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Rumsfeld's war: watch the full program at PBS.org
 Very interesting PBS Frontline special. Very interesting watch. Silly streaming Win Media Player format. It's to bad I can't download it or watch it on my media server or TV. Comments soon to come.
Update: I have composed feedback pertaining to the format here
 frontline: rumsfeld's war: watch the full program online PBS
Via: Rumsfeld's War Metafilter
The Fishing Machine - a genuine design enigma
 I must say I'm not the collector type, but when I saw the wacked out design of this 1976 Fishing Machine I had to drop $3 on it. I'm a sucker for wacked out design. The funniest thing is it still works and casts beautifully. It has the oddest feature on top too, a "range finder" that when switched on stops the cast and about 35 feet or so. Perfect for casting into those tricky little nooks and crannies. :) 
Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3 - Sarcasm will save us all.
 The Onion | Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3
Thank you onion, if not for your sarcasm I might not be here right now. I might shooting people in the head in a mutli-player online game like Wolfenstien. Big smile. :)
Microcredit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Micro-lending or microcredit is world changing. We could just throw millions or billions at big players through World Bank, or we could invest $20 here and $10 there. One works, the other doesn't. Figure it out.
Microcredit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wishful thinking the new photo iPod into a video iPod
 There's a lot of people who were wishing apple's big announcement would be a video playing iPod, but over at macworld they take it a step farther in this hilarious, ridiculous and geeky romp through how to make your photo iPod into a video iPod, sort of.
MacCentral: The New iPod Video... Almost
Philippe Starck designed Wall Street condo complex
 "Downtown is both the name and the location for a new luxury condo designed by uber designer Philippe Starck. The former 40-story headquarters for banker JP Morgan has been transformed into 326 Starck-designed residences. In addition to the usual NYC condo luxo amenities, there's a Starck Park, a 5,000 sq. ft. roof park that looks out over the NY Stock Exchange. They should have called it the Starck Exchange..."
LINK: MoCoLoco: Downtown
The ideal city bicycle - the Alta
 MoCoLoco: Alta: "The ideal city bicycle.
Norwegian designers Norway Says, Frost Produkt and Bleed Designstudio have created this innovative design for bike manufacturer Hard Rocx. It's a 'light singlespeed bike for urban areas, only 9.6 kg. It comes with internal cablerouting for the brakes.'. If the goal was to create a practical simple design with flare, they've succeeded"
Random great business plan of the day
I don't know wether I'm going to do this or not (anyone who reads this is welcome to it) but the following t-shirt idea popped into my head while having a discussion about companies that suck, primarily those like Claria (formerly Gator), and Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) that are attempting to skirt the moral and ethical backlash against them by playing the name game. The medium is the tshirt, and the message is as such.
I think
[insert company
name here]
SUCKS
so bad I payed
$20 for this t-shirt
Basically this is a cool way to un-cool brands. A way to profit by knocking companies down a peg or two, and a way to thumb your nose at them in enjoyment. This might be very popular among the internet insider and college crowd and is easily executed on on cafe press or some other site. It's completely legal as it's freedom of expression even though it clearly flies in the face of the corporation. I really must say I like it a lot.
Sometimes you just need to express your negative opinion.
The world's most human robot
 This robot does it all. Schmoozes for money AND drinks beer. How could robotics surpass this. It has all been done.
The world's most human robot (19mb QuickTime Video)
News Flash: media blows, sarcasm will save us all.
 Officials fear news of the missing explosives could be used in combination with unrelated pictures of burning stuff to sensationalize news articles. |
Between the inescapable simpleton political ads, sensationalist Ashlee Simpson news, Sinclair scandal and the constant self perpetuated media scandals I'm deeply disaffected with mainstream media and politics. So today I'm going to take it out on Bill Orielly, courtesy of The Onion which is truly "America's Finest News Source" - after the Daily Show of course. ;) Last week, a Fox News Channel producer sued Bill O'Reilly for sexual harassment, alleging that the cable host pressured her into phone sex. What do you think?
 "This is just another example of the liberal media's bias against self-destructive, narcissistic, screaming sexist assholes."
Andy Vaughn
Clerk
 "He wasn't sexually harassing her. He was just looking out for her, like he's doing for all of us, all the time."
Jonathan Warren
Announcer
 "Whether Andrea Mackris' claims are true or false, one thing is certain—that woman is never working for the vast right-wing conspiracy again."
Curtis Fletcher
Systems Analyst
I like my news sprinkled heavily with sarcasm. Thank you Onion.
Link: The Onion | What Do You Think?
fun media fixings - the news from iraq
 This clip may be a little old. But it cracks me up every time with it's Monty Python style british humor. Enjoy.
funny - newsreportfromIraq.wmv
Biking Pennsylvania's Lost Highway
 I suddenly have the need to travel to Pennsylvania. I'm reminded of the post apocalyptic visions of 'Mad Max', Stephen King's 'The Stand' and '28 days'. To be riding a bicycle on a four lane divided highway, silence, weeds growing through cracks. It would be a very eery and spiritual thing indeed.
The New York Times > Travel > Escapes > Day Trips: Biking Dark Tunnels and Wide Lanes on a Lost Highway
Random picture of the day
 This is May. May doesn't like cameras, not even camera phones.
May growls, "Stop stealing my soul."
All hail gross green Shrek twinkies! — senseless Holloween moblogging
 All hail gross green Shrek twinkies!
This was the best excuse I could come up with for using my new cameraphone to moblog today.
Bruce Sterling, New Bollywood models, Big Wifi Dinasaur
Bruce, what was that you were saying about a hot beautiful Czech new Bollywood cosmetic model... Nevermind, ahh, that's a very nice Dinasaur. Can I get one like that to live in?
from Bruce Sterling's Wired News Blog
Giant sunfish washes up on New Zealand beach
 In news completely unrelated to anything a giant sunfish has washed up on a New Zealand beach. Categorize under wacky, weird, fun, bizarro.
STUFF - STORY - HOME : New Zealand's leading news and information website: "Monster washes up near Farewell Spit"
Free culture - Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line"
 "In the beginning was the command line" has probably been online for free for years, but I just discovered it after reading today's Slashdot interview with Neal Stephenson. Which is by the way a brilliant read. And I do mean that. His Snowcrash is one of my favorite sci-fi books. I remember when I was first introduced to his work when I picked up a copy of "In the beginning was the Command Line" I was immediately insensed and read it straight through without ever putting it down. Keep in mind it's not very long.
So now that I've transitioned from "In the begining..." to the Slashdot interview and back again it's time to sign off. I have printed out the Slashdot article so I can enjoy it with a nice cup of tea before going to bed. I guess this sort of proves I'm a big geek, but heh, it's such a very good day to be a geek. With the anticipation of reading Stephen King's last book of the Dark Tower series ( just released within the last couple days) and the revival of William Gibson's blog this week we geeks are very blessed.
Referring page to download: C R Y P T O N O M I C O N . C O M
Direct link to download: In the beginning was the Command Line (zip format)
Link: Today's Slashdot interview with Neal Stephenson
Stephen King's final book in 'The Dark Tower Series' released
 I can't wait to get my hands on this. Stephen King has been working toward the completion of his seven book 'Dark Tower' series since perhaps as early as 1970 when he was 22. Many have called the Dark Tower series his opus and even more wondered if it's completion would ever come, especially since he was very nearly killed in a road side accident in 1999, but the series is now complete and I won't be able to get my hands on a copy of it fast enough.
EXCELLENT Article: The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'The Dark Tower': Pulp Metafiction (free registration required)
Read the first chapter! The New York Times > Books > First Chapters > First Chapter: 'The Dark Tower VII' (free registration required)
Great Review: Boing Boing: Stephen King finishes the Gunslinger books
Buy it on Amazon: Amazon.com: Books: The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7)
Nike consolidating the sporting goods market
 It use to be Nike was an ever present fixture in the media I paid attention to. So you can imagine my shock when I realized they bought up their competitor Converse back in July.
Apparently their market has been maturing (as markets do) and they've started buying up competitors to consolidate their market share. And with Converse helping to drive up sales, industry watchers say Nike is likely to duplicate this success by acquiring other brands.
John Horan, who publishes the trade magazine Sporting Goods Intelligence, lists youth sporting goods company Burton and outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia as two possibilities.
...
To diversify its product offerings, Nike paid about $305 million for the nearly 100-year-old Converse. So far the bet has paid off.
For the quarter ended Aug. 31, sales from the company's non-Nike brands grew 64 percent to $434.5 million, with Converse making up about three-quarters of that amount. Total revenue rose 18 percent to $3.6 billion, with Converse contributing four percentage points of that increase. Link: Latest Business News and Financial Information | Reuters.com
 On a side note converse is doing a bit of participatory marketing. Yes "paticapotory marketing" that's what I said. I could call it "viral marketing" as some do, but that implies everyone involved is some kind of degenerate. One of the many reasons I don't think highly of much of the advertising industry, but that's another issue altogether. Anyway, judge for yourself. Like Converse, this site belongs to you, it is what you make of it. Enjoy the creativity of others. If you get the itch, create something yourself. With every contribution, this site will evolve and grow. How big? That's entirely up to you. I like the sentiment, I just wish the website wasn't one big closed flash app so I could link to the right page or some of the videos.
Link: conversegallery.com
News of the weird and wacky
Just in today: "In one of those only-in-Alaska stories that will shock even the sourest of sourdoughs, a trophy-sized bull moose was accidentally strung up in a power line under construction to the Teck Pogo gold mine southeast of Fairbanks. The moose apparently got its antlers tangled in electrical wire before workers farther down the line pulled the line tight about two weeks ago."
Link: News-Miner - Wired News
By way of Fark.com (thanks Shannon)
Cheers to great buddy icons — this is the best buddy icon evar
 This is a really silly post, but what the heh. It's Sunday.
I don't know where it's originally from, but I love this image. A friend of mine is using it as his buddy image. He got it from the guy who maintains the Debian X Windows system It tops my personal favorites Beaker from the Muppet Show, and Homestar Runner, from homestarrunner.com.
"New Media Monopoly" — ramblings about new media
from: "New Media Monopoly" Excerpt 1
"During the emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, most of the best regional papers, in the North and the South, would tell me when I dropped in for the traditional 'fill-in' for outside journalists, that there was no serious problem in their 'colored districts.' Yet in city after city there came racial explosions that surprised even the local media.
When I was reporting on structural poverty in the early 1960s, once again in the newsrooms of some of the best papers I was told that there was no significant problem. But a few years later it was clear that not only was there a problem, but it had existed for a long time.
Yet if I asked these same papers about welfare cheaters, low-level political chicanery, or failings of almost any public agency, their libraries were full of clippings.
There was, it appeared, a double standard: sensitive to failures in public bodies, but insensitive to equally important failures in the private sector, particularly in what affects the corporate world. This institutional bias does more than merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.
Our picture of reality does not burst upon us in one splendid revelation. It accumulates day by day and year by year in mostly unspectacular fragments from the world scene, produced mainly by the mass media. Our view of the real world is dynamic, cumulative, and self-correcting as long as there is a pattern of even-handedness in deciding which fragments are important. But when one important category of the fragments is filtered out, or included only vaguely, our view of the social-political world is deficient. The ultimate human intelligence-discernment of cause and effect-becomes damaged because it depends on knowledge of events in the order and significance in which they occur. When part of the linkage between cause and effect becomes obscure, the sources of our weakness and of our strength become uncertain. Errors are repeated decade after decade because something is missing in the perceptions by which we guide our social actions.
My personal associations, professional experience, and research tell me that journalists, writers, artists, and producers are, as a body, capable of producing a picture of reality that, among other things, will signal 'weakness in the social order.' But to express this varied picture they must work through mainstream institutions and these institutions must be diverse. As the most important institutions in the production of our view of the real social world-newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies-increasingly become the property of the most persistent beneficiaries of mass media biases, it seems important to me to write about it."
Thoughts: I just stumbled upon this excerpt from "New Media Monopoly" by Ben Bagdikian. This is a brilliant excerpt from a different perspective, a journalists perspective. Though in my opinion the failure of media to signal "weakness in the social order" is not due the willingness or lack of willingness by journalists. The failure of media is in the architecture of editorial news system itself, the problem is inherent in broadcast systems. Because journalists do strive to "work through mainstream institutions" they invariably bend their bias toward that of their peers. This very strife to reach a wide audience through mainstream media subverts any attempt to be well rounded or unbiased because an individual can't remain unbiased when they're seeking the acceptance of the very peers which they are reporting on. Especially when that bias is supported and cultivated through a very granular process over many, many years of a career.
This repeated process of failure to signal signal 'weakness in the social order' really hits home with the weapons of mass destruction scandal, the Worldcom and Enron scandals, and even the latest scandal with Dan Rather and the forged Coast Guard documents. However, I believe it is not a failure of journalists, I believe it is a failure inherent in broadcast media. In order to have a voice you must belong and in order to belong you must seek acceptance from that which you would voice your opinion about.
By contrast new media of the "broadband" paradigm (many-to-many) allows one to develop a voice without acceptance. Acceptance is secondary. The threshold of acceptance and hence the subversion of that voice is infinitely smaller. Sure this model leads to a tremendous amount of pontification (see hear!) there is a much, much better chance of getting it right. And by much I mean an order of magnitude that is currently pretty much incalculable. I might cite the number of blogs currently online and compare it to the number of newspapers, but this is not about blogs vs. newspapers, it's about bulletin boards, chat rooms, photos, videos, emails, and PDFs sitting on FTP servers. The magnitude of change and the magnitude for the possibility of free and open speech has shifted so radically it will likely take us 100's of years to understand the ramifications. I image that in a millennia, when the next great breakthrough happens, we'll be looking at the architecture of the net and "broadband" media and discussing all it's inherent flaws which will be so obvious then. But let's just hope in the meantime that it will bring infinitely more good than bad.
Oh, one last comment. Ben Bagdikian is an author and journalist. It has been said that all people believe that both the solution and the problem exists within the scope of their work. Perhaps if they didn't they'd be inclined to find another branch of work. That said, I will not begrudge him, but in fact I will instead point out my obsession with IA (information architecture), humane interfaces, and media is what I like to think of as "my work". So, perhaps he may be wrong in thinking the failure for media to signal "weakness in social order" is the fault of journalists, but I may also be wrong in thinking that same problem stems from the failure of the broadcast medium itself.
"It's not in the box, it's in the band." - from (Antitrust ;)
Fun new media fixings — political satire School House Rock style
 School House Rock - Pirates & Emperors (6.7mb QT) Pirates and Emporers is a pitch-perfect send-up of the "Schoolhouse Rock" musical civics cartoons of the 1970s -- easily the most-compelling educational materials aired on US TV -- in which the dark history of US international policy (funding terrorists, arming atrocity-mongers) is set to jaunty music and simple animation.
Via Boing Boing: Schoolhouse Rock that tells it like it is   The Toilet Online - Leave It To Bush! (Macromedia Flash Animation)
The great sci-fi writer William Gibson is blogging again
 William Gibson: "Why?
Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succintly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.
And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, 'At times, to be silent is to lie.'"
Related links
Guardian Unlimited | Online | Talk time: William Gibson — William Gibson Talks about blogging.
William Gibson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Finally broke down and got a camera phone
 Well, I finally broke down and got a camera phone. It was not my intention but since I'm paying for the data already and the camera phone was only $30 more than a regular phone I went a head and did it. With this setup I can apparently send unlimited pictures straight from my Sprint phone to my Blogger.com blog without any problem. The picture on the right is my first test. Yeah, it's rainy here.
Detroit — The incredible shrinking city
I've been spending some time in Toldeo and Detroit recently, in fact I have a tremendous amount of pictures to post, but that's another post. These two pictures (right & below right) by Lowell Boileau from The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit are of the fabulous Michigan Theatre in Detroit while it was being used as a parking garage. Like much of Detroit the Michigan Theatre is now gone forever. "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit all began as sparkling edifices, the fulfillment of the dreams of their architects and developers.
Their end did not come suddenly, as part of some natural disaster or war. Instead it resulted from an accumulated lack of basic aesthetic sensibility. A small thing left broken here, an indiscretion of taste there, until a preponderance of damage equals an insoluble situation. What was revered becomes scorned.
Abandonment and vandalism follow and the damage becomes irreparable."
— from Detroit Institutes of the Arts Cities are shrinking all over the world. Shrinking cities are a cultural challenge to us. In the Shrinking Cities project, architects, academics and artists investigate recent developments in Detroit, Ivanovo, Manchester / Liverpool and Halle / Leipzig - and make suggestions.
Shrinking cities is a project (2002-2005) of the Federal Cultural Foundation, under the direction of Philipp Oswalt (Berlin) in co-operation with the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the magazine archplus.
— from shrinkingcities.com Link: The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
Link: the Rape of Detroit: Scavanger Desecrations of the Ruins of Detroit
the gang war in Rio — an amazing photologue
 Rio is a fascinating place of contrast. This is way off the current events radar. It is in fact from back in early April of this year and does not in fact have much to do with my primary interests, but it was such a fascinating glimpse into the modern world of Rio I had to post it.
this from back on Apr. 13, 2004
EastSouthWestNorth: "More than 1,000 police stormed into two Rio shantytowns Monday, trying to halt a violent dispute among drug traffickers that has left at least 10 people dead.
Automatic weapons fire crackled as police swept through the Rocinha favela, or slum, and the nearby Vidigal slum -- both of which overlook the city's wealthiest neighborhoods and trendy beaches.
The drug war that erupted Friday has alarmed tourists and vacationers. The respected O Globo newspaper said guests at the beachfront Intercontinental Hotel were shocked to see red and blue tracer bullets streaking across the night sky."
I sumbled upon his at: Ethan Zuckerman's Weblog - My blog is in Cambridge, but my heart's in Accra. There are a bunch more articles worth reading off this link if you choose to read it.
The Blogger.com exedous from Google
Evan Williams, one of the original blogger.com crew, announced last week he was leaving Google. Evan was one of the founders of Pyra software that created blogger.com which was bought by google in February of 2003. None of the original blogger.com crew that founded Pyra five years ago now remain at Google.
Meg Hourihan ( megnut.com), another founder of Pyra, had announced on September 14th that she was leaving the tech world to follow her passion for cooking and had become a chef at a Nantuket restraunt called Fifty-Six Union. She had been on sabbatical since May 21st
Cheers to Meg for daring to follow her passion. And good luck to Evan on finding a new project.
From geek to chef - megnut.com
evhead: Next?
Wow, there's this thing called bittorrent and you can download movies with it!
Ha! Sorry for the title, I'm mocking this excellent article by Myrtle Beach Online.
The article not only says "Wow you can download a full length movie in two hours" (paraphrase), a ringing endorsement of bittorrent, but it also naively tells you where to got to find bittorrent files! It's a wonder filesharing spreads so rapidly.
BTW, I've 'heard' that 2 hours is a little exagerated and that 4 hours is more common for a full movie.
The Sun News | 10/10/2004 | File-sharing software branches out to movies
Tomes of Knowlege - fun with Bucky Fuller
 I just stumbled upon a great Buckminster Fuller web site full of video clips and couldn't help but share. Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion Car J.Baldwin author of BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today on Bucky's omni-directional plummeting device (941k QT)
You've got to love Bucky.
Universal Access to All Human Knowledge
Why? Because this reads like my damn manifesto.
Brewster Kahle: Universal Access to All Human Knowledge
From http://craphound.com/kahleweb20.txt
Presented at Web 2.0, 10/6/04, San Francisco
Impressionistic transcript by Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com Universal access to all knowledge is possible, and it's not a
non-profit goal. Index the whole damn thing -- it's a business
for AMZN (let's sell all the books, let's sell everything),
Altavista, (let's index all the web), etc.
26MM books in the Library of Congress -- more than 50% out of
copyright, most out of print, a tiny sliver in print. A digitized
ASCII book is about 1MB, so this is about 26TB, which costs about
$60K and takes up one bookshelf.
Google announced that it will digitize in-print material and
out-of-copyright works (like AMZN's thing).
It costs $10/book to scan -- they're digitizing all the books in
the Library of Alexandria, and they're going this in China, too.
A group in Toronto is doing a robot-scanner that will bring the
cost in the industrial world -- where labor is more expensive --
to scan books for $10. At $10 per, that $260 Million to scan all
the books.
Brewster is scanning all the books that are out of copyright, and
is trying to get at all the stuff that's out of print but still
in copyright -- the orphans. It's 8MM books, most of the 20th
Century.
We're suing Ashcroft in the Supreme Court for the right to bring
out-of-print, in-copyright books to the net.
We can print a book for a dollar -- it costs Harvard Library $2
to loan a book.
We've got book mobiles in India, Egypt, Uganda elsewhere printing
books for a dollar each.
Scan a book for $10, put it on the net, download it and bind it
for $1.
--
How much audio is there?
2-3MM discs (78s, LPs, CDs) produced in the history of the world.
Lots of people aren't well-served by music publishers. Some rock
bands sell records but allow tape-trading of their live
performance. We've got 700 bands' live performances online --
including all of the Grateful Dead.
Online record-labels need help: we offer unlimited
storage/bandwidth forever for free to anyone releasing material
under a CC license. There should be no penalty to giving stuff
away.
Classical music: we need a good classical music collection. If
you know anyone in a symphony we're looking to digitize their
stuff at hi-rez.
--
Moving images
100-200K theatrically released films in the history of the world,
half are Indian.
600 films in the US are not in copyright -- we've got 300 on the
web to download, watch, cut up, do what you will.
Thousands of non-theatrical films (educational films, etc) in the
Prelinger Archive.
We're recording 20 channels of TV 24h/day at full rez. We've got
a petabyte of TV from Russia, UK, Arab world, etc.
--
We've got a DMCA exemption that allows us to digitize and rip
software. It's a disgrace that the software industry opposed
this.
We've got a web-archive going back to 1996.
This is growing at one Library of Congress per month.
--
Preservation and access
We've got copies of this in SF (on the San Andreas fault), with
mirrors in Egypt and Amsterdam.
We're adding cool search stuff, like Recall.
--
Will we do this?
Dunno -- lots of business oppos here. 4 companies have already
spun out.
This requires coop between govt, nonprofit and for-profit
entities.
--
UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE CAN BE OUR GREATEST
ACHIEVEMENT.
== Earlier version of the speach available in QuickTime ( 121 mb QT)
Via JimGilliam
Fun AP foibles — AP article sumarizes tonights debate before it happens
The Associated Press accidentally pre-published an article sumarizing tonights debate as if it had already happened. The article entitled "Economy, Iraq War Frame Bush-Kerry Debate" was emailed to me by a friend (thanks Shannon) before it was corrected and I've placed a screen snap of the entire AP article online for your reading pleasure. While funny the article does not reveal any scandelous bias.
Prewriting articles is not an uncommon practice for big events. Just prior to the last presidential debate there was a very funny skit on the Daily Show about the subject. Unforetuneatly I can't put, nor find a copy of that online.
In a related incident Action 2 News of Green Bay Wisconsin accidentally published an AP test article yesterday saying Bush had won the election. You can check out a screen snap of the article. Even better is the retraction posted on Action 2's website and the discussion on the DailyKOS.com blog. With less than a month before the presidential election, an Associated Press test article declaring President Bush the winner was picked up by WBAY.com's automated system. The article was not recognized by our web host's system as a test message.
The mistake was picked up by a discussion group on Daily Kos, prompting a phone call that alerted us to the problem. Our web host, WorldNow, removed the story in less than five minutes. The article appeared on WBAY.com for 35 minutes.
WBAY apologizes for the error, and we took quick action to correct it. WBAY-Coverage You Can Count On: Correction: President Bush Did Not Win Election on October 7
UPDATE: More funny blog coverage of the WBAY article.
Funny knee-jerk reaction on Boing Boing
Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits
Perhaps some bloggers are getting a little over-zelous in their roles as media watch-dogs.
The last mile of IP economics
 It occurs to me after rereading the Wired article The Long Tail and my earlier post on it that I overlooked the most obvious and interesting part. The end of the long tail is missing, forgotten, and un-addressed. The new economic frontier is not only in the "long tail" represented by "hybrid retailers" and "pure digital retailers" (pictured above), but in the last forgotten leg where the minimum threshold is nearly zero. In broadband connectivity this is called "the last mile". Usually the last mile is the most costly and the most complex, but that does not mean a marketplace for the last mile of intellectual property is impossible and indeed it may prove to be the most important part of the revolution.
"Anarchist in the Library" review — beyond the Anarchy
I'm currently still reading Anarchist in the Library, but I stumbled upon an interesting critical review by Adena Levin. It has a particularly interesting take that goes well beyond the labeling of P2P services as anarchy. In my opinion the most interesting thing Adena talks about is "the rise of mainstream folk culture" through new "networks of influence that are shaped by taste, by opinion, by identity, by personal connection, [and] by mentorship." The bigger problem with defining file-sharing as anarchy is that it focuses on what's absent -- central control; rather than what is present -- strong and shifting networks of cultural influence.
After a brief historical period dominated by mass media, we're seeing a revival of folk culture, with new forms of peer cultural sharing and creation -- file sharing, blogging, mashups. The trend has been growing since the advent of cheap photocopiers and cheap videocameras, and accelerating with cheap distribution and improved tools for sharing taste and collaborating.
The portrayal of culture as anarchy is a Romantic notion, shaped by the ideal of the artists as lone rebels or dissident cliques. That concept itself is the result of the mass media dominance. Artists see themselves as an embattled minority, then their work gets co-opted into mass media (Lennon's Revolution selling sneakers).
With the rise of mainstream folk culture, though, the interesting structural observation isn't the lack of central control. It's the emergence of networks of influence that are shaped by taste, by opinion, by identity, by personal connection, by mentorship.
Vaidhyanathan laments the lack of community formed around Napster. But that was just immaturity. We're just inventing tools for groupforming around shared preferences and collaborative creation. Flickr has cool tools for building groups around sharing pictures. If Napster was allowed to live, if music-sharing were legal, we'd see faster growth of social software around music. In my opinion it is important to note that while new peer-to-peer systems are seemingly anarchical, they are not and we need to move beyond this shallow understanding and study how they embrace the "semingly anarchical interests of masses" and turn them into a viable and even traditional product.
Peer systems are merely systems that try to embrace the "anarchy of the masses" and solidify it toward a common good in exactly the way our forefathers intended the modern corporation to do. Most are infact quite scientific in nature based on principals 100's of years old inmeshed with razzle dazzel technology. The primary difference between traditional free market systems and these new systems is a quantum leap in efficiency do technological advance, which lowers all costs, barriers, and boundries thus allowing for a whole new frontier of non-monetary incentive structures which some incumbent parties cannot seem to come to terms with.
That a very few of the most popular of these marketplaces do not offer an agreeable monetary incentive to producers does not mean the nature or ideology posed by P2P systems is anarchy. They are in fact far from it and if we can unshackle ourselves from the current debate which is dominated by a very few P2P players and a very few peddlers of cultural artifact then there is a huge new frontier of opportunity open to us in which we me may obsolete both these camps. The long term exploration of how these systems derive value from the "anarchy of the masses" not only offers us great opportunity, but will certainly give us a new understanding of what anarchy is and is not.
In closing I'd like to reiterat Adena's following statement in my own words. "If Napster was allowed to live, if music-sharing were legal, we'd see faster growth of social software around music." If we can establish a peer system for the legitimized, legal and open sharing of intellectual works suitable to the masses we could slowly create the critical mass necissary to draw popular culture back out of the recess of the dark net to the open web where collaboration and debate around music and cultural artifacts can fulfill the promise of a renasaince of innovation and culture expected of this great new medium.
We don't need the permission of incumbent media corporations to build these new systems. The content is already out there it just needs a marketplace.
Read the original post BookBlog: Anarchist in the Library
On a side note and probably more interesting than my comments or the review is the fact that the author Siva Vaidhyanatha chose to join in to defend his work and thank the reviewer.
Finally, there is an one other excellent post by Adena analyzing Siva's previous book and that of Jessica Litman's book "Digital Copyright: Protecting IP on the Internet".
Thank you Siva and Adena for lending the public your words for debate. I hope my small contribution does you justice in progressing this debate.
Topobo — robot programable through "kinetic memory"
 Very cool, very fun.
Topobo is a 3D constructive assembly system embedded with kinetic memory, the ability to record and playback physical motion. Unique among modeling systems is Topobo?s coincident physical input and output behaviors. By snapping together a combination of Passive (static) and Active (motorized) components, people can quickly assemble dynamic biomorphic forms like animals and skeletons with Topobo, animate those forms by pushing, pulling, and twisting them, and observe the system repeatedly play back those motions. For example, a dog can be constructed and then taught to gesture and walk by twisting its body and legs. The dog will then repeat those movements and walk repeatedly.
Great vidoes: Topobo Videos
I recommend the 30 second narated clip.
primary page Topobo
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Chicago, IL
