If you were lucky, and hadn’t pissed off the analyst recently (causing him to “forget” to schedule your job), the next day a large printout would be on your desk for you to dig through. Business at the speed of thought? Hardly. With the advent of Visicalc, you could get your numbers when you wanted, and insult I.T. nerds at your leisure, in safety.

No wonder the PC was resisted by traditional IT staff for so long; with the loss of control that applications like VisiCalc represented, the power of the I.T. staff was neutralized, and like Jericho, the walls came tumbling down.

It’s sadly ironic that three decades later, the battle for control is being fought again, but the the role of the traditional IT department is now filled by companies such as Apple, the people who were the rebels thirty years ago. The battlefield has shifted from the data centre to the mobile device; Apple’s capricious, murky, and inconsistent App Store application approval process is seen as a heavy handed attempt by Apple to maintain dominance, even as prominent developers publicly abandon iPhone development efforts. The term “jailbreaking” for installing software allowing the user to install whatever they want on the iPhone is most app.

Apple is not alone in its desire for control. The recently released Google Chrome OS seems to be designed to push the users towards Google-controlled services, and away from running the apps they wish to run, and storing the data where they wish to store it. The Cloud is being shaped into a tool for giving the public freedom from choice. And who knows what Microsoft has in mind for Azure.

Throw in a soupcon of DRM, erode fair use, patent everything in sight, and whip up some security fears, and the three decades of relative computer freedom we have enjoyed could be just an anomaly.

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Quill is either naive, lazy, or in on the game. As it is his piece reads like a press release for the RIAA.
Tags: Copyright, Music, Canada

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Standing up for the rights of others can be so rude sometimes, I guess.

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1. Encourages Speeding
2. Promotes Christianity
3. Rev is an alcoholic cooler-type beverage

The story also mentions a case from a few years ago of someone who had the plate JEHAD; after 9/11 he was told the plate was offensive, but in the end he got his plate, and an apology. I have no problem with his plate, but it seems a double-standard is in place here. It appears to be another case of what I call Zero-Sum Multiculturalism.

The basic theory is that there is a finite amount of cultural expression or tolerance possible in a society, and in order to promote one, you have to suppress another. This is often seen at Christmas time, with Christmas trees being re-labeled as “Holiday Bushes” and employees in stores being told to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Those responsible for such obscenities will at the same time go out of their way to promote every other tradition’ celebration in order to be “inclusive.” I am reminded of the language Police in Quebec, ever vigilant in their search for the illegal use of one of Canada’s official languages, as these P.C. functionaries attempt to stamp out every last sign of the Christian aspect of Christmas from public space.

Whenever any cultural assets are hidden from view, we are all poorer as a result. Why can’t “being inclusive” mean supporting cultural expressions from all cultures, including Anglo-Saxon or Judeo-Christian?

Or is having the word “REV” on a license plate an act of cultural genocide?

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Give me a break. There are too many people in Quebec spending too much of their time looking for ways to be humiliated and oppressed. It seems they aren’t happy unless they are angry. And people may call me politically incorrect for expressing impatience; too bad.
Tags: French, Canada, Quebec

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I also got the sense that, if properly cared for, this priceless artifact could be preserved forever, so future generations could look at it in wonder, learn from it, and hopefully for some, be inspired to make their own contributions to our cultural birthright.

In contrast, I think of so much of the cultural output of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and how impermanent it is. Much of the physically published work has been printed on cheap, acid-filled pulp paper, and is rotting away before out eyes. It certainly won’t survive for five centuries like the works of Da Vinci.

Much has also been written about the impermanence of electronic and digital media. While I would not of course put the following example in the same category as Da Vinci’s work, one of my projects right now is the digitization of three VHS cassettes I have from 1989 to 1991. These tapes are recordings of three amateur Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta productions in which I was fortunate to participate. VHS tapes are not know for their archival permanence, and even after only 18 years, I am seeing degradation of the tapes. Even once I have digitized these tapes, I am not out of the woods. There are varying opinions as to how long home-burned DVD’s can last, and of course if industry supported formats change at some point down the road, and players are no longer available, I will be effectively cut off from this content.

Of course, back-ups on hard drives are not safe. I was recently in touch with a friend who may have lost years of her digital photographs, due to hard drive problems. (We are still hopeful that a hard drive recovery program like Spinrite may come in and save the day). Even if there had been multiple back-ups on CD’s, there have been many instances of CD-ROMS degrading and becoming unreadable as the years pass.

In contrast, I think of the colour slides my father took decades ago. They have been properly stored, and are still bright and vibrant after 40 or 50 years. Back in the early 1980’s I did some colour darkroom work using a process from Ilford called Cibachrome, and those prints are just as vibrant today as they were when I first made them. I don’t see most colour inkjet prints lasting even a fraction of that time without significant fading.

It is ironic that while we have never been surrounded by more information and content, it has never been more malleable or ephemeral. The term, “Carved in Stone” just doesn’t apply any more. We are in a vast sea of information, and while the sea itself endures, each piece of information is like a wave, ever changing, and impermanent.

At the same that issues with digital storage threaten the long term survival of cultural assets, current copyright restrictions have placed a lot of material into legal limbo. If a work is still in copyright, but the current copyright owners cannot be contacted for permission to use/reproduce the work, it cannot be copied or distributed. As far as a wider audience is concerned, it might as well be lost. A lot of work from the twentieth century is in this unfortunate limbo.

I wonder if this is exactly the scenario desired by the entertainment industry, and those who would see themselves as cultural gatekeepers. Is “old” culture (particularly public domain/free culture) seen as the competition to the book, movie, or recording of the moment? If so, the more old content can be made unavailable to the average consumer, the more new content the average consumer would be willing to buy. Is culture now to be sold the same way as clothing, where (if fashion retailers had their way) you are expected to throw out your culture and buy replacements every year, just to remain fashionable?

As more and more content is sold in what I would call fragile forms (e.g. downloaded media), or forms whose post-purchase use and access can be significantly controlled by the content seller (DRM, encryption etc.), I fear we are headed to culture with a definite shelf-life, and “Best Before” tags controlled by the vendor. The term “culture consumer” takes on a whole new meaning, if we are tricked into believing that culture is something that is consumed, or used up like a jug of milk, and therefore needs to be purchased over and over again.

Tags: Culture, DRM, DVD,Media, Photography

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One day I was coming home from work on the subway here in Toronto, when a bunch of teenagers entered the car I was in; a rather eclectic looking bunch: the haircuts, the piercings, etc. One of teens was carrying a rather beat-up acoustic guitar. Once the train got going again, he promptly sat down and began playing and singing what sounded like original music; a mix of hard-edged folk, but with a hip-hop kind of vibe to it. He played full-tilt for a number of stops, with a number of the other teenagers singing along.

This being Toronto, the city of manners (unless you’re behind the wheel, or police dealing with ethnic minorities, or on the TTC during a service interruption waiting to get on a shuttle-bus), no one on the train said anything to the player or companions, despite the fact that he wasn’t a particularly good player or singer. He and his back-up band did have a lot of energy though.

If you’ve read other entries on my blog, you’ve seen me say a couple of times how I want more people to make their own music, to sing their own songs. But how do I reconcile the fact that while everyone should sing, there are many people around whom I’d rather not be when they are singing or performing? On the subway, I was part of a captive audience; all I could do was crank up my iPod even more. Does that make me a hypocrite? I’m still not sure. People still have a right to some degree of silence and peace.

Eventually, the teens got to their stop, and got off the train, and I happened to notice the words “Fuck iPods” on the back of the T-shirt one of the teens (not the guitar player) was wearing. I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Tags: Music, Toronto

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Web 2.0 is called “dangerous” as it undermines authority and professional standards.” Given how docile and obedient the U.S. media has become, in its apparent worship of authority, to not undermine authority to my mind would be even more dangerous. And as far as professional standards go, when I look at what passes for journalism in most mainstream media, I see hacks, shills and whores, or celebrity journalists who make themselves the story. His accusation of Web 2.0 as a wet dream for spinners and PR people is particularly stupifying, given the prevalence of the professional spinner (and the credulous Barbie/Ken Doll talking head “journalist” being manipulated) in mainstream media. He attacks the anonymity of Web 2.0, while at the same time ignoring the fact of the unknown and often largely anonymous levers of power behind mainstream media. He talks about Web 2.0 being “spin, lies and innuendo.” I guess he hasn’t watched Fox News recently.

The only thing Keen says that I agree with is the problem of media illiteracy, but even here, what he then goes on to say leaves me scratching me head. He accuses Web 2.0 of needing news to be “easy to digest, and chunkable,” but he seems to have forgotten that it was television, not the Internet that invented the sound bite as the staple of modern day journalism; Shallow coverage of hard news arose long before the Internet became mainstream. He also claims that there is reliability in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that one doesn’t find in the Internet, and here he is correct, but maybe not in the way he thinks — mainstream media is reliable in the sense that Authority can rely on it to serve its interests, as opposed to the interests of the average citizen.

The pattern of accusing Web 2.0 of the sins of mainstream media continues when Keen warns of an Internet where everything is essentially advertising, due to the blurring of the line between editorial content and advertising. blurring of editorial and advertising. How is that different from mainstream media today? I few years ago I saw a study shown how drastically the percentage of “hard” news vs lifestyle/entertainment news had fallen, and it is in the latter kind of news where this blurring is even more prominent.

He also entirely misses the point when he discusses the “accountability” of the professional media. A mainstream media organization is accountable to its shareholders (if it is a publicly traded company) or its owners; it owes nothing to society in general, and to think otherwise is to be dangerously naive.

Perhaps the most dangerous and disturbing part of what Keen says is the way he uses the word amateur; it has a strong pejorative whiff about it, and he exalts professional journalists in comparison, saying that because they are paid, they will be held to a higher standard. The word amateur derives from the Latin amare, “to love.” In this sense of the word, an amateur is doing something for the love if it, not just going through the motions to bring home a paycheque.

If culture ceases to have any sense of “vox populi” about it, it ceases to be culture, and simply becomes a means of control. The image I get is one of a cemetery, or an old-fashioned museum. The kind of “anarchy” Keen fears is only threatening to to the authoritarian elite; for the rest of us, the chaos is merely a noisy and vibrant marketplace of ideas, and I for one will take the market place of ideas, as the only way of preserving culture as a dynamic and vibrant birthright of all humanity.

Tags: Web 2.0 Keen Media

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