On being a pirate

I am up later than I should be, considering when I have work in the morning, because I was doing research for one of the courses I'm taking this semester. The course is titled "Art and Technology," and in it we are required to make a piece of art that in some why utilizes or comments on how technology pervades human culture. This is harder for artists since many of them are amazingly traditionalist in their philosophies as to what can and cannot be "Art." I myself have gotten into arguments with fellow art majors on the usefulness (or in their opinion uselessness) of creating art exclusively for online consumption. But I digress.

The way technology affects human culture is something that's been a fairly long-time fascination of mine. I'm by no means the saavy-est of computer users, but seeing how things like facebook, twitter, youtube and wikipedia affect human thought is something that I find extremely interesting. As such, I decided that I wanted to do a project that in some way displays and is a commentary of this phenomena. In my search for inspiration I re-stumbled upon Larry Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy" and found the following extract particularly interesting:

"This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison."

This isn't something that I had thought about before, and it so struck me that I find myself, now 15 minutes later than I should be up (I'm strict about bed time, ok??) talking about this on my tiny blog, which very few people even know about because... well I don't know. Because I think it's important and I think it's of interest. How often do people of my generation stop and think of themselves as criminals? It's not a common thought, but it's something that nearly everyone lives with. Does it effect our actions in a hundred tiny ways? Does it increase the likelihood that our generation might bend or break other laws? Are we facing a similar issue to the prescription drug crisis - the over prescription of laws neutralizing their effectiveness? I don't know. But it's a heavy thought, to think of yourself as a criminal.

The internet for me is a real location. It's a real place where I spend my time, and it is not time I consider wasted. The connectedness I feel with my friends, those who I have and have not met, is something dear to me. This is certainly a strange (and young) world we've created for ourselves. I wonder what it will lead to.

An interaction which amused me

I was reading Kawabata's speech "Japan, the Beautiful and Myself" this evening for a class, but was having trouble concentrating. This caused me to initiate the following strange conversation with my friend P, which amused me so that I have transcribed it here.

Me: I so love my french pop techno

Me: I was just reading a passage for class about Japanese poet monks in the 1100's

Me: "The winter moon comes from the clouds to keep me company. The wind is percing, the snow is cold."

Me: They obviously didn't have Yellie to keep them company

Him: hahah

Me: Reading that stuff really reminds me how awesome the present is and also makes me wonder how much more cool the future would be

Him: Hahah

Him: lol, I figure we've peaked

Him: shut down the patent office, we're done

Me: Oh pish posh, they said in the 20's that we had reached "the true epitome of man"

Me: And yet I really like space ships

Him: have you ever been in one? I suspect I'd find them terrifying

Me: I suspect I'd mitigate that terror with SPACE BEING FUCKING AWESOME

Me: Myoe the poet monk didn't even know what space WAS

Me: He just thought the dark was some god stuffing the planet down his jock strap or something

Him: how very poetic of you

Me: "The winter, night so cold - and yet - Lo I see the pubes of Ameterasu and I am warmed"

Him: that's weird molly

Me: I know, Ameterasu isn't even a god

MeI meant Amaterasu!

A Rocky Technological Transition

I was amused today to read on MSNBC about some of the woes befalling the Obama team on their first few days in the White House. There are things you could expect about the transition to be difficult, like navigating the halls, finding your office, actually figuring out how you're going to make all this "change" you've been promising people for the past two years... (oh shit oh shit)

However I'm not sure that anyone was expecting one of those challenges to be the built in computer infrastructure. Here's an excertp from the article:

"WASHINGTON - If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.'"

Here's the whole article.

Happy New Year!

Hooray for 2009! So far the year has been relaxing, although I can't imagine it'll stay that way. I'm hoping to make more time to write, I've been a vegetable for the past few months. Happily the torture schedule is over and now perhaps I can scrape some semblance of a life back together.

I've been doodling with the tablet some in my glorious free time, so I'll share some images on here:













More is on the flickr page linked by the images.