorder is one of the best one-man megazines remaining. Even Mommy and I Are One's Jessica Hunley is writing for Flaunt these days. What's in this issue? "Loser's Guide to San Diego" remembers the social club entrepreneurialism of Thad Poppel, who operated a string of sex clubs around San Diego. "Jailbait" is a two-sided telling of Larry's winter formal date with a high-school girl. "Curses" and "Dates from Hell" compiles anecdotes and newspaper reporting about curses and Satanism. "Sacrificial Lambs" continues that theme with a six-page retelling of a mistaken child abuse case in San Diego. "The Seven Days of 'Stache" and "Reader (Phone) Matches" looks at the underside of dating culture and telephone personal ads, pairing actual ads with the phone recordings and voicemails left by callers in response. And "The Skulls of Punk Rock," perhaps one of the best features in the issue, serves up more than 25 band logos that incorporate the skull. Beautiful. Larry's an extremely journalistic zine publisher, and I really appreciate his blend of seamy local history, prankish narcissism, and popcult commentary. And you know what? I met Larry briefly at the Kill Zinesters tour stop at Jacque's in Boston. I even asked him if he were a Satanist. I might be the guy he mentions in the introduction to "Curses." But then again, maybe I'm not. $4 to Larry, P.O. Box 15237, San Diego, CA 92175.
Go Metric #16 (Winter 2002-2003)
Today is a day of zine connections as I sit on the Big Blue Couch at Church Corner, it seems. Were I Mike Faloon, I'd map them all, later correcting and reprinting the chart. But I'm not. Yet, here they are. Mike is friends with Jef, drummer in the Anchormen. I last saw Mike at the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain, and I first met Jef at the Kill Zinesters stop in Boston. I also met Larry of Genetic Disorder there. Larry reviewed Razorcake in Genetic Disorder #16, which I just reviewed. There's a Rev. Norb and Maddy Tight Pants! column in Razorcake #12, which I also just reviewed. Norb and Maddy also contribute work in Go Metric this go. I've traded letters with Maddy, and Norb's from Wisconsin, my home state. Oh, and Jef drew the cover for this issue of Go Metric. Small freakin' zine world. And Go Metric? Big freakin' zine. If you only send for one zine mentioned in this Media Diet entry, make it this one. Mike compares Ben Weasel's "Fidatevi" to Yes' "Tales from Topographic Oceans;" interviews documentarian Russ Forster about his look at tribute bands, "Tributary;" provides a listeners' guide to the Figgs' "Slow Charm;" interviews Young Fresh Fellows' Scott McCaughey about his project with Wilco; discusses cultural engineering with s-f author Jim Munroe; appreciates Captain Underpants creator Dave Pilkey; and reviews 101 records. In the meantime, Brian Cogan remembers Joe Strummer, David Cawley details the history of Godzilla, Rev. Norb takes on the pratfalls and promise of the Spider-Man movie, Maddy compares the Boys to the Dead Boys, and Frank Leone reports on the state of punk rock in Japan. Arguably, this is the best issue of Go Metric yet. Mike's embrace of movies and books is extremely welcome, as long as he continues to broadcast in Indulge-o-phonica and participate in the Tuned to Itself Publishing Cooperative. Luckily, Go Metric's popcult obsessions are worth sharing. $2 to Mike Faloon, 15A South Bedford Road, Pound Round, NY 10576.
An Inside Job #2 (November 2002)
This collection of dream comics by the pseudonymous Hob is produced in an extremely appealing envelope-sized format. The four-page "Who What Where" is a pencil-shaded assortment of dreamland scene setters. The other pieces -- "Up to Date," "Hosted," Down Time," and "The Action" -- are more simple in their line work and much more involved in their storytelling. My favorites are "Hosted," which features the line, "It's the kind of life where you can get away with a lot, if you're quiet;" and "The Action," the longest selection. "The Action" recounts a dream about a party, a back-of-van orgy, and jealousy. I'm not the biggest fan of dream comics, but Bishop's artwork is extremely clean and emotive, and the stories here are interesting enough. I look forward to more non-dream comics. $2 to Eli Bishop, Graphesthesia, P.O. Box 420596, San Francisco, CA 94142.
A Last Cry for Help #2
Wow. I said not one word to Souther at APE, and I'm beginning to wonder whether I may be comics starstruck. He and Kiersh are two of my favorite comics makers, and this 24-page Crashlander production piloted by Kiersh shows good reason why. I continue to be impressed by how well these two collaborate and connect. Peas in a pod! Their combination of sentimental cartooniness a la Dan Moynihan, the cute brut of Ron Rege, Jr., and occasional process comics astounds. The mini mixes dreaminess with direction, and several elements really hit me hard. The watertower and Pac-Man icons on p. 3 are used to good effect. P. 4's main panel is a dark, introspective counterpart to the goofy strip at the bottom. P. 8 is amazing in its two-part emotional content. And the density and complexity of pp. 13 and 17 is nice to see in addition to the largely simple art. I'm not quite sure how old this is, but trust me, anything these guys do is worth checking out. Consistently creative. $2 to Dave Kiersh, 568 Grandview Ave., 2nd floor, Ridgewood, NY 11385, and Souther Salazar, 106 N. Chester Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106.
Mythos Collector #2 (Winter 2002)
Heavy on the mythos and light on the collector, this slightly misbilled Lovecraft fanzine doesn't quite live up to its promise. While its editor, Brian Lingard, has tried to differentiate it from other HPL zines such as Crypt of Cthulhu, it's really just more of the same. What we have here are three Lovecraftiana-oriented articles -- an interview with comic book adaptor Steven Philip Jones, the second part of Lingard's Lovecraft comic book price guide, and an auction watch lifted straight from Ebay (and therefore immediately outdated -- and three mythos-inspired short stories. The fiction accounts for more than 20 of the zine's 56 pages, and as far as Lovecraft-inspired writing goes, they aren't really worth the ink. That said, Shawn Scarber's humorous three-page nod is extremely welcome. Get in a get out. Until Lingard truly focuses on collecting Lovecraftiana, this fanzine isn't worth $4 -- or $5 postpaid, as his handwritten carbon copy receipt for me indicates. But as the interview with Jones shows, the idea behind the zine is solid. What's needed now is execution. $5 to Dark Tree Press, P.O. Box 748, Boylston, MA 01505.
Nowhere Fast
This full-color pamphlet was written by Simon Woodstock, a former professional skateboarder who was active for seven years in the '90s. Now he's found God and a new calling -- evangelizing to the youth set. This eight-page almost-zine, which was largely dismissed by the mainstream skateboarding magazines, outlines Woodstock's self-realization. For the most part, his religious growth stemmed from falling prey to the party lifestyle he engaged in while a pro skateboarder, which caused him to lose focus with his skating. While the pamphlet is full of photos of Woodstock skating, complete with dyed hair and clown suit, it's unclear whether he kept up his skating -- although it seems he couldn't regain and maintain focus without giving up his skating career. While I'm glad Woodstock found renewed meaning in his life, I'm not sure his work with the chapel or this skater-oriented pamphlet will have the evangelical effect he's hoping for. One, very few people in the skateboarding industry will take this seriously. Two, people interested in skateboarding in general will not know who Woodstock is. Now, if Tony Hawk were to come out as a vocal Christian, the church might have something to work with. Regardless, this is an interesting outgrowth of church culture and skateboarding fandom -- and an intriguing parallel to Christian punk rock. It's just a shame that stuff like this always starts with religion and then culture instead of the other way around. Following that path almost always results in watered-down culture. Free from Simon Woodstock, Calvary Chapel, 1175 Hillsdale Ave., San Jose, CA 95118.
Razorcake #12
Funny how things run in threes. Last night, before falling asleep, I read the Dillinger 4 interview in this issue of Razorcake, learning that Erik and Paddy grew up in Evanston, Illinois, where I went to college. Then I read a review of Razorcake in Genetic Disorder #16, learning that Razorcake was founded by former active Flipside contributor Todd after Flipside folded. And today, in the Media Diet mailbox, I received a second copy of this 108-page issue of Razorcake. I first purchased this issue at Newbury Comics because of the D4 (the real D4) interview. The second of assumedly two parts, the conversation involved everyone but Bill and touches on drunken shenanigans in Las Vegas, Lane's Ph.D. in clinical psychology, the band's penchant for Motown, punk-rock snobbishness, the Boy Scouts, working class influences, media coverage, and Erik's bar in Minneapolis. It's one of the most wide-ranging and in-depth interviews I've read with the band, and I'd imagine they interview relatively well. Other interviews include Nardwuar the Human Serviette's conversation with New York-based rapper Princess Superstar, the Rattlesnakes, the Arrivals, LA classics the Skulls, and the Spits. About a fourth of the zine is made up of reviews, and the requisite columns lead off the issue. While columns are often my least favorite part of zines, Razorcake includes several notable writers. Rev. Norb's advice column is a typgraphically aggressive, caffeine-addled, and heavily annotated roundup of letters about Ebay, hamsters, and subliminal messages in porn videos. Always worth catching up with Norb in all of his Wisconsinite glory! Former Boston zinester Rich Mackin, who left his job working on the Truth campaign for Arnold Communications to travel cross-country, offers a column about bicycles, Critical Mass, and anarchy. And Maddy, editrix of the cute zine Tight Pants!, lists her top 10 punk rock and non-punk things, some of which include scholarships, D4, Ben Snakepit (with whom I'll hang out at SXSW), grad school, and the Portland Zine Convention. You can guess what side those things fall on. But the magnum opus of the issue might very well be "East L.A. Punk Rock Family Tree," a six-page, flowchart-driven history of what area musicians played in which bands compiled by Jimmy Alvarado. Ranging roughly from 1980 to 2000, the project reminds me of my old hypertext history of the Bay Area punk-rock scene. All in all, Razorcake is just as dense as Flipside ever was (RIP, Flipside), but is eminently more readable to me. Maybe it's because it's less LA-centric. Maybe it's because it seems less cliquey and scene in-jokey. And maybe it's because it combines the familiar and the new -- a welcome read. $3 to Razorcake, P.O. Box 42129, Los Angeles, CA 09942.
War Against the Princes
This is a photocopied 20-page collection of anti-authoritarian writings by poet and guitarist Doug Saretsky. Written between November 2000 and May 2001, the chapbook is largely inspired by the anti-globalization protests in Ohio. Saretsky lambastes apathetic punk rockers who aren't politically active. He parallels the authoritarianism of high-school hierarchies with the police state. "Black Bandanna" comes across as almost-lyrics to a Dillinger 4 or Propagandhi song. Saretsky also remembers the first time he was arrested for shoplifting and his various moving violations and run-ins with the law. I appreciate the local nature of his poetry -- and I respect the romantic activism surrounding the Transatlantic Business Dialogue at the of 2000 in Ohio -- buy Saretsky's series of "Arrest" poems bother me. Drunk driving is not only illegal -- it's dangerous. Criticize the cops when your direct action is valid, but cop to your own bad decisions, too, OK? Doug Saretsky, Black Hoody Nation, 1970 Westwood Northern Blvd. #5, Cincinnati, OH 45225.
Soundtrack: Count the Stars, "Never Be Taken Alive," and Wayne Kramer Presents Beyond Cyberpunk
Bear with Me: A 24-Hour Comic
Reminding me slightly of the work of Andy Ristaino and Woodrow Phoenix, this 28-page 24-hour comic was created by Mason between 8:05 p.m., Aug. 15, and 8:04 p.m., Aug. 16, 2001. Drawn in an at-times overly abstract animation-influenced style, the wordless comic tells the tale of a door-to-door salesman who tries to introduce a bear to the pleasures of city living. Mason's slow-paced cinematic timing on pp. 4-5, the Kochalka-like affection on p. 11, and the ending -- p. 24 is basically a mirror of p. 2, only with a change of setting -- indicate that Mason put a lot of thought into his work. Better than most 24-hour comics I've seen, writing wise. But the stark lines and wordless nature of this mini make me wonder what else Mason can do. $2 to Joey Mason, Young American Comics.
Deadbeat #5 (November 2002)
Sent to me by Matt Johnson, the incarcerated publisher of the zine Poor and Forgotten, Deadbeat is published by his friend Mike S. Clocking in at 40 pages, Deadbeat is a well-printed, amateurishly laid out, stereotypical punk zine. Mike's opening editorial on the foibles of punk fashion neglects the fact that British punk was fashionable from the start. His quick history of the Dead Kennedys is a fun rundown of the band's legal crises and Jello Biafra's political ambitions. The MC5 piece is basically a track-by-track listening guide to "Kick Out the Jams," accompanied by a discography. There's also a brief piece on Teengenerate, an interview with Death Becomes You, and record reviews. Equal parts local fanzine, personal zine, and punk-rock history lesson, Deadbeat is a worthy effort deserving further development. While slightly naïve and self-analytical like so many young punk zines, Mike's attention to the past shows that he's trying to understand what formed the basis of the music he loves so much. I'd like to see more local scene commentary, however. Mike's quips about emo and skate parks made me grin. Free from Deadbeat, P.O. Box 460106, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33346.
Divocorp
I'm not quite sure where I picked this up, but I'm quite impressed by Frey's comic work. Artistically, this 40-page minicomic blends the cartoony simplicity of Herge (p. 5, panel 1) with the hyperreal attention to architectural detail of Jeff Zenick (p. 7, panel 3, and p. 33, panel 1). The story, then, is a postmodern mystery. An employee of Divocorp, Ike makes a connection between his employer and a man from the future who came back with a special message. After receiving a mysterious package, a cinematic "dream" in which he kills his boss, and a trip to a rave with the receptionist at work, we are left thinking Ike's swum to his death at sea. Frey's callbacks to earlier story details is extremely impressive, and I'm still not sure whether the murder was a dream, Ike's boss' head isn't in the box, the rave wasn't a ruse, and Natalie the receptionist isn't the author of Ike's death. But it's a wonderful story, and the cartooning is delightful, especially the back and forth on p. 14. Wonderful! I can't wait to see more. Sebastian Frey.
Genetic Disorder #16
It's been a couple of years since the previous issue of Genetic Disorder, and now that Larry's no longer running with the Kill Zinesters of Bunnyhop and Ben Is Dead, he's been living in a van, running from the law, and writing for pornographic magazines and Canadian children's TV commercials. This 76-page issue, done up in the old Flipside production style, only comic book-sized, makes me miss those halcyon days of 1996. Zines were kings then! And Larry's long-awaited re-emergence reminds me of what we've lost. I hope he's able to get work for magazines other than Hustler and Barely Legal because Genetic Disorder is one of the best one-man megazines remaining. Even Mommy and I Are One's Jessica Hunley is writing for Flaunt these days. What's in this issue? "Loser's Guide to San Diego" remembers the social club entrepreneurialism of Thad Poppel, who operated a string of sex clubs around San Diego. "Jailbait" is a two-sided telling of Larry's winter formal date with a high-school girl. "Curses" and "Dates from Hell" compiles anecdotes and newspaper reporting about curses and Satanism. "Sacrificial Lambs" continues that theme with a six-page retelling of a mistaken child abuse case in San Diego. "The Seven Days of 'Stache" and "Reader (Phone) Matches" looks at the underside of dating culture and telephone personal ads, pairing actual ads with the phone recordings and voicemails left by callers in response. And "The Skulls of Punk Rock," perhaps one of the best features in the issue, serves up more than 25 band logos that incorporate the skull. Beautiful. Larry's an extremely journalistic zine publisher, and I really appreciate his blend of seamy local history, prankish narcissism, and popcult commentary. And you know what? I met Larry briefly at the Kill Zinesters tour stop at Jacque's in Boston. I even asked him if he were a Satanist. I might be the guy he mentions in the introduction to "Curses." But then again, maybe I'm not. $4 to Larry, P.O. Box 15237, San Diego, CA 92175.
Go Metric #16 (Winter 2002-2003)
Today is a day of zine connections as I sit on the Big Blue Couch at Church Corner, it seems. Were I Mike Faloon, I'd map them all, later correcting and reprinting the chart. But I'm not. Yet, here they are. Mike is friends with Jef, drummer in the Anchormen. I last saw Mike at the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain, and I first met Jef at the Kill Zinesters stop in Boston. I also met Larry of Genetic Disorder there. Larry reviewed Razorcake in Genetic Disorder #16, which I just reviewed. There's a Rev. Norb and Maddy Tight Pants! column in Razorcake #12, which I also just reviewed. Norb and Maddy also contribute work in Go Metric this go. I've traded letters with Maddy, and Norb's from Wisconsin, my home state. Oh, and Jef drew the cover for this issue of Go Metric. Small freakin' zine world. And Go Metric? Big freakin' zine. If you only send for one zine mentioned in this Media Diet entry, make it this one. Mike compares Ben Weasel's "Fidatevi" to Yes' "Tales from Topographic Oceans;" interviews documentarian Russ Forster about his look at tribute bands, "Tributary;" provides a listeners' guide to the Figgs' "Slow Charm;" interviews Young Fresh Fellows' Scott McCaughey about his project with Wilco; discusses cultural engineering with s-f author Jim Munroe; appreciates Captain Underpants creator Dave Pilkey; and reviews 101 records. In the meantime, Brian Cogan remembers Joe Strummer, David Cawley details the history of Godzilla, Rev. Norb takes on the pratfalls and promise of the Spider-Man movie, Maddy compares the Boys to the Dead Boys, and Frank Leone reports on the state of punk rock in Japan. Arguably, this is the best issue of Go Metric yet. Mike's embrace of movies and books is extremely welcome, as long as he continues to broadcast in Indulge-o-phonica and participate in the Tuned to Itself Publishing Cooperative. Luckily, Go Metric's popcult obsessions are worth sharing. $2 to Mike Faloon, 15A South Bedford Road, Pound Round, NY 10576.
An Inside Job #2 (November 2002)
This collection of dream comics by the pseudonymous Hob is produced in an extremely appealing envelope-sized format. The four-page "Who What Where" is a pencil-shaded assortment of dreamland scene setters. The other pieces -- "Up to Date," "Hosted," Down Time," and "The Action" -- are more simple in their line work and much more involved in their storytelling. My favorites are "Hosted," which features the line, "It's the kind of life where you can get away with a lot, if you're quiet;" and "The Action," the longest selection. "The Action" recounts a dream about a party, a back-of-van orgy, and jealousy. I'm not the biggest fan of dream comics, but Bishop's artwork is extremely clean and emotive, and the stories here are interesting enough. I look forward to more non-dream comics. $2 to Eli Bishop, Graphesthesia, P.O. Box 420596, San Francisco, CA 94142.
A Last Cry for Help #2
Wow. I said not one word to Souther at APE, and I'm beginning to wonder whether I may be comics starstruck. He and Kiersh are two of my favorite comics makers, and this 24-page Crashlander production piloted by Kiersh shows good reason why. I continue to be impressed by how well these two collaborate and connect. Peas in a pod! Their combination of sentimental cartooniness a la Dan Moynihan, the cute brut of Ron Rege, Jr., and occasional process comics astounds. The mini mixes dreaminess with direction, and several elements really hit me hard. The watertower and Pac-Man icons on p. 3 are used to good effect. P. 4's main panel is a dark, introspective counterpart to the goofy strip at the bottom. P. 8 is amazing in its two-part emotional content. And the density and complexity of pp. 13 and 17 is nice to see in addition to the largely simple art. I'm not quite sure how old this is, but trust me, anything these guys do is worth checking out. Consistently creative. $2 to Dave Kiersh, 568 Grandview Ave., 2nd floor, Ridgewood, NY 11385, and Souther Salazar, 106 N. Chester Ave., Pasadena, CA 91106.
Mythos Collector #2 (Winter 2002)
Heavy on the mythos and light on the collector, this slightly misbilled Lovecraft fanzine doesn't quite live up to its promise. While its editor, Brian Lingard, has tried to differentiate it from other HPL zines such as Crypt of Cthulhu, it's really just more of the same. What we have here are three Lovecraftiana-oriented articles -- an interview with comic book adaptor Steven Philip Jones, the second part of Lingard's Lovecraft comic book price guide, and an auction watch lifted straight from Ebay (and therefore immediately outdated -- and three mythos-inspired short stories. The fiction accounts for more than 20 of the zine's 56 pages, and as far as Lovecraft-inspired writing goes, they aren't really worth the ink. That said, Shawn Scarber's humorous three-page nod is extremely welcome. Get in a get out. Until Lingard truly focuses on collecting Lovecraftiana, this fanzine isn't worth $4 -- or $5 postpaid, as his handwritten carbon copy receipt for me indicates. But as the interview with Jones shows, the idea behind the zine is solid. What's needed now is execution. $5 to Dark Tree Press, P.O. Box 748, Boylston, MA 01505.
Nowhere Fast
This full-color pamphlet was written by Simon Woodstock, a former professional skateboarder who was active for seven years in the '90s. Now he's found God and a new calling -- evangelizing to the youth set. This eight-page almost-zine, which was largely dismissed by the mainstream skateboarding magazines, outlines Woodstock's self-realization. For the most part, his religious growth stemmed from falling prey to the party lifestyle he engaged in while a pro skateboarder, which caused him to lose focus with his skating. While the pamphlet is full of photos of Woodstock skating, complete with dyed hair and clown suit, it's unclear whether he kept up his skating -- although it seems he couldn't regain and maintain focus without giving up his skating career. While I'm glad Woodstock found renewed meaning in his life, I'm not sure his work with the chapel or this skater-oriented pamphlet will have the evangelical effect he's hoping for. One, very few people in the skateboarding industry will take this seriously. Two, people interested in skateboarding in general will not know who Woodstock is. Now, if Tony Hawk were to come out as a vocal Christian, the church might have something to work with. Regardless, this is an interesting outgrowth of church culture and skateboarding fandom -- and an intriguing parallel to Christian punk rock. It's just a shame that stuff like this always starts with religion and then culture instead of the other way around. Following that path almost always results in watered-down culture. Free from Simon Woodstock, Calvary Chapel, 1175 Hillsdale Ave., San Jose, CA 95118.
Razorcake #12
Funny how things run in threes. Last night, before falling asleep, I read the Dillinger 4 interview in this issue of Razorcake, learning that Erik and Paddy grew up in Evanston, Illinois, where I went to college. Then I read a review of Razorcake in Genetic Disorder #16, learning that Razorcake was founded by former active Flipside contributor Todd after Flipside folded. And today, in the Media Diet mailbox, I received a second copy of this 108-page issue of Razorcake. I first purchased this issue at Newbury Comics because of the D4 (the real D4) interview. The second of assumedly two parts, the conversation involved everyone but Bill and touches on drunken shenanigans in Las Vegas, Lane's Ph.D. in clinical psychology, the band's penchant for Motown, punk-rock snobbishness, the Boy Scouts, working class influences, media coverage, and Erik's bar in Minneapolis. It's one of the most wide-ranging and in-depth interviews I've read with the band, and I'd imagine they interview relatively well. Other interviews include Nardwuar the Human Serviette's conversation with New York-based rapper Princess Superstar, the Rattlesnakes, the Arrivals, LA classics the Skulls, and the Spits. About a fourth of the zine is made up of reviews, and the requisite columns lead off the issue. While columns are often my least favorite part of zines, Razorcake includes several notable writers. Rev. Norb's advice column is a typgraphically aggressive, caffeine-addled, and heavily annotated roundup of letters about Ebay, hamsters, and subliminal messages in porn videos. Always worth catching up with Norb in all of his Wisconsinite glory! Former Boston zinester Rich Mackin, who left his job working on the Truth campaign for Arnold Communications to travel cross-country, offers a column about bicycles, Critical Mass, and anarchy. And Maddy, editrix of the cute zine Tight Pants!, lists her top 10 punk rock and non-punk things, some of which include scholarships, D4, Ben Snakepit (with whom I'll hang out at SXSW), grad school, and the Portland Zine Convention. You can guess what side those things fall on. But the magnum opus of the issue might very well be "East L.A. Punk Rock Family Tree," a six-page, flowchart-driven history of what area musicians played in which bands compiled by Jimmy Alvarado. Ranging roughly from 1980 to 2000, the project reminds me of my old hypertext history of the Bay Area punk-rock scene. All in all, Razorcake is just as dense as Flipside ever was (RIP, Flipside), but is eminently more readable to me. Maybe it's because it's less LA-centric. Maybe it's because it seems less cliquey and scene in-jokey. And maybe it's because it combines the familiar and the new -- a welcome read. $3 to Razorcake, P.O. Box 42129, Los Angeles, CA 09942.
War Against the Princes
This is a photocopied 20-page collection of anti-authoritarian writings by poet and guitarist Doug Saretsky. Written between November 2000 and May 2001, the chapbook is largely inspired by the anti-globalization protests in Ohio. Saretsky lambastes apathetic punk rockers who aren't politically active. He parallels the authoritarianism of high-school hierarchies with the police state. "Black Bandanna" comes across as almost-lyrics to a Dillinger 4 or Propagandhi song. Saretsky also remembers the first time he was arrested for shoplifting and his various moving violations and run-ins with the law. I appreciate the local nature of his poetry -- and I respect the romantic activism surrounding the Transatlantic Business Dialogue at the of 2000 in Ohio -- buy Saretsky's series of "Arrest" poems bother me. Drunk driving is not only illegal -- it's dangerous. Criticize the cops when your direct action is valid, but cop to your own bad decisions, too, OK? Doug Saretsky, Black Hoody Nation, 1970 Westwood Northern Blvd. #5, Cincinnati, OH 45225.
Soundtrack: Count the Stars, "Never Be Taken Alive," and Wayne Kramer Presents Beyond Cyberpunk
Music to My Ears XXVIII
One of my not-too-long ago Ebay impulse buys was a 100-plus cassette collection of mid- to late '80s heavy metal and hard rock music. This is a slightly awkward pairing of reviews of two of those recordings -- I'm not sure whether I'll try to review all of them, but these two fill a particularly soft spot in my heart -- and a long-delayed local record review. Thank you for your patience!
Anthrax "I'm the Man" EP (Island, 1987)
This multi-faceted and belatedly unfortunately named metal band's jokey rap entreet is a slightly self-aware yet clever parody of what would eventually emerge as a genuine genre -- rap metal or nu metal. By presaging the mixture of rap and metal, poking fun at the malevolent Metallica in the process and playing off the stupidity of one band member, Charlie Benante, the band released this 1987 EP laden with live tracks that should have been relegated to a cassingle of the day. Padding the EP wiith the "censored radio version" in addition to the "def uncensored version" unripe for radio play, as well as a live "extremely def ill uncensored version" represents the worst kind of commercial complicity. The "Among the Living" album brought the band new attention, but did it really attract the demand for this? Anthrax's cover of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," as well as the Dallas-recorded live versions of "Caught in a Mosh" and the Judge Dredd-inspired "I Am the Law" are interesting solely as lively rarities, but "I'm the Man" as a joke song with unintended consequences hardly deserves its own EP. The song, as good as it is, could have easily been a bonus track on the next album. Had Anthrax not stayed with Island, I'd cry contractual obligation.
Def Leppard "Pyromania" (Phonogram, 1983)
My sister was a big Def Leppard fan, and this was one of the first cassettes I borrowed (stole) from her room. Despite the synthesizer opening to the first AC/DC-inspired track "Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)," the record's not that embarassing. The guitars and vocals are anthemic, and the drums are mixed well. But outside of the video-ready "Photograph," and perhaps "Die Hard the Hunter," the album is relatively boring, given the songs' speed. Leppard's too-long faux-live opening "Stagefright" is interesting, albeit a cliched rock-band concert shill. "Too Late for Love" and "Die Hard the Hunter" close out what might be one of the more promising A sides of an LP, regardless of the slow tempos. The B side, then, starts with the synth-heavy single, "Foolin'." I must admit that I'd forgotten "Rock of Ages," which holds up well despite the flawed drum effects. And then "Action Not Words" happens. All in all, this is an extremely strong album. The synth-swelling "Billy's Got a Gun" is a weak ending, but otherwise, with several solid songs on the record, Def Leppard is able to keep it real 20 years later.
The Fleece "Wrecked at Rehearsal" (Teagown, 2002)
I have a Fleece T-shirt. It's not made of fleece, and I didn't feel ripped off when I bought it, but there we go. The band sent me this CD about six months ago, just before I left for the 2002 CoF Roadshow, and it's well worth waiting to concentrate on. Thanks for your patience! With the quiet opening to "The Press Release," complete with Papas Fritas-like vocals, albeit out of tune, the band's come a long way from the first time I saw them. Tuneful yet discordant, their earnestness is admirable. And the triumphant head of the song is awesome. Hooray for organ. The second song, "The Vanishing Face," features some Lance Hahn-styled vocals and more triumphant guitars over keyboards. Quite pleasing. The stop and start section preceding the ending is most impressive. The rest of the record continues to impress. The keyboard-tinged Elephant Six-ness of "Perfect Hands" perfectly casts the slightly out-of-tune vocals, shades of Sinkcharmer and Soltero, which I totally appreciate. There are some piano flubs, but they're OK, as the jangly "Everything Has Not Been Discovered" entices rather than discourages. Wrapping up the record, "As You Were" cascades with an almost triumphant guitar proposal leading into a Neutral Milk Hotel-meets-Graham Smith vocal overture that indicates an increasing interest in melodic mention. A fine release, slightly uneven at first, but in the end, impressive. Beautiful, little-known New England pop goodness.
One of my not-too-long ago Ebay impulse buys was a 100-plus cassette collection of mid- to late '80s heavy metal and hard rock music. This is a slightly awkward pairing of reviews of two of those recordings -- I'm not sure whether I'll try to review all of them, but these two fill a particularly soft spot in my heart -- and a long-delayed local record review. Thank you for your patience!
Anthrax "I'm the Man" EP (Island, 1987)
This multi-faceted and belatedly unfortunately named metal band's jokey rap entreet is a slightly self-aware yet clever parody of what would eventually emerge as a genuine genre -- rap metal or nu metal. By presaging the mixture of rap and metal, poking fun at the malevolent Metallica in the process and playing off the stupidity of one band member, Charlie Benante, the band released this 1987 EP laden with live tracks that should have been relegated to a cassingle of the day. Padding the EP wiith the "censored radio version" in addition to the "def uncensored version" unripe for radio play, as well as a live "extremely def ill uncensored version" represents the worst kind of commercial complicity. The "Among the Living" album brought the band new attention, but did it really attract the demand for this? Anthrax's cover of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," as well as the Dallas-recorded live versions of "Caught in a Mosh" and the Judge Dredd-inspired "I Am the Law" are interesting solely as lively rarities, but "I'm the Man" as a joke song with unintended consequences hardly deserves its own EP. The song, as good as it is, could have easily been a bonus track on the next album. Had Anthrax not stayed with Island, I'd cry contractual obligation.
Def Leppard "Pyromania" (Phonogram, 1983)
My sister was a big Def Leppard fan, and this was one of the first cassettes I borrowed (stole) from her room. Despite the synthesizer opening to the first AC/DC-inspired track "Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)," the record's not that embarassing. The guitars and vocals are anthemic, and the drums are mixed well. But outside of the video-ready "Photograph," and perhaps "Die Hard the Hunter," the album is relatively boring, given the songs' speed. Leppard's too-long faux-live opening "Stagefright" is interesting, albeit a cliched rock-band concert shill. "Too Late for Love" and "Die Hard the Hunter" close out what might be one of the more promising A sides of an LP, regardless of the slow tempos. The B side, then, starts with the synth-heavy single, "Foolin'." I must admit that I'd forgotten "Rock of Ages," which holds up well despite the flawed drum effects. And then "Action Not Words" happens. All in all, this is an extremely strong album. The synth-swelling "Billy's Got a Gun" is a weak ending, but otherwise, with several solid songs on the record, Def Leppard is able to keep it real 20 years later.
The Fleece "Wrecked at Rehearsal" (Teagown, 2002)
I have a Fleece T-shirt. It's not made of fleece, and I didn't feel ripped off when I bought it, but there we go. The band sent me this CD about six months ago, just before I left for the 2002 CoF Roadshow, and it's well worth waiting to concentrate on. Thanks for your patience! With the quiet opening to "The Press Release," complete with Papas Fritas-like vocals, albeit out of tune, the band's come a long way from the first time I saw them. Tuneful yet discordant, their earnestness is admirable. And the triumphant head of the song is awesome. Hooray for organ. The second song, "The Vanishing Face," features some Lance Hahn-styled vocals and more triumphant guitars over keyboards. Quite pleasing. The stop and start section preceding the ending is most impressive. The rest of the record continues to impress. The keyboard-tinged Elephant Six-ness of "Perfect Hands" perfectly casts the slightly out-of-tune vocals, shades of Sinkcharmer and Soltero, which I totally appreciate. There are some piano flubs, but they're OK, as the jangly "Everything Has Not Been Discovered" entices rather than discourages. Wrapping up the record, "As You Were" cascades with an almost triumphant guitar proposal leading into a Neutral Milk Hotel-meets-Graham Smith vocal overture that indicates an increasing interest in melodic mention. A fine release, slightly uneven at first, but in the end, impressive. Beautiful, little-known New England pop goodness.
Pieces, Particles XIII
The following media-related stories recently spotted in print publications might be worth a look. Heads and decks, only. Heads and decks.
Books on the Run by Andy Cornell, Punk Planet #46 (November/December 2001)
The projet Mobilivre-Bookmobile project builds a bridge between zines and book arts.
Caution, Planets Ahead by Sam Hooper Samuels, Smithsonian, March 2003
The world's largest (maybe) 9-planet solar system model goes up along Route 1 in northern Maine
Comic Book Collection by Ed Symkus, The Cambridge Tab, Feb. 28, 2003
Zeitgeist reveals true comic superheroes: the artists
A Concept in CDs That Offers Profits to Artists, Prized Tracks to Fans by Sean Glennon, The Boston Globe, March 2, 2003
Discs available only at concerts grow in popularity among indie acts
A Critic Reading His Critics by Bernard Holland, The New York Times, March 2, 2003
Some letters from readers are very nice, some genuinely instructive. But others are alarmingly vicious.
The Crusaders by John Pilger, New Internationalist #333 (April 2001)
John Pilger uncovers the hidden history of Western media propaganda.
Drawing a Blank by Chris Ziegler, Punk Planet #46 (November/December 2001)
DIY comic artists sketch out life in the margins
Empires of the Senseless by Katherine Ainger, New Internationalist #333 (April 2001)
The media don't just promote globalization -- they're an integral part of the process
Fire Your Inner Slave Driver by Joe Robinson, Utne, March-April 2003
Is "work guilt" keeping you from getting most out of life?
Going Postal by Sarah Raper Larenaudie, Fashions of the Times, Feb. 23, 2003
When W or Elle puts Gisele on the cover, you can expect a torrent of letters, pro or con. Who would bother?
Hitmakers for Hire by Jenny Eliscu, Rolling Stone, March 20, 2003
Writing chart-toppers isn't complicated for the Matrix
Hooked on Comics by Mike Miliard, The Boston Phoenix, Feb. 28, 2003
Collector Robert Cronin give fans a glimpse beneath the panels
How Protesters Mobilized So Many and So Nimbly by Jennifer 8. Lee, The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2003
"Smart mobs," text-messaging -- and organizers who think like field commanders.
Kaufman on TV by Jason Dove, Chunklet #16
The following lists several of the many pieces of Kaufman footage that I have obtained in the past few years. Some are available as regular or standard releases and some are considered hard to find, rare, out of print or bootlegged. With this trusty key we can categorize most of the Kaufman performance footage that is available. In the process, we can analyze and perhaps begin to understand some of the many facets of this ultimate method actor
A More Perfect Union by Linda Frye Burnham, Utne, March-April 2003
A troubled Southern community turns to theater for healing
A New Monopoly Earth First, August-September 2001
Large-scale, global anti-capitalism protests putting smaller, local, anti-capitalism protests out of business
Sitcoms and the Single Girl by Marcelle Karp, Bust, Summer 2001
These TV gals showed us that you don't need a man, as long as you've got your girls
Social Centers by Adam Bregman, Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001
Italy's cultural underground
Staging a Comeback by Rick Rothacker, Northwestern, Spring 2003
Richard Geer helps economically depressed towns find their muse -- and their pride -- through community theater.
A Star-Studded Kid-Lit Scam by Tracy Mayor, The Boston Globe Magazine, Feb. 23, 2003
What do Spike Lee, Lynne Cheney, and Jerry Seinfeld have in common? Along with other celebrities, they write children's books that shoot to the top of the bestseller list no matter how bad they are.
Top 12 Most Luddite Films of All Time Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001
Up Against Wal-Mart by Karen Olsson, Mother Jones, March/April 2003
At the world's largest and most profitable retailer, low wages, unpaid overtime, and union busting are a way of life. Now Wal-Mart workers are fighting back.
You Are What You Queue by Craig Tomashoff, The New York Times, March 2, 2003
Our lives and psyches are more public than ever, thanks to Netflix.
If you work for a magazine and would like to sign me up for a complimentary subscription, please feel free to do so. My address is in the grey bar over on the left.
The following media-related stories recently spotted in print publications might be worth a look. Heads and decks, only. Heads and decks.
Books on the Run by Andy Cornell, Punk Planet #46 (November/December 2001)
The projet Mobilivre-Bookmobile project builds a bridge between zines and book arts.
Caution, Planets Ahead by Sam Hooper Samuels, Smithsonian, March 2003
The world's largest (maybe) 9-planet solar system model goes up along Route 1 in northern Maine
Comic Book Collection by Ed Symkus, The Cambridge Tab, Feb. 28, 2003
Zeitgeist reveals true comic superheroes: the artists
A Concept in CDs That Offers Profits to Artists, Prized Tracks to Fans by Sean Glennon, The Boston Globe, March 2, 2003
Discs available only at concerts grow in popularity among indie acts
A Critic Reading His Critics by Bernard Holland, The New York Times, March 2, 2003
Some letters from readers are very nice, some genuinely instructive. But others are alarmingly vicious.
The Crusaders by John Pilger, New Internationalist #333 (April 2001)
John Pilger uncovers the hidden history of Western media propaganda.
Drawing a Blank by Chris Ziegler, Punk Planet #46 (November/December 2001)
DIY comic artists sketch out life in the margins
Empires of the Senseless by Katherine Ainger, New Internationalist #333 (April 2001)
The media don't just promote globalization -- they're an integral part of the process
Fire Your Inner Slave Driver by Joe Robinson, Utne, March-April 2003
Is "work guilt" keeping you from getting most out of life?
Going Postal by Sarah Raper Larenaudie, Fashions of the Times, Feb. 23, 2003
When W or Elle puts Gisele on the cover, you can expect a torrent of letters, pro or con. Who would bother?
Hitmakers for Hire by Jenny Eliscu, Rolling Stone, March 20, 2003
Writing chart-toppers isn't complicated for the Matrix
Hooked on Comics by Mike Miliard, The Boston Phoenix, Feb. 28, 2003
Collector Robert Cronin give fans a glimpse beneath the panels
How Protesters Mobilized So Many and So Nimbly by Jennifer 8. Lee, The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2003
"Smart mobs," text-messaging -- and organizers who think like field commanders.
Kaufman on TV by Jason Dove, Chunklet #16
The following lists several of the many pieces of Kaufman footage that I have obtained in the past few years. Some are available as regular or standard releases and some are considered hard to find, rare, out of print or bootlegged. With this trusty key we can categorize most of the Kaufman performance footage that is available. In the process, we can analyze and perhaps begin to understand some of the many facets of this ultimate method actor
A More Perfect Union by Linda Frye Burnham, Utne, March-April 2003
A troubled Southern community turns to theater for healing
A New Monopoly Earth First, August-September 2001
Large-scale, global anti-capitalism protests putting smaller, local, anti-capitalism protests out of business
Sitcoms and the Single Girl by Marcelle Karp, Bust, Summer 2001
These TV gals showed us that you don't need a man, as long as you've got your girls
Social Centers by Adam Bregman, Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001
Italy's cultural underground
Staging a Comeback by Rick Rothacker, Northwestern, Spring 2003
Richard Geer helps economically depressed towns find their muse -- and their pride -- through community theater.
A Star-Studded Kid-Lit Scam by Tracy Mayor, The Boston Globe Magazine, Feb. 23, 2003
What do Spike Lee, Lynne Cheney, and Jerry Seinfeld have in common? Along with other celebrities, they write children's books that shoot to the top of the bestseller list no matter how bad they are.
Top 12 Most Luddite Films of All Time Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001
Up Against Wal-Mart by Karen Olsson, Mother Jones, March/April 2003
At the world's largest and most profitable retailer, low wages, unpaid overtime, and union busting are a way of life. Now Wal-Mart workers are fighting back.
You Are What You Queue by Craig Tomashoff, The New York Times, March 2, 2003
Our lives and psyches are more public than ever, thanks to Netflix.
If you work for a magazine and would like to sign me up for a complimentary subscription, please feel free to do so. My address is in the grey bar over on the left.
Friday, February 28, 2003
Music to My Ears XXVII
Charles Foster of Sparklemotion, which I stumbled across while trolling through some Blog Hot or Not sites, points to some music worth listening to. Molly Pitcher is an "alternative-folk" duo from New York. Their song "No One Loves a Folk Song" reminds me a little of the Indigo Girls. He also recommends several songs by Tripod, as played on the Breakfast Show. The songs are classic novelty song material, which would be right up Cory's alley.
Charles Foster of Sparklemotion, which I stumbled across while trolling through some Blog Hot or Not sites, points to some music worth listening to. Molly Pitcher is an "alternative-folk" duo from New York. Their song "No One Loves a Folk Song" reminds me a little of the Indigo Girls. He also recommends several songs by Tripod, as played on the Breakfast Show. The songs are classic novelty song material, which would be right up Cory's alley.
The Movie I Watched Last Night LVIII
I'm behind on these, as I watched several movies over the last couple of weekends, but if the Pieces, Particles entries are any indication, I'll all about catching up.
Thursday: The Pianist
After a quick dinner of French toast and strawberries with a Harpoon IPA with Andrea and Lauren at Zaftig's in Brookline, we headed to the Coolidge Corner. I've been trying to maintain a low threshold for experimentation and spontaneous experiences lately, so when Andrea told me they were going to the movie -- and asked if I wanted to join them -- I jumped at the chance. And even though I might not have gone to see The Pianist by myself, am I ever glad I did. Set in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, the movie details the plights and ongoing flight of a radio broadcast pianist. While Roman Polanski could have easily gone over the top in terms of portraying the atrocities that the German forces exacted on the Polish Jews, most of the violence, while present, was rather tastefully done. Similarly, the cinematographic styling was top notch. There were several scenes that were absolutely breathtaking, including several snow and blowing leaves in autumn shots, and a wide pan of some CGI ruins of Warsaw. The characterizations in the movie were deeply rooted, and I felt a real affinity for many of the characters. Best line, paraphrased: "Weren't you lucky to run into us today? That's the historical imperative in action, as I like to say." A beautiful classical soundtrack, stunning visuals, and a sensitive script made this a beautiful movie. Well worth seeing.
I'm behind on these, as I watched several movies over the last couple of weekends, but if the Pieces, Particles entries are any indication, I'll all about catching up.
Thursday: The Pianist
After a quick dinner of French toast and strawberries with a Harpoon IPA with Andrea and Lauren at Zaftig's in Brookline, we headed to the Coolidge Corner. I've been trying to maintain a low threshold for experimentation and spontaneous experiences lately, so when Andrea told me they were going to the movie -- and asked if I wanted to join them -- I jumped at the chance. And even though I might not have gone to see The Pianist by myself, am I ever glad I did. Set in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, the movie details the plights and ongoing flight of a radio broadcast pianist. While Roman Polanski could have easily gone over the top in terms of portraying the atrocities that the German forces exacted on the Polish Jews, most of the violence, while present, was rather tastefully done. Similarly, the cinematographic styling was top notch. There were several scenes that were absolutely breathtaking, including several snow and blowing leaves in autumn shots, and a wide pan of some CGI ruins of Warsaw. The characterizations in the movie were deeply rooted, and I felt a real affinity for many of the characters. Best line, paraphrased: "Weren't you lucky to run into us today? That's the historical imperative in action, as I like to say." A beautiful classical soundtrack, stunning visuals, and a sensitive script made this a beautiful movie. Well worth seeing.
Among the Literati XXVII
Neal Pollack turns 33 tomorrow, March 1. Media Dieticians everywhere, if you're familiar with his work and appreciate it, send him some happies!
Neal Pollack turns 33 tomorrow, March 1. Media Dieticians everywhere, if you're familiar with his work and appreciate it, send him some happies!
Subway Soundtrack IV
This is a silent film of sorts, but David Crawford's Stop Motion Studies concentrating on passengers on the Red Line is a beautiful look at the people who ride the T. Poetry in motion!
Thanks to Boston Common.
This is a silent film of sorts, but David Crawford's Stop Motion Studies concentrating on passengers on the Red Line is a beautiful look at the people who ride the T. Poetry in motion!
Thanks to Boston Common.
Better Fred Than Dead II
Even Neal Pollack has something to say about Mr. Rogers' passing.
Even Neal Pollack has something to say about Mr. Rogers' passing.
Music to My Eyes XI
Pleix is an online community of digital artists, including 3-D artists, musicians, and graphic designers. There's a lot of interesting video work available through the community, but the video developed for Plaid's piece "Itsu" strikes me as especially important today. Equal parts anti-consumer culture commentary, mainstream media manifesto, and economic erotica, it's well worth watching.
Thanks to Memepool.
Pleix is an online community of digital artists, including 3-D artists, musicians, and graphic designers. There's a lot of interesting video work available through the community, but the video developed for Plaid's piece "Itsu" strikes me as especially important today. Equal parts anti-consumer culture commentary, mainstream media manifesto, and economic erotica, it's well worth watching.
Thanks to Memepool.
Sites on the Side of the Road VI
Mike and Nathan are gearing up for more Roadtrip Nation activity soon. They've revamped the Web site, incorporating interviews with the leaders and innovators they meet along the way, and updating folks on their documentary, roadtrip, and book projects. They've also launched the Green RV, an informative email newsletter about their activities. It's an awesome project. And they're good people. We've ridden side by side in many ways since the first CoF Roadshow in 1999. Now, if only they could make a T-shirt that's not in such a ghastly color!
Mike and Nathan are gearing up for more Roadtrip Nation activity soon. They've revamped the Web site, incorporating interviews with the leaders and innovators they meet along the way, and updating folks on their documentary, roadtrip, and book projects. They've also launched the Green RV, an informative email newsletter about their activities. It's an awesome project. And they're good people. We've ridden side by side in many ways since the first CoF Roadshow in 1999. Now, if only they could make a T-shirt that's not in such a ghastly color!
Corollary: Blogging About Blogging L
What's the "official" word on Google's acquisition of Pyra and Blogger? Ev says...
What's the "official" word on Google's acquisition of Pyra and Blogger? Ev says...
Thursday, February 27, 2003
From the In Box: Better Fred Than Dead
Thanks so much for the beautiful tribute to Mr. Rogers. I have always been a big fan. Interestingly, just yesterday, I was torturing my daughter with my rendition of "You Are Special" (I add a bit of drama and jazz to it to make it extra special). And a friend just said she had watched "The Neighborhood" two days ago, on a whim. He is part of our common television heritage and we are better for it.
When I was a child, my father was an executive at WNET, the New York PBS station. Because of his work, I was exposed to all of those great public television shows for children (as well as Monty Python at a very early age!). My father did not work directly with, but interacted many times with, Fred Rogers. Through the PBS connection, my mother developed a pen pal relationship with Fred (they had teaching and divinity degrees in common), and every year at Christmas we would receive a family Christmas card featuring Fred, the Mrs. and their two sons (who looked very much like him). Fred wrote a lovely note of condolence when my mother died, suddenly, five years ago.
Again, thanks for the thoughtful piece. -- Mari Guarino
Thanks so much for the beautiful tribute to Mr. Rogers. I have always been a big fan. Interestingly, just yesterday, I was torturing my daughter with my rendition of "You Are Special" (I add a bit of drama and jazz to it to make it extra special). And a friend just said she had watched "The Neighborhood" two days ago, on a whim. He is part of our common television heritage and we are better for it.
When I was a child, my father was an executive at WNET, the New York PBS station. Because of his work, I was exposed to all of those great public television shows for children (as well as Monty Python at a very early age!). My father did not work directly with, but interacted many times with, Fred Rogers. Through the PBS connection, my mother developed a pen pal relationship with Fred (they had teaching and divinity degrees in common), and every year at Christmas we would receive a family Christmas card featuring Fred, the Mrs. and their two sons (who looked very much like him). Fred wrote a lovely note of condolence when my mother died, suddenly, five years ago.
Again, thanks for the thoughtful piece. -- Mari Guarino
North End Moment XXXIV
As I left Mangia Mangia with my grilled cheese and tomato, tater tots, and cranberry juice, a man with several leather coats draped over his arm stopped me on the street just outside the restaurant.
Man: "Do you know if anyone in there would be interested in buying a leather coat?"
Me: "What?"
Man: "Is anyone in there interested in a cheap leather?"
Me: "Um, no."
Man:"What are they, some kind of f*ckin' cheap people?"
I crossed the street and angled away as quickly as I could -- "Hey! Now where are you goin'?" -- but I have a couple of questions.
How much do you think the coats cost?
What kind of a man walks down the street selling leather coats off his arm?
What kind of person buys a leather coat from a man walking down the street?
As I left Mangia Mangia with my grilled cheese and tomato, tater tots, and cranberry juice, a man with several leather coats draped over his arm stopped me on the street just outside the restaurant.
Man: "Do you know if anyone in there would be interested in buying a leather coat?"
Me: "What?"
Man: "Is anyone in there interested in a cheap leather?"
Me: "Um, no."
Man:"What are they, some kind of f*ckin' cheap people?"
I crossed the street and angled away as quickly as I could -- "Hey! Now where are you goin'?" -- but I have a couple of questions.
Nervy, Pervy XI
Just to show that I am a true Webaissance Man, I'm going to write about Suicide Girls immediately after mourning the passing of Mr. Rogers. Matt wonders "when did Suicide Girls take over from Playboy in the 'I only read it for the articles' department?"
Yes, Media Dieticians, you've got to pay to play with most of SG's content, but access to its interviews, features, and fiction is free. Recent interviews feature William Gibson and David Cronenberg.
Just to show that I am a true Webaissance Man, I'm going to write about Suicide Girls immediately after mourning the passing of Mr. Rogers. Matt wonders "when did Suicide Girls take over from Playboy in the 'I only read it for the articles' department?"
Yes, Media Dieticians, you've got to pay to play with most of SG's content, but access to its interviews, features, and fiction is free. Recent interviews feature William Gibson and David Cronenberg.
Better Fred Than Dead
Fred McFeely Rogers died today, becoming a full-time resident of the Land of Make Believe. His TV show, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, played a large role in the formative years of my life, and I have many fond childhood memories of Mr. Rogers.
I used to sit on my mom's lap -- or beside her, when I was small enough -- in my dad's recliner watching Mr. Rogers on the local PBS affiliate. I have several Mr. Rogers records, which remain prized possessions because of their mix of gentle homily, slightly out-of-tune singing, and extensive liner notes, lyrics, and positive messages for children.
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was my show, loved more than Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, the Electric Company, or 3-2-1 Contact. My mother and I wrote a letter of protest to a local TV station when Captain Kangaroo was going to be canceled. They kept the show on the air, and I received a letter of thanks from the Captain. That, too, remains a prized possession.
I would have saved Mr. Rogers from stomach cancer if I could have. He was a gift to children, and every time I put on a cardigan sweater or change out of my boots into my Vans at work, I feel like Mr. Rogers. What are we to do? Thanks to PBS, we can listen to some of the songs sung on the show. And thanks to TV Barn, we can read a poetic memorial to the man's life and work.
I'll miss you, Mr. Rogers. Thanks for helping make me who I am today.
Fred McFeely Rogers died today, becoming a full-time resident of the Land of Make Believe. His TV show, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, played a large role in the formative years of my life, and I have many fond childhood memories of Mr. Rogers.
I used to sit on my mom's lap -- or beside her, when I was small enough -- in my dad's recliner watching Mr. Rogers on the local PBS affiliate. I have several Mr. Rogers records, which remain prized possessions because of their mix of gentle homily, slightly out-of-tune singing, and extensive liner notes, lyrics, and positive messages for children.
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was my show, loved more than Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, the Electric Company, or 3-2-1 Contact. My mother and I wrote a letter of protest to a local TV station when Captain Kangaroo was going to be canceled. They kept the show on the air, and I received a letter of thanks from the Captain. That, too, remains a prized possession.
I would have saved Mr. Rogers from stomach cancer if I could have. He was a gift to children, and every time I put on a cardigan sweater or change out of my boots into my Vans at work, I feel like Mr. Rogers. What are we to do? Thanks to PBS, we can listen to some of the songs sung on the show. And thanks to TV Barn, we can read a poetic memorial to the man's life and work.
I'll miss you, Mr. Rogers. Thanks for helping make me who I am today.
Business Reportage Goes Boom, Now Bust II
Red Herring is about to flounder. Its folding might only result in the sale of the name and its subscriber list. Media Life speculates that the Herring's closure will help magazines birthed in the now-empty "new economy" niche better resposition themselves.
Thanks to Fucked Company.
Red Herring is about to flounder. Its folding might only result in the sale of the name and its subscriber list. Media Life speculates that the Herring's closure will help magazines birthed in the now-empty "new economy" niche better resposition themselves.
Thanks to Fucked Company.
Conferences and Community II
SXSW Interactive is next weekend, and the anticipation is starting to rise. I'll be staying at my friend Rick's new house. I'll be hanging out with zine and comic folks, including Joe O'Connell from Lost Armadillos in Heat and Ben from Snakepit. Evhead will be there. Scott from Meetup will be there. Cory Doctorow, Sandy Stone, and Jon Lebkowsky are hosting an EFF party Monday night, the night Bruce Springsteen is playing in Providence. And I'll connect with some CoF members from Austin and Houston. Should be a blast!
SXSW Interactive is next weekend, and the anticipation is starting to rise. I'll be staying at my friend Rick's new house. I'll be hanging out with zine and comic folks, including Joe O'Connell from Lost Armadillos in Heat and Ben from Snakepit. Evhead will be there. Scott from Meetup will be there. Cory Doctorow, Sandy Stone, and Jon Lebkowsky are hosting an EFF party Monday night, the night Bruce Springsteen is playing in Providence. And I'll connect with some CoF members from Austin and Houston. Should be a blast!
Among the Literati XXVI
Some friends of a friend guest edited the current edition of Slope. Slope 17 is an anthology of FU poems. If you ever needed to say FU to someone, here are 25 poetic ways to express how you feel.
Some friends of a friend guest edited the current edition of Slope. Slope 17 is an anthology of FU poems. If you ever needed to say FU to someone, here are 25 poetic ways to express how you feel.
Games People Play VI
One of the highlights last night -- at least for me -- was playing Radikal Bikers. The game has several flaws -- including horrible graphics and a too-linear narrative -- but it's pretty easy to see past them and get into the game. At least for me.
Basically, Radikal Bikers is a moped-racing game set in Rome, Italy. As a player, you have your choice of four pizza delivery people, two of whom are scantily clad women. The goal is to beat a competing pizza delivery person -- labeled "CPU" -- to the delivery points. If they beat you, you cry. If you win, you proudly present the pizza box. The game, while full of eye candy, is extremely linear. If you play it a couple of times, you can map a route to winning, and I'd imagine that it gets boring after awhile.
The game adds some interesting aspects to the race, however, adding shortcuts -- which earn you points when taken -- and special effects such as turbo speed and a power kick so you can destroy cars around you. My favorite parts of the game include scooting through the catacombs, shooting down the side alleys in which laborers are moving boxes, watching the rampaging rhinos escaping the zoo, and cutting through the cemetery, where you encounter zombies. Zombies! And rhinos! Zombies and rhinos!
I'll go back to the Saloon just to play Radikal Bikers. But another thing that intrigues me about the game is the economic story the game tells. Just as it's bad form to call a cab to pick you up -- and then hop into the first cab you see on the street -- it strikes me as silly that two people would be racing to deliver a pizza to the same customer. The delivery people work for competing pizza places, so that means that the customer called both. Does that happen? Here or in Italy? Wouldn't you have to pay for both pizzas because you ordered both?
And, and this is the biggest question, did the customer order the same toppings on both pizzas? Future game play may answer all of these questions, and more.
One of the highlights last night -- at least for me -- was playing Radikal Bikers. The game has several flaws -- including horrible graphics and a too-linear narrative -- but it's pretty easy to see past them and get into the game. At least for me.
Basically, Radikal Bikers is a moped-racing game set in Rome, Italy. As a player, you have your choice of four pizza delivery people, two of whom are scantily clad women. The goal is to beat a competing pizza delivery person -- labeled "CPU" -- to the delivery points. If they beat you, you cry. If you win, you proudly present the pizza box. The game, while full of eye candy, is extremely linear. If you play it a couple of times, you can map a route to winning, and I'd imagine that it gets boring after awhile.
The game adds some interesting aspects to the race, however, adding shortcuts -- which earn you points when taken -- and special effects such as turbo speed and a power kick so you can destroy cars around you. My favorite parts of the game include scooting through the catacombs, shooting down the side alleys in which laborers are moving boxes, watching the rampaging rhinos escaping the zoo, and cutting through the cemetery, where you encounter zombies. Zombies! And rhinos! Zombies and rhinos!
I'll go back to the Saloon just to play Radikal Bikers. But another thing that intrigues me about the game is the economic story the game tells. Just as it's bad form to call a cab to pick you up -- and then hop into the first cab you see on the street -- it strikes me as silly that two people would be racing to deliver a pizza to the same customer. The delivery people work for competing pizza places, so that means that the customer called both. Does that happen? Here or in Italy? Wouldn't you have to pay for both pizzas because you ordered both?
And, and this is the biggest question, did the customer order the same toppings on both pizzas? Future game play may answer all of these questions, and more.
Corollary: Happy Birthday to Media Dieticians XI
I promise, this is the last birthday-related entry I'll publish about my 30th. I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing about my aging. We all age, every minute, every day. How am I different or special?
Well, last night I felt really special because of the gathering of friends that convened at the Cambridgeport Saloon in Cambridge. Things started slowly at 8, when I arrived to claim a high table by the dart boards and officially open my office hours. There was a small, dedicated crew in the early hours, and then the crowd grew.
I have many different circles of friends, and they don't often overlap. Last night, they did. In attendance, we had people from work, childhood family friends, people from the Anchormen and Handstand Command, folks I know through the Boston-area Web community, and some people I met for the first time last night. One surprising overlap was that a long-time friend went to high school with some people I know through Handstand Command and the comic shop. I had no ideas our lives overlapped that way, too.
Around 11:30, we inherited some second-wind friends from work who had spent the earlier portion of the evening at the Enormous Room to celebrate another friend's birthday. Not to claim the party crown, but folks seemed to think that the Cambridgeport Saloon was a better location, and the dart boards and pool tables, as well as the pinball and video games, occupied much of our attention. I hope people had fun!
Thanks to Emily for working the camera. It was kind of dark in there, huh?
I promise, this is the last birthday-related entry I'll publish about my 30th. I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing about my aging. We all age, every minute, every day. How am I different or special?
Well, last night I felt really special because of the gathering of friends that convened at the Cambridgeport Saloon in Cambridge. Things started slowly at 8, when I arrived to claim a high table by the dart boards and officially open my office hours. There was a small, dedicated crew in the early hours, and then the crowd grew.
I have many different circles of friends, and they don't often overlap. Last night, they did. In attendance, we had people from work, childhood family friends, people from the Anchormen and Handstand Command, folks I know through the Boston-area Web community, and some people I met for the first time last night. One surprising overlap was that a long-time friend went to high school with some people I know through Handstand Command and the comic shop. I had no ideas our lives overlapped that way, too.
Around 11:30, we inherited some second-wind friends from work who had spent the earlier portion of the evening at the Enormous Room to celebrate another friend's birthday. Not to claim the party crown, but folks seemed to think that the Cambridgeport Saloon was a better location, and the dart boards and pool tables, as well as the pinball and video games, occupied much of our attention. I hope people had fun!
Thanks to Emily for working the camera. It was kind of dark in there, huh?
Event-O-Dex XL
Looks like a good weekend for music.
Thursday, Feb. 27: Plunge into Death, Pelvic Circus, Sallie, and Distorted Megabytes at the Choppin' Block, 724 Huntington Ave., Boston.
Friday, Feb. 28: Palomar, Soltero, and the Mittens at the Milky Way, 405 Centre St., Jamaica Plain.
Saturday, March 1: Choo Choo la Rouge, Jen O'Connor, Soltero, and the In Out at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon St., Somerville.
Looks like a good weekend for music.
Thursday, Feb. 27: Plunge into Death, Pelvic Circus, Sallie, and Distorted Megabytes at the Choppin' Block, 724 Huntington Ave., Boston.
Friday, Feb. 28: Palomar, Soltero, and the Mittens at the Milky Way, 405 Centre St., Jamaica Plain.
Saturday, March 1: Choo Choo la Rouge, Jen O'Connor, Soltero, and the In Out at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon St., Somerville.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Blogging About Blogging LI
Hot on the heels of its acquisition of Blogger, Google has started sending legal letters requesting that Web writers not use phrases such as "I googled for Muppet Baby icons yesterday." Welcome to the blogosphere? Unimpressive.
Trademark protection is an ongoing legal battle -- and expense -- for companies and brands such as Kleenex, Frisbee, Xerox, and so forth. But in Google's case, as I think is true in Xerox's case as well, the terms use as a verb stems from the fact that people use Google to search the Web. While "to xerox" became a generic phrase meaning "to photocopy" and "kleenex" is now used to describe any facial tissue, I don't see this potential danger for Google.
Sure, "xerox" morphed -- because of the brand's early ubiquity and eventual outpacing by other photocopier manufacturers. And, yes, "xerox" is a silly word. "Google" is even sillier. How can we seriously say "I googled for Muppet Baby icons" if we used AltaVista or AlltheWeb? My prediction: "Google" will never become a generic term for "searched on the Web."
When I say I googled for something, I mean it. I used Google. And that, my friends, is an endorsement.
Hot on the heels of its acquisition of Blogger, Google has started sending legal letters requesting that Web writers not use phrases such as "I googled for Muppet Baby icons yesterday." Welcome to the blogosphere? Unimpressive.
Trademark protection is an ongoing legal battle -- and expense -- for companies and brands such as Kleenex, Frisbee, Xerox, and so forth. But in Google's case, as I think is true in Xerox's case as well, the terms use as a verb stems from the fact that people use Google to search the Web. While "to xerox" became a generic phrase meaning "to photocopy" and "kleenex" is now used to describe any facial tissue, I don't see this potential danger for Google.
Sure, "xerox" morphed -- because of the brand's early ubiquity and eventual outpacing by other photocopier manufacturers. And, yes, "xerox" is a silly word. "Google" is even sillier. How can we seriously say "I googled for Muppet Baby icons" if we used AltaVista or AlltheWeb? My prediction: "Google" will never become a generic term for "searched on the Web."
When I say I googled for something, I mean it. I used Google. And that, my friends, is an endorsement.