August 2002 Archives

Bill Thompson has this interesting diatribe on The Register Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web, in which he argues for a web that respects national boundaries in order to protect the rest of the world from a web dominated by the United States.

Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may decide not to play.

I hardly know how to respond to this. To me the fact that the net is so radically open is what makes it worthwhile. Thompson wants to give the nation state the political power to regulate the web. This might work well for the democratic nations of Europe who want to ban racial prejudice a la Yahoo and the French suit to ban Nazi artifacts. I acknowledge the need for local representation but wonder if the web might be more helpful in giving us a transnational culture instead of replicating the local mores. This transnational culture will be affected by America but I don't think it approaches hegemony, at least not yet. Johnson's article is a timely warning to remind us that we get the net we choose.

Washington Post on the power of swarming: groups of people arranging their lives around the contact provided by their cell phones.

Howard Rheingold says:

Smart mobs are a serious realignment of human affairs, in which leaders may determine an overall goal, but the actual execution is created on the fly by participants at the lowest possible level who are constantly innovating, Rheingold notes. They respond to changing situations without requesting or needing permission. In some cases, even the goal is determined collaboratively and non-hierarchically. It is the warp-speed embodiment of Gandhi's maxim, "There go my people, I must run to catch up with them for I am their leader."

Salon.com posts another entry demonstrating that technology is changing the way we conceive creativity. In 'Bootleg culture' Pete Rojas describes the growing phenomenon of 'bootlegs' or 'mash-ups', new songs that are created through the juxtaposition of two or more old songs. Such as "Soulwax's bootleg of Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious" mixed with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Freelance Hellraiser's mix of Christina Aguilera singing over the Strokes, and Kurtis Rush's pairing of Missy Elliott rapping over George Michael's "Faith."

Siva Vaidhyanthan sums up the changes "It's about demolishing the myth that there has to be a special class of creators, and flattening out the creative curve so we can all contribute to our creative environment."

Technology makes the production, distribution, and creation of new artifacts increasingly easy. The problem we face now is who will control the results and the raw material of creativity. Copyright owners are fearful that they will lose their compensation for creating the new works that feed the mash-ups. Those who make the remixes want control over what they have purchased and the freedom to manipulate and talk-back to the world as they see fit.

Pete Rojas concludes:

Technology has not only expanded who can create; in blurring the distinction between consumers and producers, these new digital tools are also challenging the very ideas of creativity and authorship. They are forcing us to recognize modes of cultural production that often make it impossible to answer such once simple questions as, Who wrote this song? The cultural landscape that emerges will be a plural space of creation in which it may even become pointless to designate who created exactly what, since everyone will be stealing from and remixing everyone else. The results might be confusing, but it'll probably be a lot more fun and worth listening to than a world where only those with the financial resources to pay licensing fees (e.g., P. Diddy) get to make songs with sampling.