Blog 11: Another blog

A sharing economy is an economy where people come to interact and exchange ideas and work. No one is there to make money but instead are all there by choice. I would consider internet communities like reddit sharing communities. People gather here to talk with other people and to amuse themselves. They are not actively trying to make money. In fact in many communities like this people who post links to their own sites are shunned as it is seen as shameless self promotion and an attempt to make money where money should not be a factor.
A commercial economy is one like the one we live in every day. We pay for what we want and get paid for performing some needed task. A very few of us are fortunate enough to get paid for doing what we love but not very many. Everything in a commercial economy has a price. Generally its price is in some way connected to is scarcity. For this reason commercial economies sometimes struggle in the digital world where no object is truly scarce. However there is money to be made or there would be no internet.
Lessig’s greater argument is that copywrite is not serving the purpose that it was originally intended for. It no longer inspires creativity and in fact actively stifles it. He mentions both commercial and sharing economies because they are going to both have a difficult time as the world becomes more digital. Commercial economies are going to lose some of their steam as possession becomes more and more digital. Let put it like this. If my apartment were burning down right now I would get my cats and my computer and gtfo. Everything thing else I own can be replaced and mostly just sits around taking up space. There are a couple of items that are of sentimental value to me that I would want to have to pass along to my kids or others but these were all given to me. The things that are important to me are not as commercial as they would have been to someone30 years ago in my same place.
The flip side of the coin is that the newness of the internet is wearing off. People are smart and love nothing so much as money. Because of this people will always find a way to make money off of something. I talked about reddit earlier as a sharing economy. Lets revisit that now. Reddit is an internet link aggregation site with the ability to vote links up or down. There is a dark underside to reddit though. The use of voting blocks to send a topic to the first page for a company in return for monetary rewards is quite common. Basically a large number of people with multiple accounts get together and try to get comments to the front page. This is the cancer that killed digg.com a site that started out a lot like reddit. Reddit has taken steps to ensure that this dosent happened but I am sure people still find a way.
The end result is that both of these economies are going to have to come together to form the hybrid economies that lessig talks about or face eventual obliteration.

Blog 10: A remix of expectations

The remix is here: http://i.imgur.com/vMJtV.jpg
On page 68 Lessig discusses the RW culture of media. He starts out with a bit about how text is the today’s Latin in that it is used as a medium for communication for the elite. I have not decided how much I but this idea but I can say that it is something I have thought on quite a bit. I read a lot. When I was a child my family had a television but it was not connected to anything but a VCR. This is probably why I enjoy reading so much. So I balk at the idea that reading does not hold the same importance for others that it does me. However when I think deeper on the issue I realize that none of my friends read with anything that could be described as regularity. The one friend I have who comes the closest is one who reads comic books non-stop. I stumbles across this comic remix on the internet the other day and immediately thought of this friend. I am constantly telling him he needs to make the jump from comics to books and then he will see what a real plot is like. He tells me that I need to widen my range of media consumption to include comics as they do tell some compelling stories. I don’t know that either of us will ever win this debate but I sent him this remix as a jab. It clearly makes mock of one of his favorite things. He loved it and the idea got stuck in his head. I spend a great deal of time rewriting old comics with him several weekends ago. It was very enjoyable. I suppose I had better connect this back to Lessig. I never felt a connection to comics as strongly as I did when I was rewriting. Suddenly old comics that told horribly racist stories were rewritten to mock their main character. It was around this time that I realized Lessig was right. Books are becoming the communication means for elitists while media is the language of the common man. To speak it is something we grow up learning how to do. Without ever intended to I have started creating remixed media.
This remix connects back to Lessig’s arguments about remixed media in other ways. Clearly this comic is not hurting the original creators ability to tell their story or make money from it. The person who remixed this comic has so changed it form it s original story as to be unrecognizable. This is the point of a remix. The only link back to this comics original origin is that you know the words are not what was originally intended by the artist and that makes it a little bit more funny. Most of the mirth derived from this piece comes with the new story the remixer told through it.
Lastly this comic is hosted by imgur.com which was created with the express purpose of hosting pictures in an easy format. It is used largely for remixes. It has developed into a mini image blogging site. You can comment on the images hosted if you know where to look for the original posting. The link I have included is the image only link. I was unable to find the page link. But what is important about this is Lessig’s ideas about not censoring ones feedback. When you post an image in imgur people who find their way to the comments page and leave a comment never intend to come back and probably could not find their way back if they wanted to. This leads to very honest comments. There is so little censorship of opinions on the internet and I think that might be the most horrible and importing part about the remix. People are going to tell you what they think of you remix and it will have little to do with anything but their own feelings and thoughts. People pay very little heed to feelings on the internet. I have just about run out of thoughts on this topic so I suppose I will stop for now.

Blog 9 Lessig to me

Lessig is showing the reader how copywrite is criminalizing our culture. From time immemorial humans have understood the concepts of progression. We all know that on the first day god created the earth and we are all familiar with the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. This is the heart and soul of Lessig’s argument. We all take from those who have come before and pass it on to those who come after. It is only in the last one hundred years that this kind of thing has become illegal. Lessig provides an example of censorship in culture when he talks about an exhibit that features the music of john Lennon sang by a number o f people who are big fans of his work. Despite the fact that the artist was not in it to make money Yoko Ono objected. Yoko has created a lot of art herself so it is somewhat startling that she would fail to see the art in this. It makes me wonder how much of it is just a lack of communication. Recently Weird Al made a parody of Lady Gaga. He submitted it to Lady Gaga for approval but it was rejected. Weird Al wrote about it on his blog where word of the post reached Lady Gaga who promptly called up Weird Al and told him to go ahead and put the song out. It turns out that her manager turned down Weird Al without ever even telling Lady Gaga.
This ties nicely into the next section of this blog. Read Only culture as Lessig discusses it is the culture that has dominated the 20th century. It develops when the cost of producing media is very expensive. When it takes significant resources to produce media then there will be less media produced and distributed. This means that those with the resources will not risk their money on an artist who is different. This is the restrictive reality that is ready only culture. It is dominated by a very small number of media produces who control most if not all of the media market. Lady GaGa is a holdover of this RO culture. One of the last few vaulted to dominance by the media giants who are desperately trying to cling to control. Weird Al’s inability to contact her is a side effect of read only culture. Lucky for us Weird Al has been embracing the Read Write culture that is now rising to dominance. He writes a blog in a unprofessional style. There is not filter between his thoughts and our eyes hungrily eating up his words on the web. This is the hallmark of Read Write culture. As the price of producing media has dropped more people have been able to enter the ranks of the media producer. This causes a twofold effect. First celebrities are more approachable and media production covers a much wider swath of culture. People are seeing and liking media now that they would have never had the chance to see 20 years ago.
In this introduction to his book Lessig talks about John Sousa. Sousa was a composer at the start of the 20th century who made many famous pieces of work. He saw something sweeping the nation that he did not like. This was the predominance of the phonograph. He was disgusted by the idea that people were forgoing singing and creating music because they could listen to it whenever they wanted. He went to congress to fight for copy write as a way to stop the spread of this infernal machine. He was really concerned by what he rightfully saw as the start of read only culture where humans would become like robots because we were all shaped by the same music and culture that was fed to us by media giants. I can speak to what growing up in the 70’s was like but I don’t feel like this was a totally detrimental problem. Instead it provides the common group for read write culture to grow from. Lessig put Sousa in his book to show people that copy write was originally viewed as a way to preserver culture and reward creativity. It look like that’s what it would be at the time because the circumstances required a change. Are circumstance have changed once more and it’s time to reconsider our laws.

DTC 356 Movie Tie In

The dual economies Lessig is talking about on pg224 seem like a very convincing idea. Lessig does a good job of pointing out something that the movie seemed to stress as well. When you have this share economy coexisting with a commercial with cross over between the two the people from the sharing economy who's work ends of commercialized in any way are going to want some kind of recognition. This might not necessarily mean monetary compensation but something as small as recognition.

The movie talks about industries that had control in the past desperately trying to control the future course of their market. I feel like this ties in well to the section were Lessig is talking about LucasFilms under handed offer of free web space for starwars mashups. This idea of "Sure you can use our material all you want to make a mashup but anything you make belongs to us" is supper disappointing. This is clearly LucasFilms just looking for a way to control a new trend. There are some companies that have made the transition well to a hybrid share economy. Amazons market place is a great example of this. When you purchase something on Amazon you get the option to review the product you bought. Most people have written a review at least once for just such a purpose. The logic behind it is that if you used reviews to purchase a product then you need to post some reviews so that the next fellow to come looking at the product has the same robust reviews that helped you make your choice. All the while Amazon sits back and watches as their website gains in value with customer convincing one another to purchase products. Their is a important trade of here that both the book and the movie touched on. In order for this system to work Amazon has to have a hands off approach. If they tamper with the review system too much then customers will loose faith in it.

This is the idea example of how a hybrid share economy should work. The user puts in time and effort but not to add value to a company but instead to help other consumers in the hopes that other consumers will do the same and the overall level of shopping will improve. Amazon gets value from this customer to customer exchange and retains some basic moderator rights but for the most part has given up control in exchange for value added.

The books goes on to talk about the CDDB that provides track labels based off the work of a large community. I think this also falls into the category of the method trying to retain power. Basically what started as a free where idea was bought out by someone who specialized in building startup companies for profit. The mistake they made here was trying to turn a direct profit off the work of a large group while retaining full control over how the work of that group could be used. They would have run into far fewer problems if they would have decided to become a nonprofit. Mozilla the company that makes the popular free browser Firefox makes a healthy profit each year off it's business deals. The money is used to pay the salaries of Mozilla's employees and then is reinvested in Firefox and other Mozilla projects. A great deal of the work on Mozilla is not done by paid employees. People are still willing to volunteer their time and skill to help the project out because no one is making a profit off their work. This is how it should work. If you have an awesome idea for a business but it requires the work of a large volunteer population to make it work you don't really own the rights or shouldn't. Instead any company that arises from the business should be a non-profit. This allows the company to have contracts with other businesses to generate operating revenue and pay a staff of core employees who's job it is to oversee and guide the work of volunteers. No one is going to begrudge the creator of and idea a hefty salary to work at the company and working on your creating and getting a paid for it is a pretty swell deal. Like the movie says we will have trouble until this idea of control exerted by the those who used to control a business fades.

Hip Hop and Transmedia

de Bourgoing's article Hip Hop Goes Tansmedia: Seven Laws covers seven of the basic ways that the Hip Hop culture in the LA area leverages new and emerging social media technologies to change the way that Hip Hop is heard, promoted, and makes money. The article uses examples from the LA Hip Hop culture to show that artists are no longer tied to traditional production deals to become successful.

In the first third of this class we talked about the way that information was categorized in the digital world. This article deviates from this greatly and instead shows how technology is affecting the society that we live in. The two topics are connected but in a subtle fashion. The traditional path of music took to become digital goes something like this. A band gets together and plays music. The music sounds good and the band gains notoriety by playing locally. The band is singed to a major record company who has the finical assets to create numerous physical artifacts that can be sold to allow the bands music to be heard. Hip Hop was always an uncomfortable guest in the house of traditional music authorship. It got it's start with sampling and most often was performed live or recorded on to cassette tapes. The music and beats that hip hop was built on was often borrowed from already popular music. Music is no longer well represented by physical objects. Instead it is a digital object that is more inconvenient when transfered to a physical object. It is unsurprising that Rap was one of the first music styles to throw off the shackles of production and embrace this new media. Many rap stars long ago discovered what most of the rest of the music interindustry is just now discovering. Selling music in the digital age requires a product that is more then just a pleasant song. If you wish to make money as an artist now you need to sell consumers your life style.

In Paul Miller's Rhythm Science he discusses many of the aspects of hip hop and what it is and is not. He discuses how in the digital age people are more apt to pick and choose the culture you adopt to make your own. In the section DJing is Writing he covers the idea that in order to understand music you must understand the references within music in a similar fashion to understanding the references a book might make to other works of literature. He goes on to talk about how the hip hop culture is pick and choose. You don't have to take it all in and make it you. He talk about how hip hop also reflects this philosophy. Basically everything in life is fair game to be used to to identify yourself.

This connects in a similar fashion to the free form ideas behind the 3rd order of order. Definition is not something to be written in stone in this new age. Music no longer come only in sheets with 4 note progression. People no longer image themselves after they favorite celebrity. You are a conglomerate of everything you have consumed and the aspects of it that you like best and choose to express. It is a complicated idea but understandable. What makes something new is not original content but rather old content as shown through the filter of you. In the same way you are a conglomeration of your experiences repackaged and broadcast using with your conception of self as the filter.

Explicit data, Implicit data

Heidegger, says that "the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world"

This quote is referring to the web of knowledge that allows humans to understand words. It relies completely on the idea that things can be categorized. For instance my favorite thing to drink is mountain Dew. Boom your braid just did what Heidegger is talking about. At the very least you know that what I like to drink is a liquid, that it is not poisonous, and that it’s the thing that I prefer to drink over all others. You were able to deduce this from my assertion that I enjoy drinking this thing. Drinking carries with it the implicit idea that something that is drank must be liquid. I believe that Weinberger used the example of a bird to show a similar idea. To someone who has no concept of what a bird is then telling them something is a bird is worthless. However if the concept bird is understood by someone then anything you tell that person is a bird will automatically have feathers, a beak, and wings.

The is a problem with the third order of order and the idea of implicit knowledge. The problem is that the third order of order tries to break everything down into separate parts and then rebuild words as a way to organize things. For instance if I had a picture of a pelican I would tag it with all the information needed to understand the picture. Pelican, Bird, Feathers, Fish, Flying, Ocean. The problem is that all these tags carry the same weight. According to the tags the word fly and bird are equally related to the picture. Now lets approach the system from the others side. Say I am reading a book and it talks about the constant buzzing of a fly that is circling a characters head. I want to see what this fly looks like so I type fly and wings into a image search that uses tags. This is utterly unhelpful because it returns thousands of images of birds, bats, planes, and insects. If I know that I am looking for an insect then I might have a chance of finding a picture of a fly but that knowledge is implicit. So that is the problem with the third order of order. It requires the user to already know some implicit information about what they are looking for. It offers no help to a user who is unversed in the implicit connections of the culture the system is designed for.

The Hanging Tree:
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run so we’d both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Deduction My Dear Watson - Blog 4

Several years back while browsing a used book shop I picked us the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Reading through the book I noticed that a shocking number of people living in 1880's London were poisoned. After reading through several of the stories I got to wondering about poising. I decided that I knew far to little about poisons. So after reading the reviews on a number of books about poisoning on Amazon.com I ordered one that looked fascinating. The book arrived and I read through it. It has been over a year since I read the book and only two facts from it seem to have really stuck in my head. First, cows will avoid eating marijuana plants after eating them only once. The obvious conclusion here is that cows do not enjoy being high. The second fact is that face is that koala bears subside on eucalyptus leaves which are extremely poisonous. Koala bears are able to cope with the poison but the leaves leave them high. This means that koala bears are high all the time. The reason I bring up these two completely irrelevant facts is to question how my brain stores and recalls information.

In chapter 5 Weinberger discusses the limits of trees for data storage. He does this by discussing Linnaeus's worms category. The point he makes is that by organizing data into trees all other connections between items in the trees are ignored. Clearly this is not how the human brain works. When I think of Sherlock Holmes I also think of stoned Koala bears and sober cows. I cannot think of any tree that would connect these topics. These topics all share a common idea in my head. That idea is poison. There are other ways to approach these topics in my head where they are not grouped. For instance if someone were to ask me what I know about Australia one of the first things to come to mind would be the fact that Koala bears are drug addicts. I wound not think about Sherlock Holmes or sober cows. There are also topics other then poison that would bring all three items to mind. If I were having a discussion about drugs with someone all three topics would come to mind. The cow and the Koala for the obvious reason that both directly include drugs. Sherlock Holmes would be brought to mind because having read the books I know that he is an occasional user of Cocaine. Linking one word to many things is called tagging by Weinberger. He attributes it's current wide spread usage to Delicious.com, a website that allows users to build lists of websites and then access them via tags that were assigned to each site as it was added to the list.

Weinberger talks about tagging as the best way to keep track of the 3rd order of organization. While I agree that tagging is the best way we currently have to sort through the massive amounts of data stored digitally I still see a number of problems with tagging. Weinberger uses flickr as an example of tagging in action. People on flickr tag there images with several key words when they upload them. When someone searches flickr for one of those key words the image and all others that sure that tag will be returned. This allows for a limitless number of categories. Here is the problem. If I were to upload a picture of a Koala bear eating I would naturally tag it with OMG cute, Koala Bear, Tree, Poison, Sherlock Holmes. That last one is not going to make sense to anyone but me. Now when someone searches for Sherlock Holmes they will wonder at the random picture of a Koala. This does not seem like a big deal, I am one person and it is only one categorized image. However everyone makes connections like this and the picture is not necessarily categorized. If you are me the image is tagged perfectly. Only when your not me does the tag become wrong. To combat this sort of problem tagging tends to be very generic and describe what is in the image with single words. For example a picture of a doctor operating would be tagger with tags like: Doctor, Operation, Incision, Intestines. Anyone trying to find general pictures of a doctor would receive this image back as part of their search. However if someone is looking for a specific image of their doctor they will have a very hard time finding it. Because tags tend to be more generic to avoid confusion like a picture of a Koala tagged with Sherlock Holmes it makes it very very hard to find a specific image.

In addition to the above problem tags allow for little inter connectivity between tags. A tag is like a light switch in that it is either on or off. There are do degrees of variance. If I search flickr for cats it will look at images to see if they have a cat tag. If it finds as picture with a cat tag it will return it to me otherwise it will ignore the image. There is no way to indicate that an image without a cat tag is somewhat related to my search. For instance what if the picture contains a saucer of milk. Clearly this image is in someways related to cats but the current tag system would not know this and would not return this image when I searched for cats. Our brains are able to do this. When I think of stoned Koala bears ducks come to mind. Not because ducks are habitual drug users but instead because they were mentioned in the same poisons book. There is a small bean called the castor bean. It is extremely poisonous. You may be more familiar with its common poison name. It is used to make the poison ricin. Two castor beans are enough to kill a human. Twelve will kill a horse. It takes fifty castor beans to kill a duck. For whatever reason ducks are very resistant to ricin. Both the Koala bear and the duck are facts that pertain to animals eating poison. However it would be very difficult to show this connection through tags.

So obviously tags work better then trees in the digital world. This is because that categories can be created both when data is added and when searched. With a tree all categories have to be picked before the tree is ever laid out. Tags are not perfect. They make it very difficult to look for specific things due to their generic nature and fail to show degrees of connection that our brain uses every day. There must be a way to allow for these connects but if there is I am not aware of it.

On a final note everyone should read a little Sherlock Holmes. Preferably not Hounds of the Baskervilles as it is one of the worst Sherlock Holmes stories.