I found this over on BoingBoing - it’s a talk given by Lawrence Lessig at the TEDxNYED conference.
Like Jimmy Guterman who posted this on BoingBoing I am always inspired by Lessig’s take on culture, copyright and the need to bring back some sanity to the process of protecting our creative works and our social worlds and finally find an ending to the crazed legal and cutlural wars that have been waged throughout this past decade.
Go - make like Disney - remix something.
Cheers.
Isaac Asimov talks to Bill Moyers in 1988 about the implications of everyone having access to computers that are linked to everyone else - and how this access to information will revolutionize how we all learn. Brilliant stuff.
He’s one smart dude - and probably the only person in the world who could sport such outrageous whiskerage.
Cheers.
John Boswell at Symphony Of Science has released another wonderful music video featuring Carl Sagan and 11 other scientific minds celebrating how science changes our point of view of the world and universe we live in - or, as Richard Dawkins croons: “Science is the poetry of reality.”
Well done, Mr. Boswell. Keep ‘em coming.
Cheers.
Temple Grandin talks at the recent TED conference about how the world needs all kinds of minds. Fascinating stuff.
We inevitably seek to shape, categorize, reform and alter the way our kids (and ourselves) think, behave and interact with the world. We do this because we want our kids (and ourselves) to be perceived as normal, to fit in, to be a part of the world instead of being apart from it.
I am all too aware of the role bipolar behaviour influences the arts. Autism, in all its many forms, has often been regarded as a strange dysfunction or aberration of the brain instead of as a possible evolutionary step for our species. Doubtless if the grand scientific minds of the 1800’s were to see how most of behave today we’d all be locked up in Bedlam.
While some forms of brain difference are manifestly disabling there are many many traits of the human mind that allow some of us to become an Einstein, Newton, Gould, Rainman, or even Temple Grandin.
I’m no flippin’ expert - I only have my own experience to bring to bear upon this - and I don’t want to go all Jerry Mander and Neil Postman on you but I suspect the rise in autistic symptoms within our younger population may indeed be in response to the overwhelming deluge of unmediated information. Unlike Postman and Mander, I don’t see this as a bad thing - it just is - and, as in times past, the brain will find a way to survive, to protect itself and ultimately thrive.
I don’t know. I just think she gave a really cool talk. Lemme go think about it.
Cheers.
P. S. Although Postman and Mander can come across as intensely pessimistic luddites they do have some good thoughts on the media cesspool we are drowning in. I remember reading Mander’s The Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television when I was working for Henson on Fraggle Rock. During a break in shooting I was half-in / half-out of this round foam blob creature that ate Doozers and poring through the pages when Jim asked me: “What are you reading?”. I gleefully held up the book and he snorted: “That’s a bit inflammatory, don’t you think?” to which I replied: “Not if you keep paying my salary!”
Anyway - there’s a really good piece by Mander that is more recent over at the Lapis Magazine site. It’s called The Homogenization Of Global Consciousness: Media, Telecommunications & Culture. Give it a read and then let me know how easy you sleep at night.
I’d really love to see him and Kevin Kelly go at it.
The title of this article is as bizarre as the video itself. I found this over on Bruce Sterling’s blog Beyond The Beyond and it is a wondrously brain melting bit of video wizardry that dissects and reassembles the images and sound of the formerly linear presentation of media - much like the Yooouuutube site I blogged about earlier.
That it uses one of my favourites and the best movie musical of all time - “Singin’ In The Rain” - only helps but it also serves to reinforce the ideas behind the technique since it incorporates dance and music. Have a lookey-loo and I’ll rant at ya after you’ve had your head opened up just a little bit.
Now at first blush this might seem like just a weird and trippy gimmick - and it could certainly remain as such. But consider the choices made in the creation of this little gem - it’s not arbitrary work. The repetition of the lyrics, the overlapping layers of the melody, the attendant visuals that are given focus at the requisite moment(s) in time - it’s just fucking brilliant. Check out their otherwork.
And not just as a mashup. The images and sounds drip like rain water upon a pane of glass. This is poetry, folks.
At the risk of hauling out the old adage poetry in motion - it is just that. Regardless of whether the content is repurposed or original, this is a stunning example of where our culture is heading.
I hear you say: “What the fuck are you on about, Robbo?”
Fair enough. Just this:
We are emerging from a culture that has been dominated by visuals - motion visuals. The moving image has become the lingua franca of the past century - it defines us and it defines our world. The power once held by a painted image, a photograph or a sound bite has long ago relinquished its hold upon the minds of our culture - and in its place is the moving image.
Technological and market forces decreed that such images would always come from a combined creative and business elite - a one-way and top-down conversation. The democratization of this technology is allowing the once passive viewer to speak back to those once hierarchal images - to craft a response in a myriad of forms - to redefine our culture by adopting the language of moving pictures and transforming them into poetry. We also get to speak to each other in this way - transforming the culture further by adopting the methods of what was once voices from above to our own voices from within.
Poetry.
Giambattista Vico postulated - back in the early 1700’s - a recurring cycle of three ages of culture: The Poetic, The Mnemotic & The Vulgar. It doesn’t take a great mind to look about and realize what age we are currently wallowing our way through. Vulgar doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But it is a cycle.
The wheel turns - slowly, yes - but it does turn.
And thus we enter an age where the content of our former culture becomes transformed into the poetic. McLuhan oft stated the content of new media was the media of old. This is but one of the reasons why fighting to retain public access to common culture is important. Our voices stem from our ability to speak of what once was by using the voices of that recent time past.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
I easily foresee a culture that speaks like the video above. Songs, stories, music, dance, narrative, marketing, instruction - the whole gamut of human communication - parlayed through what now would be perceived as an incoherent too-well-stirred pot of media.
We shall speak in video.
And this speech will not merely be regarded as art or a sub-culture of hipster dialect, Daddio - it will be how we converse.
Just as easily as I type - and you read - these words.
Welcome to the future.
Say what?
Cheers.
P.S. This reminds me of the work of Graham Smith, who I used to hang out with a bit in the early ’80’s when he was at OCA creating his photography based work Skinned and messing around with early experiments in video and cludgey virtual reality simulations. He’s currently deep into the telepresence and immersive video world but still crafting very compelling images.
Cory Doctorow posted on the BoingBoing blog about Cameron McMaster’s very detailed post on how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright.
iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a “license” to quote 5 words from the AP).
iCopyright offers “licenses” to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author.
As Doctorow points out, the content of the CBC is funded by taxpayers and yet we are expected to pay for the right to quote from that content.
And as McMaster says in his post:
Seriously, this is really screwed up. Our public broadcaster is using an American company that follows American laws of Fair Use (and probably not the most liberal interpretations of it) to control its content and also inciting everyone to turn each other in and for everyone be on the look out for digital rights bounty hunters? It’s a good thing we’re in Canada where we don’t have the DMCA and we have a Supreme Court ruling that stops Big Media from getting information about our IPs from ISPs.
Because even if you share the story, even if you print it, you could be tracked down and fined.
Bullshit.
That would mean I couldn’t quote Martin Morrow’s appreciation of the recently departed J. D. Salinger where he said:
The word “rebel” is so overused and misused in our culture that it seems pat and tired to apply it to J.D. Salinger. Yet, I can think of few prominent contemporary arts figures who actually deserve that label as much as he did.
Nor would I be able to include this portion from Charlene Sadlers piece on the use of iPhone apps by toddlers, where she said:
When Alexandra Samuel’s two-year-old first sat down to play a video game on her iPhone, the Vancouver mom was more worried about his impact on the device than the effect it could have on him.
Samuel was surprised by what happened next.
And Bob MacDonald’s commentary on the moth-balling of NASA’s shuttle program, where he says:
Back in the 70s, they were promised to be the cheap way to space, but after two of them exploded in flight, taking 14 lives, and after countless retrofits and rebuilds, every flight of the shuttle now costs about $1.5 billion. Granted, they are the most complex machines to ever fly and have accomplished amazing feats in space, but they demonstrate how NASA has turned into a cumbersome organization that spends a lot of money to go nowhere. No private transportation company could ever operate that way.
- could not be referenced without permission - and payment. No partial quotes are allowed, no excerpts - the entire article has to be paid for - by the month.
I include these quotes for the purpose of showing just how absurd and insulting is this most recent clusterfuck of CBC policy.
The pinheads at CBC responsible for this decision must have thought themselves to be extraordinarily clever when in fact they have shown themselves to be pitifully ignorant not only of the workings of the web, the basics of fair-dealing and fair-use and the differences between U.S. and Canadian copyright law - but also the very nature of the public trust which they are charged with managing on behalf of the citizens of Canada.
More from McMaster’s blog:
Thanks CBC! You serve your public well by outsourcing your DRM enforcement to an American company, which allows for money that could be invested in a Canadian company to be spent abroad. This company creates an atmosphere of self-censorship and fear. Because most Canadians don’t know the difference between Canadian copyright law and American, the users of your website, mainly Canadians, will be afraid to do anything – the digital rights bounty police will come after them. This company that limits non digital uses of your information and also disables the sharing of information, and most likely, subject your website viewers to all sorts of DRM tracking devices. Way to foster a public sphere!
Hey, CBC pinheads! Fuck you. How much is iCopyright going to charge me for the quotes in this blog? How much will I be asked to pay for quoting a video or audio snippet?
McMaster included a few page samples from the CBC website where they explain how (and for how much) you can license the right to use the content your tax dollars have already for. Here’s one:
You think I’m going to pay the CBC for the right to include the quotes above in this blog post? No. Duh. What do you think my response is going to be when any request for payment is made? Yeah - you got it. Fuck you.
By the way - iCopyright offers a reward of $1,000,000 for reported piracy. You want to report me? Fuck you too.
I don’t know what makes me more furious, the idiotic attempts of old media carpetbagger shysters selling their bullshit schemes to attach a meter to every friggin’ slice of information we use in conversation - or the dirt stupid idiots at the CBC who actually thought this was a good idea. I really hope more people make noise about this to not just embarrass the CBC but to also continue to insist that publicly funded works belong to the public.
Want to add your voice?
Join the Canadians against CBC’s iCopyright DRM Facebook group.
You can also go to the CBC Contact page and tell ‘em what you think.
The CBC would do well to take a lesson from the National Film Board who have been putting their works online - for free - for everyone to access.
As it sez in the CBC article on the subject:
The online screening room was created as part of a $1.3-million project to digitize the NFB’s collection of historic films.
“This is part of our ongoing response to the digital revolution,” NFB chair Tom Perlmutter said in an online news conference on Wednesday.
The NFB, which restructured its film programs over the past 18 months to free up resources for the digital project, plans to put 10 new films a month online.
That’s how it should be. Instead the CBC is acting in a crass penny-ante manner by signing up with a U.S. based group of extortionists, attempting to charge people a fee for the right to quote from articles. It is an ill-advised and ignorant scheme which reeks of U.S. copyright policy snake-oil that CBC pinheads have bought and swallowed. You dumb fucks.
CBC - fuck off.
Cheers.
P. S. Cameron McMaster is far more level-headed than I and he has posted a very cogent response to the groundswell of outrage about all this. You can read his post here and follow his thoughtful advice on what else we can do.
And whilst I do just that I shall also continue to tell the CBC to fuck off.
Nifty little info comic courtesy of the InfoAnarchy Wiki. Just cick on the image to see it full size.
Pass it on.
And while you’re at it - go sign the Public Domain Manifesto. As blogged on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow:
The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception. Since copyright protection is granted only with respect to original forms of expression, the vast majority of data, information and ideas produced worldwide at any given time belongs to the Public Domain. In addition to information that is not eligible for protection, the Public Domain is enlarged every year by works whose term of protection expires. The combined application of the requirements for protection and the limited duration of the copyright protection contribute to the wealth of the Public Domain so as to ensure access to our shared culture and knowledge.
Read it. Sign it. Talk about it.
Cheers.
P. S. Thanks for the comic link, Fred!
P. P. S. If you want to get really fucked up squirrely ass mad about all this corporate ownership of the entire fucking world bullshit be sure to drop by Michael Geist’s blog where he looks at the secret ACTA negotiations that start today in Mexico where this agreement is being designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it will reshape domestic law in many countries, including Canada.
I’ve posted before about the advent of Augmented Reality. Bruce Sterling has been all over this as well. Today he posted about this fucking awesome video by Keiichi Matsuda, a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Here’s what Matsuda had to say about the video:
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
Here’s the video:
This shows a pretty freakin’ accurate look at how our kids are going to be seeing the world around them in the fairly near future. I’m gonna be trying to hold together my damaged synapses long enough to be able to experience this myself and not run away screaming like some old fogey from a past century - which I am - and instead plunge my face deep into that bucket of apples and see what I can come up with.
As I noted before, there will be commercial noise in the AR world as every form of information struggles to gain our attention. The systems we employ to diffuse, arrange, organize and otherwise control this flood of sensorial data will be vital to our existence. Like learning to tune out the noise of a busy city street and still function as a human being - our minds and attendant culture will be adaptable to the cause.
Hard for those us who are not digital natives - (I hate that fucking term) - to conceive of ever being able to survive under such a continuous barrage over overlaid visual and aural stimulation. And yet the most basic of extended communications skills we employ today would have been mind warping to anyone who lived a mere 100 years ago.
This kind of immersive, technological, self-imposed evolution is inevitable and being able to see such forward-thinking examples of what might be will help us prepare for what we need to accomplish as we ease ourselves into the hot bath water of information overload in the years ahead. The further reaches of where we are going with all this is to have a similar experience that involves massive and simultaneous communication with others around the globe - pressing our faces not just against the glass of the candy store window but through the glass of the screen - allowing our senses of the world and our sense of self to merge with the greater shared mind of the net.
Oh yeah - and still retain our individuality and our sanity.
Can we do it?
Or is this just another thing we’re most likely to fuck up?
Cheers.
P. S. I particularly liked the use of the Honest Ed’s ad on the dish washer door.
I just heard that Kate McGarrigle, sister of Anna, mother of Martha and Rufus, has passed away. The music remains.
Hug those you love.
It’s his day today - I’ll let him do the talking.
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