Category: Culture

CC Media

So I’ve been thinking recently about journalism, and more specifically about the current state of news media. It seems to me someone could do pretty well if they did something (anything) and licensed all their work CC-BY, so any publication could use it. Whether that thing be reports for radio, tv, newspaper, magazines, whatever. If it’s good content, and free to the publications, it has a better chance of being accepted now than ever before. And depending on the strategy taken, it could prove to be an incredible way to get a foot in the door, and sidestep a whole lot of bullshit in the whole process.

And then I saw this, which is an interesting route that journalism could take, though I don’t really like it. The idea is reporters backed by philanthropists, which is fine for a while. I imagine wandering the country, making enough to keep wandering, and reporting on things. All free for any major organization to use. I’d love to see someone try it, and if the situation is still viable in a year’s time, I just might.

Movies with Agenda

I was thinking about how movies that are meant to move you work. I’m thinking of theatrical movies, not documentaries or the like. A good example would be Crash, which deals with racism in America through fictional anecdotes. I think the majority of movies work the way Crash does. They present a problem that the audience is familiar with, and then the characters conquer it. Crash is certainly a movie that plays out exactly like this. They focus on a systemic problem, like racism, and bring it down to an individual level to tell a story. And in the end, racism is defeated! Now leave and be happy you’re better than those racists.

Another approach, which I think is more realistic and more effective is what we see in American History X (sticking with the theme of racism). American History X shrinks down the systemic problem to tell a story, and the main character overcomes their bigotry, but racism still wins in the end. It treats the problem of racism as a systemic problem, which it is, instead of an individual problem. Just because the main character has come around, does not mean the rest of the world has as well. As usual, no real conclusion here, just though those little differences were interesting.

CC Potential

I was thinking recently about the incredible potential behind the Creative Commons, and how it is nowhere near being realized. Some people get it – ccMixter for instance. But for some reason the same doesn’t happen with video or text. People are publishing both under CC licenses, but nothing is really being remixed yet. I’m waiting for people to realize the potential behind such services as blip.tv which has loads of videos licensed under CC, and allows downloads of the source file. From that, incredible things can be made.

One thing I would love to see, but for a number of reasons do not expect to, is CC licensed concert footage. There are already a very large number of artists who allow recordings of live shows to be freely traded on the internet (note, not under CC licenses in most cases). The logic behind moves like this is pretty simple: bands make more money touring than they do on CDs. If they allow recordings to be freely tradeable online, they can reach people they never would have otherwise, build a bigger fan base, and get more gigs. If people in the audience were allowed to film shows, with the condition that they had to share them online, videos could be made of every show, from several angles, using a high quality audio recording (like those already available) for the soundtrack. Just think of what we could be doing.

Movie Night

So I watched two movies tonight – one of those nights. First was a movie someone got me because it involves people traveling around in a bus. It was actually a pilot for a tv series in the early 70s that never got picked up: In Search of America. First off, he has a really nice bus. For all they do to try and make it look like a ratty piece of crap, his bus is seriously sweet, and a hell of a lot more money went into it than my bus. Past that, the movie is incredibly predictable, and not especially interesting. It somehow manages to be preachy without having any message.

Later, I watched Shortbus. Shortbus is good. See it. Preferably with open minded people. It made me want to go to New York, or some big city, where you can actually interact with strangers. Somehow, that doesn’t happen at UConn. Even though I’m surrounded by twenty thousand people, the rules are different, and strangers aren’t welcome unless everyone is drunk. Even though we never really talk to our neighbors, they’re not strangers – they know us in their own way (“It was four in the morning and they were throwing things at the wall!“). That potential for interaction with radically different people is pretty well summed up in a story by Elna Baker that I listened to between movies (Yes Means Yes). So there you go – a very media rich night.

Bonnaroo 365 Video

I usually try to catch Bonnaroo sets at AT&T’s blueroom, because they’re pretty good. But since it streams live, if you miss it, you miss out. Bonnaroo is starting to stream videos of previous sets from their own website, and I’m pretty happy about it. The Raconteurs set from ’08 is up, and there is supposed to be more on the way.

Cellphone Cancer

I was reading a Gizmodo post recently about the a study on correlation between cellphones and cancer. The study isn’t done, but apparently there is considerable evidence pointing to cellphones causing tumors.

This raises a lot of very interesting questions. Cellphones have had such and incredible impact on the way we live our lives – would we give them up? Would it be possible to find a less harmful alternative? Giz thinks it could go the way of tobacco – common knowledge of its dangers that are ignored by many.

In case you’re wondering, this isn’t a real threat – the comments on that article explain. But it is interesting to step back and think of what our world would be like if suddenly cellphones became feared.

Happy Christmas

I think this is my new Christmas tradition, like playing Alice’s Restaurant on Thanksgiving. David Sedaris’s “6 to 8 Black Men” is simply wonderful. If you have not heard it, please listen to it now. If you would rather read it for some reason, you can do that too.

[audio:http://john.paganetti.com/wp-content/uploads/David%20Sedaris%20-%206%20to%208%20Black%20Men.mp3]

What I’ve learned in Sociology

Finally done with classes this semester. This semester had by far the best classes I’ve taken. One was Sociology of Gender, which I have to admit I had never spent much time thinking about. It quickly became my favourite class of the semester, and I’m glad I took it. But I think I learned something from my classmates that I hadn’t expected to learn.

Apparently I was not raised like everyone else. I’m not sure how much I can take from this class at face value, but if I believe what they say, I was raised by hippies. I’m not sure if everyone else in the class just answers how they think they should, or if they’re sincere. We’ve certainly been trained to give the “right” answer. This class often talks about gender roles in the household, eg: women cook, men do manual labor, women take care of children, men make the money, etc. That wasn’t the case in my family.

Tasks were shared between my mother and father. If I was sick at school, and someone needed to take me home, the parent with fewer obligations came to get me, it was not automatically the mother (an example used several times in class with much assent from other students). My dad cooked a lot, and when he didn’t, he would do dishes. Apparently this is not normal.

I’m not claiming that there were no gendered activities in my house growing up. My dad would mow the lawn, chop wood, and build things. My mom would cook larger holiday meals, sew Halloween costumes and so on. But these were not steadfast rules, and I remember stacking cords of wood with both my parents, and helping both prepare Christmas dinner (ok, I probably didn’t help).

I dunno, maybe I’m taking extreme examples that were used in class to prove a point too literally, or maybe I have an ultra-heteronormative sociology class. Either way, I think more than anything else I learned how ‘progressive’ my household was/is. Weird.

The Open and Social Web

There is a certain kind of technology gaining popularity on the web. Most of it has been around for a little while now (a year or so), and is just gaining popularity and traction now. The idea behind this technology is that you’ll define something in one place, and it will follow you around the web, ideally making your life simpler.

First, and probably most prevalent, are Gravatars. The idea is that you set an avatar on the gravatar website, and any website you post to that is gravatar-enabled will automatically display your avatar based on your email address. So this way, on any website you post, your avatar will be there with you, and you won’t need to upload it to each site you post on.

Next are social commenting systems. I’ve just started looking into these recently, and I’m not really sure about them yet. The idea is similar to Gravatars, but takes it a step further and lets you post on any social commenting [Disqus or IntenseDebate] enabled comment system with a single user id. So you don’t need to sign up on new sites, and your comment history is associated with you. There are some other little features, but that is the main idea, and what is important to this post.

Lastly there is OpenID, which looks to do what the social comment systems are doing, but with everything (sort of). The idea behind OpenID is that you can sign into any OpenID enabled site with a single user, and access whatever it is that site is offering (this extends beyond comments). Oddly enough, both of the main social commenting systems support OpenID.

The way OpenID works is fairly simple – when you go to log in to a website that supports OpenID, you enter a URL specific to you. You’re then bounced over to whoever is authenticating you (likely whoever owns that URL) and log in. Then, you bounce back to the original site you were on, all logged in (and optionally some other information filled in for you).

I like OpenID more than either of the above systems, but not just because it has the potential to encompass both of them. OpenID is actually open. The other two systems are on centralized servers that are out of your control. Anyone can make an OpenID authentication server. Tonight I set up my own OpenID server just to test it, and it works. There are tools out there that make setting up a server trivial (I’m serious, you can and should do this). All of my information is completely under my control, and I am able to log into thousands of websites across the internet.

I don’t really have a conclusion, but the idea behind these services is interesting and worth paying attention to, and OpenID is pretty awesome.

Myth and the Information Age

Myth has its roots in poor access to information. There are loads of myths from ancient times, though as time goes on, the myths get fewer and fewer. In fact, there is a inverse correlation between the amount of recorded information and the amount of myths circulating. Looking at the history of the United States, there were many myths and folktales in the colonies, and as time went on and newspapers grew and people began to write, they became fewer. In the West, there was a strong frontier myth until the West became Urbanized.

But today, we’re looking at an unprecedented amount of information. The internet has made it so that anyone can contribute to the available pool of information, and anyone else can easily access it. What will happen to myth? We know more about celebrity and events than we ever have before in history. As hard as the National Enquirer tries, its not easy to make credible things up.

Myth’s best chance seems to be the purposeful dissemination of bad information, but the internet has already dealt with that. I’ve seen many many cases of “Breaking News” that over the course of a day is quickly revealed as fake. When everyone who reads a story can easily check its validity, it is near impossible to pass any wooden nickels. The future won’t have any cowboys, or Paul Bunyan, or Johnny Appleseed.

I think what I’m getting at is the death of private life. We volunteer so much information that private life no longer exists. I’m certainly guilty of this. But there is loads of talk of that elsewhere, so I’ll stick to myth. It seems that someone would have to go out of their way to create any myth. Artists who don’t give interviews are good examples here. I think I’ll miss myth.