Over the last few days, I have been looking at sections of my PhD to help me understand some of the processes that are happening with attempts to censor/filter the Internet as proposed by the Australian Government. One of the particular issues I have is not so much whether censorship is bad (I believe it is) or whether free speech trumps it (perhaps in a limited way), but what opportunities we forego in an attempt to protect children from ‘inadvertent’ exposure to ‘stuff we don’t like’. I use ‘we’, there, to mean society in general or at least the vocal portions of it. Read more of On being more interesting
Category: innovation
There’s a pattern here, somewhere
Tracing patterns – there’s something. It’s not good. In fact, it’s terrible for us, the people.
- Copyright
- Copyright was designed in th 1700′s to protect creators from publishers. (Source)
- Copyright is an economic right, automatically vested in creators by governments. (Source)
- Copyright is now a weapon used against both creators and consumers.
- Rightsholders more often seem to be publishers, not creators.
- Buttons
- The Button Makers Guild was the RIAA of the 1600′s. (Source)
- Hollywood owes its location and prominence to its avoidance of paying licence fees to Thomas Edison for making movies. (Source)
- CDs, DVDs, whips, buggies, iceboxes, buttons are all outmoded technologies.
- We haven’t yet gained the right to make our own modern buttons.
- Computers
- The Internet and the World Wide Web opened up ways of interconnecting, collaborating and organising.
- WWW technologies are law-blind.
- Xanadu failed.
- Rightsholders want Xanadu, not WWW.
- Censorship
- The Internet and WWW allow massive sharing and exchange of information.
- People love this.
- Rightsholders and Governments fear this.
- Governments, rightsholders and some corporations have more power.
- Technologies
- Technology is not neutral.
- Many activities are enabled by technology.
- Many activities are broken by technology.
- Technology can make or break us.
- Information
- Information is a key to learning.
- Learning is a key to participation.
- Participation is central to our ways of being.
- We are Information.
- News
- News is dying.
- News is ever more important.
- Paper is obsolete.
- We are news.
- Change
- Change is necessary for growth.
- Technologies change us (see 2, 5 and 6 above)
- Some people fear change (see for instance Australian Christian Lobby)
- We are change.
- Democracy
- Dissent is necessary for democracy.
- Democracy is about the people.
- We are the people.
- We are being silenced.
There’s something that links all of these together. Something bigger than our current economic crisis or even our fight against censorship. There’s something striking at the heart of us. I fear we have no power, that our democracy has failed us in the face of massive greed and corporatism.
I used to think that the main difference between Australia and the US was that Australia arose from injustice. We got the convicts, the US got the Puritans. This gave us an insight into injustice, even though we perpetuated it here. It underlies our larrikinism, our dissent against propriety. But we have been invaded. We have lost our way. We are not who we thought we were, and those of us who remember are shaking our heads in dismay. We are being overwhelmed by a new form of puritanism.
This pattern is pervading my thoughts, and yet I cannot quite see it. What is it that I see?
Edited to add:
- Serfdom is making a comeback.
- People don’t understand numbers.
- More children are abused in their home than by strangers.
- Moral panics!
Tags: nocleanfeed, technology
Blogging for yourself
I have this idea for a paper but I’m not sure where it’s going. I started writing it years ago and have somehow managed to commit myself to it for my annual review. The paper is about blogging but I am now more interested in the notion of collaborating with yourself in a blog – getting back to the notion of journaling as a process of developing one’s ideas. Then I realised that I’m very slack at doing that exact thing, even though I know there is value in it. I think one of the things that prevents me is the fear of getting into a two digit readership. This blog is for me (and anyone else who happens to stumble upon it) and it’s supposed to be where I develop my ideas. But I’m slack.
Part of the idea of doing this is getting those little bits of writing done. Engaging with literature and thoughts and all manner of things (that aren’t thoughts or literature … is there anything else?). But I keep hesitating. It’s as if future me doesn’t matter. But I want to talk to future me. That’s what this is all about. Having a blog or a journal is leaving notes for yourself, talking to future you. Those thoughts can be revisited while helping to measure change in ideas, growth of knowledge and shifts in perspective. I want to document them. I want to be able to come back, but I’m too much the vicarious participant. If I love reading so much, what’s happened to my writing?
As we near the end of our semester, I’m going to commit to more regular updates, find something worth commenting on, talk to myself, because, really, this is about me. If you also find something of value, then, hey, that’s great. But I’m talking to myself now.
Tags: blogging, vicariousity
I hate August
August in Brisbane is perhaps the most annoying time of the year. It is dry, cold and I tend to get lots of static. Everytime I touch things, I get a shock. I’ve even managed to short out the touch pad on my laptop which isn’t as bad as it sounds, it just means I have to restart.
So, today, in the middle of a lecture, it was quite disconcerting to find the touchpad not working. Luckily, I have a back up plan. Actually I had two. The first trick was to move to the Lecture room computer, then have a quick break, during which, I remembered that I had Salling Clicker installed on both my phone and my laptop. Salling clicker allowed me to keep going even without the touchpad or a replacement mouse (which I how I generally deal with the weirding out of the touchpad). It felt a bit funny using the phone to control the mac and I think I need much more practice, but it certainly was a bit different not having to run to the laptop just to click a link.
I’m starting to really enjoy this course. I think the term ‘generative’ is apt for what occurs here. Generativity is one of the concepts that Jonathan Zittrain discusses in The Future of the Internet. I really have to finish reading that book. I have a feeling it will be very important for the development of this course.
Ideas and control … how are they linked?
I was listening to something on the radio and it got me thinking. A century ago, people started being recognised as people. It took a while and we haven’t completed that task, but with the beginnings of the shift of enfranchisement to include others besides powerful men, we started down a track which has led to here. Where is here? Well, here is where we have people with (almost) equal rights. I say (almost) because there are still portions of various societies that still view members of that society as lesser members. Not as good as the powerful members. People having fewer rights, fewer options, fewer possibilities to grow.
Concurrently, we had this burgeoning of ideas. The last century has seen a flurry of intellectual growth, ideation, information. Are these two linked? I’m not enough of a historian to determine that. But, and this is my point, with the increase of both ‘rights’ and ‘ideas’ and a decrease in ‘control’ of people, there seems to have been a shift to the control of ideas.
How has this happened? How is it that the powerful people of a century ago have shifted their control of ‘others’ to the control of ‘ideas’? We no longer condone the ‘ownership of people’ but we now have this notion of ‘ownership of ideas’ and frankly, if I try to own an idea, the only way I can control it is by not sharing. If I share an idea, it’s not just mine, it’s ours. I think this means I believe that ‘intellectual property’ is a crock!
And that I gladly share with you.