Further Reading

A couple of you have asked me what to read or look into next.  So I'll give a few good sources for anyone who's still reading this.

Electric Media:

NPR's show On the Media is always good.  Bob Garfield is great.

Most of you know that I think Frontline is the best show on TV.

Bob McChesney's radio show is often pretty good.

Books:

Thomas de Zengotita's book, Mediated, is the best book on media issues I've read in a long time.  And it's available in our library.

Douglas Rushkoff is also excellent.

Evidence of the Singularity

I can't even explain this.

Read These

Here's another great article; I'd like to call it a MUST-READ, but that label won't be enforced.

It reads, in part:

UNTIL A FEW YEARS ago [...] our only method of tracking ourselves was to notice what we were doing and write it down. But even this written record couldn’t be analyzed objectively without laborious processing and analysis.  [...] Then four things changed. First, electronic sensors got smaller and better. Second, people started carrying powerful computing devices, typically disguised as mobile phones. Third, social media made it seem normal to share everything. And fourth, we began to get an inkling of the rise of a global superintelligence known as the cloud.

And here's another article, from a very different perspective. And here's another holy crap article.  And remember what I said about Harry Potter?  And this article reminds me of the Bob Dylan line: "if my thoughts/ dreams could be seen--they'd probably put my head in a guillotine."

A few more links

Please don't disregard the previous post(s) because of this one.  And to those poor suckers who missed Wednesday's class, you might want to study up on the Singularity.  (I'm just saying...)

Mostly, I just wanted to share a few more things with you while the blog still lives:

Net Neutrality
Perspectives on proprietary software
The EFF
The Onion

And the front page of Thursday's Times has a story headlined, "Now Accepting Cash, Checks or Cellphone," which includes this:

"[These companies] are creating innovative ways for individuals to avoid cash and checks and settle all debts, public and private, using their cellphones."  

Sounds good, but consider the likelihood that every transaction you make will be tracked and stored by entities you're unaware of, along with more information, like your precise location, your search queries, your affiliations, your thoughts....

The Future

First, a note about the course: if you thought it was worthwhile, please pass the word along to anyone who might be interested in taking it this summer (in June).  The summer version of this course is less performance, more book-club. Mass Media in the summer is my favorite thing to teach (and students have enjoyed it too).  Thanks for helping me spread the word.

I think the best thing to do here, rather than writing at length is just to have a link dump.  Send me links to fantastic things you've found and I'll include them here.  Before we get to the futuristic stuff, though, here are a couple articles of broader relevance to the course:

This is a MUST READ.

A former MM&S student sent me these:
Why are kids so bored?
And this is a bit disturbing.

THE FUTURE

No matter what happens, the future will be unlike the past.  I don't just mean that things will change; I mean that either the Singularity will happen, or the trend that describes all of history will break.  This is Kurzweil's view.  If you think it feels too broad, too immense or too fantastic, remember that our linear intuitions are a very poor guide in these realms.

Here's a somewhat-old-but-still-cool BBC movie about the post-human future, featuring Ray Kurzweil, a remote control rat (yes, a real rat), and a monkey who can control a computer with his thoughts.

Here's the big dog.  And robots with skin. And don't let your enemies get an army of these. ["combining living and machine components, could eventually make robots more effective."]  Sorta like this.

This is amazing.  Here's a story about the brain-twitter interface.  And speaking of brains, I already showed you the visuals picked up in Japan.  But practical roll-outs are on the way too.  More and more comes out every day.

Implants are cool.  Or you could just grow some new organs.  And enhance away.

About the state of info gathering and "property" rights.  There's this.  And more everywhere you look.

I could keep adding things all night, and haven't even gotten to the weird stuff.  But you get the idea.

One more thing on that...

I'd love to share more ideas about ownership and property, but we're winding things down.  So, just indulge me a bit more on copyright.

The core of the issue, in my view, is that technology has altered the economies of scale in information reproduction so drastically that we have all become de facto publishers.  Laws that were clearly written as industrial regulations suddenly apply to individuals.  The right to own, share, or alter the information we use was never was never codified because it was assumed; it was taken for granted. Nowadays, these freedoms threaten the sanctioned monopolies of powerful interests, so they get crushed.

This redirection of the law is not inevitable, nor is it harmless.  We now face the prospect of all information going behind a pay wall. Our complicity is monitored and enforced by programs installed, often against our will, on the machines we depend on.  This is an affront to the notion of an open society.  It is entrenched by propaganda that teaches us to view ourselves as consumers (not citizens) within economies (not societies) where "free" means "without payment" rather than "without restriction."  (Richard Stallman points out the semantic difference between the phrases "free beer" and "free speech.")

Consider public libraries.  What is their purpose? What values inspired our predecessors to create them?  This is not a rhetorical question.  Clearly, libraries were put in place to (among other things) remove the barriers to shared knowledge.  Those barriers are being rebuilt stronger than ever.

Books were once so valuable that the were chained to desks.  Now they are so cheap that we are being chained.

Copyright

Well, I think Friday's class was an interesting one.  In retrospect, some of the words I used ("repulsive," "repugnant," "intolerable") might have been, well, a bit too harsh, even off-putting.  I apologize if that was the case.  But these blunders arise from my desire that you confront important topics--like the laws and systems that dictate what you can do with information--confront them in some way that isn't apathy or boredom.

To summarize the importance of this issue,  there are two converging trends:
1. Your increasing dependence on computerized information.
2. Your decreasing control over that information.

In all seriousness, I'd love to read some comments about Friday or any of this.