COMM 203: Relating With Technology

Last night, I experienced this whole "medium is the message" thing in a very real way.

This past Christmas, I received Nirvana's Nevermind on vinyl record. Last night, it occurred to me that I had not yet listened to all the bonus tracks. So, this being the only medium on which I had those PARTICULAR versions of the songs I've heard a million times (CHECK IT OUT GUYS, in this version, he says "Pay to play" instead of "Stay away"!) I was obliged to bring out the record player. 

Of course, listening to vinyl records when you could get the same experience in a more convienent format, such as, perhaps Mp3 or YouTube or... I was sitting at a gaming PC with a high speed internet connection and I opted to go physically out of my way to listen to the music in a format that was obsolete twelve years before I was born (Also, Nevermind is two years older than me, so there's that). If that's not the medium being the message, then I don't know what is.

You beautiful sonic reproduction utility with your pops and clicks.

Of course, it's hard to imagine lugging around a record player as an extension of myself. For that, I have my MacBook. It goes with me everywhere and I use it for everything. Of course, the primary way one uses a computer as such an extension is the ability to, like, um, not... remember... hold on, gotta Google this... oh yeah, NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING OR LEARN EVER.

An excuse for me to use xkcd as part of school? Yes please. (Yay for Creative Commons!)

So, I'll admit to doing the whole internet as an extension of knowledge thing. On a certain level, it's good, but I'd hate to see how smart people are without being able to look everything up in five seconds.

I have to say, the biggest way I interact with that thing you youngins call the "information super highway network web blog pancake" is purchasing digital download games. Now, here's a little graphic I made to explain how insanely amazing and global village-y that process is.

I can communicate fast enough with the world that I have, on multiple occassions, bought products from a store based in London, had them tied to an account on a server in Seattle, and minutes later had the product downloading to my computer here in WV. 

The global village thing is also a lot of the reason that an awkward person like me has a number of friends. One of the people I'm closest to lives in Massachusetts and we can talk on Facebook almost as well as we could in person.

So, all that structuralist or determinist stuff- I think it's overwhelmingly a structuralist world, and, for the sake of arguement, I'll go back to the VCR and Betamax debate, sort of.

This article talks about Blu-ray and HDDVD, and how pornography was thought to be a big part of who was going to win, based on a similar situation that occurred in the VHS/Beta battles. Today, we know that a large part of why Blu-Ray won was, in fact, the other half of a 14 year old boy's interests, not pornography, but Playstation. 

Whether it's adult films or Duty being Called Of, this situation shows that, honestly, we all only will adopt a technology if it allows for, just, an insane advancement in entertainment. Excepting the IPad, which does nothing that a Windows XP Tablet from 2005 didn't do (consider Moore's Law where applicable to actual processing power) when it was laughed out of the market for being a useless luxury. If we have the free will to decide which technologies will win out, then the technology is not responsible for the way our society changes, we are.

COMM 203 - Creative Commons

Creative Commons is something I have a lot to say about. Here we go.

Let me preface with some shameful self-promotion. I am a Creative Commons artist. My album, Whores In My Head was released in the CC this weekend. Obviously I have some faith in the system here.

Now let me do some autobiographical rambling that will seem to be a non-sequitur until you get to the end. The only real concert I've ever been to was a folk music show, which is odd for a punk fan to say, but follow me on this. The show was Arlo Guthrie. Arlo's father was Woody Guthrie, who has often been called a communist sympathizer. Why? The words that accompanied the copyright of every song he wrote.

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

If you're versed in modern society, and in what Creative Commons means, you'll recognize that what Woody said to make himself seem communist is totally exactly what Creative Commons and GPL are.

More like Creative COMRADES!

The thing is: this works. Sharing and public ownership are GOOD when it comes to creative endeavors. Which makes sense, because that's how it's always been. Guthrie was called a communist because it was a popular thing to call people at the time, but the truth is, all of folklore and folksong come from the idea of a commons.

House Of The Rising Sun was written over many decades by many people, working and adapting the song until it was nearly perfect. Bob Dylan recorded a version of it, and he had the decency to only copyright the performance. The Byrds covered Dylan's version, and they copyrighted the arrangement. So now if you play the very public domain song House Of The Rising Sun, you better not happen to choose the same key and tempo as The Byrds, or you're violating copyright.

So, in a capitalist society, there will be people who game the system and try to ruin public ownership for everyone (see also "tivoization"), but all in all, the common property system seems to work in creative ventures.

"So, why didn't it work in Russia, Mr. Red Angus?"

Well, there's a difference between sharing songs, which are infinite and dynamic, and turnips, which are finite and bland. People are willing to share culture because it's only cost is time, and the time you spend sharing it is time you spend enjoying it. As annoyed as I was with the endless parodies of Gangnam Style, I recognize that people actually enjoy adapting and sharing that culture. However, when it's turnips or starvation, you bitches ain't gettin my turnips.

COMMrades, I bleed community. So long as the artist is respected, their work should be adapted. If you followed the link to my album above, you'll notice it lacks drums and bass guitar. If someone adds those elements, will I be mad? HELL NO. I'll be ecstatic that someone loved my work enough to improve it. If you download it, it belongs to you just as much as it belongs to me, and it's your duty to enjoy your property in any way you see fit.