Thanks to Rob Lee (who recorded me), the audio from my Podcamp Montreal 2009 presentation Finding the Song: Editing an Interview As If It Were Music is now available for download below.
Edit: Rob reminds me that we should also thank Sage and Todd Tyrtle for the use of their H4 to record this and other presentations!
This past weekend at Podcamp Montreal I attended a presentation by Adele McAlear on protecting one’s digital legacy. It was a great presentation, and we also had a great discussion during the session, and it really got me thinking again about the fragility of our media.
I stated that is ironic I have century-old photos of relatives that are in good condition, and CD-ROMS I burnt in 1997 that can no longer be read reliably.
In museums around the world we have ancient clay tablets, scrolls, ancient codex’s, ancient fine art. Much of the material from these ancient times was lost, but some survived, and properly cared for should last indefinitely.
Contrast this with the present day methods of storage: CD’s and DVD’s of suspect longevity, video and audio tape flaking oxide, hard drives (often as not with no back-ups), old data tapes and obsolete diskettes/cartridges, and cloud storage that be a company shut-down or an electromagnetic pulse away from oblivion. Many of the old films of the early 20th century on cellulose nitrate have decomposed, and for many others no quality prints, let along negatives survive. Many of the publications of the 20th century were printed on acid-filled cheap paper stock, and are deteriorating rapidly.
Maybe we should be looking for data storage methods that focus on archival permanence rather than technical trendiness. If you have text you cannot afford to lose, print it out on high quality paper. For audio/video I’m not sure what the long term solution would be, we can’t all have analog disk cutters in our homes.
In the far future, the 20th and 21st century could be know as the Age of Ephemera, if little of our present day content survives.
Clay tablets, anyone?
It’s Monday morning in Montreal, and shortly I’ll be getting on a train and heading home to Toronto, after having attended Podcamp Montreal 2009 (an amazing event!!).
This in itself is sort of an ironic statement, as technically Montreal is my home town, and I only moved to Toronto (via Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Waterloo, Ontario) when I was in University. I haven’t actually lived in Montreal since 1968 when I was 6 years old.
Almost all the relatives I had in Montreal have either passed on, or moved away. I don’t know my way around the city, (how many six year-olds are allowed to wander around large cities?), there is nothing that ties me here except a birth certificate. I love the city, its atmosphere, its history and culture, its energy, but it is not home. I love coming here, but I always feel a bit sad, or at least wistful when I do.
What really strikes home though is that it is not just a chronological separation; the Montreal of my childhood no longer exists (and this is a good thing). As a Montreal Anglophone, I was a child of the “Deux Solitudes” era, where the English language assumed a predominance disproportionate to the number of native speakers; one just assumed that wherever you went, you didn’t have to speak French to function. There was certainly no shortage of arrogance in that regard. For the most part, my parents had English friends, as did I. We lived in a linguistic enclave.
Fast forward to 2009. I was struck by the Montreal Anglophones attending the conference: to a person it seemed, they were able to flip over into French at the drop of a hat. The Francophones as well of course were able to go back and forth with ease. I took French in high school, and first year university, but that was a long time ago, and it is hard to blow the dust off of it every couple of years.
I tried fumbling through in my halting French, and felt a sense of shame that as a Canadian I didn’t have a better command of both official languages. To see a group of perfectly bilingual people, brought together by a common interest, able to share discourse is either language is for me a Canadian ideal.
And now I turn my gaze to Toronto, where a numerical majority of its residents were not born in Canada. One hears so many languages on her streets, and while I know a few words in Greek, Italian and Russian, I certainly cannot converse in these languages, and I feel poorer for it.
If social media is all about communication, then to assume that as an English speaker I can sit back and let others translate their thoughts into English is to merely repeat the mistakes of my generation, and previous generations, and we will all be the lesser for it.
I will try to do better.
I am really looking forward to Podcamp Montreal next weekend (Sept. 19-20, 2009); after all, Montreal is my hometown (although I haven’t lived there since 1968).
I’m also excited to be a presenter, and the title of my presentation is “Finding the Song: Editing an Interview as if it were Music.”
In my presentation, I’ll be talking about how I edit interview speech, while trying to be faithful to the innate rhythm and musicality of human language. I will also have some “before and after” examples of clips from my podcast On the Log.
If you’re coming to Podcamp Montreal, I hope you’ll check out my session!
It has been interesting watching the reaction to Joe Wilson shouting out “Liar” at Obama’s healthcare speech last week. It seems there’s been as much or more shock at his breach of decorum than to his morally bankrupt position on American healthcare. It’s like he broke the club rules.
I compare this to parliamentary traditions, such as in Canada and Britain, where in our Houses of Commons heckling and the hurling of insults is part of the process. To be fair, if you directly call someone a liar, you must either recant the statement, or be ejected temporarily from the house, but it certainly isn’t a matter of national controversy.
And then there are the videos we see from time to time of politicians in other countries engaging in bench-clearing brawls in their own legislative assemblies.
Which democracies are more vibrant? I’d say the ones that don’t shy away from open political conflict.
Politics of course is a blood sport, and I would say that the systems that accept the raw fighting and insults are a bit more honest. The U.S. attempt to maintain a veneer of civility smacks of hypocrisy. It seems more of an attempt to keep “the club” (the members of both parties) in control, and to keep the money and privilege rolling in.
The U.S. is at a turning point, and the stakes as I seem them are too high to get sidetracked by civility. Why didn’t someone stand up on the left and shout “You’re the liar!!” back to Joe Wilson?
There are days when it’s hard not to feel old, and for a while at least today was one of those days.
This afternoon I walked through the University of Toronto campus, and just like every other year, the students keep looking younger. And then it hit me; it has been 29 years since I was a freshman in university. 29 is not a round number, like 20, 30, or 50, but it does give me pause for thought.
I think how the experience has changed. For one thing. no computer. For the first two years of university I did all my essays (and as a history major I had many) on a manual typewriter. It was only the last two years when I had the luxury of the use of an electric typwriter. And as someone who hated writing second drafts, and would revise directly from first draft to typed final copy, the thought of me having even the most basic word processor back then makes me feel wistful. It might have helped my decidely unspectacular grades!
Music was on vinyl, or cassettes. Pirating happened, but not as easily or as casually as it does today. And without internet, or cheap long distance, the world did seem smaller.
But before this turns into a maudlin tribute to years gone by, I should focus on the similarities between students of today, and the former students of my generation. I’d like to think I still have a spirit of learning (in fact more today than when I was in school). And I am happy for what learned, as a member of my generation (late cycle baby-boomers, to be precise).
I’m glad to have learned computers when they were comparatively primitive. I’m glad I learned photography in the film era, and learned to do darkroom work. I’m glad my first audio editing involved quarter inch tape and a splicing block. Doing things the hard way pays off, in the kind of learning you get in return.
And to this year’s class of frosh, or whatever they call you these days, enjoy these years, but never, ever stop learning.
And every now and then, try doing something the hard way.
I finally got my malfunctioning blog fixed, or rather reinstalled, and all content restored, but the comments are lost. I feel like I am in mourning.
