What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. The best explanation I’ve seen of this subject.
Category Archives: Media & Culture
Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2012
“The mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” Futurity means metropolitan people with small families in a weather crisis.”
Future Change as Seen by American Right-wing Talk Radio (2011-12)
- Existential threats to the American Constitution. Mostly from “Sharia Law,” which is sort of like the American Constitution for Moslem Islamofascists.
- Imminent collapse of all fiat currencies, somehow leading to everyday use of fungible gold bars.
- Sudden, frightening rise of violent, unemployable, disease-carrying “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists who are bent on intimidation and repressing free speech.
- Hordes of immigrants being illegally encouraged to flood the polls.
- Lethal and immoral US government health-care.
- Radical Gay Agenda / Litigious Feminazis (tie).
- God’s Will. Surprisingly low-key, considering what an all-purpose justification this is.
“I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.”
“Space Travel people. There’s no popular understanding of why space cities don’t work, though if you told them they’d have to spend the rest of their lives in the fuselage of a 747 at 30,000 feet, they’d be like “Gosh that’s terrible.”
“Transcendant spiritual drug enthusiasts. You go into one of those medical marijuana dispensaries nowadays, they’re like huckster chiropractors, basically. The whole ethical-free-spirit surround of the psychedelic dreamtime is gone. It’s like the tie-dyed guys toking up in the ashram have been replaced by the carcasses of 12,000 slaughtered Mexicans.”
When experts don’t seem so “expert”
This is an excerpt from a post by Terry Heaton, one of the handful of thinkers I look to first for an understanding of what’s happening in the world. The link to his post is below, but the following paragraphs can stand on their own.
Our culture is based upon hierarchical layers of “expertise,” some of it licensed by the state. This produces order, which Henry Adams called “the dream of man.”
It also produces elites, the governing class, those who call the shots for others not so fortunate as to occupy the higher altitudes. This is the 1% against which the occupiers bring their protests, their dis-order.
We used to think that elites and hierarchical order were necessary for the well-being of all, but that idea is being challenged as knowledge — the protected source of power (and elevation) — is being spread sideways along the Great Horizontal. It’s not that we’re so much smarter than we used to be; it’s that the experts don’t seem so “expert” anymore, because the knowledge that gave them their status isn’t protected today. Anybody can access it with the touch of a finger.
This is giving institutions fits, and each one is fighting for its very life against the inevitable flattening that’s taking place. Medicine wants no part of smart and informed patients and neither does the insurance industry. The legal world scoffs at the notion that they’re in it for themselves as they occupy legislatures and create the laws that work on their behalf. Higher education increasingly touts the campus experience over what’s being learned, because they all know that the Web has unlimited teaching capacity. Government needs its silos to sustain its bureaucracy, but the Great Horizontal cuts across them all.
I added the emphasis in graf 3. For me, this is The Big Idea of the early 21st century. The high-speed smart phone in my pocket means you don’t necessarily know more than I do, so why the fuck should you be in charge?
What an exciting time to be alive. And sure to get exciting-er.
How the Internet Will Save the World
Dr. David Eagleman gives lecture titled How the Internet Will Save the World: Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilizations. Rome, the Mayans… lots of great civilizations assumed they would go on forever. Just as we do. Eagleman shows you this is not necessarily the case.
Radio’s Salvation?
“Television is the last protected media business,” but it’s going to get disrupted. For one, once televisions are computers, analytics of who watches will get more accurate than Nielsen panels. “Everyone knows that if we go to actual measurement, ad rates will collapse because the numbers aren’t as good as Nielsen makes them look.”
Social media immortality
P. O. Box: Fighting spam
Reply
I rented a post office box this week. The smallest size. Costs $42 a year. The post office is just a couple of blocks from The Coffee Zone, my morning hang-out. My plan is to check the box on Saturday mornings. If someone needs to reach me more often, there’s email.
“Home delivery” for us has been a box at the entry to where we live. Every night Barb brings up all the cataloges and 3rd class junk mail that cannot be stopped. Nine of ten pieces go into the trash. Nothing –absolutely nothing– needs to be delivered every day.
So I pursaded Barb to let me rent a PO Box.
The USPS will forward 1st class mail to the box but not the junk (“You’ll want to let them know your new address,” reminded the carrier.) Uh huh.
I’m unclear if all of the 3rd class spam will find me. I assume it will. The spammers just pay USPS for sticking some shit in my box. I got the smallest box in an effort to make it harder for them. If the piece is too large, they leave me a note and I can pick it up at the front desk. Right.
I don’t feel like I am giving up any convenience and I will have at least the illusion of some control.
Ultra Realistic Dental Training Robot
The End of Demographics
In small market radio we were thrilled to have research that told us how many men listened to our station compared to how many women. And, of course, the demos: 12+, 18-24, 35-54… I think I missed one but that’s not the point. From 8 or 10 “diaries” in a county we were supposed to extrapolate useful information for out programmers and advertisers. Uh huh.
This article illustrates how much things are changing.
“The rise of mass-produced consumer goods also brought the rise of mass-market advertising. In the 1950s and 1960s, the goal of television was to aggregate the most possible eyeballs for advertisers. In order to convince consumers that an advertising message was relevant to them, consumers had to buy the idea that they were just like everyone else. The year that someone was born will not tell you how likely he is to buy your product.”
Your business card a billboard for your brand
“In my universe a powerful brand should be able to explain their mission in a single paragraph–the fewer words, the better. But what most brands forget is that their business card is indeed their ‘napkin,’ a blank canvas enabling them to communicate the essence of their brand (or fail to do so).
We live in a super-cluttered world where no one has time for anything. We’re bombarded with text messages, TV commercials, billboards and online ads, and so companies need to know what they stand for. It’s a fact that you cannot remember more than three television commercials in a row, let alone recall the design of your average business card unless they manage to rise above the cacophony and stand out in a way that’s completely relevant.”
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