I spend a lot of time reading and posting (on Twitter and elsewhere) about the politics of the Internet, particularly issues regarding online speech and the open architecture of the web. I am vocal about my positions on many “offline” political matters as well, and try to back them up with action, but there’s something about advocating for the web that feels more communal, more urgent, and maybe ultimately, more effective. I don’t mean this in the illusory quasi-utopian sense put forward by techno-activists in the early days of the web (not that the days aren’t still early), but rather in the very concrete sense that the web’s history, technology and body of stakeholders are unusually harmonious.

Everyone has something at stake

One important (and practically cliche) characteristic of the Internet, as it has evolved in recent years, is that regular users have increasingly become content producers. They have a real ownership stake in the way the web works and the rules that govern it. Linking, sharing, quoting and remixing are fundamental to the web, but also fraught with legalities (legitimate and otherwise), which is why things like CreativeCommons and EFF have sprung up from within the industry to bring some order and balance to online copyright, while preserving and promoting the existing culture of openness. While citizens in “real life” (or whatever), through years of being beaten down, ignored, and propagandized, may be prone to letting harmful and irrational legislation pass unchallenged, those of us who create content on the web frequently respond to power-grabs, injustices and legislative threats with an immediacy that is uncommon offline. This perhaps reflects the “right now” nature of the network. But I think this immediacy is also related to the fact that many of us understand just how fragile the web actually is (technically, legally and culturally), and how easily it could be fundamentally changed or even destroyed by the rash actions of the ill-informed and/or ill-intentioned.

Internet Enforcers

While there is ample room for debate and disagreement over tactics and ethics, I find in web protests like those of Anonymous or the Reddit-led mobbing of Cook’s Source an undeniably populist and democratic spirit. Many -  notably the music and film industries – have complained that the Internet generation has an outgrown sense of entitlement. There may be some truth to that, especially when it comes to pirated content, but all in all, the web’s “power users” have also displayed a very sharp sense of justice, an affinity for the theater of public relations, and a knack for rapid coordination. Imagine the world we might live in were offline political organizing so fast and effective. (There is, of course, the obvious dynamic of anonymity at play here, which is not to be discounted. But one could argue that is equally the case for any sufficiently large protest, on the web or on the street. Anonymity is what makes the mob a mob, and mobs can be blamed for acts of brutality as readily as they can be credited for acts of liberation.)

“Go web young man!” (groan)

While it’s beyond ridiculous to call the web “the wild west” or the “cyber-frontier” or whatever the hell people say or used to say with that newscaster-y blend of vague understanding and condescending doom, it’s still an apt metaphor (or at least one that’s good enough to indulge for the next few sentences).  The web really has always been about opportunity, possibility,  growth, and a great push into the unknown. As with the westward expansion of 19th century America, the web has seen it’s share of gold rushes (real and hysterical), fortunes made and lost, an array of ever-shifting economies, and an embrace of the classically-liberal capitalist ideal that markets (in the modern case: investors, developers, and users) will decide the natural order of things, distant legislators be damned. (Of course, laissez-faire societies are rife with all forms of collateral damage. Perhaps we should begin to regard the 20th century version of the music industry as the wild buffalo of the digital age.) As the colossus crawls west, possibilities emerge for the young and recede for the old. In this dead horse of a metaphor, the web is both the prairie and the railroad, the developers are the prospectors, and users the settlers (California is basically still California). The danger and the promise are one: only the real frontiersmen know how to get things done out in this wilderness of ones and zeros, and yet our so-called statesmen have failed to even commission themselves a Lewis and Clark (to clarify, I’m talking about this horse shit).

Industry is on our side for once

The web/tech industry is historically rooted in openness and decentralization. Reading up on the history of the Internet and the web (see for example Johnny Ryan’s History of the Internet and the Digital Future or James Gleick’s The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood), you will see a recurrence of geeks (boy, am I tiring of that word lately) pushing back against authority, circumventing military protocol, skirting institutional bureaucracies, and escaping co-optation. The web and its core of makers have always pushed toward the fluid and open, and against the staid and stable. In many tech companies, one can almost detect a sort of institutional joie de vivre. Not to overstate or even fully accept such an assertion (corporations being profit-oriented legal constructs and not actual moral/emotional beings), but it makes sense in light of the fact that these companies are made up overwhelmingly of people who do what they do for a living because they would otherwise be doing it for free. The industry and it’s constituent parts have a shared interest in keeping the web as open as it was when they walked in the front door, and as fluid as it was when they were first seduced by its possibility.

Old media operates on a culture that could not be more opposed to that of the web, which is why they and their frighteningly-effective lobbyists have been cast (rightly) as enemies of the open web. Where the web fosters openness and decentralization, old media culture is one of centralization, hegemonic control, and hair-trigger litigation. For the most part, this is the culture of corporate America as a whole, but even the giants of the tech industry have a stake in maintaining an open, fair and free Internet. On the most obvious level, legislation like SOPA and PIPA present a very real threat to the existing legal and technical foundations of the web, which is why web and tech companies, joining open web activists, have been waging a very public fight against them, even as politicians and old media outlets struggle (or perhaps refuse) to understand what’s actually being proposed. But perhaps less obvious to some is the longer term threat posed by such heavy-handed intervention. It’s not just that SOPA, PIPA, and the like threaten the web of today (curbing speech while propping up the decrepit media titans of yesteryear), it’s that it threatens the web of tomorrow, and a whole range of innovation and opportunities yet unknown. As such, open web activism has yielded an unlikely common interest that includes citizens of every type, free speech activists, software engineers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, lobbyists, universities and massive multinational corporations.

That’s quite an unusual alliance and frankly if we can’t make progress to protect the web with that constituency, then one has to wonder about the entire premise of representative democracy. But I’m hopeful that progress will be made in the coming years, and while attacks may continue, I don’t think the dynamic described above will change any time soon. As we look down the barrel of yet another absurd and borderline retarded election year, it just feels good to be hopeful about something.

These bills are scheduled to come to a final vote on January 24th, 2012. If you haven’t already (and maybe even if you have), visit americancensorship.org, fightforthefuture.org or EFF.org to learn more about SOPA/PIPA and how you can help stop their passage. I know it’s a drag but you should really consider calling your representatives in Congress. Using a telephone.

Travel and Registration

First of all, I cannot say how important it is to plan your travel in advance. Not only will you save (your organization) a couple hundred bucks with “early bird” registration, you will also have a decent shot at booking an affordable downtown hotel (or other spot, see below). Airfare is also obviously cheaper – by a truly huge amount, like up to 50% – when booked even a month or two in advance. You can save some more money by arriving in Austin a day or so before the conference begins (The conference began on Friday and I got in at 11:45pm on Wednesday night, saving myself a few bucks on travel that more than zeroed out the extra night’s accommodations; this also gave me a full bonus day to pick up my badge, get to know the city and check in with some local friends). I would advise against renting a car for reasons I will get to later.

Accommodations

As I implied above, downtown hotels get to be scarce and expensive during SxSW (aka “south by” to Austinites). Luckily, my savvy travel companion managed to find alternative accommodations via Air B n’ B, a service that facilitates vacation rentals, usually in the form of apartments, condos, and studio spaces. Guests and hosts each have public profiles and ratings, which helps in making a your choice. We managed to house 4 people comfortably for less than $100 per night total (yep, around $25 per person per night).  The location, about 4 miles from the conference center was pretty good; I imagine rates go up the closer you are to downtown, but from what I can tell, they are still really really affordable (at least in comparison to downtown hotels).

Getting around Austin

As I mentioned, our place was a few miles from downtown, but that never became a problem, even without cars.  Bus service in Austin is excellent from what I saw. Plenty of coverage, regular service throughout the day and late into the night, and an all-day pass only costs $2 (perspective for the bus-averse: an all-day pass in my neighborhood is $4.50). The buses go everywhere you want to be and almost as quickly as driving; there’s even a $1 shuttle to and from the airport.  Cab service is also abundant downtown and by call-ins, though it can be pretty hard to flag down a cab later in the evening, when the streets are flooded with drunk people in need of a ride (I’m told getting a cab to the airport from downtown is also sketchy during SxSW, as some drivers prefer the bulk take of quick and dirty fares, and will turn you down or overcharge; in other words, plan to use the airport shuttle provided by CapMetro if you are leaving before the end of the conference).

I did most of my traveling around Austin via a rented bike (most(?) of the indie bike shops, instead of officially renting, will sell you a bike with a “guaranteed buyback” minus a few bucks a day; I got mine from the nice people at Peddler’s).  The city is pretty bike-friendly, though bike lanes do come and go frequently and inexplicably. In some areas (on my route at least), it was preferable to jump onto the sidewalk, but watch out for the telephone poles, street signs, and fire hydrants, all of which tend to be placed dead center in the middle of the sidewalk. It makes riding a bike on the sidewalk sometimes feel like a cross between downhill slalom and taking a motorcycle license exam. The road is usually fine, but I would recommend against trying to “claim your rights” in the higher traffic areas outside downtown.  In any case, riding a bike is certainly a feasible option if you are up to it and the city seems to be invested in making Austin one of the more bike-friendly cities in the nation.

Even being in less than ideal “winter shape,” riding 8-10 miles per day was not only fairly easy, it was one of the highlights of my trip. The average temperature in Austin in March is somewhere in the high-60s/mid-70s. Coming from colder climes, it was nice to spend some time outdoors, not only for the weather and the exercise, but because it really let me get to know the city intimately and quickly, and prevented me from falling into the state of fuzziness that sometimes comes with extended conference travel.

Food, Entertainment, and Parties

There’s plenty to do in Austin, even without a badge. W. Sixth Street, aka “the Drag,” is really the center of the city’s entertainment district, and is really a big part of SxSW activity.  There are tons of bars, restaurants and clubs on the strip, catering to an array of tastes.  In my view, while it was definitely a fun place to hang out during the conference, I would probably find it a bit too fratty and clubby if I lived in Austin.  Try to explore other areas as much as you can.  There is live music happening all over the city and plenty of off-the-grid weirdness to take in (The Capital building is also kind of cool, but, whatever…).  I spent an afternoon on the other side of the tracks (actually the other side of the freeway overpass), hanging around East 6th, which was a little seedier, a little artier, and a little more punk rock, which suits me fine.  I especially liked the coffee shop that served “moonshine” and the caravan of circled up buses-turned-semi-legal-food-trucks (Cock Sparrer was playing on the lot PA, so you know it’s legit).

So far, I haven’t really mentioned anything specific to SxSW; you could do all of this stuff in Austin any time.  But during the conference, there is definitely more going on, and some of it requires a SxSW badge.  I went to two parties (that I know of) that were sponsored by large tech/media companies.  A badge will not only get you in the door, but might also get you some free drinks and swag.  Without planning on it, I managed to see some pretty good bands for free just by happening upon sponsored parties (Ted Leo/No Age/Thee Oh Sees/Mister Heavenly being my favorite lineup). Sadly, I missed the Comedy Death Ray Radio party, one of many awesome looking comedy events I failed to attend for some reason.

My travel companion was (and is) the founder of a tech startup, so he used the parties for more directed networking, while I just kind of chatted up whoever would talk to me, which turned out to be a lot of people actually.  Locals and conference-goers alike were very friendly and quick with the business cards, which still seems a bit foreign to me, but when in Rome and all that. I handed out more business cards in 6 days than I normally would in 6 months (and, by the way, got some nice comments on the style of my cards, which I designed myself for the first time, hooray for me; one guy even said, “this is the best university business card ever” to which I happily explained how I’d gone rogue on the cards, but I digress into shameless bragging). Although I’m not a particularly outgoing person, there was definitely an air of camaraderie that seemed to make walking up to total strangers seem okay.  It might have been all the free booze.

At the Conference

I’ve heard a lot of people rumbling about how SxSW Interactive has become too big, too commercial, how it has lost some of the intimacy and communal feeling that made it so beloved. I can’t really speak to that since it was my first year, but it seemed fine to me – great in fact. I mean, it was a huge conference with something like 30K attendees (not counting the film and music badge-holders, a demographic orders of magnitude larger). So it probably has lost something in the process of growing so large, but whatever; I’ll leave that conversation to SxSWi veterans. My biggest complaint was that, while most sessions were clustered in or around the Austin Convention Center, a few were held so far out of the way on the other side of town that attending them was not an option.

So what did I learn? It’s really hard to say with any degree of detail. I had some great conversations with some really interesting people. I feel like I got in touch with a community and culture that previously seemed almost hypothetical to me. There were lots of panel discussions and speakers, some of whom I had heard of (like Matt Mullenweg, Christopher Poole (m00t), Jane McGonigal, that SCVNGR guy, Jeffrey Zeldman) and others I had not (like people from W3C, and CSS3 and HTML5 working groups).  The sessions were all pretty interesting and impressive in their own rite. I especially enjoyed the librarian meetup, the sessions on educational gaming, and the various panels about the politics and processes behind HTML/CSS standards-making.

I’m not sure about the exact numbers but there seemed to be between 20-40 sessions per slot, meaning there were always hard choices to be made when working out my schedule. Sometimes I picked right; sometimes I didn’t.

Audio from SxSWi

Lucky for me (and you), anyone can listen to pretty much any of the more prominent panels, sessions, and keynotes by scouring through the massive schedule and clicking through to the detailed view. This is great because now I feel no pressure to actually describe any of the sessions. Just check it out yourself. I’ll be digging though this stuff for months.  I just listened to the excellent (and important) Al Franken talk, which I missed the first time around. I’m not so sure how well some of these will hold up without visuals.  Either way, it’s great to have them available.  Here are a few you might want to check out first.

Al Franken: An Open Internet: The Last, Best Hope for Independent Producers

Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better

*Panel: The Politics behind HTML5

*Panel: Drawing Back the Curtains on CSS Implementation

More audio at: http://schedule.sxsw.com/

On the About page for this site, I kind of hint at why I chose Jefferson’s Newspaper as the title for this blog, but it’s not a complete answer (and in any case, the About page has been long since moved out of view; it’s really only kept around for the sake of provenance at this point).  The gist of that founding document is this: as I was putting together some ideas for a blog, I happened across an interesting quote by T.J. that stoked my imagination; I decided to buy a corresponding domain name.

Here’s the quote:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

–Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.

As we all know, Thomas Jefferson quotes, like the man himself, are open to interpretation – not only because his true intentions cannot always be easily deciphered but because he is often understood and exploited, not as a flawed human being but as an abstracted symbol, a common hero of opposing teams in an endless game of cultural capture the flag.  Putting aside, though, the question of who owns Thomas Jefferson and that the above quote is part of Jefferson’s larger body of evolving and sometimes-conflicting thought on newspapers and the press, we can easily understand his meaning in this instance.

Our man T.J. was saying in essence,

“Look, we have established this kickin’ new form of government based on the notion that citizens know best what is best for them.  Duh.  The government, being composed of citizens, is arranged to be responsive to citizens and their will — even when their will is patently retarded.  Thus, we need to make sure it’s not or we’ll be in for some shit; one way to accomplish this is to make sure citizens are well-informed through an independent press.  Of course, they will also need to be able to read that stuff, so let’s make sure they get some schooling.  Europe was full of illiterate slobs, but we will have to do better to maintain a democracy.”

Of course, Jefferson wasn’t talking about enlightening or educating everyone.  Not slaves or Native Americans, for sure, but also not most white people (women, the landless, etc).  Nevertheless, it’s a pretty obvious quote, by now a cliche: a strong and well-managed democracy depends upon a well-informed electorate.  Currently, our democracy is neither strong nor well-managed. And our electorate? Well, let’s just say things have been better.

Newspapers appear to have outlasted their influence over the mob in this country (and by mob, I mean morons, though only in this specific case… I actually like mobs of smart people, so don’t go thinking I’m against mobbing it up from time to time) and are barely holding onto any semblance of their former relevance. The “real” news media, now basically consisting (in the mainstream) of TV pundits and demagogues, has, with the help of their parent corporations, slowly eroded any democratic tendencies that remained in mainstream journalism at the beginning of this century (which were arguably few to begin with).  While I suspect that Jefferson and the founders had something else in mind for the press — something more like Amy Goodman (civil, erudite) and much much less like Glenn Beck (clownish, fear-mongering), we can see which actually sells.

So looking at Jefferson’s qualifier in that quote — “But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them” — it seems Fox News and the rest actually did take it to heart.  But instead of enlightening up in the Jeffersonian spirit (however limited), they have dumbed down to the point of total illiteracy.  Television is a powerful tool of coercion: not only do you not need to be able to read to consume it’s ideas, you don’t even need to be able to think.

And so we find ourselves amid Jefferson’s unwitting “would you rather” game, actually faced with making a decision of sorts.  The Tea Party (and the media conglomerates that drive the their ill-informed agenda) seems intent on gimping the government in favor of unbridled corporate power.  On the other side, we find a government that is — in too many ways to list — truly broken, and increasingly so due in part to the toxic storm that is our present media landscape.  When faced with the choice between newspapers and democratic government, we know — and Jefferson knew — that there is indeed no choice to be made.  Each depends on the other.  While I am no big fan of either our government or our news media, I believe that both can be reformed and indeed must be.  They are our only hope to push back against undemocratic global capital.  But achieving that means educated people across the spectrum of American society and economy standing up and demanding redress.  Not by marching around shouting slogans (though that has its place) or by claiming sole interpretative authority over 200+ year old writings by brilliant but long dead “founding fathers” (though, again, that can be fun if not frutiful).  Our times are novel and I’m not so sure the specifics of the past fit the present, even when the general ideas do.

So the Tea Party can have Jefferson if they want him that bad.  It makes no difference to me.  Jefferson is not the point, and in fact, despite my affinity for many of his ideas about democracy, I don’t even really like the guy.  Nor do I have much respect for the founding fathers as human beings.  As Ice-T said in some interview that I cannot find right now, “[paraphrase:] Fuck the Constitution. It was written by a bunch of slave owners, so obviously they were all psychopaths.”  But I’m way off topic at this point.

In the interest of providing some perspective and wrapping this up, however inelegantly, I offer a fuller quote from Jefferson’s correspondence with Carrington:

“I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.”

Jefferson wasn’t just talking about newspapers or government.  He was talking about education, citizenship and democracy.  About the abuse of power.  About the curiosity of human culture.  About the power of information.  These are not things I talk about explicitly (for the most part) on this blog, but these are the ideas that inform my outlook and motivations.  So if this blog derives from or coincides with Jefferson and/or newspapers, that’s cool, but I think really it could just as easily be called Chomsky’s iPhone or Bakunin’s Kindle or Debord’s Google Reader Account or or or….

Some Background

When Sonny Bono and company enacted the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the entry of new works into the public domain basically froze. Bono and his powerful backers (Disney, Jack Velenti, and other assorted industry shills) pushed this freeze mainly to protect their own interests (but also to come into line with the EU’s even worse copyright adjustments). Representative Bono, formerly half of the craptastic pop duo, Sonny & Cher, would be able to license his one hit song for the term of his own life (which actually ended shortly before the bill passed) plus 70 years instead of the previous 50, ensuring that his descendants will receive unearned income from Viagra (and perhaps flying car) commercials until at least 2068. That’s a 100 year copyright protection; for a younger (and even crappier) artist like Justin Bieber, think more like 150 years and you hopefully realize how absurd this is. And yet Bono, Disney and Valenti felt even this was not enough, and would have lobbied for infinite copyright protection if they thought they could pass it. Valenti, a real turd if you’ve ever looked at his life’s work of killing artistic freedom, famously proposed a copyright term of “forever less one day.” Imagine a world in which nothing is in the public domain. That’s what they wanted. The perpetual monetization of what is essentially public culture. A disaster for humanities scholarship and production, but also for preserving and forwarding our shared culture in the US and around the world. For most, this doesn’t require much more explanation, but Lawrence Lessig’s recent TEDTalk on “remix culture” is a nice place to continue thinking about it.

So What Does This Have to do with Metropolis?

So, Metropolis. I’ve seen Metropolis (usually in bits and pieces) several times. It’s available on VHS and DVD, streams on YouTube and elsewhere on the web, is screened in galleries and museums; I even saw it used as the visual backdrop to a hip hop show (DJ Spooky circa 2000, who played his set in front of both Metropolis and Society of the Spectacle, among others, as I recall). While I’m not by any means an expert on the film’s history or impact, I can say with some certainty that it is among the most important films ever made, possibly the best loved silent film and one of the first sci-fi stories ever put to celluloid; a simply stunning piece of visual art. Unsurprisingly, it has been referenced, re-mixed and re-interpreted widely over the past 83 years.

Metropolis, while flourishing mainly in marginal “film geek” and “art school” segments of society, is about as ubiquitous as a silent film can be. This ubiquity owes not only to the films quality and lasting appeal, but also to its unbelievable availability. In addition to relatively frequent free and public use, I’ve seen it for sale for about the cost of a postage stamp in at least a dozen different versions (different music, mainly, including one version featuring a terrible Freddie Mercury song) and stores. Like other public domain titles (Metropolis entered the public domain in 1953), it is manufactured and distributed around the world by small companies that put little effort into quality control or maintaining the original artistic vision. With the 2010 release of The Complete Metropolis, which is digitally remastered and includes some lost footage, as well as an updated performance of the original musical score, the film is now getting a definitive treatment by film preservationists.

If we consider Fritz Lang as the author, under the current copyright regime, this film would not have entered the public domain until 2046; if we consider it a corporate authorship (and I’m not sure whether an individual or a studio actually owns a film’s rights, especially one from 1927), that date could be as late as 2071. Luckily, the copyright expired in ’53 under an older but equally confusing regime and was not renewed (a subsequent court challenge to reclaim the film’s copyright failed, despite the fact that the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act restored copyright to many works that might have entered the public domain). So the question is this, in which scenario would this silent film be poised to flourish in a widely anticipated re-release 83 years later: the one in which the film built up a huge following through ubiquitous and varied availability and remix, which also allowed the film to be pieced back together from archival quality prints held around the world? Or the one in which the receivers of a defunct German film company tightly controlled the film, restricting use and distribution, and most likely burying it altogether? My assumption (in my view, quite uncontroversial) is that whomever would have controlled the copyright of the film would not have kept it in print at all, let alone promoted it widely (though admittedly, perhaps the film would have lived on in Germany either way).

What do we have if nobody can get their hands on Metropolis until 2071? Basically, we have an historical artifact. That’s all well and good. I happen to like things called “artifacts,” but I also happen to think of those things as distant and dead (at least when I’m not wearing my history hat). As it turned out, in Metropolis we can see a living culture, a film carrying its influence across the first century of international cinema, a film whose importance and adoration is not so much being asserted with the re-release, but being reinforced and celebrated. There is a continuity that benefits our understanding of film history, of popular culture; it enriches our appreciation of the film and ensures its continued existence far more fairly and organically than any legal right. Paradoxically, if Metropolis were not in the public domain, The Complete Metropolis would not stand a chance of existing, let alone generating a profit. The widespread and generation-spanning love and appreciation of the film came largely out of it’s free-ness, which is why we’re willing to pay for it.

Post Script

I’ve recently entered the tangled web of copyright hell by way of a local history-based documentary film project, in which students and others use archival and oral history assets to construct short films for the web. I’m not talking about serious filmmaking here, but largely amateur/educational creation. We don’t need Donald Duck in our documentaries but we do need access to more footage and images than you can imagine to construct reasonably interesting short films, and most of that material, it turns out, is copyrighted. Sometimes it is held by large corporations (which equals two possible outcomes: “No” or “Pay us your whole budget for this thing we forgot we owned”); other times, it is under the control of the original creator (some who feel their work is too important to ever allow anyone to see or use it); most frustrating, some of it is held in archival collections where conservatively-interpreted pre-digital accession contracts basically ensure that the footage will never again see the light of day (“in-house screening only” both ignores the way research is conducted in the digital age, and also the way content is consumed by the public; neither group is likely to dig through a low-profile archival collection in order to wait hours while library staff finds the film projector that will inevitably be crammed into a 1 person “private viewing station.” And of course, when they leave they will only have some notes and their memories to show for it). These approaches might work to the benefit of the copyright holders and maybe even creators if they were MGM and I were Errol Morris, but they are not and I am not. For most works, particularly those archival items held at small institutions, copyright essentially becomes moot because no one gives a damn, no one knows it exists. But still, we hide it away, we consult our lawyers and our contracts, all parties turn out their empty pockets and walk away, less than satisfied that “at least it’s being preserved.” The question remains, “For who? For what?”

I recently picked up a copy of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. I was completely struck by the first essay, “Unpacking My Library”, where Benjamin discusses book collecting. And while I myself take pride in my ever growing personal library, I almost immediately began to translate all his references to books as pertaining to record collecting. Not only this, but Benjamin’s words somehow summed up, far more eloquently than my own I might add, why, despite my professional stance that everything should be digitized and widely disseminated, I don’t and never will own an ipod. It made me rethink a few ideas I’ve become accustomed to, things like ownership and physicality, that have become essential to my work as a Digital Humanist. So, I thought I’d share…

Let me start by quoting part of Benjamin’s conclusion,

“…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects”.

While this statement would possibly seem insignificant enough to your average person, “ownership” is an extremely weighted word for the Digital Humanist. Putting it simply, Digital Humanists hate ownership. Often, this disdain is directed towards corporations and their claims to proprietary software. This is easy enough, especially with the aggressive (unethical?) business practices of companies like Blackboard. The music industry, with its severely outdated business model, is another common target.  Many Digital Humanists go further though. They challenge their colleagues and institutions, especially universities and museums, to give up traditional rights to scholarship, educational content and primary sources.

However, we can think of ownership from another side. What about an individual’s ownership of something? Now, as I’m pretty sure not all Digital Humanists are total Communists (just kind of), I think most are comfortable with the idea of an individual owning possessions like a house, car, whatever. Its more intellectual property rights, especially of digitized intellectual property, that irk us. Because Digital Humanists have created this distinction, most of us can live in relative peace with the belief that its okay for us to own all sorts of things, but Microsoft needs to stop charging people for software. It works for me at least.

There are some cases, however, where this distinction begins to blur, and I think music is an excellent example. I’m not necessarily talking about the consumption of music here, but the collecting of music. Lets return to Benjamin’s idea of ownership. I’ll throw another quote at you because I genuinely like how he writes:

“Even though public collections may be less objectionable socially and more useful academically than private collections [as the Digital Humanist knows very well] … the phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it looses is personal owner”

Think about that for a second and let me pose a question: do you own the songs on your ipod? I mean, not legally, that all depends on how you acquired them. But, do you feel ownership of them? Is that Vampire Weekend (or whatever the kids are into these days) mp3 yours? Speaking strictly for myself, I don’t really feel like a song on a copied CD is mine, let alone an mp3 file. Even if some feel that they do in fact own their mp3 files, looking deeper into Benjamin’s essay, I think I can demonstrate why this definition of ownership is inadequate or at least very distinct from the ownership I am trying to describe. Let me explain.

The Thrill of the Hunt

I really miss hunting for records. Don’t get me wrong, I still go to the record store to look for things, but its just not the same when what I’m looking for could just as easily be bought online while I’m watching TV. Especially for the collector of underground music, the joy of finding something you’ve sought for literally years is pretty hard to describe. However, guess who describes it perfectly?

“I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old birth is its rebirth”

In explanation of this rather odd statement, Benjamin explains how, for the collector, the acquisition of an item quite literally fulfills that item’s destiny, which is of course, to become part of your collection. All of that item’s history, from its production, to its past owners, real or imagined, becomes an additional property of the item (think of it like invisible metadata that exists in the collector’s head). Honestly, it sounds dumb, but I have to admit that I’ve shared this extraordinary feeling. Putting all real probabilities aside, it truly seems like destiny when you uncover that record that you’ve been searching for, perhaps for years, in the used bin at some crappy record store you dragged your girlfriend to on vacation. Every crease on the album sleeve, every marking, all the writing, it all stays with you, forever becoming part of a collection that includes but is not limited to the music itself. Basically, it all adds up to much more than the music itself.

Physicality, Ownership and the Digital World

The point of all this nonsense, besides that record collecting is cool, is that while the digital world has not necessarily changed music itself, it has certainly qualitatively changed the collecting of music. Physicality is one aspect of this, as the physical marks on something like a used record can perhaps be used to conjure up a richer history of that item, which, as Benjamin suggests, adds to the many joyful histories contained within in a collection, inseparable but distinct from the music itself. However, I would argue that physicality, while perhaps the most obvious, is not the most important factor. For instance, back in the days of peer to peer file sharing, I certainly felt Benjamin’s “thrill of acquisition” when finding an album after countless unsuccessful searches. I believe the more essential element is that “ownership”, in the Benjamin sense, is directly dependent on a meaningful acquisition. One that produces “profound enchantment” and a literal sense of destiny.

Its interesting for myself, as a Digital Humanist, to consider that part of Benjamin’s “ownership” as defined in his quotation, cites public ownership in direct opposition to this personal ownership that makes collecting so desirable in the first place.  Its easy to see why this is so, if only because widespread availability would necessarily lesson the difficulties and joys of acquisition. Thus, some of my most cherished goals of dissemination and the eradication of the ownership of digital “property” also contribute to the deterioration of a different kind of “ownership”, that of an individual to that personal, intangible, yet very real aspect of his or her collection. In this case, its music. But perhaps the example can be applied elsewhere. When I reflect on all of this, I realize that receiving information of any kind, academic for instance, is not necessarily so different from listening to a record. Its certainly more than just memorization, critical thinking, or other mental processes normally associated with learning. In fact, my “collection” of academic knowledge has been dramatically enriched by everything else that took place while in school, at conferences, or in the archive. From the thrill of putting on those white gloves the first time I handled historic photographs to the memories of my music professor’s leather pants and rants about punk music (“Roots of Rock and Soul”, a legendary class). Of course, I’m not saying Digital Humanists should abandon our, in my view, very essential goals. Its just that, thinking of Walter Benjamin’s library and my record collection, I think its also important to remember the central importance of the process of acquisition, not simply the content acquired.

Recently, I had a conversation about blogging with my partner, who is a Montessori teacher.  Often times as we share a ride home from work, she will discuss some aspect of her work day that leaves me impressed with her knowledge and insight about teaching and child development.  More than once, I have suggested to her that she start a blog to share that knowledge and more than once she has shot down the idea, citing a number of reasons, my favorite of which goes something like “the thought of writing about work when I’m not at work literally makes me sick to my stomach!  Really sick!”  This got me to thinking about why I blog, often about things related to my work, and led me to come up with a typically offhanded formulation about why others do the same.

So what it is that distinguishes myself and others from the non-blogging majority?  I propose three basic prerequisites to blogging: time, community, and hubris.

Time

The first is pretty obvious so I will assume that time does not need much explanation.  Unless you are a professional blogger, you do it in your free time, and most of us don’t have enough of it to spend addressing a largely imaginary audience.

Community

Assuming one has time, I think you still need to feel like you are addressing or contributing to a community, broadly defined.  When I blog, I usually imagine it will be of some use or interest to someone.  Sometimes I know exactly who I am speaking to.  If I write a tutorial about WordPress or Omeka hacks, for example, I know I am speaking to others who, like me, are hacking their way through a particular project, often piecing together information from forums, Google searches, colleagues and friends.  I feel like that is a community (intermediate-level web developers?) of which I am part and whose needs I understand.  I cannot emphasize how important that community has been to my ability to work, and in writing a tutorial I am attempting to carry my weight and give something back.  In some ways, this is a reflection of my own belief in DIY and the punk rock spirit, two other topics (or is that just one topic?) that I’m likely to write about based largely on the idea that they are communities I value and to which I try to contribute.

Hubris

Okay, I know hubris is maybe a strange choice of words, but it got you reading this, right?  And I think it suggests a broad set of characteristics or personality traits that contribute to the “blogging state of mind.”  Twitter and other micro-blogging services typify this impetus in the extreme.  Look at any group of seasoned twitter users and you will see links, links, links, along with a smattering of reviews, smarmy comments, mini-editorials, and self-promotional status updates.  That’s what makes the form annoying/overwhelming for some people, but it’s also the essence of its greatness.  Blogs leave a bit more wiggle room for complexity and nuance, but suggest the same motivation.

Further, it may be no coincidence that librarians and developers love (micro-) blogging.  The fact that I am nominally both, I think, has much to do with why I blog (here, on Twitter, and elsewhere).  As a librarian, I value information and seek to share it with others.  It’s a big part of who I am and if I’m honest with myself I have to admit it’s because I’m kind of a know-it-all.  Most librarians are to varying degrees, though it doesn’t always show because we tend to be a mild bunch.  I like knowing I can find the answers to a wide array of questions and can synthesize them into something vaguely coherent.  It’s very much a desire to be helpful, but it also takes some hubris to assume the position of oracle.

There’s an interesting post over at Full Stop Interactive that describes the Myers-Briggs personality type of hackers and developers in much the same way many have described librarians: an apparently paradoxical mix of utopian ideology and sensible shoes practicality that brings forth the opinionated, the didactic, and the resourceful.  Despite what you think of Jungian psychology, it seems safe to assume that, while MBTI cannot fully classify the wholeness of personality, it seems to be onto something when you look at aggregate career-specific data.  Again, these two groups that often overlap and interact share personality type indicators and common interests that might contribute to their general blogginess.  I would never suggest these are the only two groups that blog, nor the only groupings of personality to succumb to the siren call of the know-it-all culture.  What my blog post presupposes is that those of us who blog share something in common with one another and maybe with one of these groups. With my partner, the non-blogging Montessori teacher, I share many things in common but apparently not the traits that lead to blogging, whatever they may be.

There you have it.  My cockamamy theory about blogging, complete with bloggerific abruptly non-conclusive ending.  What do you think?  Am I onto something?  Have you read or heard anything similar elsewhere?  Or is it total baloney?

Image Credit: made using Big Huge Labs’ Motivator

Yes, I know it’s 2010 (pronounced “twenty-ten”), and I know that nostalgia for the analog age is a 30-something cliche, and I know the cassette has become a sickening node of ironic culture.  But for just a few minutes, I ask you to set aside your pernicious Family Guy-inspired liking for hackneyed 80s references to consider the cassette as it should be understood: as a lost assertion of our basic rights, a technological and social artifact,  and a symbol of friendship, grassroots culture and low-fi audiophilia.
I’m not really going to get deep into the history of the cassette but I think it’s worth noting that tapes “changed everything” as they say.  Music became smaller, more portable, cheaper (actually, freer), more contentious, more ubiquitous, and both more and less intimate.

When considering cassette media, we need to ponder the hardware that was used to play it.  The cassette gave us The Walkman and the “boombox” – two devices that couldn’t be more different.  One, the Walkman, was meant to shut out the world, to bring the music closer, to retire into the imagination and the inner world of musical sensation.  The other, the boombox, or “ghetto blaster”, was meant to bring imagination and musical sensation into the outer world.  The Walkman is an extension of the teenage bedroom, domain of the vinyl LP.  The boombox is an extension of the club, the car, the party, and perhaps the penis – a manifestation of action, performance, and bravado.  Think Radio Raheem when you think boombox.  Whatever you do, do NOT think Lloyd Dobbler, that sappy new romantic who reappropriated his boombox as a two-way Walkman. The boombox was urban, evolving into the “system” – the window-rattling audio menaces one might encounter when stopping your car next to a ’91 Civic with gold spinner rims.  The Walkman was suburban, evolving into the iPod – a tiny, consumer-fetishized personal technological wonder.  Culturally, I think these two very conflicting devices actually worked in tandem to create an atmosphere in which divisions of youth (and sub/counter) culture  became more distinct, more visible, more confrontational and also more accessible – a commodity-identity that could be easily recognized and digested and therefore easily bought and sold.

Still, the cassette was a continuation, as were its followers.  Like a vinyl album, it retained the “flipside.”  This was an essential component of musical media that was not removed until the birth of the CD,  a small (i.e. cassette-like?) disc (i.e. album-like?) media which was capable of high fidelity sound (i.e. album-like?).  The displacement of the CD by the mp3 removed the physicality of all prior formats but combined the reproducibility, portability, and low-fi impermanence of the cassette with the single serving goodness of the 7″ vinyl single/EP.  It was not until fairly recently that mp3 recordings began to match the high fidelity of CDs and vinyl LPs, and even still the mp3 is most often consumed one song at a time (rather than by the album).  The introduction of both the cassette and the mp3 format launched the recording industry into a hissyfit panic that some people might copy content instead of buying it, and both technologies came along right at a time when mainstream record labels were putting out the kind of banal garbage that helped make that true.

But even though the early mp3 resembled earlier formats in some senses, in others it was music/youth culture’s waterloo – the end of an era in which music was an all-powerful, awe-inspiring, cultural force; a refuge that was both in plain sight and deeply underground; equally technical and nebulous.  It signaled the beginning of a new era where music became a capitalist accessory, a component of yet more shallow spectacle, an economic asset used primarily to sell physical and sensory widgets.  Sure, we can look back to the late 1960s and see similarities in the commodification of hippy/beat culture, but nobody was using The Velvet Underground to sell car tires, mainly because ad execs (not to mention the general public) didn’t know who the VU were. (Yes, that linked ad is from 1993 – roughly “the year punk broke” to name another watershed moment – yet it still illustrates the music as advertising appliance approach that has become even more common since the late nineties/early aughts.)  Now, anyone with an internet connection can find, read about, and download that Moss Icon EP I searched for across several months within a matter of seconds.  When a thing becomes too easily accessible, it loses its value.  If diamonds grew on trees, nobody would be interested, except for their industrial value.

Which brings me back to the point of this little rant.  I am deeply sad, forlorn even, that music is meaning less to me these days.  Perhaps it is age, but I think it has even more to do with the ritual, culture, and physicality of the cassette, as contrasted with modern equivalents, which are far more casual, and it is on that theme that I shall continue to opine without further asides.

The mixtape, an icon of 80s and 90s culture, was (and is for some purists still) a deep symbol of friendship and even love, representing a ridiculously large commitment of time and energy.  I have given and received mixtapes that went through so may edits and overdubs that in the quiet between songs you could hear layer upon layer of other songs, some that didn’t fit the mix, some that made the cut but were moved elsewhere in the order, and others that were simply taped over for lack of a new and truly blank cassette.  Labels and covers were almost always handmade, with evidence of their own revision and improvisation.  I once received a mixtape recorded over a factory-issue Best of Chicago album that belonged to my friend’s father.  She just popped the overwrite-protection tab and taped right over “Saturday in the Park”, confirming that all was well in the world.  Unlike the burned CD, a sterile object of disinvestment only Stanley Kubrick could love, a great mixtape was a palimpsest of aural, cultural and emotional information.

Although the dubbed cassette was not as personalized as the mixtape, it could still be deeply personal.  The dubbed cassette was the lo-fi copy you got from your friend who had an album you didn’t own yet, or maybe had never even heard of before. My first dub was Appetite for Destruction (side A) and Eazy Duz It (side B).  The height of my dubbing excess came about a decade later, when I spent roughly a week digging through a new friend’s collection of obscure oi!, streetpunk, and viking rock, dubbing each album and transcribing the songs onto little pieces of notebook paper that I folded into the tape cases to serve as makeshift liner notes.  I honestly cannot imagine listening to any of that music on any other physical format and even though I would have loved to find my own original copies of some of that stuff (for bragging rights), part of me was always okay with just having the scammed copy.  A few years ago, my tape deck (a wood paneled top loader with 4 level sliders on the top) broke for the last time.  I put those tapes, and dozens more, out on the street in my densely populated urban neighborhood, hoping someone would find and cherish them.  Without my noticing, it rained heavily that day, soaking the box, the labels, and the covers.  Nobody, save for the garbage man, ever came for them.  A shameful moment indeed, but instructive.  The dubbed cassette was both a second class citizen and an object of desire and affection, the Sally Hemmings of your record collection.  It represented the inferior but also the exotic.  It was special and prized but also kept to the side,  segregated from your more conventionally desirable items, except for those moments when you were alone, when you traveled, or when you wanted to impress your savvier friends with your more obscure tastes.  In the end, unceremoniously abandoned.

I could go on some more about the importance of the cassette to DIY and punk culture, but I’ll leave that alone.  I could also talk about taping crappy pop songs off the radio so I could lip sync to them in my childhood living room, or how I once faced two single-deck boomboxes at each other in order to make a copy of Licensed to Ill, but I don’t want to spread the schlock too thick here.  Instead of grasping at the sky in agony over my lost passion for music, I’ve decided to reinvest myself in vinyl and try to set aside times to just listen to music – not on my phone, not while I’m walking down the street or in the elevator, but listening to music while I’m… listening to music (okay, I might read a magazine, but an analog one for sure).

As Steve Albini put it back in the day, “The future belongs to the analog loyalists. Fuck digital.”

Note: I “dubbed” the above image from the Internet and photoshopped in what may well be the real title of a real tape I may or may not have made for or received from a friend circa 1989.

“The only historically justified tactic is extremist innovation” – Debord & Wolman, A User’s Guide to Détournement (1956)

I’ve been thinking about the Situationists for about a decade now, after learning of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle in some Propagandhi liner notes (I think) about a decade ago.  Sadly, after all that time, I’ve developed no great insights as to what the hell they were talking about.  I mean, I get the gist if that counts for anything, but I think to really grasp what they’re really getting at, one needs a graduate seminar and plenty of contextual knowledge.  Nevertheless, the shit is damn brilliant and informs my worldview in many ways (most of which are surely based on misreading).  Since presently, I do what one might call information work, and as a result have become heavily invested in the web and social networking, I’ll use this post to share some cool films by the Situationist International (SI), and briefly look at how the SI’s  ideas of spectacle, détournement, and separation apply to the social web.

Social networks as commodified existence…

I’ve always felt a certain ambivalence toward the Internet, particularly as it has become the prime mediator of social and professional interaction.  Obviously, we have experienced some real and perceived benefits due to our increasingly rapid adoption of technology (defining “technology” is problematic in many of the same ways as “information,” but let’s put that aside and assume I mean computers and electronics and stuff).  We have increased economic opportunities (for some), more free time (theoretically), greater safety and efficiency, instant production and communication without regard to geography, and access to unbelievable amounts of information.  But we can just as easily indict technology for it’s less benign social, political, and economic effects.  A short list of technology’s less celebrated effects might include: modern global warfare, loss of personal privacy, environmental devastation, and political (as well as social, economic, and cultural) hegemony — all brought to new heights by liberatory (at first glance) technology such as industrial automation; steam, electrical, and combustion power; the telephone; modern media; and any number of innovations in digital computing.  Of course, what we currently colloquially refer to as “technology” — the Internet — is equally hailed in alternation as a force for democracy and a catalyst for democracy’s demise.  Obviously, both are true in their own argumentation, but miss the larger point altogether.

With the relatively recent explosion of Web 2-point-oh!, social networks, etc., we see something notably different than what was experienced with earlier technologies.  Machines, electricity, cars, televisions, and the like, were all transformative and initially liberated in some sense; addressing (and inventing) needs, and conferring legitimacy and status to their early consumers.   In those regards, the Web is not different.  Where it departs from previous innovations is that it goes beyond creating, serving, and reinforcing consumer identity and consumer culture into actually displacing and disappearing the consumer as he exists in reality.  Debord identified this tendency in …the Spectacle as it relates to earlier (1960s) cultural conditions, but it is ripe for application to the 21st century, with it’s ravenous tech fetishism and fascination with identity construction and maintenence through social networks.

As you may have guessed, I recently picked up Society of the Spectacle for some rereading and found that basically the entirety of the first chapter is as effective a deconstruction of 21st c. new media culture as it was of television, films, and advertising in 1967.  Here’s a sample…

1

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

2

The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

3

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.

4

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

5

The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.

6

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

I could continue quoting ad nauseum (actually, you may already be throwing up), but I’ll leave it to the reader to read more if they choose.  In the end, I’m still not sure where I stand on this.  I like the internet.  It’s amusing and often useful.  And as a worker in information and technology, I am actually not alienated from my own work.  More than ever, I have a high degree of control over the products of my labor. While I see the potential harm of these evolving conditions, I mostly see them in the bizarrely onanistic tweets/status updates of others.  I, naturally, am able to rise above the unreality of mediated life — so much so that I’m thinking about purchasing an island timeshare in Second Life to serve as respite for my World of Warcraft guild.  This, of course, would be done as an act of serious-parodic détournement (not to be confused with shallow irony), and thus would not be lame.

Détournement…

So, what is détournement?  A quick but insufficient answer might be found reference to hip hop, web mashups, Marcel Duchamp, or Adbusters. “In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original” (Wikipedia).  A common example (though I’m not sure it was ever actually produced) would be to take the footage of The Birth of a Nation, and replace the text panels of that technical masterpiece with new music or text which would change (or détourne) the original meaning, from an egregiously racist historical lie, to something that crafts from the film’s intellectual content and technical strength an effective (and modern/correct/relevant) moral-political statement.  As Debord & Wolman point out (1956), if such a project merely attempts to negate the meaning through irony, counter-argument or comedic juxtaposition, it misses the opportunity and the point.  The best example I’ve seen, which serves as a better instruction than I can write, is René Viénet’s Can Dialectics Break Bricks?.

Film: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?: René Viénet, 1973: via U B U W E B

I’m not a great fan of the Debord films, though they do nicely illustrate, literally, the idea of the spectacular as it permeates our collective media life.  As with social networks, academia and high culture, the images Debord détournes in Society of the Spectacle are, individually and collectively, simultaneously useful, beautiful, and inspiring, as well as banal, authoritarian and vacuous. Like all cultural products, their meanings are contextual and constructed and can serve many masters at once.  The same is true of new media products, services, and cultural tendencies.

Film: Society of the Spectacle, parts 1 & 2: Guy Debord, 1973: via U B U W E B

Although new media culture has some very deep differences from traditional media culture working in its favor (openness, decentralization, interactivity), it’s yet to be seen how that will change over time.  Likewise, will the ubiquity of web-mediated social interaction continue on its current trajectory (whatever that might be is actually unclear), or will it evolve into new and unexpected forms?  I’ve got this idea that the (social) web is the perfect vehicle for détournement, though I’m less convinced it’s a worthy venue for cultural resistance.  Any thoughts?

Let me clarify a few understandable journalistic mistakes here, since I frequent the liberal terror underground (also known as Ikea).

1.  “Sources indicate that graffiti left under a downtown bridge was put there by G-20 protestors… [video shows graffiti reading "We the People..."]“

That was me.  It actually said “G-20 is a total dick, dude” before we changed our minds and went with an obscure quote from noted Anti-American radical, the US Constitutional Convention.

2.   “A fire at a local park was reportedly started by protestors staying in a tent… [video shows extinguished campfire hole]“

I’m not sure how they figured it out, since I left no apparent evidence, but that was also me.  Camping is one of the most extreme of all seditious acts, and provides a great ambience for toasting vegan s’mores and planning future acts of librul terror.

3.  “A young man, who did not want to be identified, says he’s been told protestors are renting South Side homes…. [video shows a conspicuously disguised hippy-surfer type listlessly exclaiming 'people are gonna die.']”

That was actually me, incognito of course, dressed as “a total duder from Portland.”  I will just say it now, I am an agent provocateur for the Securities and Exchange Commision.  The disguise was chosen by my case agent, who has been watching a lot of John From Cincinnati.

4.  “Sources indicate protestor advance teams have been spotted by police taking video and photographs of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Omni William Penn Hotel, City Hall, County Courthouse, Fort Pitt and Liberty Tunnels… [video shows rapid fire montage of these and other buildings]“

After some extensive investigation, it appears this one was just Japanese tourists.

5.  “Sources indicate highly-organized protestor advance teams are mapping out possible attack points…”

The sources actually differ here, which was not disclosed by the crack team of KDKA investigative journalists.  While some observers report that the Anarchist Black Cross was behind this nefarious “mapping,” key detainees have claimed innocence, insisting they are geocaching enthusiasts caught up in the haze of espionage.  Others still insist that it was actually a roving band of GIS hacks building a geolocation iPod app for the PA Board of Tourism.

6.  The part about “stockpiling human waste.”

That’s totally true, but unrelated.

In all seriousness, our media continues to plumb the depths in pursuit of the ever-growing simpleton demographic.  My special lady fired off a nice letter to KDKA that sums it up nicely. If you are so inclined, you might do the same.

Dear Marty Griffin,

A friend of mine sent me link to your report about protesters at the G20 summit.  I must say that you made your channel and it’s staff look foolish and anti-American.  The tone of the entire piece treated protesters like terrorists.  Peaceful protest is LEGAL and it is a truly American act.  I am very curious as to how rigorous the source and fact checking was on your “feces throwing” accusations.  The graffiti you showed was a quote from the preamble of our constitution yet you treated it as if it came from some terrorist manifesto.  You gave no evidence that what was obviously the remains of a basic camp fire came from radical, pyromaniac agitators.  I am sick and tired of the scare tactics used by so many local news channels both in my hometown of Cleveland and in Pittsburgh.  You show little respect for your audience and appear to take for granted the freedom of speech that keeps you and other more serious journalists in business.

Yes, that’s true.  I even got a Master’s Degree.  Now, I like history and other humanities for lots of reasons, not just because they’re sometimes kind of metal, but I figured that with my first post on this site I’d return to my roots and original reasons for liking history.

Strangely enough, this post will sort of fit in thematically with some of my others that are in the works in that one of my goals for this site is to highlight artists that I find interesting, under appreciated or just plain awesome.  So, get ready for some awesome medieval and Renaissance artworks.

Also, just to be clear, by metal I mean like fucking metal man.  Like with guitars and stuff.  Got me?

Gustave Dore

Gustave Dore is really metal (he’s also from the 19th century, so, not medieval at all really.  still super metal though).  I can appreciate the intricacies of Gustave Dore‘s etchings on a purely artistic level.  However, I can appreciate them much more on a purely metal level.  I’d say his interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is my favorite.  For instance, Dore’s depiction for Canto XXVII shows the “Sowers of Dischord”, poor damned souls that they are, ripping themselves apart as their innards spew out.

Even his work on the Bible is pretty metal.  This really brings the up the question, unanswered by many except for maybe Zao, as to why is it that the Bible and Christian imagery in general is so metal?

I guess my first answer would be that both share a strange preoccupation with the Devil.  In fact, looking at Dore’s work on the Divine Comedy its interesting to note that the majority of his etchings deal with the Inferno, as opposed to Purgatory or Paradise.  I think this has much to do with the fact that hell, being what it is, would be the easiest to represent visually.  Theologically speaking (if I were a medieval Catholic, or I guess the 19th century Dore too), evil/hell/satan could all be represented visually because evil/hell/satan were all tied to a notion of physicality, just like the human body (which was also treated with mistrust).  The mind or spirit (like Paradise or God), on the other hand, were more ephemeral and, specifically, they were decidedly non-physical.  This is all due to some big theological debates that led to a body/spirit = evil/good stance by the Catholic church.  In any event, this theology would make it easier to picture or create an image of a monstrous horned demon than something of the “divine realm”.  Before I get on some crazy tangent about dualism (boy could tell you some tales about the Cathar heresy) or even iconography, lets see what all this has to do with metal.

First off, I honestly have no real idea, but lets just muse for a second.  I guess I’d say that metal, being really serious rock music, is concerned, as all great rock n roll is, with the human body and all of its more natural yet frowned upon needs and wants.  By this I guess I mean drugs, sex, moving around a lot in an aggressive yet not necessarily coordinated manner, and loud noise.  Given this, metal’s choice of Christian imagery is actually a pretty appropriate way, in my opinion, to enter such a debate.  If satan=body, that makes him a pretty obvious rock n roll choice.  I mean, why attack the 70s, 80s or 90s establishment when you can attack the historical root- the ancient and medieval church.  I mean, they’re the one’s that started all this anti-body, anti-sex, anti-cheap fun riff raff to begin with right?

As a side note, isn’t it kind of weird that a society would set itself up where its easy to visualize pure evil, but pure good is, by definition, not visually accessible?  Just sayin’.

Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch (yes, I had to copy and paste his name) is probably the most metal of all medieval artists.  Yes, he is in fact from the medieval period, albeit kind of late.  Again, I’ll just flat out admit that I have no idea what his paintings are supposed to mean exactly.  You would really think he was on drugs, although I’m guessing that he actually wasn’t, being the good Catholic that he was.  But man, there’s all sorts of flying fishes, flowers coming out of people’s asses, a demon that’s literally shitting people into a hole.  Its very intense and very metal.

Bruegel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, similar to Bosch in many ways, should also be mentioned here, although many of his most metal works are both very similar and of lesser quality than Bosch’s.  The Triumph of Death is an exception to the last statement.  I will also say that his depiction of the Tower of Babel (a copy hangs in my study) is quite epic, which is another aspect of metal.  Epicness (?) is really important to metal, as it was to people during the medieval period.  It’s important to lots of people though, but it seems to me the further back in time you go, the more epic the stories are.  Maybe that’s another reason for the Christian imagery.  I mean, depending on who you talk to, the Bible is and is not many things.  I would say, however, that few could deny that the Bible is quite epic.

Caravaggio

Caravaggio was also pretty metal, although he’s more Renaissance than medieval.  Also, a lot of his paintings aren’t that metal, to tell you the truth.  I’ll give him credit for the Medusa head (Greek mythology is also kind of metal), as well as the possibility that he murdered someone.  I don’t know, I’m not in love with the guy, but I’d feel bad leaving him off the list.

The Black Death

One of the most metal topics in medieval art was the Black Death, Bubonic Plague, the Plague (all great metal band names btw).  Its just a metal topic, I don’t know.  It’s so metal its even kind of hard to explain.  Hope you’ll enjoy a few examples.

The Point?

Obviously, there’s really no point to this article, I just thought it would be fun.  If anything, I hope to turn people on to some great artists, especially Dore, Bosch and Bruegel because while each is totally famous, sometimes I think that they don’t get enough exposure, especially to certain audiences.  Also, its an interesting historiographical framework.  I mean, we (historians) have imposed plenty of other subjectively constructed frameworks on the past (nation state, progress narrative, anything really- just read Hayden White, you’ll see what I mean), why not do something more fun.  If not metal, how about Radical History as in like surfer radical, not politically radical.  Think about it, it could be kind of postmodern or at the very least historical events would be connected only in the most nontraditional fashion.  For example:

1965- Snowboards are invented- way radical.

1993- Bill Clinton, who loved weed and saxophones became president- totally radical.

1994- My friend Doug ate 6 burritos in one sitting- most radical.

See what I mean?

I must also admit that this article had absolutely nothing to do with Digital anything, and for that I’m sorry.  I have no problem if anyone wants to make a mash-up of Gustave Dore’s artwork to metal music.  Maybe his interpretation of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner with Iron Maiden’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner?   Just a thought.

Next time: I much more serious article on d.a.levy and new media.

Related Reading: Wikipedia: Dualism (sorry for all the wikipedia links by the way, i promise better research next time)

As the dialogue on the emergent (yet increasingly passe?) edupunk movement has begun to penetrate the mainstream press, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the term might mean to my present occupation, and also about what punk rock has meant to me historically (both in terms of my personal history and also my views on History with a capital H). I’ll spare you the many cliched “life experiences” I’ve enjoyed as a result of my involvement in punk culture, and focus here on how it has impacted my views on art, literature, politics, society, technology and education (i.e. the (digital) humanities).

My friend Joe, a newspaper editor, once said something to the effect of “It’s kind of crazy how all the punks end up doing such interesting and serious work outside of punk when they ‘grow up.’” Okay, he probably said something a lot better and more impactful than that because I remember the gist of it years later. For some reason this brief conversation has stuck with me. As I moved through undergrad and grad school and into the professional world, I have consistently noticed the phenomenon in action. The best students, the best teachers, the best writers, and the best researchers all seem to have this common background. I have seen it and confirmed it in many of my (more interesting) colleagues and it shows in the work of many others whom I’ve never met. It’s a certain flair for innovation, improvisation, and investigation; a proclivity for self-education and DIY solutions; a disdain for convention and privilege; and an eye for finding humor and absurdity in unexpected places.

3 Chords is All You Need (… at Least to Start)

Yep. The Ramones first album proved among other things that you only need to know three guitar chords to make great music. But like many other punk bands, the music matured over time, becoming more complex as the artists began to hone their skills and increase their repertoire. Sometimes the music got better, sometimes it got worse as a result. Even though I never was able to master even the requisite three chords to start my own band, the “anyone can do this” attitude that punk embodied has carried over into everything I do. Most everything one might pursue has those metaphorical three chords — the trick, as with the guitar, is figuring out what they are.

In digital humanities, those three chords might be HTML, CSS, and PHP. (Maybe others have a different idea. I’m focusing here on the digital part because the humanities part – the content – is understood. Afterall, if you don’t have something to say, you shouldn’t be starting a “band.”) The degree to which you need these “chords” will vary depending on what you are trying to accomplish, as well as on the tools you use and the people you work with. But generally speaking, these three will set you up to start web publishing, and also give you a solid base for understanding other more complex programming languages and projects.

So you find the chords, you master them. Then on to the next challenge… and the next. Before you know it, you’ll be soloing on your hand-built keytar as your self-produced album rockets to the top of the prog rock charts. Or not. Maybe you’ll just keep pounding away at those same chords and finding new ways to use them. But the point is that it’s alright to start small (and/or stay small).

DIY or Die!

It’s not just that you can do it yourself but that you should. To me, there is no such thing as a major label punk rock band (at least not after about 1980). Being punk has always been about doing it yourself – sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by preference, and occasionally as an anti-capitalist or anti-authoritarian gesture. If you do it yourself, you are free to do it however you want.

Thus far, a lot of the digital humanities projects I’ve seen are tied to institutional funding and labor, proprietary content and technology, and bound by copyright and contractual obligations. It’s not that these projects are bad. Many are great. And they often benefit especially from connections gained through these affiliations. They also employ people, which is good. It’s just that they can also become organizationally bloated, unwieldy, and tenuous as a result. This doesn’t mean you have to run your semantic search think tank from your mom’s garage (though, hell, why not?), it just means keeping hierarchies in check and making sure you don’t lose control of your project, or lose sight of your goals. It also means learning as you go; tinkering, experimenting, and failing are all important.

No Rights Reserved

DIY is not about individualism, it can also be about leaning on (and contributing to) like-minded communities. Open source technologies and Creative Commons licenses are totally punk rock. Open platforms (like WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, etc.) and software packages (Gimp, OpenOffice, FireFox) share their code, encourage non-proprietary standards, and are often developed and maintained by a community of users/contributors. If you want to use them, you can do so for free. If you want to study them, make them better or bend them to your own needs, you can usually do that too. Most open source projects operate under some kind of Creative Commons license.

But open content is also important. Humanities research requires the use of all kinds of content. Running up against unnecessary copyright restrictions can be not only frustrating but can actually bring projects to a halt – especially digital archival projects operating under the aegis of larger institutions; institutions that are understandably (though sometimes paranoically) wary of litigation. There are two (or maybe three) significant archival repositories in my neighborhood. One opens its content to all comers because they have defined themselves as an institution committed to education and community. They allow hands-on access, digitization, and non-profit use of nearly everything in their collections. At the other end of the spectrum is the more hallowed institution. They believe that their collections are sacrosanct and that their artifacts exist to be preserved. They do not make anything available online and they forbid reproduction of any type (unless you pay a ridiculous fee) for fear that everyone is out to steal their content. They really believe that if they increase access, they will lose their standing. Direct quote: “These items are all we have! We can’t just let people download them! Then how will we make money or get funding?” As if they are bringing in a lot of money in their current state: offline, behind lock and key, and crippled by the analog DRM called fear of obsolecense. The people who will pay (i.e. commercial projects like documentaries), will pay anyway. If they can find your content. Overprotection creates a situation where the “wondrous” artifacts they preserve may as well have burned in Alexandria. It’s pretty annoying to know that the perfect set of historic image sits just across town, waiting to help you complete your groundbreaking, non-profit, community-based public history project, but it will cost you $1000 (or the equivalent in months of grovelling) to use it.

So why add to this problem with your own unnecessary copyright barriers? Open it up, and let people benefit from and build on your work. They’ll do it anyway, so what do you have to lose? (see also Stuart Geiger’s post on the topic). The point of your work is to make an impact (on communities, people, scholarship, your reputation, etc.). While nothing is more punk rock than throwing the ole’ “No Rights Reserved” on your blood, sweat and tears creation, CreativeCommons allows you to choose the degree of openness that suits your project, so no pressure… you poser.

Death to Posers and EduJocks

Punks hate nothing more than posers and jocks (and maybe Ronald Reagan). They are antithetical to all the punk believes in. Posers are an affront to the punk rocker’s unending need to measure and display authenticity. In edupunk and in the digital humanities (interesting how these seem to be tied together), there are also what might be called posers. We will call them EduJocks (I sure hope you heard it here first, but I doubt it). EduJocks adopt the outward persona of the digital humanist/edupunk, but lack the internalized commitment and understanding of the bigger picture. If you hear someone saying, “Well, BlackBoard is good for some things…” or “Too bad there’s no alternative to Microsoft Office/ContentDM/Adobe…”, cut them off and walk away immediately. You are in the presence of an EduJock. This could be like a Jeff Foxworthy bit. You know you’re an EduJock if… [ahem - this is what blog comments are for].

That’s it for Part 1. I’m getting tired of this right now, but I have plenty more to say. Stay tuned for Part 2, wherein I will blow your mind with another ludicrous application of the time-honored punk rock tradition of making everything you like be about punk rock.

Yes, this post ends abruptly. That’s because it’s punk rock. I’m exploring the form.

Here are some teaser topics for the next installation:

Framing: The Decline of Western Civilization

Liner Notes: The Original People’s University or Citation City

Lies My Teacher Professor Told Me

Judging an Album by it’s Cover (and/or the Record Label) or Style is Substance (the Medium is the Message)

Nihilism as a Valid Academic Perspective

Technology of Resistance?