En kortfilm der blev lavet på Aabenraa Statsskole maj 2012, 3uMe, som en eksamensproduktion og kandidat til Vertigo Filmfestival. Blev dog ikke nomineret. ( http://vertigo.statsskole.dk/ ).
Filmen handler om den følelse af at være overrumplet af pres fra flere forskellige sider – de forventninger samfundet pålægger én. Et aktuelt emne, som gruppen har kunnet relatere til under hele produktions-processen.

Filmet, instrueret og redigeret af Kathrine Marie Graversen, Ashraf Rachid, Jakob Hansen og Frederik Højfeldt Nielsen.

Cast: Nicolai Risbjerg Møller-Nielsen, http://www.dask-online.dk/

www.statsskole.dk

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr0CR3Va8xE

Jeg har netop sendt nedenstående klage til DSB Kundeservice (efter med megen møje og besvær at have opstøvet en email-adresse til DSB) :

Til DSB Kundeservice,

Jeg ønsker hermed at indgive en klage over den rejse vi foretog med DSB 29/3 fra Odense til Berlin.

Jeg og min familie, ialt 2 voksne og 2 børn på hhv. 4 og 1 år havde 29/3 en mildest talt uheldig og skrækkelig oplevelse, da vi tog med InterCityExpress-toget fra Fredericia med retning mod Berlin – en rejse vi havde bestilt god tid i forvejen, fordi vi gerne ville give vores børn en god rejseoplevelse med toget – og ikke skulle skifte tog eller tilbringe lange ventetider i en lufthavn på vores rejse.

Det første der sker er at togføreren påtaler, at vi har en barnevogn og en klapvogn med toget – hvilket forlængst er blevet arrangeret med DSB da vi købte rejsen, hvorfor vi havde pladsbillet til barnevognen på strækningen Odense-Fredericia t/r. I toget til Berlin var det ikke muligt at bestille plads, men vi fik at vide, at vi gerne måtte medtage dem. Begge kan klappes fuldstændigt sammen, hvilket vi var igang med at foretage, da togføreren påtaler medbringelsen. Men idet medbringelsen af barnevognen er en klar forudsætning for at vi valgte at tage toget, forekommer det besynderligt, at dette skal påtales idet vi stiger ind i toget.

Vi kommer imidlertid efter dette godt afsted fra Fredericia, men efter kort tid tager rejsen en uventet drejning.

I nærheden af Vamdrup får vi at vide, at toget må holde stille og ikke kan køre videre, fordi der længere syd på strækningen har været en påkørsel – formodentlig af en person, men de nærmere omstændigheder kendes ikke.
Vi får at vide, at vi sandsynligvis skal videre med bus – selvom vi (vi og de passagerer vi talte med i nærheden) alle foretrak at afvente en normaldrift i toget, så vi fortsat (med nogen forsinkelse) kunne få den rejse til Berlin uden skift, som vi har bestilt og betalt, og for at undgå med besvær med at skulle have bagage og barnevogn m.v. ud og ind af tog og busser, bl.a. af hensyn til vores børns rejseoplevelse.

Det kan imidlertid ikke lade sig gøre at skaffe busser, tilsyneladende – hvorfor toget holder stille i adskillige timer – inden der så kommer noget information om, at politiet nu har afspærret strækningen og afsøger denne med hunde, hvorfor vi alligevel skal med nogle busser videre. Vi får endvidere oplyst, at der slet ikke længere er nogen lokofører på toget – denne har angiveligt forladt toget, fordi han/hun er blevet sat til at køre et andet tog.

Vi tager indtil videre situationen med ro og oprejst pande, pakker roligt sammen og får børn og barnevogn m.v. ud af toget for at stige ind i de busser, der skulle kommer.
Der ankommer nogle busser, som fyldes til bristepunktet med passagerer fra toget, og som skal køre os til Vojens – hvilket tager vel mindst en halv times tid, hvis ikke længere. Vores børn er allerede nu temmelig trætte – den ældste falder i søvn på sit sæde kort inden bussen kommer til Vojens, hvor hun må vækkes, da vi skal af, angiveligt fordi vi herfra skal videre med et tog sydpå. Angiveligt, fordi det er så sparsomt med information, og fordi der ingen DSB-medarbejder er med de busser vi transporteres med.

Den næste oplevelse tager for alvor kegler, da vi får forlydender om, at togdriften nu er “normaliseret” hvilket vi ved selvsyn kan konstatere, da der holder et IC3-tog, der – netop idet vi myldrer ind på perronen – kører i sydgående retning, tilsyneladende uden efterretninger om, at dette tog muligvis (vi ved det ikke) skuile have haft passagerer med fra InterCity Express toget. Under alle omstændigheder uhyre frustrerende at stå i Vojens på det tidspunkt, hvor vi ellers ville have været i Berlin, under andre omstændigheder. Ventetiden på perronen i Vojens er kold for os alle – men der kommer ikke noget tog der skal køre os sydpå. Damen i kiosken overrendes af mennesker, der vil vide noget, men hun kan blot henvise til 70 13 14 15, som jeg og flere andre forsøger at ringe til. Efter temmelig megen vente-musik og efter at have trykket sig igennem adskillige “brugervenlige” telefonmenuer, og efter at have talt med to medarbejdere fra DSB, hvoraf den ene ikke vidste noget, andet end at togdriften nu var “normaliseret” (hvad det så skulle hjælpe?), og en anden, som ikke kunne hjælpe, men derimod kunne fortælle at han ikke kunne stille os videre til de der kunne hjælpe os, fordi de var netop i dette øjeblik (sådan fremgik det af samtalen) var ved at blive fyret…! – Der står vel omkring et par hundrede mennesker på Vojens station og fryser, fordi de er blevet dumpet der af nogle busser som DSB har bestilt, og netop i det øjeblik vælger DSB at fyre udlandsdivisionen…

Jeg afslutter samtalen med DSB – flere andre har haft bedre held end jeg, og det forlyder at der nu igen vil komme nogle busser, som denne gang skal køre os til Flensburg, hvorfra vi da vil kunne tage et tog videre til Hamburg og herfra til Berlin.
Busturen til Flensburg forløber omtrent som turen fra Vamdrup til Vojens – dog er den længere, og idet bussen er en turistbus og ikke en rutebil, må barnevogn m.v. skilles helt ad og pakkes ned i bussens bagagerum – sammen med de mange andre barnevogne m.v. der skal med. Undervejs er der forlydender om, at der måske slet ikke var nogen personpåkørsel – men en påkørsel af en fugl – og at dette skulle være årsagen til, at politiet afspærrede strækningen og ikke kunne finde den påkørte person.

Modtagelsen af DB i Flensburg er eksemplarisk – der er en DB medarbejder der afventer de danske passagerer fra bussen og sørger for at bringe os alle helt hen til den rigtige perron og elevator. Man tænker uvægerligt – tænk, hvilken forskel det ville have gjort, om der havde været en DSB medarbejder med busser m.v. der på lignende vis havde kunnet guide og give ordentlig information. Men det skal senere vise sig, at DB ikke har noget at lade DSB høre, når alt kommer til alt.

Allerede i Hamburg – hvor der ingen information er udover den man selv kan opsøge i en informationsskranke – lykkes det at blive yderligere forsinket for os og de øvrige familier med barnevogne og små børn, der nu er blevet til en gruppe der følges ad. Det sker idet toget der afgår fra Hamburg mod Berlin nægter at tage os med, hvorfor vi må se på at toget ruller afsted foran snuden på os – og nu må vente yderligere på den næste forbindelse til Berlin, hvilket betyder at vi først er i Berlin omkring kl 21 onsdag aften.

Nu skulle man måske tro, at man ikke kan opleve flere uheldige oplevelser på sådan en togrejse. Men det er ikke tilfældet.

Da vi skal afrejse en lille uge senere fra Berlin med kurs mod Danmark viser det sig – informationerne kommer først, idet toget kommer ind til Berlin Hbhf. – at adskillige vogne, herunder de vogne, hvori vi havde bestilt plads, ganske enkelt ikke er tilkoblet toget, fordi de er “kaput”. Disse vil først blive tilkoblet i Hamburg, viser det sig. Igen er informationerne yderst mangelfulde. Resultatet er et tumultagtigt kaos på perronen og i de vogne der er på toget – 100 mennesker der forsøger at klemme sig ind i de samme togvogne, fordi de vogne de ellers skulle befinde sig i, ikke findes på toget. Vi rejser vel at mærke stadig med to små børn, og må tilbringe rejsen fra Berlin til Hamburg dels stående og siddende i en mellemgang i toget, og må finde os i at blive forulempet af andre passagerer, der nægter at trække længere ind i togvognen, hvilket forhindrer os og andre passager i at komme videre ind i toget. Ikke en undskyldning eller nogen form for kompensation eller plaster på såret gives der af DB i den forbindelse. Vi føler os faktisk godt gammeldags røvrendt. Det er efter mine begreber helt utænkeligt at DB ikke har haft informationer om de manglende vogne, som kunne have nået os på et langt tidligere tidspunkt. Vi har trods alt ventet på hovedbanegården i adskillige timer på vores tog, og en lille smule information på tavler eller fra en medarbejder ville have gjort underværker, for ikke at tale om, at det kunne have fået en langt højere prioritering at skaffe de nødvendige vogne.

Rejsen videre fra Hamburg til Fredericia forløber nogenlunde planmæssigt, bortset fra at toget her forsinkes så meget, at det ikke kan lade sig gøre for os at opnå forbindelse med det tog videre til Odense, som vi har pladsbilletter til. En mindre detalje – men måske virker det ikke specielt fremsynet at give os et “vindue” på så få minutter i Fredericia til at skifte tog, at der skal kun en mindre forsinkelse til, tilsyneladende, for at forbindelsen ikke kan opnås.

Jeg er desværre nødt til at sige, at vi efter denne rejseoplevelse vægrer os ved at vælge toget som rejseform næste gang vi skal ud at rejse med vores børn. Ikke pga. de opståede forsinkelser, men pga. den kluntede håndtering af situationerne – på både dansk og tysk side – af de uventede situationer, som skaber unødig usikkerhed, ekstra ventetid og stress.

Vi klager ikke over forsinkelsen af vores udrejse – vores rejse blev på lidt over 12 timer mod de forventede ca. 5 timer. Vi klager ikke over den uventede, opståede situation som vi var så uheldige at blive fanget i, som følge af en mulig personpåkørsel, hvilket i bekræftende fald er en dybt ubehagelig og sørgelig hændelse for alle involverede.

Vi klager over det, som vi har oplevet som en kluntet og usikker håndtering af situationen af DSB (og til dels DB), fravær af personale og service og af ordentlig information – og slet ingen som helst hensyntagen til at man som familie rejser med små børn, eller kompensation for, at man under ingen omstændigheder får et produkt der ligner det man har købt (en rejse uden skift og fravær af alt det besvær det indebærer). Vi klager også over, at forsinkelsen blev unødigt lang, pga den kluntede håndtering og dårlige information eller fravær af information og koordinering internt i DSB. Allerede da de første busser havde kørt os til Vojens fik vi via 70 13 14 15 at vide, at togdriften var “normaliseret” – og kunne til vores store frustration se tog køre sydpå – uden selv at kunne få lov til at køre med det tog vi havde købt billet til. DSB kunne have valgt at holde toget (og lokoføreren!) på strækningen og lade det køre videre til Berlin med den forsinkelse der nu engang var opstået – og på den måde undgå den umådeligt anstrengende – for os og vores børn, og for de øvrige rejsende, herunder mange andre familier med små børn – videre forsinkelse af vores rejse, herunder efterfølgende mange skift.

Vi klager også over, at vi på vores hjemrejse ej heller har fået det produkt vi har betalt for, denne gang uden nogen påviselig karakter af “force majeure”, som den formodede påkørsel på vores udrejse efter alt at dømme kan kategoriseres som.

Venlige hilsener,
Morten Blaabjerg

Vedhæftet indscannet kopi af vores togbilletter samt faktura fra DSB.

Denne henvendelse er samtidig med indsendelsen til DSB publiceret online på undertegnedes blog samt på TrustPilot.

PS. Vedr. den anvendte email-adresse : Jeg ønsker ikke at benytte diverse tilbudte online-formularer til at kontakte DSB, da det fratager mig muligheden for at beholde en kopi af min email. Jeg finder det ærligt talt ikke en rimelig brugeroplevelse af organisationens webside, at man skal have oplevelsen af at blive trukket rundt ved næsen, fordi man vil sende organisationen en email. Jeg vil opfordre jer til at finde en simpel og brugervenlig måde at anvende email i organisationen på, dvs. ganske enkelt publicere de relevante email-adresser, hvor det er muligt at finde dem. Hvis alle andre kan, hvorfor skulle DSB så ikke også kunne?

Jeg synes det er en kedelig sag, og specielt en kedelig sag at skulle bruge sin tid på.

Men jeg mener helt alvorligt, at det er en borgerpligt at oplyse om en så dårlig oplevelse som den vi har haft her, for at vise DSB (og andre virksomheder/organisationer) at de må stå til ansvar for deres dårlige kommunikation og kundehåndtering, og for på den måde – håber jeg – at fremprovokere en dialog. Alene det at DSB søger at undgå at publicere noget så simpelt som en emailadresse på deres hjemmeside signalerer for mig, at de ser deres organisation som en silo, der er løsrevet fra resten af samfundet og fra almindelig kontakt med deres kunder, på ligeværdige vilkår. DSB vil styre hvordan kontakten og kommunikationen skal finde sted. Men det er ikke en respektfuld måde at gå i dialog med nogen på, at stikke dem et online-skema og kalde det for en email. Det er på tide, at DSB rykker ud af siloen.

Det er ikke så meget forsinkelsen og det at blive udsat for en så tragisk hændelse, som det altid er, når nogen vælger at kaste sig ud foran et tog (hvis det da var det der skete) – men hele den måde organisationen fraskriver sig ansvar, i sin ageren og kommunikation, i selve toget, telefonisk og via nettet, i telefonmenuer, ventemusik, i besparelserne på personale osv. der fører til sådan nogle absurde situationer for virksomhedens kunder. Situationer man som kunde bringes i fordi virksomheden lider under nogle kort sagt forkerte forestillinger om hvordan den skal drive virksomhed. Forkerte, fordi de så åbenlyst skaber dårlige oplevelser for deres kunder og dårlig omtale – og vel derfor er kontraproduktive i fht. virksomhedens mål og mission?

Og det talt som en, der er daglig kunde hos DSB, og normalt er glad for det – som pendler på (en del af) den selvsamme strækning vi havde denne meget dårlige oplevelse med.

Via Ildhavet

classical gas violin version played by the princess of violin Vanessa Mae

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLcNBd0HPhQ

By special request, here’s Mason reprising his hit single on the Smothers Brothers reunion special. Ripped from a beat-up old VHS tape so the quality isn’t too good.

/

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9nl3T31wI

Let’s start off by saying that SOPA should never ever be passed. However, there’s an interesting parallel between the reasons cited by the entertainment industry when they push forward anti-piracy legislation and problems faced by file-sharing companies.

Enter the multi-million dollar business of P2P-scammers.

For more than a decade all sorts of shady companies have been ripping off novice file-sharers by tricking them into downloading scam products. Their sites appear to offer downloads for software such as uTorrent, Vuze, LimeWire and FrostWire, but the free clients come with a twist.

In some cases people have to pay for the download ‘service’ while others simply install a malware-infested program on users’ computers. There are even scam outfits that do both.

Talking to TorrentFreak, FrostWire‘s Angel Leon explains that because of these scams they get loads of refund requests every day, hurting the company’s reputation. The scammers on the other hand make huge profits.

“The big harm done here is to our trademark,” Leon says.

“They blatantly use our logo and our name, they’ve also managed to game Google big time with a shitload of content farm websites to the point that they’re placed 2nd in Google’s search results, so they must be making a killer.”

The pictures on the right are just a few examples of the thousands of scam sites on the Internet. All of them rip-off novice consumers by letting them download rogue versions of FrostWire.

“The damages we feel are basically our users being victims of these people and threatening us for something we haven’t done,” Leon told us.

“Then there’s all the work we do to promote our brand as the way to use P2P for legal purposes gone to hell, because of the way the scammers encourage copyright infringement,” he adds.

Unfortunately, there is not much file-sharing companies can do about these scams. FrostWire actually went as far as hiring a company that’s specialized in sending takedown requests, but without results. And even if one scam domain is shut down, another will replace it the day after.

Scammers know how to route around censorship.

According to Leon, Google isn’t very helpful either. While the legit version of FrostWire is not allowed to advertise on Google’s Adwords, the scammers are slipping through by the dozens.

“It’s very interesting to notice that somehow they manage to go past the Google AdWords guidelines and they spend a lot of money on advertising everyday on the “frostwire” related keywords,” Leon told TorrentFreak.

“On the other hand, if we try to advertise FrostWire as a file sending application, we get a boot from Google saying that we are P2P software.”

FrostWire and other file-sharing companies hope that enough people ask for a refund from the credit card companies so the scammers have a hard time accepting money. Other than that there’s not much they can do. Or is there?

Reading the above shows that the problems FrostWire and others face are similar to those described in the pro-SOPA talking points of the entertainment industries.

There is one major difference though. Unlike Hollywood, file-sharing companies such as FrostWire fully realize that such a broad censorship law would do more harm than good. Also, P2P scammers actually cause millions of dollars in damages to the public.

Source: How SOPA Could Actually Benefit File-Sharers

En betydelig del af disse udgifter skyldes udelukkede, at VKOs lovgivning kræver, at kontanthjælpsmodtagere skal straffes for udeblivelse fra aftaler. Dette er for smed at rette bager, fordi den største økonomiske straf rammer de uskyldige kommuner, som ikke må hjælpe borgerne med at få huslejen betalt.

Københavns kommune har opgjort, at udsættelser af borgere fra deres boliger ved fogedens mellemkomst koster 210.000 kr. pr sag i gennemsnit. Med 4405 sager i hele landet i 2011 bliver det en meningsløs udgift på 925 millioner kr.

Udlejerne, hvoraf 70 % er almene boligafdelinger, hvor tabet fordeles på de øvrige beboere, og 30 % er private udlejere, påføres tab omkring 115.000 kr. jfr. kommunens tal hovedsagelig fra KAB. I alle tilfælde rammes fuldstændig sagesløse og forsvarsløse mennesker af tabene, som samlet er omkring ½ milliard kr.

Årsager og delløsninger:
1
Kontanthjælpsloftet og fattigdomsydelserne har hidtil gjort det svært for mange at betale de simpleste regninger. Dette er en af årsagerne til fogedudsættelser, som SRSF + EL har fået sat en stopper for.

2
Straffesanktioner for udeblivelse
Det er lovfæstet at kommunerne skal straffe alle kontanthjælpsmodtagere, som ikke møder til kommunens befalede tider, ved at stoppe ydelserne indtil klienterne møder op. Det betyder med stor sandsynlighed, at de hverken har til mad og drikke eller til huslejen.
Her går det virkelig galt, for en ting er, at Folketinget har villet straffe de, der udebliver; men man straffer også de sociale myndigheder, såvel arbejdsmæssigt som økonomisk, foruden at man straffer udlejerne.
Det må være fuldt rigeligt at tage penge til mad og drikke fra folk.

3
Løsningsforslag
En rimelig løsning vil være, at sikre den største del af klientellet, på offentlig forsørgelse, ved at indgå aftale mellem ydelsesmodtager og kommune om, at huslejen betales direkte af kommunen, uden at straffe-sanktionerne rammer huslejen, til gengæld skal en sådan aftale være uopsigelig, ind til klienten enten flytter eller får egen indtægt, så de offentlige ydelser bortfalder.
Det vil være en udstrakt service over for ”de faste kunder”. Da servicen kan automatiseres vil det ikke koste kommunerne noget i det daglige, og kommunerne vil efterhånden som alle kommer med, kunne spare udsættelses-omkostningerne, op mod 1 milliard kr.

4
Betalingsdato, frem og tilbage
Muligheden, for at tømme og overtrække bankkontoen før huslejen skal betales, blev for kort tid siden forøget af VKO ved at skubbe betalingsfristen, hvorefter der rejste sig et krav om at rykke betalingsfristen til første bankdag i måneden.
Dette vil nok reducere mængden af tilfældige overtræk og restancer. Man kan derfor håbe og forvente at mængden af restancesager falder.

Derimod hjælper dato-stramningen ikke, de der har alvorlig uorden i økonomien, og måske aldrig læser rudekuverter og i øvrigt har rod i dagligdagen. De vil stadig have mellem 24 og 72 timer fra løn og ydelser går ind på kontoen til huslejen skal betales, og det kræver kun få minutter at tømme en bankkonto.
De svageste, der er de faste kunder i socialforvaltningerne og ved fogedudsættelserne bliver ikke hjulpet.
Der er kun en løsning og det at kommunerne får ret og pligt til at tilbyde aftaler jfr. punkt 3.

5

Uopsigelig sikkerhed
De, der opfatter en uopsigelig aftale som et problem, bør erindre, at en lejekontrakt på en bolig også principielt er uopsigelig fra udlejers side. Ved en lejekontrakt er der begrænsede muligheder for at bryde kontrakten, og ovenfor er ligeledes defineret en afgrænsning, således at aftalen afbrydes ved flytning eller fast arbejde.

Huslejen skal principielt betales uanset om lejer har lyst eller ej, og da klienterne (lejerne) ikke bør bruge pengene fra de indsættes den sidste bankdag i måneden til de skal betales den første bankdag i den følgende måned, så er den foreslåede betalingsaftale hverken et overgreb eller noget reelt tab, kun en gratis service, med henblik på at spare kommuner og udlejere for store uforudsigelige udgifter, og i øvrigt hjælpe de pågældende med at beholde tag over hovedet. Det er ikke det mindst vigtige.

6
Gældsrådgivning
Ovenstående er ”kun” en hjælp til de, der allerede er i det kommunale system som kontanthjælps modtagere og pensionister, altså hovedgruppen af udsættelsestruede.
Andre, der trues af udsættelse, er enten lavtlønnede i fast arbejde eller belastet af en høj husleje eller omfattende privat gæld.
Deres problemer kan ikke uden videre løses med automatiske administrative løsninger. De har behov for uvildig rådgivning.
Udlejerne må aldrig gøres til økonomiske rådgivere for lejerne. Hverken de private eller de almennyttige udlejere. Dels har de sjældent forudsætningerne, dels har de ingen lovfæstet tavshedspligt.
De velmente forsøg, der foregår nu i enkelte boligselskaber må betragtes som alvorlige misforståelser. Det eneste udlejerne med al rimelighed bør gøre er at forsyne lejerne med ansøgningsskema til boligsikring og de nødvendige oplysninger i den forbindelse og derefter sende lejerne til den kommunale borgerservice / socialkontor, og / eller til de få frivillige gældsrådgivninger, der findes i de større byer.

se i øvrigt mine tidligere indlæg om emnet

Antonella and I watched Terence Malik’s The Tree of Life (2011) a month or so ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. Whatever you make of the craziness of the creation of the universe narrative interludes or the abstracted narrative structure, this film is a work of art of the highest magnitude. Like another great modernist Franz Kafka who could project dreams in his fragmented novels, Malik can project the impossible essence of memory on film. The way in which he captures the life of a family in Waco, Texas with only the dramatic arc of the wonder and dread that is everywhere around us always is wild. Innumerable times during the middle of this film I found Malik had again and again tapped into this sense of experience and memory that I thought was my own—a deep, respectful sense of the flawed beauty of the human condition. There are so many scenes I can point to that illustrate this, but one which continues to haunt and buoy me at once is the following scene where a child drowns in a water hole while a whole community helplessly looks on. A possibility that haunts every parent to the bone comes true in this scene—and the setting is gorgeous, the camera watches the commotion in the swimming hole from behind the parents, and the scene gets burned on your sensibility.

I’m really not sure if this film worked on me so deeply because of where I find myself in my life—40 years old, three kids, doing as much damage as good I am sure—or because it works in the world of memory sans nostalgia. A space of being there that pretends to neither idealism nor desolation, a sense of being in the past with emotion, depth, and difficulty. In this regard the oldest son, Jack O’Brien (Hunter McCracken) was superb as was Mr an Mrs. O’Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain respectively). The father-son relationship in this film ran deep for me, a haven’t felt as fragile as a parent after watching this since the night Miles was born. That’s the effect you want a film to have, when the emotional and spiritual psyche gets blown away you know something is happening there.

Musikernes fagblad agerer talerør for en utroværdig politisk lobby og forplumrer debatten om underholdningsindustriens økonomiske tilstand.

Foto: kubotake

The Sky is Rising. Himlen stiger. Sådan lyder titlen på en omfattende rapport, som bloggerne Mike Masnick og Michael Ho fra Techdirt har lavet om underholdningsindustriens økonomi. Rapporten er baseret dels på industriens egne tal, dels på hvad der er lavet af uafhængige undersøgelser om emnet. Konklusionen er klar: det går godt, måske ikke for alle i industrien, men der har været kontinuerlig vækst, også mens resten af den globale økonomi har været i krise.

Denne konklusion huer naturligvis ikke RettighedsAlliancen, der tjener sine penge som lobbyorganisation på at fortælle politikere præcis det modsatte. RettighedsAlliancen er en parablyorganisation, der bl.a. tæller så forskellige interessenter som musikere organiseret i fagforeningen Dansk Musikerforbund, såvel som deres arbejdsgivere i pladeselskaberne, organiseret i IFPI.

I Musikeren, Dansk Musikerforbunds fagblad, fandt man for nylig et forsøg på kritisk journalistik. Forsøget mundede ud i en påstand om at RetttighedsAlliancen ikke havde fået svar fra TechDirt på en anmodning om kildefortegnelse til The Sky is Rising, en kildefortegnelse som ellers er offentlig tilgængelig.

Det viser sig imidlertid at RettighedsAlliancen faktisk har fået svar fra TechDirt. Anmodningen blev bare ikke rettet officielt, men privat af RettighedsAlliancens studentermedhjælper gennem Techdirts kontaktformular. Studentermedhjælperen fik svar samme dag.

Denne afkobling mellem realiteterne og RettighedsAlliancens udtalelser fik Henrik Moltke, der har dækket The Sky is Rising-rapporten i Information og Harddisken, til at kommentere følgende til Musikerens artikel:

»Man kunne beskylde Rettighedsalliancen for at lyve, bruge uetiske metoder for at diskreditere en seriøs diskussionspartner, for at tale mod bedre vidende offentligt. Man kunne sige at det bestemt ikke er første gang. [...] Men det ville være forkert at synke til det niveau, så det gør jeg ikke.«

Det vil jeg så tillade mig at gøre:

RettighedsAlliancen lyver, når den påstår at have henvendt sig til TechDirt. RettighedsAlliancen lyver paradoksalt nok også, når den påstår at TechDirt ikke har reageret på henvendelsen, som blev rettet privat af en studentermedhjælper.

RettighedsAlliancen bruger uetiske metoder for at diskreditere en seriøs diskussionspartner, når en studentermedhjælper bliver sendt i byen under dække af sit studie i et fordækt forsøg på at finde fejl i en rapport, der underminerer Alliancens eksistensberettigelse.

RettighedsAlliancen taler mod bedre vidende offentligt og det er bestemt ikke første gang. Et nyligt eksempel er sagen om de 95%, som endte med at formand for DPA og bestyrelsesformand i KODA Ivan Pedersen såvel som Handelsminister Pia Olsen Dyhr begge måtte stå skoleret foran DR Detektor, efter at have brugt RettighedsAlliancens tal.

I virkeligheden burde det være RettighedsAlliancen selv, der skulle stå skoleret for åben skærm og forklare hvad det gør ved debatten, når den fremlægger kraftigt overdrevne tal, bl.a. for Folketingets kulturudvalg som begrundelse for at indføre brevmodellen.

In the age of endless sharing, super cookies, social search results, and that ever-present social graph, it’s comforting to know that there are some who are still prioritizing privacy. (And a few of them are former Googlers no less!) In October 2010, Google engineer Brian Kennish created Facebook Disconnect, a Chrome extension that disables all traffic from third-party sites to Facebook servers but still allows you to access Facebook itself. The extension was an immediate hit, racking up 50K active users in two weeks (it now has 200K+), prompting Kennish to leave his job at Google to focus full-time on helping the average web user take back control of their data.

Shortly thereafter the former Google engineer launched Disconnect, applying the same method behind Facebook Disconnect to other major third-party sites, like Digg, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, enabling you to disable data tracking while you browse.

Now collectively attracting over 400K weekly active users, Kennish tells us his privacy-protection tools ended up being much more popular than he ever expected. As a result, he decided to turn the side project into a real company, co-founding Disconnect.me with another ex-Google engineer, Austin Chau and consumer rights advocate Casey Oppenheim.

The company, which officially launched late last year, is founded on a simple premise: Personal data should belong to people, not corporations. So, the team is building Disconnect.me into a full-fledged platform that allows users to control who does what with their data online, Kennish says. The first step is to help users stop the free flow of personal information to third-parties, he says, while step two will be giving users customized controls that allow them to share personal info when and how they deem fit. (To give you a sense of how big he thinks this problem is, watch this video here.)

To help them in their crusade, the team has raised $600K in seed funding, led by Highland Capital Partners with participation from Charles River Ventures, and angels investors like David Cancel, Mark Jacobstein, Ramesh Haridas, Vikas Taneja, Chris Hobbs, and Andy Toebben.

Both to celebrate their new raise and to provide users with a response to Google consolidating its privacy policy (which, in fact, rolled 70 different policies into one, allowing the company to combine all data it has on you into a single profile), the team is launching Google Disconnect and Twitter Disconnect for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

These extensions are similar to Facebook Disconnect and follow the recent addition of Facebook Disconnect to Firefox and Safari. And, of course, some may also be familiar with Kennish from Frictionless, which he built with Nik Cubrilovic to take having to download a Facebook app out of the process of reading news on the social network. (Read John’s coverage here.)

The app was an awesome solution to a grievance many have experienced when reading social news, and Kennish says he expected the extension to get some traction, but it only had about 3K active users at its peak, and with Facebook iterating on its UI, Kennish said they had trouble keeping up, and decided to put the app “in hibernation.” Although, with some pressure, we may be able to convince the guys to bring it back.

In the meantime, Disconnect.me is going to be focusing on protecting you from the thousands of companies that track, analyze, and auction off your browsing and search histories without so much as a peep to you or the millions of other web surfers out there. And, by the way, Disconnect.me doesn’t collect your IP address or any personal info, unless you want to give them your email address, of course.

This also especially relevant given this post from Gizmodo today about nuking your search history and the case against Google.

For more, check them out at home here.

I’ll leave the last word on The Budget to Dick Puddlecote and move on to more pressing matters.

1. Khards over at HPC (which seems to be defunct at the time of writing) said he’d mentioned LVT to his colleagues, and one of the rhetorical questions put to him, was: “Ah yes, but what about a high earner foreign couple who are over here to earn as much as they can, live in a small flat and want to return home again in a couple of years? Is it ‘fair’ that they get away with paying less tax than a single earner family in a ‘modest’ house with a garden, where mum stays at home with the kids?”

Answer: it’s a trick question, because it is a diagonal comparison (notwithstanding the Child Benefit which the family gets and the two-earner couple doesn’t, which evens things out).

The reply is: if there are two high earner foreign couples and one lives in a big house and the other in a small flat, is it fair that the couple which occupies more land, which is a scarce resource (in an economic rather than a literal sense) pays more? Yes.

And if there are two single-earner families, one of them can only afford a small flat and has to take the kids to the park to play, and the other can afford a ‘modest’ house with a garden, is it ‘fair’ that the wealthier couple pays more? Yes.

2. Another common diagonal comparison is: “What about a pensioner couple who’ve paid taxes all their life, if there are four young people sharing the house next door using twice as much local services. Why shouldn’t the four young people pay twice as much?”

Bullshit. Why not compare four young people who can only afford a house-share with a two-earner couple next door who can afford a house to themselves? The four sharers are prepared to put up with the aggro of sharing so that they can benefit from sharing the rent, the utilities etc. Sharing is usually not a choice, it’s a necessity. If the two-earner couple can afford a house to themselves, that’s their choice and good luck to them; they are always welcome to take in two paying lodgers if they want to pay less tax and have more money to spend on cars or holidays.

And why not compare a pensioner couple with a large house to themselves with a pensioner couple in a small flat? Why is it ‘unfair’ for the pensioner couple in the large house to pay more than the pensioner couple in the small flat?

3. Then the diagonal comparisons are taken to extremes: “What about a Poor Widow In A Mansion who bought the house for 12’6 back in the 1940s; why should she pay more tax than a millionaire who lives in a bedsit? That gain is only on paper, she doesn’t have a cash income to pay the tax.”

Nope. Let’s do a proper comparison. Why shouldn’t the Poor Widow, who has struck property gold and won the lottery of life and who can bank her winnings any time and still afford somewhere nice with enough money left over to pay the tax for the rest of her life, pay more than a genuinely Poor Widow [whose husband was a coal miner and died of lung disease twenty years ago etc] who still lives in a back-to-back that’s barely beaten inflation since the 1940s?

Apart from the fact that there are very few millionaires who live in bedsits (with or without LVT, you can save a lot of money by trading down from a swanky home into a bedsit – how many of them do?), if one millionaire really chooses to live in a bed sit to save money and another millionaire wants to live in a nice house, why is it so terrible if the millionaire in the bedsit pays less tax? If you are going to argue that both millionaires ‘should’ pay the same amount of tax, then you might as well argue that non-smokers ought to cough up a few hundred quid tobacco duty every year, or that teetotallers should pay a few hundred quid alcohol duty.

4. The Homeys then usually take the “millionaire in a bedsit” example to extremes and say that all millionaires would trade down and so the tax base would collapse. Well, apart from the fact it wouldn’t happen (or else why don’t millionaires buy a second hand banger for £1,000 instead of a Bentley for £100,000, which includes about £50,000 in embedded taxes?), so what if they did? If everybody sold their second homes and holiday homes, if all empty homes came onto the market, then the price of housing will fall until somebody else is willing to buy them; and the people most likely to buy them are people who want to actually live in them (or buy them to rent out to somebody who wants to live in it).

So what is the net impact of all this? Very little indeed. At the moment, we’ve got twenty-six million homes and twenty-six million households to live in them; once everybody has sold up for as much as they can get and moved out, prices will – by definition – fall to a level where everybody can promptly afford to move back in again because it’s so cheap, then we’d have twenty-six million homes with, er, twenty-six million households living in them.

Of course, in the highly unrealistic scenario that everybody flatly refused to pay more than a bare minimum of LVT and desperately tried to trade down, take in lodgers, stay living with their parents etc, then yes, LVT revenues would fall, but so would the price of housing (the two move in tandem). Those are Good Things, not Bad Things!!

That would reduce the cost of living enormously and we’d hardly need a welfare system or the taxes to pay for it; because people would have enough money left over from their wages (after paying a small amount for buying a home and LVT) to pay to send their children to school; to take out their own medical insurance, unemployment insurance, to save up for their old age etc.

Don’t forget, even if the selling price or rents of all the housing in Wales or the north of England fell so low that the corresponding LVT revenues were +/- £nil, there will always be enough people prepared to pay £5,000 a year more than £nil to live in or near London or in the south west (I know that I certainly would, as would millions of others).

Even if the tax raised from houses in the rough part of town were +/- £nil, people will always be happy to pay £1,000 a year more than £nil to have a house overlooking the park, nearer the station or near the best school (again, I know that I certainly would, as would millions of others), with a gradient in between, so the tax will always average out at a couple of thousand pounds a year per household.

This – together with Business Rates, which disproves the ‘collapsing revenues’ theory anyway – would still be quite enough tax revenue to pay for the core functions of the state, which are a laughable one-tenth or so of total current government spending, and everybody else can live their lives free of any sort of publicly or privately collected taxes.

Win-win!

Paul Adams has given talks before about how Facebook is transforming traditional marketing — after all, he’s the social network’s global brand experience manager. However, he took a more provocative approach today at Federated Media’s Signal conference, where he told the marketers in attendance that they don’t understand Facebook.

He admitted the feeling is mutual. Marketers complain that Facebook doesn’t understand their needs, while Facebook complains that marketers don’t understand what works. Luckily, Adams wasn’t just complaining. He had specific thoughts on what marketers are getting wrong, and how they can do better. For one thing, he said that marketers who think Facebook needs to expand its offering to include things like larger units and pre-roll ads are “misunderstanding how our platform works.”

All these attempts to create ads that interrupt users or grab their attention are misguided, because Facebook isn’t about moving peoples attention from one spot to another, and it’s not about trying to make something happen now, he said.

Instead, Facebook is all about building relationships. That means marketers should focus on “many lightweight interactions over time.” Using tools like Facebook Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Open Graph apps, brands can slowly build relationships with consumers, in the same way that getting little updates from your friends (that they listened to a song on Spotify or went for a three-mile run with RunKeeper or whatever) can build your friendship over time: “Sometimes, serendipitously, those [individual] stories are interesting, but it’s the aggregations that are really powerful.”

Adams said that trying to serve an intrusive ad instead of building a relationship with a customer is like “trying to throw a party with a bunch of strangers. It’s not going to be a very good party.” However, once advertisers have been interacting with fans for a while, then they can try to do something more meaningful: “Suddenly you’re throwing it with people you’ve built a relationship with.”

This is a problem we’ve seen before. Every time a new communication technology is invented, people try to apply the methods of existing media to the new medium. In this case, Adams said advertisers are trying use the TV advertising approach. That doesn’t make sense on Facebook, and as “the Web is being rebuilt around people,” it’s going to make less and less sense online.

Adams previously led the social user experience research team at Google, and he has a book out about social networks. So if his approach sounds a little intellectual compared to most advertisers and technologists, that’s probably why.

[image via Adams' Twitter account]

Aura Dione performing her single “Friends” live on The Voice of Denmark with the eight semi-finalists on February 18, 2012.

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_tbK_V1Ow

“Spontant” indslag ved en forelæsning i lineær algebra (IMF ved Aarhus Universitet, 27. februar 2012).
Videoen skifter til bredformat efter ca. 20 sekunder.

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31iL3IU7mxQ

King Leonidas visits Skyrim.

This is what happens when you have too much fun with mods and console commands.

Sparta shout mod owner: http://www.youtube.com/user/LurtzGaming
Spartan armor mod owner: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2198

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqaV6HFpXOs

Not So Fast

It feels like the internet has made us faster than ever, but are we in fact lagging behind the opportunities presented by technology?

WORDS BY Jeff Jarvis

ILLUSTRATION BY Shout

Accepted wisdom has it that internet time moves quickly; that we are living through change at an unparalleled pace; that our modern minutes are but 10 or 20 seconds long. But what if our progress is not as speedy as it seems? What if we are only at the bare beginning of the disruption now underway?

Consider Gutenberg time. The printed book did not begin to take on its own form until 50 years after its invention. At first, printers mimicked scribes, with fonts designed to look like handwriting, while printing itself was promoted as automated writing. ‘They appear not to have perceived the printed book as a fundamentally different form,’ writes Leah Marcus in her essay Cyberspace Renaissance, ‘but rather as a manuscript book that could be produced with greater speed and convenience.’ They simply didn’t see the possibilities.

Nor do today’s media companies – not fully, not yet. Look at how they’re using the web and new platforms such as the tablet. They’re still attempting to replicate legacy forms, content, business models, industrial structures, and control: Old wine in new casks. Newspapers, magazines, and books all remain recognizable as such online.

Just as the form of the book didn’t evolve quickly, neither did society around it. Elizabeth Eisenstein, author of the definitive work on Gutenberg’s impact, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, writes, ‘One must wait a full century after Gutenberg before the outlines of new world pictures begin to emerge into view.’

John Naughton, a columnist for the Observer in London, asks us to imagine we are pollsters in 1472, 17 years after the first printed Bibles (we are only about that far away from the introduction of the commercial web ourselves). On a bridge in Mainz, we ask citizens how likely they think it will be that Gutenberg’s invention could:

a. Undermine the authority of the Catholic Church
b. Power the Reformation
c. Enable the rise of modern science
d. Create entirely new social classes and professions
e. Change our conceptions of ‘childhood’ as a protected early period in a person’s life

‘Printing did indeed have all these effects,’ Naughton states, ‘but there was no way that anyone in 1472 in Mainz (or anywhere else for that matter) could have known how profound its impact would be.’

The internet, I believe, could prove to be every bit as disruptive as the printing press, reshaping not just media – for the internet is much more than a medium – but almost every industry and social institution. Of course, there’s no way to know that for sure. Dan Gardner’s book Future Babble argues that expert predictions are uniformly worthless. But then, the very idea of an expert on the future is absurd.

“The wise course is not to try to forestall change (to slow or stop it through regulation), but to accelerate it through openness and investment.”

Still, we must try to imagine the edges of possibility so we can make better strategic decisions in business, technology, policy, and education. If we assume that the current disruption has already occurred at broadband speed – and so we must be nearly through it – then we will plan based on what we see around us now. But if instead we assume that ‘we ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’ then we will seek out greater disruption and unforeseen opportunities. We will protect flexibility, invention, and imagination so we may pivot as we see the future’s true shape emerge.

Indeed, we may want to hasten change. In a 1998 Rand Corporation paper, The Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Backward to See Ahead, James Dewar argues that our information age will be marked by unintended consequences, so the sooner we recognize, embrace, and adapt to them, the better. The wise course then is not to try to forestall change (to slow or stop it through regulation), but to accelerate it through openness and investment.

So imagine that change. Start with the idea that technology leads to efficiency over growth in numerous industries. See retail: Drive down a commercial highway in America and you will pass numerous empty big-store boxes that don’t seem like they’ll ever be filled. Chain retail – invented only a century ago by The Great A&P – appears to be losing to the efficiency of internet sales and consolidated distribution. Many companies are unable to withstand the pricing transparency the net affords or bear the cost of redundant staff, real estate, and inventory. The entire supply chain is upended by disruptors from Amazon to Kickstarter.

In the delivery industry, postal services in many countries are facing devastating shrinkage as email and social communication call into question the very notion of a letter; as transactions become too inefficient and expensive to conduct on paper, as marketing finally shifts from mass mailing to targeted relevance. Yet communication flourishes.

Newspapers and magazines are struggling to adjust to a new media economy built on abundance rather than control of scarce time or space. Now news is beginning to mimic the end-to-end architecture of the net as witnesses share what they see with the world. Journalists must ask how they can continue to add value to an information flow that no longer relies solely upon them.

Health, design, marketing, finance, manufacturing, insurance, energy… Every one of these sectors is just beginning to witness the upheaval the net brings.

Government is already being disrupted, of course. Wikileaks demonstrates the folly of secrecy. The Arab Spring is unseating dictators. Icelanders are rebuilding their economically wrecked society by rewriting their constitution via Facebook comments.

But I wonder whether something even bigger is afoot: Will we rethink even our notion of nations and thus of societies? Does the net enable us to make new societies that cut across boundaries? I wonder whether that is a lesson of the hashtag revolt, #occupywallstreet; that institutions — in which we have less and less trust — are replaced by networks; that society, too, begins to mimic the architecture of the net.

Perhaps I’m going too far. But then again, perhaps I’m not going far enough.

A group of academics at the University of Southern Denmark argues that we are emerging from the other side of what they call ‘the Gutenberg parenthesis.’ Before Gutenberg, knowledge was passed mouth-to-mouth, scribe-to-scribe, changing along the way with little sense of authorship. Inside the parenthesis, with the press, knowledge became linear, permanent, more a product than a process, with clear ownership.

More than five centuries later, they say we are emerging from the other side of the parenthesis. Now knowledge is again passed along, remixed as it goes, with less sense of ownership: It’s process over product. In his upcoming book Too Big to Know, David Weinberger sketches a vision of knowledge that is too big for libraries, institutions, or our heads. ‘Knowledge is now the property of the network,’ he writes. ‘The smartest person in the room is the room itself.’

This change in our mental map of information affects our cognition of our world, the Danish academics argue. So more is changing than merely industries and institutions. Our social norms and societies are up for grabs. How we understand the world around us is evolving, and change that profound doesn’t happen quickly.

Shared via Posterous on February 29, 2012 at 03:54PM

Jeg har – efter lange overvejelser – meldt mig ud af Radikale Venstre og istedet ind i Danmarks Retsforbund, hvilket jeg gav et lille pip om via Twitter for et par uger siden. Jeg har godtnok lige betalt mit årskontingent hos de radikale, men sommetider træffer man ikke altid sine beslutninger på de allermest gunstige tidspunkter. Det går nok – Radikale Venstre er stadig et af de partier som er repræsenteret i Folketinget, som jeg har størst sympati for, og jeg vil også stadig husere på partiets åbne debatsite Radikale.net. Jeg har derimod indstillet mine betalinger til partiets valgfond, som dog alligevel løber op i 600 kr om året, og vil i stedet lægge disse i valgbøssen i mit nye parti, og gøre mit til, at der kan samles tilstrækkeligt med underskrifter til, at Retsforbundet kan blive opstillingsberettiget til de kommende valg, og til at de ideer som partiet er baseret på bringes til torvs i de politiske udvekslinger.

Hans-Christian linker fornylig til en artikel i Information, hvor den tidligere radikale landsformand Asger Baunsbak-Jensen efterlyser at den nye danske regering tager førertrøjen på og “tænder et håb” for, at der findes andre veje end de, der blindt føjer markedet. Det er en virkelig spændende og relevant artikel. Desværre har jeg – ked af at måtte sige det – mistet tiltroen til at Helle Thorning-Schmidt & Co. kan netop det, som Baunsbak-Jensen efterspørger : at tænde et håb.

Derfor tror jeg heller ikke på, at regeringen har mange chancer for at sætte et varigt præg på dansk politik og på vores kurs som samfund. Jeg har meget svært ved at snuppe den ukritiske sparelogik, som præger regeringens økonomiske politik, dens tilslutning til Europagten (og dermed afgivelse af dansk suverænitet og mulighed for at lægge en uafhængig kurs) og f.eks. senest dens (og dermed RV’s) fuldstændigt ukritiske modtagelse af ACTA-traktaten, i et omfang, så jeg i stigende omfang har haft svært ved at se mig selv om medlem af Radikale Venstre.

Men dette er trods alt kun en lille del af den politiske proces jeg har været igennem i min levetid. Hvis jeg skal beskrive det ganske kort, er jeg lige så stille kommet til den overbevisning der skal ganske anderledes boller på suppen, end hvad neo-liberalismen og den neo-klassicistiske økonomiske tænkning har at byde på. Og jeg opfatter den politik, som tilbydes og udøves på tværs af alle de i Folketinget repræsenterede partier, i større eller mindre omfang, som neo-liberalistisk, eller under indflydelse af neo-liberalistiske forestillinger. Måske lige med undtagelse af Enhedslisten – som dog også har store problemer med at tilbyde et reelt alternativ.

Neo-liberalismen – med dens opfattelse af staten som et virksomhedsregnskab, og dermed dens sparelogik og dens udsalg af offentlige institutioner og dermed privatisering af indtægter, som burde komme os alle til gavn, gør mig aldeles rasende. Budskabet synes at være, at det er ok, at en del af samfundet holder en forbrugsfest i opgangstider, imens vi alle “solidarisk” skal betale til gildet i nedgangstider, i form af besparelser på alt fra børnehaver og skoler til sygehusvæsen og alderdomshjem. Der findes en anden vej. Jeg vil i stigende omfang her på bloggen beskæftige mig med, hvori denne vej består.

Via Ildhavet

Et bidrag til Filmfestivalen Oregon 2011
Region: Midtjylland
Kategori: Under 20
Instruktør: Kerren Lumer-Klabbers

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBxyQuwoJNc

Alle rettigheder er forbeholdt TV2 Danmark, den enkelte sanger og artisten for original tracket.
http://v.tv2.dk/deltagere/kim-wagner/

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGoplUiOOJ4

Alle rettigheder er forbeholdt TV2 Danmark, den enkelte sanger og artisten for original tracket.
http://v.tv2.dk/deltagere/freja-kirk/

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvkj39NBMAI

Film clip for the song Bronte, from the Gotye album Making Mirrors
Buy Making Mirrors here http://www.smarturl.it/gotye

http://www.gotye.com/

http://www.facebook.com/gotye/

http://www.twitter.com/gotye/

Directed and animated by Ari Gibson at Mechanical Apple
Background art by Jason Pamment

Music credits:
Produced by Wally De Backer
Mixed by Francois Tetaz, assisted by Wally at
Moose Mastering, Richmond, VIC

Fretless Bass: Lucas Taranto
Drums, percussion, strings and steel drum samples,
lead and backing vocals: Wally

Contains a sample of Banana Boat Song as performed by
Leo Addeo and Orchestra.
Used courtesy of RCA/JIVE Label Group, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment

Contains a sample of Mozambique as performed by Les Baxter. Used courtesy of EMI Music Australia Pty Ltd

**************************
Now your bowl is empty
And your feet are cold
And your body cannot stop rocking
I know
It hurts to let go

Since the day we found you
You have been our friend
And your voice still
Echoes in the hallway of this house
But now
It’s the end

We will be with you
When you’re leaving
We will be with you
When you go
We will be with you
And hold you till you’re quiet
It hurts to let you go

We will be with you
You will stay with us

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le34ygtODfI

Drakkenstrike’s Sid Meier’s Civilization Components Breakdown Video Review in HD Part 2 of 2

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB7BYaERncc

Drakkenstrike’s Sid Meier’s Civilization Components Breakdown Video Review in HD Part 1 of 2

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eKe6oCt6EE

Vincent Browne takes on Klaus Masuch over the issue of the Irish people having to foot the bill for unguaranteed bondholders.

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAf7J4a_T1g

Forfatter og debatredaktør m.v. Bjørn Bredal skriver 9. januar 2012 i en signatur i Politiken :

Ophavsret er en pest for kunst og idéer

Rettighedsindustrien har udviklet sig til det rene galimatias.

Af Bjørn Bredal, lederskribent

Der går en ødelæggende juridisk epidemi gennem det internationale kunstliv: ophavsret, copyright, royalty.

Under det lille symbol © gemmer sig et onde, hvis omfang de færreste gør sig klart, fordi det kun dukker op i den offentlige debat, hver gang nogen forlanger at blive bedre ’beskyttet’.

Men ophavsretten og hele den juridiske industri, der er knyttet til den, beskytter ikke, den dræber. Og det frygtelige er, at mange af de kunstnere og kreative mennesker, der forlanger mere ophavsret, ikke har tilstrækkelig distance til hele problematikken til at se, at de nærer et monster, som æder dem selv.

De ser sig blinde på deres eget lille hjørne af den ophavsretlige virkelighed og tror, at copyright grundlæggende er deres ven. Men den er deres og samfundets fjende.

Nu senest satte EU så ’beskyttelses’-perioden for musikoptagelser op fra 50 år til 70 år. Et lodret vanvid, som følger op på det samme vanvid, som i 1990’erne førte til udvidelse af ’beskyttelses’-perioden for døde komponister, forfattere, malere etc.: Kunstnerne dør – og så skal de beskyttes!

Logikken er til at græde over, og det var slemt nok, så længe ’beskyttelsen’ var 50 år: Vi taler helt enkelt om en syg mekanisme, der flytter penge over fra den levende kunst og de levende kunstnere til deres arvinger og især til hele den industri, der administrerer rettigheder.

Og nu får denne industri 20 år ekstra at gøre ondt med: indtil 70 år efter at den sidste Beatles er død (hvilket vil sige, at den sidste Beatles’ børn også er døde) vil der stadig sidde nogen og ’have rettighederne’ til The Beatles’ musik. Tænk, hvis de milliarder gik til den levende kunst.

Lige for tiden er det især filmindustrien, der forlanger sig bedre ’beskyttet’. Folk downloader film fra nettet uden at betale, og det går selvfølgelig ud over filmindustriens indtægter. Og muligvis er der ræson i at bremse den trafik på en eller anden måde – i nogle få år efter at en ny film har haft premiere.

Vi har alle en praktisk interesse i, at filmindustrien kan fungere og udvikle sine produkter akkurat ligesom medicinalindustrien og alle andre industrier: Hvis enhver blot kan kopiere den nyeste medicin eller den nyeste film, i samme øjeblik den kommer på markedet, bliver der jo aldrig råd til at udvikle den næste pille eller den næste film.

Så selvfølgelig skal vi have noget lovgivning omkring rettigheder, patenter og praktisk brug af nye ideer og produkter, herunder kunstneriske produkter. Men denne selvfølgelighed burde aldrig være andet end en undtagelse fra hovedreglen: Enhver offentlig idé er offentligt eje.

Så længe du har en idé inde i dit hoved, så er den din (’Tanker er toldfri’) – men slipper ideen ud af dit hoved, så tilhører den menneskeheden. Der er to niveauer her, et principielt og et praktisk. Principielt burde der ikke findes copyright overhovedet, hvis man spørger mig.

Gælder det ikke bare om, at så mange som muligt ser den nyeste film af Lars von Trier eller Susanne Bier? Er det ikke i samfundets interesse, at nye tanker, former, udtryk, ideer, fortællinger, sange, billeder kan blive til glæde for så mange som muligt så billigt som muligt og meget gerne gratis?

Det er frygtelig forkert, når fortalere for ’mere beskyttelse’ på et eller andet område straks sætter sig op på en høj moralsk hest og taler om ’tyveri’ og ’kriminalitet’ hos dem, der glad og gratis bruger løs af kunsten.

Billedsproget spærrer for udsigten til de praktiske problemer, der skal løses, og fører til det ødelæggende galimatias, som rettighedsindustrien er blevet.

Det er forfærdeligt, at Det Kongelige Teater ikke kan opføre en opera af Richard Strauss uden at betale en formue til den for længst døde komponists oldebørns advokater; at lærere på skoler og universiteter ikke kan vise et billede af Picasso uden at begå en ulovlighed; ja: eller at en gymnasielærer ikke kan vise den lille dumme kommentar, du læser netop nu, til sine elever, uden at gymnasiet skal betale royalty for det.

Jeg vil så meget hellere have, at 100 gymnasieelever læser min kommentar, end at jeg får et par hundrede kroner udbetalt fra et firma, der for tiden vokser fuldstændig vildt i sin egen ødelæggende logik og hedder Copydan eller Tekst og Node, eller hvad det aktuelle navn nu er for den rettighedsindustri, der søger at hindre, fordyre og forkrøble udbredelse af tanker og ideer.

Det er en skændsel i et demokratisk samfund, at en flok elever i en skoleklasse ikke kan sidde og diskutere en aviskommentar, se et filmklip eller lære om et maleri, uden at det skal koste skolen dyrt.

I småt og stort: © er altid et problem, meget sjældent en løsning.

Det eneste jeg er uenig med Bjørn i er, at vi ‘selvfølgelig’ skal have denne type skidteras i vores lovgivning. Jeg mener tværtimod som det vil være mange bekendt, selvfølgelig at vi skal helt af med den. Mange af argumenterne herfor kommer Bredal ind på i sit indlæg. Fantastisk at læse dette skarpskud fra Bjørn Bredal. (Via Claus Pedersen på Facebook)

Via Ildhavet

A UK student has learned that he will be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement charges, after he created a website that helped people view films and TV shows for free.

US authorities claim that 23-year-old Sheffield undergraduate Richard O’Dwyer earned thousands of pounds by linking to and promoting copyrighted content, but he profited not by directly charging users but through hosting advertising on the TVShack website.

The main argument in the student’s defence case was that the site didn’t actually store copyrighted material, and it merely linked users to content held elsewhere, with his lawyer Ben Cooper citing both Google and Yahoo! as examples of other sites that do the same thing. Cooper also claimed that O’Dwyer would be the first UK citizen to be extradited for such an offence and was being used as a guinea pig for US copyright law.

Whilst the final decision is still pending appeals, O’Dwyer faces jail if he’s convicted of the allegations, which came as a result of a crackdown on copyright infringement by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The two charges – conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and criminal infringement of copyright – each carry up to five years sentences.

Police officers from the UK and America swooped on O’Dwyer’s home in South Yorkshire and seized equipment in November 2010, but no criminal charges followed from the UK authorities.

In May last year, however, the US Justice Department requested that Richard O’Dwyer be extradited to the US under the Extradition Act 2003, after the Southern District Court in New York brought two charges against him for copyright infringement regarding his website that was hosted at TVShack.net.

Following the extradition request, O’Dwyer was released on bail by UK authorities, and then he appeared in Westminster magistrates court for a preliminary hearing, at which point his lawyer opposed the ruling, arguing that any prosecution should take place in the UK, as TVShack was not hosted on American servers.

This is a key point of contention in the case. Even without looking at whether what O’Dwyer did was illegal or not, the involvement of US courts has baffled many parties.

The key facilitating factor that has let this case proceed to this stage, is the 2003 US-UK Extradition Treaty, which allows suspects to be extradited to the US without UK courts having to consider the evidence first. Conversely, UK prosecutors must submit their evidence to US courts before making an extradition request. Indeed, this has led to a number of civil liberties groups raising the question about why the UK Government hasn’t pushed to amend the Extradition Act 2003.

Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, has previously said: “Enacting the forum amendment would have been quite simple. It’s not that we’re arguing that in every case where activity has taken place here we shouldn’t allow people to be extradited. But we should at least be leaving our judges some discretion to look at the circumstances.”

In November last year, as part of his continuing struggle to avoid extradition to the United States, Richard O’Dwyer, the former administrator of the now defunct UK-based video links site TVShack, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

The case was eventually adjourned, with accusations from Richard’s lawyer Ben Cooper that US authorities were unfairly trying to gain the upper hand through unreasonable delays. Nevertheless, all parties were back in court today to hear the judge’s ruling.

“There are said to be direct consequences of criminal activity by Richard O’Dwyer in the USA albeit by him never leaving the north of England,” District Judge Quentin Purdy said in his ruling. “Such a state of affairs does not demand a trial here if the competent UK authorities decline to act and does, in my judgment, permit one in the USA.”

“I reject all challenges advanced to this request. No bars or other challenge being raised or found, I send the case to the Secretary of State,” he concluded.

Richard’s most vocal supporter, his mother Julia, voiced her despair and continued with her criticism of the UK’s extradition treaty with the US.

“If [the US authorities] want to prosecute something they will. There’s no safeguards here for British citizens,” she said.

The Judge did not have the “technical brains to know about the whole thing,” she noted, adding: “That guy just lives and breathes extradition.”

Ben Cooper described Richard as an extradition and copyright law “guinea pig”, adding that he would launch an appeal.

Source: TVShack Admin Can Be Extradited To US, Judge Rules

In his 1998 essay, “Scorsese Learns From Those Who Went Before Him,” Roger Ebert writes, “There is no greater American filmmaker right now than Martin Scorsese, and hasn’t been for some time, perhaps since Welles and Hitchcock and Ford died, and yet to talk with him is like meeting this guy who hangs out all the time at the film society.”

Scorsese is a highly prolific filmmaker, but even while pressing ahead he is always looking back, revisiting the films that have inspired him since he was an asthmatic child haunting the theaters of New York City. In A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, the great director says:

I’m often asked by younger filmmakers, Why do I need to look at old movies? I’ve made a number of pictures in the past 20 years. And the response I find that I have to give them is that I still consider myself a student. The more pictures I made in the last 20 years, the more I realized that I really don’t know. And I’m always looking for something or someone that I can learn from. I tell the younger filmmakers to do it like painters do. Study the old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There’s always so much more to learn.

A Personal Journey was completed in 1995. The three-part documentary formed the American part of The Century of Cinema series sponsored by the British Film Institute. The film was co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson, features a title sequence by Saul Bass and was cut by Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. In Scorsese on Scorsese, Wilson talked with Schoonmaker about the grueling experience of editing A Personal Journey at the same time she was racing to complete the three-hour Casino. Schoonmaker said:

It was too much! At one point, Marty asked me to abandon the documentary. He was terribly worried that I’d be slowed down by A Personal Journey, another monumental job, and that we wouldn’t be able to deliver Casino on time. I told him it was impossible to stop and he agreed. He even said that in the long term, A Journey would perhaps be more important than Casino.

You can watch a 133-minute version of A Personal Journey above, courtesy of the BFI. (Be patient and allow an extra moment for the film to load.) A deluxe edition of the original 225-minute documentary is available for purchase on DVD.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at openculture.com, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus.

Af Claus Krogholm Sand

Big Brother, Robinson Ekspeditionen, reality-tv. Hvad har det i grunden med virkelighed at gøre? Det hele foregår i kunstigt skabte miljøer, det er åbenlyst iscenesat og redigeret, og det er spil og konkurrencer, der driver aktørerne. Så hvor er der reality i reality-tv? Spørgsmålet er måske forkert stillet. Det handler snarere om, at vort begreb om virkeligheden har forandret sig.

Skred i offentligt og privat
Situationen er velkendt fra hverdagen, bussen eller toget: vi bliver — ufrivilligt — vidner til et andet menneskes private samtale ført over mobiltelefonen. Denne nye teknologi har bragt det ofte meget private ind midt i det offentlige rum. Det kan for nogle virke nærmest blufærdighedskrænkende således at blive “påtvunget” indblik i for eksempel unges seksuelle eskapader i weekenden, når disse deles med venner via mobiltelefon. For andre er denne intimitet åbenlyst en naturlig del af adfærden i det offentlige rum.

Det er ikke mindst dette skred i opfattelsen af, hvad der er offentligt og hvad der er privat, som Anne Jerslev hæfter sig ved, når hun forsøger at indkredse fænomenet reality-tv. Anne Jerslev vil ikke blot afskrive reality-tv som det kommercielle tvs spekulation i identitetssøgende unges desperate behov for at eksponere sig selv. I stedet ses reality-tv i et bredere, historisk perspektiv, hvor også udviklingen inden for dokumentargenren og på kunstscenen inddrages. De forandringer, der har præget de sidste 30 år inden for det politiske og sociale rum, inden for medier og kunst osv., er nødvendige for at forstå reality-tv.

Reality-tv kan siges at være opstået for 30 år siden med dokumentar-serien An American Family, der i 12 afsnit fulgte familien Loud gennem blandt andet en skilsmisse. Serien var dengang voldsomt omdiskuteret, blandt andet fordi man overskred grænsen mellem det offentlige og private ved at gå helt ind i kernen af intimsfæren: familien. Det blev diskuteret, hvad serien i grunden dokumenterede: opløsningen af familien som socialt forankringspunkt — eller blev familien opløst som følge af kameraets tilstedeværelse? Under alle omstændigheder markerer serien begyndelsen på den udvikling, der foreløbig er kulmineret med reality-tv: at man kan blive kendt på at være den, man er, og ikke ved at være noget særligt.

Iscenesætter autenticitet
Reality-tv, der dækker over en række forskellige programtyper, karakteriseres ifølge Anne Jerslev ved serieformatet, ved en faktakontrakt med seerne, ved at være underholdende, ved genreblandinger og ved at iscenesætte og producere autenticitet og intimitet. Anne Jerslev bruger også begrebet følelses-tv om denne udvikling. Videre kan reality-tv inddeles i tre overordnede kategorier:

REALITY-DOKUMENTAR. Omfatter serier som Cops, Livet er fedt og Stripperkongens piger. Det er programmer, der går ind i eksisterende miljøer, men som i modsætning til andre dokumentarprogrammer først og fremmest er underholdende.

REALITY-MAGASIN. For eksempel Kriminalmagasinet og Station 2.

REALITY-GAMESHOW. For eksempel Robinson Ekspeditionen og Big Brother. Her er der tale om, at programmet iscenesætter en social virkelighed med indbygget konfliktpotentiale (deltagerne skal fungere både som venner og konkurrenter). Det er programmer, der tilstræber liveness, det vil sige en oplevelse af, at det foregår her og nu (skønt programmerne er redigerede). Der er endvidere tale om mediehybrider, hvor der ved siden af tv også er tale om en interaktiv ageren med programmet via internet og sms, samt at en stor del af programmernes drama udspilles i formiddagsaviserne og ugebladene.

Andet end spekulation
I sine grundige analyser af de forskellige programtyper kortlægger Anne Jerslev forbilledligt den udvikling, der er sket i medielandskabet de sidste 30 år. Kameraer, lyssætning og det øvrige produktionsapparat var for 30 år siden så omfattende, at det næppe har kunnet undgå at indvirke på familien Louds hverdag. I dag er kameraer og mikrofoner så små, at de let lader sig overse. Desuden er tilstedeværelsen af et kamera i dag ganske upåfaldende. Men den udvikling der især har fundet sted er, at hvor kameraets tilstedeværelse oplevedes som et forstyrrende fremmedlegeme for familien Loud, så ignorerer dagens Big Brother-deltagere ikke nødvendigvis kameraet, men agerer naturligt foran kameraet. De poserer for kameraet, ikke fordi de spiller roller, men fordi de er bevidste om at agere sig selv foran kameraet. De formes ikke af mediet, men skaber sig selv i og igennem mediet.

At der er tale om en ny form for ageren i et socialt rum, der i høj grad også er et medie-rum, dokumenteres af det interessante empiriske materiale, Anne Jerslev inddrager: 442 danske stile om reality-tv, der blev afleveret ved studentereksamen på Højere Handelseksamen i 2002. Disse vidner om en ny form for social og kulturel dannelse, der foregår i vennegrupper snarere end i familien og som i høj grad bruger medierne og medierummet til refleksion.

Anne Jerslev har skrevet en fortrinlig bog om reality-tv. Fænomenet bliver på oplysende vis sat ind i en historisk, social, kulturel og æstetisk kontekst, der gør det muligt at se reality-tv som andet end endnu en omgang spekulation i det pinlige og private. Bogen er akademisk i anslaget, med et fyldigt noteapparat, og henvender sig nok især til universiteternes medieuddannelser, men vil givet også kunne finde anvendelse i gymnasierne.

Kilde : Ekkofilm.dk. Bogen er desværre p.t. udsolgt fra forlaget.

Shared via Posterous on January 12, 2012 at 11:49AM

Reality-tv, docu-soaps, hverdagsdokumentar – begreberne svirrer gennem luften. Men de nye genrer opfinder ikke en ny dokumentarisme, snarere videreudvikler og kombinerer de elementer fra den allerede eksisterende dokumentariske tradition.

Af Ib Bondebjerg

Dokumentarismen har længe været på det danske tv-marked, og den har fået en markant ny styrke efter monopolbruddet i 1988. Dokumentarismen er blevet et centralt parameter i tv-stationernes indbyrdes konkurrence – både i form af dybdeborende, journalistiske dokumentarudsendelser (f.eks. Michael Klint og Henrik Grunnets Den perfekte patient, 1996) og observerende dokumentarprogrammer fra hverdagslivet (f.eks. Lars Engels’ Pigerne på Halmtorvet, 1992).

Dokumentarudsendelser har ofte fået næsten lige så høje seertal som tv-fiktionen, der er dyrere at producere. Men fra slutningen af 1990’erne hedder det nye fænomen pludselig ”reality-tv”, og det er ikke længere bare tv, men vidtforgrenede mediebegivenheder. Både Robinson Ekspeditionen (TV3) og Big Brother (TvDanmark) skaber medieomtale og forsidestof i alle landets aviser og sladderugeblade samtidig med, at de er vidtforgrenede Internet-begivenheder.

Forlængelse af skolegården
Egentlig er et program som Big Brother meget kedeligt og trivielt tv. Det er ikke et fortættet drama som i fiktionen eller dramatisk-journalistisk afslørings-tv, men det seje hverdagsflow tilsat lidt rollespil, skæg og ballade og indimellem også emotionelle sammenbrud, psykologisk konflikt og gruppe-krise for åben skærm. Tiltrækningskraften for deltagerne og publikum ligger i konkurrencemomentet og drømmen om medie-berømmelsen, men også den simple sociale og psykologiske identifikation og legen mellem rolle og autenticitet. Og så er det ikke mindst forventningen om og spillet omkring det seksuelle – kroppen, det intime – som blæses ud i det offentlige rum i den redigerede tv-version og den fulde Internet-version, hvor opasia.dk reklamerer med at have badeværelset/soveværelset.

Det er nok ikke tilfældigt, at den slags programmer hitter nu. Ikke mindst de unge, som disse programmer i høj grad henvender sig til, er vokset op med tv og de mange ungdoms-soaps og deres uendelige rollespil og konflikter (f.eks. Beverly Hills 90210), med chat-rum, MUDs og virtuelle verdener og spil på Internettet og computeren. De er kort sagt vokset op i en medieverden, hvor det at simulere og spille roller i forskellige sociale universer og fantasiverdener udgør en forlængelse af skolegårdens og fritidsfællesskabernes sociale og psykologiske rum. De har et blasert, indarbejdet og mediebevidst forhold til medievirkeligheden som simuleret rollespil, med dem selv som aktiv medspiller.

Big Brother som reality-tv er i den forstand endnu et virtuelt spil på tv og nettet, men denne gang med rigtige personer og karakterer, som man både kan kigge voyeuristisk på og deltage i spillet omkring. Både denne form for reality-tv og andre er i den forstand en forlængelse af hverdagslivets identitetsspil. Reality-tv forener hverdagens omgangsformer med fiktionens iscenesatte univers og Internettets interaktive simulerede rum og fællesskaber.

Den dokumentariske tradition
Privatiseringen og intimiseringen af den offentlige diskurs og fokuseringen på hverdagslivets erfaringer via enten almindelige menneskers dagligliv eller institutionernes indre liv er en proces, der længe har stået på i film og tv.

Den observerende, filmiske dokumentarisme – f.eks. hos amerikaneren Frederick Wisemann – har siden omkring 1960 udforsket det indre liv i forskellige typer af institutioner og i en indirekte stil dokumenteret hverdagslivets mikrokosmos og institutionernes skjulte magtstrukturer. Helt tilbage til 1948 sendte man på amerikansk tv-magasinet Candid Camera, og fra 1970’erne blev sådanne programmer med almindelige mennesker fanget i ualmindelige hverdagssituationer – f.eks. Real People (1979-) – mere udbredte.

Allerede i 1973 sendte den amerikanske tv-station PBS den første egentlige reality-tv-serie, An American Family, hvor amerikanske seere kunne følge en tilsyneladende almindelig families udvikling og gradvise indre opløsning gennem et år. Netop denne tv-dokumentariske serie introducerer en række af de genre-mæssige karakteristika, som vi finder i nyere reality-tv-serier, hvor en gruppe personer følges gennem længere tid, og hvor det dramatiske og fiktive blandes med autenticitet og live-oplevelse.

Fra 1988 og i årene efter, da DR-dokgruppen gik i luften, og TV2 lancerede Fak2eren og Reportageholdet, rummede begge stationers produktioners mange observerende eller tætte human interest-orienterede reportager. På DR startede Lars Engels sin udforskning af livet på Vesterbro, senest kulminerende med Historier fra en politistation. I tolv afsnit får vi indblik i politiets univers og adgang til det mest intime og pinlige hos de skæbner, som passerer gennem systemet. Lars Engels programmer har alle hørt til de meste sete programmer overhovedet på DR, sommetider på højde med national fiktion.

Og da TV2 i 1998 skulle fejre sit 10-års jubilæum, kårede seerne Lars Højs program Annes kamp til det bedste TV2-dok. Det er et program, som med stor emotionel intensitet lader os følge en 25-årig ung kvindes optimistiske kamp mod kræften og hendes ligeså ubønhørlige nederlag. Virkeligheden som en melodramatisk og intens human-interest-historie er simpelt hen høj-populært, høj-intensivt tv.

Tv-dokumentarismens historie har således en lang række eksempler på forløbere for den moderne reality-tv. Det er ikke sådan at de forskellige reality-tv genrer i dag opfinder en ny dokumentarisme, men de videreudvikler og kombinerer elementer fra den allerede eksisterende, dokumentariske tradition. Tv-dokumentarismen i Danmark har sin egen historie, som naturligvis er influeret af filmdokumentarismen, men dog klart adskiller sig fra denne ved sin ganske anderledes journalistiske forankring. Den tidlige tv-dokumentarisme i 1950’erne og 60’erne er præget af den oplysende og informative tradition, som også har præget Statens Filmcentral indtil engang i 60’erne. Men den henter også vigtige inspirationer fra radiomontagen, der allerede i 50’erne begyndte at udforske hverdagslivet med en observerende mikrofon. Almindelige menneskers hverdagsliv i medierne er altså heller ikke et nyt fænomen i Danmark.

Dybdeborende dokumentarisme
Man kan tale om fem grundlæggende tv-dokumentariske former i den hidtidige danske og internationale tv-historie fra 60’erne og frem: den dybdeborende journalistiske, den observerende, den dramatiserede, den refleksive og poetiske samt reality-tv. Reality-tv som grundform henter elementer fra i hvert fald de tre første dokumentariske formater, mens den refleksive-poetiske dokumentarisme har en forsvindende lille plads i tv-historien. Der synes ganske simpelt ikke at være særlig plads til denne meget personlige og æstetiske eksperimenterende form, som ofte kun findes på de meget sene sendetidspunkter på mere smalle kanaler som f.eks. DR2.

Den dybdeborende journalistisk tv-dokumentar er først og fremmest præget af epistemisk autoritet, dvs. en søgen efter sandheden i en sag eller et problem og båret af en stærk tiltro til, at denne kan findes via journalistisk graven i kilder og modsætninger. Det er en sagsorienteret form, hvor den grundlæggende dramatiske struktur er efterforskningen – med journalisten som detektiven. Den har en lineær struktur og er argumentatorisk opbygget, således at den rejser en række klare spørgsmål og søger at give en række lige så entydige svar, en klar konklusion og en løsning.

Genren vælger oftest offentlige sager af stor almen og politisk betydning, men kan også fokusere på mere almene human interest-forhold, der har politiske aspekter. Den kan bruge dramatisering og rekonstruktion og også visuel symbolik og effekter. Et meget typisk eksempel er, som allerede nævnt, Michael Klint og Henrik Grunnets Den perfekte patient, TV2 1996, som afdækker en skandale i det danske sygehusvæsen, eller Poul Martinsens DR-dokumentar Den sagtmodige morder (1988) om familiedrab i en tyrkisk familie.

Observerende dokumentarisme
Den observerende dokumentarisme dukker som nævnt op på dansk og internationalt tv i 60’erne. I 80’erne udvikler den sig til en af de helt centrale dokumentariske tv-former, specielt via DR-dokumentar-gruppen og eksempelvis Lars Engels’ programmer om livet på samfundets sociale skyggeside.

Det er en form, der ligesom moderne reality-tv ofte går meget tæt på det personlige/private og på de sider af hverdagslivet, som ofte ikke fremvises i offentligheden. Ligesom reality-tv har den da også været anklaget for at være social pornografi og voyeurisme for Over-Danmark på Under-Danmarks bekostning. Genren har kun en meget svagt markeret epistemisk autoritet, dvs. den søger ikke nogen klart defineret sandhed, men snarere viser den en kollektiv livsverden frem for at give den stemme i en offentlighed, hvor den ofte bliver udgrænset.

Den observerende dokumentarisme tager derfor heller ikke bestemte sager op, men beskriver enkeltindivider (portræt) eller hyppigst grupper, ofte knyttet til institutionaliseret liv (fængsler, mandehjem, kvarterer, beboelseskvarterer). Som form har genren en episodisk mosaik-struktur, og den bygger sjældent på lineær dramaturgi. Hvis den følger en lineær struktur, så er det fordi den afspejler en bestemt tidsstruktur eller en tidsligt struktureret hverdagsvirkelighed (en natlæges vagt, livet på en hospitalsafdeling etc.).

Der anvendes derfor også sjældent dramatisering i form af traditionel fiktiv dramaturgi, men dramaturgien kan skabes via selve virkelighedsdramaet eller via en dramatisk montage af episoderne. Formen har normalt ikke nogen stærk visuel symbolik og visuel iscenesættelse, og hvis det forekommer, er det meget svagt og meget selektivt. Prototypen på den slags observerende dokumentarisme er Lars Engels’ tv-udsendelser, f.eks. Pigerne på Halmtorvet, eller Poul Martinsens Høje historier (TV2, 1999).

Dramatiseret dokumentarisme
Den refleksiv-poetiske dokumentarisme er så sjælden på tv, at den ikke skal uddybes her. I denne dokumentarform gøres selve virkelighedsudsigelsen og iscenesættelsen til det centrale i fremstillingen, og grænsen mellem fiktion og fakta antastes direkte.

Den dramatiserede dokumentarisme havde især sin storhedstid i 70’erne og 80’erne i form af drama-dok (fiktive, men typiske cases iscenesat som dokumentarisme) eller docu-drama (en faktisk historie udført som rent fiktivt drama med stærkt markeret virkelighedsreference). Der er ikke plads til nærmere at beskrive denne form, men den minder meget stærkt om visse elementer i reality-tv. Man kan af historiske eksempler på drama-dok nævne Broen (1969) af Poul Martinsen, som skaber en iscenesat ramme for et dokumentarisk møde mellem to livsformer. Modsat nutidens reality-tv er der dog ikke tale om en konkurrence eller et meget langt eksperiment, men en enkelt udsendelse.

Man kunne også nævne Poul Trier Pedersens såkaldte spontan-spil fra 70’erne, hvor han får virkelige mennesker til at gennemspille konflikter og problemer i deres eget liv, på deres egen arbejdsplads. Docu-drama’et kan modsat illustreres ved serien Jane Horney, som i sin tid skabte stor debat som en fiktiv historie baseret på den rigtige stikker-likviderings historie om Jane Horney.

Hverdagsliv og human interest
De moderne former for reality-tv bygger på elementer i både den journalistiske, den observerende og den dramatiserede dokumentar. Men der lægges nu meget stærkere vægt på emotionel og dramatisk iscenesættelse af hverdagsliv og human interest. Ofte så stærkt, at der er en tendens mod kommerciel iscenesættelse og bevidst satsning på mediebegivenheder, brug af flere medier samt casting af personerne.

Reality-tv er et forsøg på at skabe metabevidst underholdning og infotainment, især for de nye unge mediebrugere, hvor spillet mellem roller og iscenesat live-autenticitet udgør kernen i udsendelserne. Men det er samtidig meget karakteristisk, at reality-tv udnytter teknologien i den nye interaktive multimedie-kultur. I de mest spektakulære former opbygges en refleksiv og interaktiv reception, ikke bare ved at seerne stemmer med eller udgør et aktivt publikum, men ved at Internettet og web-tv udnyttes til at skabe en flerhed af medieoplevelser.

90’ernes reality-tv er altså ikke noget nyt fænomen. Men alligevel markerer de nye reality-genrer en nyudvikling af forskellige under-genrer, hvor dramatiseringen og iscenesættelsen af hverdagslivet antager klart forskellige former. Og omfanget af den voyeuristiske overvågning er markant intensiveret, f.eks. i et reality-show som Big Brother, hvor kameraer og mikrofoner døgnet rundt filmer personer, som er indespærret i flere måneder.

Man kan tale om tre former for reality-tv: reality-serien, reality-magasinet og reality-showet.

Reality-serien
Reality-serien (docu-soap) er karakteristisk ved at have føljetonens eller seriens narrative præg. Ligesom i den fiktive føljeton-form følger vi følger en gruppe autentiske personer igennem en længere, fortløbende fortalt historie, sommetider knyttet til en bestemt lokalitet, institution, en bestemt arbejdsplads, en fritidsbeskæftigelse eller nogle af de store ritualer i vores hverdag som f.eks. fødsel, bryllupper og død. Der behøver dog ikke altid at være en fortløbende historie og persongruppe; man kan også have en fast lokalitet og persongruppe, hvortil knyttes forskellige nye personer pr. afsnit.

Her får formen en slags serie-præg, idet den samme historie gentages med variationer i hvert afsnit. Den kan rumme en autoritativ speak og også markant visuel stil eller scenografi, men vil hyppigt i lange passager have karakter af observerende dokumentarisme med skematisk anvendelse af visse traditionelle dramaturgiske træk.

Eksemplerne er f.eks. TvDanmarks Stripperkongens piger, Bryllupper eller Skadestuen, som viser den kommercielle tv-stations emne-prioritering. TV2s Strigler og børster (om fascinationen af hestevæddeløb) var et eksempel på en meget lavmælt hverdagshistorie, mens Fødegangen var en meget stærk, dramatisk og emotionel historie om livet og skæbnerne på Hvidovre Hospitals fødeafdeling. DRs programmer Bladet (om Ekstrabladet som arbejdsplads), er et hektisk klippet arbejdsplads-portræt, Strømer på stenbroen (om politiet) er en kombination af hverdagsliv og krimi, mens Livets gang i kolonihaven er endnu et eksempel på den lavmælte hverdagsrealisme.

Reality-magasinet
Reality-magasinet er den mest journalistiske af reality-tv-formerne. Her er der tale om et fast magasin-program med en journalistisk studievært, der fremlægger forskellige cases – som regel kriminalitet, ulykker og dramatiske redningsaktioner. Kriminal-magasinet har som formål at få focus på uløste forbrydelser eller give generel oplysning om kriminalitet og politi-arbejde. Men samtidig benyttes ofte dramatiske rekonstruktioner, der inddrager seeren som detektiv og dermed forlener programmet med den fiktive krimis kvaliteter.

DRs Kriminalmagasinet og TV2s Station 2 er de typiske danske eksempler på denne genre. Ulykkes-magasinet, for eksempel det legendariske engelske 999 eller det ligeså legendariske amerikanske Rescue 911, har i udgangspunktet den oplysende effekt at fortælle om ulykker i hverdagen. Men samtidig skildrer magasinet professionelle redningsfolks heroiske indsats eller almindelige menneskers evner i krisesituationer. Også her spiller dramatiserede rekonstruktioner en vigtig rolle.

Kun få danske stationer har udviklet selvstændige formater, idet man har vist de udenlandske eller lavet en dansk kopi som TV3s Alarm 112. I alle disse former kombineres en tydelig, autoritativ studievært og interviews med både professionelle og almindelige mennesker. På den måde er de dramatiske og melodramatiske indslag indlejret og framet af en oplysnings-ideologi, i hvert fald i public service tv-versionerne.

Reality-showet
Den sidste grundform er reality-showet. Det er programmer, der konstruerer en konkurrence-præget ramme omkring udvalgte, almindelige mennesker, som skal leve sammen eller kæmpe mod hinanden efter ganske bestemte regler og under ganske bestemte fysiske rammer og betingelser. Ofte spilles der på den sociale mekanisme, som bestemmer, hvordan man inkluderes i en gruppe eller ekskluderes. I et iscenesat show-agtigt og dramatisk forløb synliggøres de mest centrale socialpsykologiske mekanismer, som behersker både familieliv, kærlighedsliv og arbejdsliv.

Rammerne er vidt forskellige: Villa Medusas (TvDanmark) discountagtige ungdoms-ferie-hytte set-up, Robinson-ekspeditionens (TV3) mere spektakulære og eventyragtige drømmeverden eller Big Brothers (TvDanmark) intense, næsten psyko-terroragtige overvågning døgnet rundt.

Men disse game-reality-shows, som ofte er blevet mødt med kritisk afstandtage i den seriøse presse, behøver ikke have et kommercielt konkurrencemoment. Der er former, som minder mere om den klassiske, dramatiserede dokumentarisme og dens iscenesatte eksperimenter med socialt, pyskologisk og kulturelt sigte.

Det ser man f.eks. i BBC’s The 1900 House (sendt på dansk TV2), en historisk rekonstruktion af livet i et victoriansk hus fra år 1900 og et socialt eksperiment, der tester en nutidig families evne til at overleve på fortidens betingelser. Det er faktisk underholdende, levendegjort socialhistorie. Det samme gælder BBC’s reality-føljeton Castaway, hvor man har skabt rammerne for opbygningen af et nyt samfund på en øde ø. Også her er der tale om et socialt eksperiment uden konkurrencemoment, men med betydelig dramatisk og dokumentarisk kvalitet.

Mediekritiske unge
Reality-tv er ikke kulturens undergang, selv om aspekter af den rummer betænkelige kommercielle udnyttelsesperspektiver. Det er blot endnu et underholdnings-koncept eller et blandet dokumentarisk genreprodukt, som afspejler en moderne medievirkelighed på godt og ondt. En virkelighed, der er blevet medialiseret og globaliseret, har sprængt eller antastet de gamle genrers og mediers grænser og skaber nye rammer for de unges socialisering. I dag er medierne til stede næsten overalt, og de gennemlyser større dele af virkeligheden end tidligere. Dermed påvirker de også rammerne for vores private og offentlige liv. Det skaber nogle nye muligheder – og nye farer.

Grænsen mellem offentligt og privat er blevet flyttet meget det seneste tiår. Man overskrider grænser og viser ting, som før var tabu. Især den unge generation er vokset op med en mere refleksiv medie- og rollebevidsthed. Det betyder også, at de forholder sig relativt afslappet og bevidst til nye former som f.eks. reality-tv. De ved godt, at det ikke er den skinbarlige, autentiske virkelighed, men et iscenesat spil med virkeligheden. De er fascineret, men også i stand til at forholde sig distanceret og kritisk til det.

Source : Ekkofilm.dk

Shared via Posterous on January 11, 2012 at 01:18PM

WikiLeaks has always had money issues. Whether they’ve been how to get money, how to be transparent about money, how to spend money, whom to spend money on, why to spend money and so forth – these are all issues one deals with in an organisation that doesn’t exist for the reason of making money.

I’ve been quite annoyed with WikiLeaks and the money. I’ve been sad, but I do understand the reasons to it, that it’s been so hard to get full disclosure of the money. Showing the world whom you pay money to for secure and private hosting is obviously like giving out the secrecy, so it’s quite hard to be transparent about that. Still, I want to know where my money goes when I donate to any sort of organisation. I’m also been sad that not more money has been donated to the Bradley Manning Foundation – more was promised then was given. I demand a high standard for organisations like WikiLeaks because they should not have places to attack. If you deal with open cards, you’re less vulnerable to any attack.

So, there’s lots of criticism. But whatever these are, they are nothing that makes WikiLeaks a criminal organisation. Even when I’m upset with the way that a person from WikiLeaks behave, it’s up to me to decide if I’m willing to give money to them or not. Especially considering there’s no ongoing (publicly aware) investigation or a letter from any government saying they should not have the right to receive money.

In my world, you’re not convicted until your actually convicted. A suspicion against you should not leave you without your rights. When you’re under pending trial or conviction, it’s still just pending. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. So also WikiLeaks. Whatever criticisms one might have.

That’s why I’m so proud of Flattr. When I started Flattr I based it on many of very simple principles. I wanted people to be treated fairly – even when there’s discussion about if it’s right or wrong. I wanted to make sure that everyone had equal opportunity in the system. I wanted everyone to feel that all parts of the system was benefitial to all parts. I wanted the people that work at Flattr to be able to speak their own mind, and feel proud of what they did – and if we do something wrong, tell eachother that. And today, again, I’m so proud to see that this is working. Even though I have a love-hate type of relationship to WikiLeaks, and some of my other co-workers at Flattr as well, we all stand up for the right of WikiLeaks to use the system. It’s a separate thing from any personal views. It’s a political view based on equal rights, the right to a fair trial and the right to partake in society as a peer.

And it’s also why I’m so upset with Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and so forth. For not abiding to the simplest and most basic views of a democracy. For not standing up for freedom of speech. For rather abusing their market position in order to shut someone up. They’ve done this many times before, but not on this scale. With The Pirate Bay, we lost thousands of dollars in donations when Paypal shut down our account. We never recovered that money. That issue put serious dents into our work. WikiLeaks is a much bigger organisation, so of course the dents will be bigger than for TPB.

The current monetary system is not built for democracy. This whole ordeal with blocking receivers makes this obvious. We have monetary private censorship in place. The people that control the money control the outcome of money. It’s a real problem that we need to fix. I’m doing what I can with Flattr, but we should all try to do our part.

It doesn’t really matter if you like WikiLeaks or not. It’s about allowing private companies to decide if there is a WikiLeaks or not. The judges should be the people – and possibly courts – but never a for-profit company.

WATCH THE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO: http://youtu.be/IOu0DuxFAT0
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22 months
1,357 hours
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288,000 jelly beans

————————————-
IN YOUR ARMS CREDITS
————————————

In Your Arms

Written by Kina Grannis

Directed by Greg Jardin

Produced by Daphne Raves

Concept Art by Lauren Gregg

Wardrobe by Gillian Zwick

Sound Design by Suzanne Goldish

Production Company: @radical.media

Awesome Jelly Bean Animation Team:
Kristina Carucci
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Ptolemy Slocum
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Clarisse Wiedem

Additional Animators:
Monica Ahanonu
Matt Beans
Sarah Burt
David Chang
Jane Cohen
John D’Arco
Hope Marquardt
Erin McLaughlin
Krisztianna Ortiz
Kyle Padilla
Allen Marshall Palmer
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FIND KINA ONLINE
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- SECOND YOUTUBE CHANNEL: http://www.youtube.com/kinatime
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Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg

Download “In Your Arms” on iTunes: http://bit.ly/tonWaT
WATCH THE MAKING OF “IN YOUR ARMS”: http://youtu.be/cIH4MJAC2Tg
“In Your Arms” Tour Dates: http://www.kinagrannis.com/?page=tour

22 months
1,357 hours
30 people
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288,000 jelly beans

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KINA ON TOUR
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Tour Dates: http://www.kinagrannis.com/?page=tour
RSVP ON FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/qOSENq

This February I’ll be coming back to Europe on tour! I’ll be playing the following cities: Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Norwich, Birmingham, Bristol, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Paris, Lausanne, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Barcelona & Madrid. See you soon!

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or get it ONLINE here:

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————————————-
IN YOUR ARMS CREDITS
————————————

In Your Arms

Written by Kina Grannis

Directed by Greg Jardin

Produced by Daphne Raves

Concept Art by Lauren Gregg

Wardrobe by Gillian Zwick

Sound Design by Suzanne Goldish

Production Company: @radical.media

Awesome Jelly Bean Animation Team:
Kristina Carucci
Lauren Cunningham
MacKenna Dixon
Marcus Demmon
Kevin Harman
Alexandra Judelsohn
Jay Kim
Pearl Lung
Ptolemy Slocum
Erin Thiele
Clarisse Wiedem

Additional Animators:
Monica Ahanonu
Matt Beans
Sarah Burt
David Chang
Jane Cohen
John D’Arco
Hope Marquardt
Erin McLaughlin
Krisztianna Ortiz
Kyle Padilla
Allen Marshall Palmer
Natalie Pasallar
JJ Rubin
Cherie Saulter
Susan Wiedem
John Sheptock
Janine Sides
Hethur Suval
Chelsea Stark
Sarah Tejeda

Special thanks to Jelly Belly!

http://www.jellybelly.com

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FIND ME ONLINE
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Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0

Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition

IT IS a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’ message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed.

That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform.

Scholars have long debated the relative importance of printed media, oral transmission and images in rallying popular support for the Reformation. Some have championed the central role of printing, a relatively new technology at the time. Opponents of this view emphasise the importance of preaching and other forms of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the role of media as a means of social signalling and co-ordinating public opinion in the Reformation.

Now the internet offers a new perspective on this long-running debate, namely that the important factor was not the printing press itself (which had been around since the 1450s), but the wider system of media sharing along social networks—what is called “social media” today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries, grasped the dynamics of this new media environment very quickly, and saw how it could spread his message.

New post from Martin Luther

The start of the Reformation is usually dated to Luther’s nailing of his “95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31st 1517. The “95 Theses” were propositions written in Latin that he wished to discuss, in the academic custom of the day, in an open debate at the university. Luther, then an obscure theologian and minister, was outraged by the behaviour of Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who was selling indulgences to raise money to fund the pet project of his boss, Pope Leo X: the reconstruction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Hand over your money, went Tetzel’s sales pitch, and you can ensure that your dead relatives are not stuck in purgatory. This crude commercialisation of the doctrine of indulgences, encapsulated in Tetzel’s slogan—“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, so the soul from purgatory springs”—was, to Luther, “the pious defrauding of the faithful” and a glaring symptom of the need for broad reform. Pinning a list of propositions to the church door, which doubled as the university notice board, was a standard way to announce a public debate.

Although they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther’s friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and quickly spread throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther’s friend Friedrich Myconius later wrote that “hardly 14 days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.”

The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation.

Mubarak and Leo X, the anciens régimes

The media environment that Luther had shown himself so adept at managing had much in common with today’s online ecosystem of blogs, social networks and discussion threads. It was a decentralised system whose participants took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to participants in such systems as a “networked public”, rather than an “audience”, since they do more than just consume information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to a friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to ripple through the network of printing centres across Germany.

Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.

As with “Likes” and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a given item’s popularity. Luther’s pamphlets were the most sought after; a contemporary remarked that they “were not so much sold as seized”. His first pamphlet written in German, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, was reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were editions of a few dozen works by Luther. In all, some 6m-7m pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the Reformation, more than a quarter of them Luther’s.

Although Luther was the most prolific and popular author, there were many others on both sides of the debate. Tetzel, the indulgence-seller, was one of the first to respond to him in print, firing back with his own collection of theses. Others embraced the new pamphlet format to weigh in on the merits of Luther’s arguments, both for and against, like argumentative bloggers. Sylvester Mazzolini defended the pope against Luther in his “Dialogue Against the Presumptuous Theses of Martin Luther”. He called Luther “a leper with a brain of brass and a nose of iron” and dismissed his arguments on the basis of papal infallibility. Luther, who refused to let any challenge go unanswered, took a mere two days to produce his own pamphlet in response, giving as good as he got. “I am sorry now that I despised Tetzel,” he wrote. “Ridiculous as he was, he was more acute than you. You cite no scripture. You give no reasons.”

Being able to follow and discuss such back-and-forth exchanges of views, in which each author quoted his opponent’s words in order to dispute them, gave people a thrilling and unprecedented sense of participation in a vast, distributed debate. Arguments in their own social circles about the merits of Luther’s views could be seen as part of a far wider discourse, both spoken and printed. Many pamphlets called upon the reader to discuss their contents with others and read them aloud to the illiterate. People read and discussed pamphlets at home with their families, in groups with their friends, and in inns and taverns. Luther’s pamphlets were read out at spinning bees in Saxony and in bakeries in Tyrol. In some cases entire guilds of weavers or leather-workers in particular towns declared themselves supporters of the Reformation, indicating that Luther’s ideas were being propagated in the workplace. One observer remarked in 1523 that better sermons could be heard in the inns of Ulm than in its churches, and in Basel in 1524 there were complaints about people preaching from books and pamphlets in the town’s taverns. Contributors to the debate ranged from the English king Henry VIII, whose treatise attacking Luther (co-written with Thomas More) earned him the title “Defender of the Faith” from the pope, to Hans Sachs, a shoemaker from Nuremberg who wrote a series of hugely popular songs in support of Luther.

A multimedia campaign

It was not just words that travelled along the social networks of the Reformation era, but music and images too. The news ballad, like the pamphlet, was a relatively new form of media. It set a poetic and often exaggerated description of contemporary events to a familiar tune so that it could be easily learned, sung and taught to others. News ballads were often “contrafacta” that deliberately mashed up a pious melody with secular or even profane lyrics. They were distributed in the form of printed lyric sheets, with a note to indicate which tune they should be sung to. Once learned they could spread even among the illiterate through the practice of communal singing.

Both reformers and Catholics used this new form to spread information and attack their enemies. “We are Starting to Sing a New Song”, Luther’s first venture into the news-ballad genre, told the story of two monks who had been executed in Brussels in 1523 after refusing to recant their Lutheran beliefs. Luther’s enemies denounced him as the Antichrist in song, while his supporters did the same for the pope and insulted Catholic theologians (“Goat, desist with your bleating”, one of them was admonished). Luther himself is thought to have been the author of “Now We Drive Out the Pope”, a parody of a folk song called “Now We Drive Out Winter”, whose tune it borrowed:

Now we drive out the pope 
from Christ’s church and God’s house. 
Therein he has reigned in a deadly fashion 
and has seduced uncountably many souls. 
Now move along, you damned son, 
you Whore of Babylon. You are the abomination and the Antichrist, 
full of lies, death and cunning.

Woodcuts were another form of propaganda. The combination of bold graphics with a smattering of text, printed as a broadsheet, could convey messages to the illiterate or semi-literate and serve as a visual aid for preachers. Luther remarked that “without images we can neither think nor understand anything.” Some religious woodcuts were elaborate, with complex allusions and layers of meaning that would only have been apparent to the well-educated. “Passional Christi und Antichristi”, for example, was a series of images contrasting the piety of Christ with the decadence and corruption of the pope. Some were astonishingly crude and graphic, such as “The Origin of the Monks” (see picture), showing three devils excreting a pile of monks. The best of them were produced by Luther’s friend Lucas Cranach. Luther’s opponents responded with woodcuts of their own: “Luther’s Game of Heresy” (see beginning of this article) depicts him boiling up a stew with the help of three devils, producing fumes from the pot labelled falsehood, pride, envy, heresy and so forth.

Amid the barrage of pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts, public opinion was clearly moving in Luther’s favour. “Idle chatter and inappropriate books” were corrupting the people, fretted one bishop. “Daily there is a veritable downpour of Lutheran tracts in German and Latin…nothing is sold here except the tracts of Luther,” lamented Aleander, Leo X’s envoy to Germany, in 1521. Most of the 60 or so clerics who rallied to the pope’s defence did so in academic and impenetrable Latin, the traditional language of theology, rather than in German. Where Luther’s works spread like wildfire, their pamphlets fizzled. Attempts at censorship failed, too. Printers in Leipzig were banned from publishing or selling anything by Luther or his allies, but material printed elsewhere still flowed into the city. The city council complained to the Duke of Saxony that printers faced losing “house, home, and all their livelihood” because “that which one would gladly sell, and for which there is demand, they are not allowed to have or sell.” What they had was lots of Catholic pamphlets, “but what they have in over-abundance is desired by no one and cannot even be given away.”

Luther’s enemies likened the spread of his ideas to a sickness. The papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication in 1520 said its aim was “to cut off the advance of this plague and cancerous disease so it will not spread any further”. The Edict of Worms in 1521 warned that the spread of Luther’s message had to be prevented, otherwise “the whole German nation, and later all other nations, will be infected by this same disorder.” But it was too late—the infection had taken hold in Germany and beyond. To use the modern idiom, Luther’s message had gone viral.

From Wittenberg to Facebook

In the early years of the Reformation expressing support for Luther’s views, through preaching, recommending a pamphlet or singing a news ballad directed at the pope, was dangerous. By stamping out isolated outbreaks of opposition swiftly, autocratic regimes discourage their opponents from speaking out and linking up. A collective-action problem thus arises when people are dissatisfied, but are unsure how widely their dissatisfaction is shared, as Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, has observed in connection with the Arab spring. The dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, she argues, survived for as long as they did because although many people deeply disliked those regimes, they could not be sure others felt the same way. Amid the outbreaks of unrest in early 2011, however, social-media websites enabled lots of people to signal their preferences en masse to their peers very quickly, in an “informational cascade” that created momentum for further action.

Where monks came from, in the Lutherans’ view

The same thing happened in the Reformation. The surge in the popularity of pamphlets in 1523-24, the vast majority of them in favour of reform, served as a collective signalling mechanism. As Andrew Pettegree, an expert on the Reformation at St Andrew’s University, puts it in “Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion”, “It was the superabundance, the cascade of titles, that created the impression of an overwhelming tide, an unstoppable movement of opinion…Pamphlets and their purchasers had together created the impression of irresistible force.” Although Luther had been declared a heretic in 1521, and owning or reading his works was banned by the church, the extent of local political and popular support for Luther meant he escaped execution and the Reformation became established in much of Germany.

Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution. Today’s social-media systems do not just connect us to each other: they also link us to the past.

Via The Economist

Shared via Posterous on December 21, 2011 at 06:00PM

This video essay by Kevin B. Lee highlights a signature feature of director Steven Spielberg.

Whenever you watch a Spielberg movie there is a good chance you will see the camera zoom in on a character looking at something (or someone) in awe.

As the video points out it was not a new technique, but the enormous success of his movies meant that it became synonymous with the wonder of his films.

It is an effective technique as it literally draws us closer to the characters and stokes our imagination as to what is being looked at.

Perhaps it goes back to the famous “Dolly zoom” shot of Roy Scheider on the beach in Jaws (1975) where we get a disturbing close-up before cutting to glimpses of a dreadful shark attack (it’s around 2.01 in the clip below).

But the visual motif also functions as a metaphor for his career – a director who cares deeply about his audiences before providing them with something of wonder to look at.

> Transcript of the essay at Fandor
> Steven Spielberg at the IMDb, MUBi and TSFDT
> Chaos Cinema the Rise of the Avid

http://www.fandor.com/blog/?p=9436 to read the full transcript of this video.

With his two new movies War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg commands our attention once again. We’ve taken the occasion to produce the following video essay exploring what may be the most singular visual element to his films: the face.

Watch more exclusive video content at http://www.fandor.com.

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5W4RxGv4s

Rene Magritte’s “The Lovers”

UMW Art Historian Marjorie Och recently sent around this Press Release from the Visual Resources Association’s Intellectual Property Rights Committee that seems to take a strong stand in asserting a rather broad and liberal interpretation of the fair use doctrine as it pertains to using images for teaching, research, and study. The statement even encourages sharing!

Points 3 through 6 below are especially important for us here at UMW given that we are in the middle of creating the third iteration of an online exhibit for Marjorie Och’s Venice Seminar. And this Press Release becomes a welcome touchstone for how far can we go when incorporating reproductions of paintings, film stills, more contemporary images of Venice, etc.

Read the entire press release below.

PRESS RELEASE

December 7, 2011

Contact: Visual Resources Association Intellectual Property Rights Committee

VISUAL RESOURCES ASSOCIATION RELEASES STATEMENT ON THE
FAIR USE OF IMAGES FOR TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND STUDY

The Visual Resources Association, the international organization of image media professionals dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image management, has released a Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study. The Statement describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use. The six uses are: 1) preservation (storing images for repeated use in a teaching context and transferring images to new formats); 2) use of images for teaching purposes; 3) use of images (both large, high-resolution images and thumbnails) on course websites and in other online study materials; 4) adaptations of images for teaching and classroom work by students; 5) sharing images among educational and cultural institutions to facilitate teaching and study; and 6) reproduction of images in theses and dissertations.

This Statement on the Fair Use of Images draws from the academic community’s longstanding practice of relying on fair use for teaching and learning, and highlights one area – the use of images in theses and dissertations – where the Association believes the community should return to its previous practices of being more assertive. The Statement also relies heavily on recent fair use jurisprudence and aims to provide image users within the educational and cultural heritage communities with greater certainty when relying on fair use.

The Statement was developed by the VRA’s Intellectual Property Rights Committee, with the guidance of a Legal Advisory Committee of preeminent copyright scholars and legal experts, whose members include: Robert W. Clarida (Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman), Jeffrey P. Cunard (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP), Jackie Ewenstein (Ewenstein & Young LLP), Georgia K. Harper (Scholarly Communications Advisor, The University Libraries, University of Texas at Austin), Virginia Rutledge (PIPE Arts Group) and Jule Sigall (Associate General Counsel – Copyright, Microsoft; Formerly Associate Register for Policy & International Affairs, U.S. Copyright Office).

Maureen Burns, VRA President, noted the Association’s aims in producing the Statement: “An important aspect of VRA’s mission is to inform educational image users about, and to help form consensus around, best practices in the field of visual resources. These guidelines reflect a consensus (albeit largely unwritten to date) within the Association – and by extension the broader educational community – that the practices described within the guidelines are reasonable assertions of fair use. Our hope is that this document will help to ensure that images are robustly and widely used to facilitate uninhibited academic inquiry.”

* * * * *

For more information about the Statement, please visit the Intellectual Property Rights Committee page on the VRA website at http://www.vraweb.org or go directly to the document here: http://www.vraweb.org/organization/pdf/VRAFairUseGuidelinesFinal.pdf

Maureen Burns, Ed.D.

President, Visual Resources Association

I hear it everywhere. The web is dead, apps are the future.

I heard it first on the cover of Wired Magazine in March 1997 and again in August 2010. I was so impressed I added it to my blogroll, as a reminder to all that you’re reading a dead medium.

That was said in jest, of course.

I’ll keep playing here while the rest of you flirt with apps. I’ll be here when you come back. I know it’s going to happen. Here’s why.

Linking.

Visualize each of the apps they want you to use on your iPad or iPhone as a silo. A tall vertical building. It might feel very large on the inside, but nothing goes in or out that isn’t well-controlled by the people who created the app. That sucks!

The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub. How nice your bathtub is. Try building a continent around it if you want to get my point.

We pay some people to be Big Thinkers for us, but mostly they just say things that please people with money. It pleases the money folk to think that the wild and crazy and unregulated world of the web is no longer threatening them. That users are happy to live in a highly regulated, Disneyfied app space, without all that messy freedom.

I’ll stay with the web.

Update: I wrote a follow-up to this piece.

Sometimes you can get very valuable insights from someone out there, if you try to listen instead of continuously ‘shout’ on your own. It’s especially crucial, if you’re building a startup, because you want to understand and learn how your potential market relations (especially potential customers) think about what you have to offer, and how they see the world and what their problems are. In the oft-quoted but still wise words of Steve Blank, “opinion is inside the building, data is outside the building”.

Recently I received an email from Søren Storm Hansen, a Danish blogger, from whose blog I had shared a handful of posts using Google Reader, Ifttt and Kaplak.net. Søren didn’t want his posts ‘republished’ on Kaplak.net. Apparently not because he wanted to keep his readers fixed to his site (he publishes full feeds and every item carries ads) but because he didn’t want “his name associated with services, which didn’t contribute anything”.

As it is of no paramount importance to me personally whether Søren’s stuff is shared on Kaplak.net or not I ended up removing Søren’s feed from my Google Reader subscriptions, so in the future I will not read (and therefore not share) items from his blog. But his request still left me slightly puzzled, because why would you want to risk losing readers or potential readers like this, if you’re a blogger? I suppose even a successful blogger wants more readers? Apparently Søren shares no similar reservations as to whether his readers share items from his blog with services such as Google+ and Facebook, and they’re not even so kind to email him a pingback (which I do precisely because I want the sharing to be noticed which may spur conversation), and they do not carry his ads.

As a blogger I’ve had stuff shared or republished from my blogs in the past too. Some of my writings have even appeared in self-published antologies about web entrepreneurship. I do not share Søren’s reservations about this as I do not believe my ‘personal brand’ is associated in particular with any one particular item, or with any one context in particular (which potentially could damage it beyond repair, or more plainly, risk not to contribute anything to it). Similarly I do not believe in copyright, because I don’t think I (or others) would or should benefit financially from any particular work. Rather I believe I benefit from what may be termed my total brand equity value – what I’ve proven I can do in the past, and so in what I may be able to do in the future. In fact, this is the crucial factor which got me my current job, which has gotten me earlier engagements, and no doubt will help me receive offers in the future.

What I learned from Søren’s request is something along these lines : the distribution as well as the ‘non-distribution’ (control of distribution – in so far as this is possible) of one’s online activities and the contexts they create, seem to be two sides of the same concern : to build one’s online reputation (or ‘personal brand equity’ in advertising speak) to a level where one may successfully convert this to financial benefits, job offers, speaking engagements etc. – and therefore also take steps to protect it. If one specializes in one line of work, one may not be interested in seeing one’s stuff in a context which puts it in another light. The question is though, if the cat is not already out of the bag, once you hit the “publish” button? Meaning – is it really up to you, how your recipients use what you’ve given them yourself?

As many people building websites are, I’ve been preoccupied with eyeballs, i.e. the problem of ‘how many’ a given message or product may reach. I’ve seen Kaplak through the lense of aggregation and syndication of RSS feeds, and as such, my first instinct upon receiving Søren’s request was to jump in and talk feeds and the ‘grey zone of syndication’, as I’ve discussed previously on this blog. But this turned out not to be Søren’s concern. His perception of Kaplak is more in line with a ‘xerox for the internet’ – a place where you can make a copy of an article or blog item and share it with others to read. This certainly makes sense, although this has not been Kaplak’s primary focus – instead we use already established technologies and services such as RSS/Atom feeds, Google Reader, Ifttt and Posterous for the ‘xeroxing’, while Kaplak admittedly (yet) doesn’t contribute much, except try to make a number of shared items available in a new context, where they may ultimately reach recipients, they would otherwise not reach, and reduce costs in creating these new connections, so that products on the ‘slim end’ might benefit from these.

I’d certainly be interested to hear other POV’s on what online sharing (or ‘xeroxing’), aggregation and syndication mean for the value of one’s online reputation or ‘personal brand equity’. In what ways are the ‘xeroxing’ of items on Kaplak.net different from the context, one’s published items may appear in, in say, search results or in one’s feed reader?

Via Captain's log

The Crime of Poverty

by Henry George
April 1, 1885

Henry George was an itinerant typeseetter and newspaper editor who became a skilled lecturer and critic of the economic system. His book Progress and Poverty made him famous, and he ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor of New York several times in the 1880s and 1890s. In this address, delivered in an opera house in Burlington, Iowa, George examines the social roots of poverty in the United States in the nineteenth century, challenging the myth of individual blame.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I propose to talk to you to-night of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in a short time, hope to convince you of much; but the thing of things I should like to show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in poverty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps as himself, are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when he said that the hell of which Englishmen are most afraid is the hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone, but of people all over the civilised world, no matter what their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we strive and strain and struggle; and work on oftentimes in blind habit long after the necessity for work is gone.

The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich. They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be suffering in a community from which any class can totally escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very air which rich and poor alike must breathe.

Poverty is the mother of ignorance, the breeder of crime. I walked down one of your streets this morning, and I saw three men going along with their hands chained together. I knew for certain that those men were not rich men; and, although I do not know the offence for which they were carried in chains through your streets, this I think I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you will find it in some way to spring from poverty. Nine tenths of human misery, I think you will find, if you look, to be due to poverty. If a man chooses to be poor, he commits no crime in being poor, provided his poverty hurts no one but himself. If a man has others dependent upon him; if there are a wife and children whom it is his duty to support, then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a crime—aye, and I think that, in most cases, the men who have no one to support but themselves are men that are shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world for every man; and for every man who lives a single life, caring only for himself, there is some woman who is deprived of her natural supporter. But while a man who chooses to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is certainly a crime to force poverty on others. And it seems to me clear that the great majority of those who suffer from poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, but because of conditions imposed by society at large. Therefore I hold that poverty is a crime—not an individual crime, but a social crime, a crime for which we all, poor as well as rich, are responsible.

Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening to the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. Sankey was singing and something like a revival was going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes connected with the revival, and recounted some of the reasons why men failed to become Christians. One case he mentioned struck me. He said that he had noticed on the outskirts of the congregation, night after night, a man who listened intently and who gradually moved forward. One night, the clergyman said, he went to him, saying: My brother, are you not ready to become a Christian? The man said, no, he was not. He said it, not in a defiant tone, but in a sorrowful tone; the clergyman asked him why, whether he did not believe in the truths he had been hearing? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't he become a Christian? Well, he said, I can't join the church without giving up my business; and it is necessary for the support of my wife and children. If I give that up, I don't know how in the world I can get along. I had a hard time before I found my present business, and I cannot afford to give it up. Yet I can't become a Christian without giving it up. The clergyman asked, are you a rum-seller? No, he was not a rum-seller. Well, the clergyman said, he didn't know what in the world the man could be; it seemed to him that a rum-seller was the only man who does a business that would prevent his becoming a Christian; and he finally said: What is your business? The man said, I sell soap. Soap! exclaimed the clergyman, you sell soap? How in the world does that prevent your becoming a Christian? Well, the man said, it is this way; the soap I sell is one of these patent soaps that are extensively advertised as enabling you to clean clothes very quickly, as containing no deleterious compound whatever. Every cake of the soap that I sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a statement that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas the truth of the matter is that it does, and that though it will take the dirt out of clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a little while, rot them completely. I have to make my living in this way; and I cannot feel that I can become a Christian if I sell that soap. The minister went on, describing how he laboured unsuccessfully with that man, and finally wound up by saying: He stuck to his soap and lost his soul.

But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone? Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men have to make that terrible choice between what conscience tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would bring cholera to this country, or the man who, having the power to prevent its coming here, would make no effort to do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than cholera; poverty kills more people than pestilence, even in the best of times. Look at the death statistics of our cities; see where the deaths come quickest; see where it is that the little children die like flies—it is in the poorer quarters. And the man who looks with careless eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence, the man who does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty of a crime.

If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary, then it is a crime for which society is responsible and for which society must suffer.

I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, that this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our civilisation, bringing want and suffering and degradation, destroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world, in this heyday of nineteenth century civilisation. In every civilised country under the sun you will find men and women whose condition is worse than that of the savage: men and women and little children with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even in this new city of yours with virgin soil around you, you have had this winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. As here, so everywhere; and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds.

What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. We see rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another; but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease and the others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything like the poverty that festers in our civilisation.

In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, seasons when people starve; but they are seasons when the earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain has not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been swept by some foe—not when there is plenty. And yet the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds.

Why, to-day, while over the civilised world there is so much distress, so much want, what is the cry that goes up? What is the current explanation of the hard times? Overproduction! There are so many clothes that men must go ragged, so much coal that in the bitter winters people have to shiver, such over-filled granaries that people actually die by starvation! Want due to over-production! Was a greater absurdity ever uttered? How can there be over-production till all have enough? It is not over-production; it is unjust distribution.

Poverty necessary! Why, think of the enormous powers that are latent in the human brain! Think how invention enables us to do with the power of one man what not long ago could not be done by the power of a thousand. Think that in England alone the steam machinery in operation is said to exert a productive force greater than the physical force of the population of the world, were they all adults. And yet we have only begun to invent and discover. We have not yet utilised all that has already been invented and discovered. And look at the powers of the earth. They have hardly been touched. In every direction as we look new resources seem to open. Man's ability to produce wealth seems almost infinite—we can set no bounds to it. Look at the power that is flowing by your city in the current of the Mississippi that might be set at work for you. So in every direction energy that we might utilise goes to waste; resources that we might draw upon are untouched. Yet men are delving and straining to satisfy mere animal wants; women are working, working, working their lives away, and too frequently turning in despair from that hard struggle to cast away all that makes the charm of woman.

If the animals can reason what must they think of us? Look at one of those great ocean steamers ploughing her way across the Atlantic, against wind, against wave, absolutely setting at defiance the utmost power of the elements. If the gulls that hover over her were thinking beings could they imagine that the animal that could create such a structure as that could actually want for enough to eat? Yet, so it is. How many even of those of us who find life easiest are there who really live a rational life? Think of it, you who believe that there is only one life for man—what a fool at the very best is a man to pass his life in this struggle to merely live? And you who believe, as I believe, that this is not the last of man, that this is a life that opens but another life, think how nine tenths, aye, I do not know but ninety-nine-hundredths of all our vital powers are spent in a mere effort to get a living; or to heap together that which we cannot by any possibility take away. Take the life of the average workingman. Is that the life for which the human brain was intended and the human heart was made? Look at the factories scattered through our country. They are little better than penitentiaries.

I read in the New York papers a while ago that the girls at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers said that the girls did not seem to know why they had struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun of striking. Then came out the girls' side of the story and it appeared that they had struck against the rules in force. They were fined if they spoke to one another, and they were fined still more heavily if they laughed. There was a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited a lady in Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in various factories, and I asked her, Is it possible that such rules are enforced? She said it was so in Philadelphia. There is a fine for speaking to your next neighbour, a fine for laughing; and she told me that the girls in one place where she was employed were fined ten cents a minute for being late, though many of them had to come for miles in winter storms. She told me of one poor girl who really worked hard one week and made $3.50; but the fines against her were $5.25. That seems ridiculous; it is ridiculous, but it is pathetic and it is shameful.

But take the cases of those even who are comparatively independent and well off. Here is a man working hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing one thing over and over again, and for what? Just to live! He is working ten hours a day in order that he may sleep eight and may have two or three hours for himself when he is tired out and all his faculties are exhausted. That is not a reasonable life; that is not a life for a being possessed of the powers that are in man, and I think every man must have felt it for himself. I know that when I first went to my trade I thought to myself that it was incredible that a man was created to work all day long just to live. I used to read the Scientific American, and as invention after invention was heralded in that paper I used to think to myself that when I became a man it would not be necessary to work so hard. But on the contrary, the struggle for existence has become more and more intense. People who want to prove the contrary get up masses of statistics to show that the condition of the working classes is improving. Improvement that you have to take a statistical microscope to discover does not amount to anything. But there is not improvement.

Improvement! Why, according to the last report of the Michigan Bureau of Labour Statistics, as I read yesterday in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, including some of the very high priced ones, where the wages are from $6 to $7 a day, the average earnings amount to $1.77, and, taking out waste time, to $1.40. Now, when you consider how a man can live and bring up a family on $1.40 a day, even in Michigan, I do not think you will conclude that the condition of the working classes can have very much improved.

Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all who have investigated the question, by such men as Hallam, the historian, and Professor Thorold Rogers, who has made a study of the history of prices as they were five centuries ago. When all the productive arts were in the most primitive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegetables had not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle were small and poor, when there were hardly any roads and transportation was exceedingly difficult, when all manufacturing was done by hand—in that rude time the condition of the labourers of England was far better than it is to-day. In those rude times no man need fear want save when actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of transportation the plenty of one district could not relieve the scarcity of another. Save in such times, no man need fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in modern times, was absolutely unknown. Everyone, save the physically disabled, could make a living, and the poorest lived in rude plenty. But perhaps the most astonishing fact brought to light by this investigation is that at that time, under those conditions in those dark ages, as we call them, the working day was only eight hours. While with all our modern inventions and improvements, our working classes have been agitating and struggling in vain to get the working day reduced to eight hours.

Do these facts show improvement? Why, in the rudest state of society in the most primitive state of the arts the labour of the natural bread-winner will suffice to provide a living for himself and for those who are dependent upon him. Amid all our inventions there are large bodies of men who cannot do this. What is the most astonishing thing in our civilisation? Why, the most astonishing thing to those Sioux chiefs who were recently brought from the Far West and taken through our manufacturing cities in the East, was not the marvellous inventions that enabled machinery to act almost as if it had intellect; it was not the growth of our cities; it was not the speed with which the railway car whirled along; it was not the telegraph or the telephone that most astonished them; but the fact that amid this marvellous development of productive power they found little children at work. And astonishing that ought to be to us; a most astounding thing!

Talk about improvement in the condition of the working classes, when the facts are that a larger and larger proportion of women and children are forced to toil. Why, I am told that, even here in your own city, there are children of thirteen and fourteen working in factories. In Detroit, according to the report of the Michigan Bureau of Labour Statistics, one half of the children of school age do not go to school. In New Jersey, the report made to the legislature discloses an amount of misery and ignorance that is appalling. Children are growing up there, compelled to monotonous toil when they ought to be at play, children who do not know how to play; children who have been so long accustomed to work that they have become used to it; children growing up in such ignorance that they do not know what country New Jersey is in, that they never heard of George Washington, that some of them think Europe is in New York. Such facts are appalling; they mean that the very foundations of the Republic are being sapped. The dangerous man is not the man who tries to excite discontent; the dangerous man is the man who says that all is as it ought to be. Such a state of things cannot continue; such tendencies as we see at work here cannot go on without bringing at last an overwhelming crash.

I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that flows from it is unnecessary; I say that there is no natural reason why we should not all be rich, in the sense, not of having more than each other, but in the sense of all having enough to completely satisfy all physical wants; of all having enough to get such an easy living that we could develop the better part of humanity. There is no reason why wealth should not be so abundant, that no one should think of such a thing as little children at work, or a woman compelled to a toil that nature never intended her to perform; wealth so abundant that there would be no cause for that harassing fear that sometimes paralyses even those who are not considered the poor, the fear that every man of us has probably felt, that if sickness should smite him, or if he should be taken away, those whom he loves better than his life would become charges upon charity. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. I believe that in a really Christian community, in a society that honoured not with the lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one would have occasion to worry about physical needs any more than do the lilies of the field. There is enough and to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle, we trample in the mire what has been provided in sufficiency for us all; trample it in the mire while we tear and rend each other.

There is a cause for this poverty; and, if you trace it down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look over the world to-day—poverty everywhere. The cause must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the tariff, or to the form of government, or to this thing or to that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty is common to them all the cause that produces it must be a common cause. What is that common cause? There is one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and that is the appropriation as the property of some of that natural element on which and from which all must live.

Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the ages dark and rude five centuries ago—how do you explain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause. Whoever reads the history of England, or the history of any other civilised nation (but I speak of the history of England because that is the history with which we are best acquainted) will see the reason. For century after century a parliament composed of aristocrats and employers passed laws endeavouring to reduce wages, but in vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that gave a mere living because the bounty of nature was not wholly shut up from them; because some remains of the recognition of the truth that all men have equal rights on the earth still existed; because the land of that country, that which was held in private possession, was only held on a tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent payable back to the nation. The church lands supported the expenses of public worship, of the maintenance of seminaries and the care of the poor; the crown lands defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a third portion of the lands, those held under the military tenures, the army was provided for. There was no national debt in England at that time. They carried on wars for hundreds of years, but at the charge of the landowners. And more important still, there remained everywhere, and you can see in every old English town their traces to this day, the common lands to which any of the neighbourhood was free. It was as those lands were enclosed; it was as the commons were gradually monopolised, as the church lands were made the prey of greedy courtiers, as the crown lands were given away as absolute property to the favourites of the king, as the military tenants shirked their rents and laid the expenses they had agreed to defray, upon the nation, in taxation that bore upon industry and upon thrift—it was then that poverty began to deepen, and the tramp appeared in England; just as to-day he is appearing in our new States.

Now, think of it—is not land monopolisation a sufficient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first place, he is an animal, a land animal who cannot live without land. All that man produces comes from land; all productive labour, in the final analysis, consists in working up land; or materials drawn from land, into such forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land. Children of the soil, we come from the land, and to the land we must return. Take away from man all that belongs to the land, and what have you but a disembodied spirit? Therefore he who holds the land on which and from which another man must live, is that man's master; and the man is his slave. The man who holds the land on which I must live can command me to life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his chatter. Talk about abolishing slavery—we have not abolished slavery; we have only abolished one rude form of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and a more insidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial slavery that makes a man a virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking him with the name of freedom. Poverty! want! they will sting as much as the lash. Slavery! God knows there are horrors enough in slavery; but there are deeper horrors in our civilised society to-day. Bad as chattel slavery was, it did not drive slave mothers to kill their children, yet you may read in official reports that the system of child insurance which has taken root so strongly in England, and which is now spreading over our Eastern States, has perceptibly and largely increased the rate of child mortality!—What does that mean?

Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said, O man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and independent citizen, with just as much to say as I have except that this island is mine, and of course, as I can do as I please with my own property, you must not use it save upon my terms. Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's slave as though he had called him one. Friday was not a fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly off through the air; if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through life to death.

A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this question was talking a while ago with another friend of mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much attention to the land question. Our greenback friend said, Yes, yes, the land question is an important question; oh, I admit the land question is a very important question; but then there are other important questions. There is this question and that question, and the other question; and there is the money question. The money question is a very important question; it is a more important question than the land question. You give me all the money, and you can take all the land. My friend said, Well, suppose you had all the money in the world and I had all the land in the world. What would you do if I were to give you notice to quit?

Do you know that I do not think that the average man realises what land is? I know a little girl who has been going to school for some time, studying geography, and all that sort of thing; and one day she said to me: Here is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder what the surface of the earth looks like? Well, I said, look out into the yard there. That is the surface of the earth. She said, That the surface of the earth? Our yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never thought of it! That is very much the case not only with grown men, but with such wise beings as newspaper editors. They seem to think, when you talk of land, that you always refer to farms; to think that the land question is a question that relates entirely to farmers, as though land had no other use than growing crops. Now, I should like to know how a man could even edit a newspaper without having the use of some land. He might swing himself by straps and go up in a balloon, but he could not even then get along without land. What supports the balloon in the air? Land; the surface of the earth. Let the earth drop, and what would become of the balloon? The air that supports the balloon is supported in turn by land. So it is with everything else men can do. Whether a man is working away three thousand feet under the surface of the earth or whether he is working up in the top of one of those immense buildings that they have in New York; whether he is ploughing the soil or sailing across the ocean, he is still using land.

Land! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do you own ? The lawyers will tell you that you own from the centre of the earth right up to heaven; and, so far as all human purposes go, you do. In New York they are building houses thirteen and fourteen stories high. What are men, living in those upper stories, paying for? There is a friend of mine who has an office in one of them, and he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot for air. Well, the man who owns the surface of the land has the renting of the air up there, and would have if the buildings were carried up for miles.

This land question is the bottom question. Man is a land animal. Suppose you want to build a house; can you build it without a place to put it? What is it built of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron—they all come from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose, any of those things which men struggle for, where do they come from? From the land. It is the bottom question. The land question is simply the labour question; and when some men own that element from which all wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live, then they have the power of living without work, and, therefore, those who do work get less of the products of work.

Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strangeness of the fact that, all over the civilised world, the working classes are the poor classes? Go into any city in the world, and get into a cab and ask the man to drive you where the working people live. He won't take you to where the fine houses are. He will take you, on the contrary, into the squalid quarters, the poorer quarters. Did you ever think how curious that is? Think for a moment how it would strike a rational being who had never been on the earth before, if such an intelligence could come down, and you were to explain to him how we live on earth, how houses and food and clothing, and all the many things we need were all produced by work, would he not think that the working people would be the people who lived in the finest houses and had most of everything that work produces? Yet, whether you took him to London or Paris or New York, or even to Burlington, he would find that those called the working people were the people who live in the poorest houses.

All this is strange—just think of it. We naturally despise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I do not say—I distinctly repudiate it—that the people who are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even in most cases; but it ought to be so. If any good man or woman could create a world, it would be a sort of a world in which no one would be poor unless he was lazy or vicious. But that is just precisely the kind of a world this is; that is just precisely the kind of a world the Creator has made. Nature gives to labour, and to labour alone; there must be human work before any article of wealth can be produced; and in the natural state of things the man who toiled honestly and well would be the rich man, and he who did not work would be poor. We have so reversed the order of nature that we are accustomed to think of the workingman as a poor man.

And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the primary cause of this is that we compel those who work to pay others for permission to do so. You may buy a coat, a horse, a house; there you are paying the seller for labour exerted, for something that he has produced, or that he has got from the man who did produce it; but when you pay a man for land, what are you paying him for? You are paying for something that no man has produced; you pay him for something that was here before man was, or for a value that was created, not by him individually, but by the community of which you are a part. What is the reason that the land here, where we stand tonight, is worth more than it was twenty-five years ago? What is the reason that land in the centre of New York, that once could be bought by the mile for a jug of whiskey, is now worth so much that, though you were to cover it with gold, you would not have its value? Is it not because of the increase of population? Take away that population, and where would the value of the land be? Look at it in any way you please.

We talk about over-production. How can there be such a thing as over-production while people want? All these things that are said to be over-produced are desired by many people. Why do they not get them? They do not get them because they have not the means to buy them; not that they do not want them. Why have not they the means to buy them? They earn too little. When the great masses of men have to work for an average of $1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot be sold.

Now why is it that men have to work for such low wages? Because if they were to demand higher wages there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who compel that fierce competition that drives wages down to the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment; neither had Robinson Crusoe; the finding of employment was the last thing that troubled them.

If men cannot find an employer, why cannot they employ themselves? Simply because they are shut out from the element on which human labour can alone be exerted. Men are compelled to compete with each other for the wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of the natural opportunities of employing themselves; because they cannot find a piece of God's world on which to work without paving some other human creature for the privilege.

I do not mean to say that even after you had set right this fundamental injustice, there would not be many things to do; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may, you never can get rid of wide-spread poverty so long as the element on which and from which all men must live is made the private property of some men. It is utterly impossible. Reform government—get taxes down to the minimum—build railroads; institute co-operative stores; divide profits, if you choose, between employers and employed-and what will be the result? The result will be that the land will increase in value—that will be the result—that and nothing else. Experience shows this. Do not all improvements simply increase the value of land—the price that some must pay others for the privilege of living?

Consider the matter, I say it with all reverence, and I merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your minds—it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are what they are, that God himself could relieve poverty—utterly impossible. Think of it and you will see. Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws—it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his fellows. Supposing the Almighty were to hear the prayer, how could He carry out the request so long as His laws are what they are? 

Consider—the Almighty gives us nothing of the things that constitute wealth; He merely gives us the raw material, which must be utilised by man to produce wealth. Does He not give us enough of that now? How could He relieve poverty even if He were to give us more? Supposing in answer to these prayers He were to increase the power of the sun; or the virtue of the soil? Supposing He were to make plants more prolific, or animals to produce after their kind more abundantly? Who would get the benefit of it? Take a country where land is completely monopolised, as it is in most of the civilised countries—who would get the benefit of it? Simply the landowners. And even if God in answer to prayer were to send down out of the heavens those things that men require, who would get the benefit?

In the Old Testament we are told that when the Israelites journeyed through the desert, they were hungered, and that God sent manna down out of the heavens. There was enough for all of them, and they all took it and were relieved. But supposing that desert had been held as private property, as the soil of Great Britain is held, as the soil even of our new States is being held; suppose that one of the Israelites had a square mile, and another one had twenty square miles, and another one had a hundred square miles, and the great majority of the Israelites did not have enough to set the soles of their feet upon, which they could call their own—what would become of the manna? What good would it have done to the majority? Not a whit. Though God had sent down manna enough for all, that manna would have been the property of the landholders; they would have employed some of she others perhaps, to gather it up into heaps for them, and would have sold it to their hungry brethren. Consider it; this purchase and sale of manna might have gone on until the majority of Israelites had given all they had, even to the clothes off their backs. What then? Then they would not have had anything left to buy manna with, and the consequences would have been that while they went hungry the manna would have lain in great heaps, and the landowners would have been complaining of the over-production of manna. There would have been a great harvest of manna and hungry people, just precisely the phenomenon that we see to-day.

I cannot go over all the points I would like to try, but I wish to call your attention to the utter absurdity of private property in land! Why, consider it, the idea of a man's selling the earth—the earth, our common mother. A man selling that which no man produced—a man passing title from one generation to another. Why, it is the most absurd thing in the world. Why, did you ever think of it? What right has a dead man to land? For whom was this earth created? It was created for the living, certainly, not for the dead. Well, now we treat it as though it was created for the dead. Where do our land titles come from? They come from men who for the most part are past and gone. Here in this new country you get a little nearer the original source; but go to the Eastern States and go back over the Atlantic. There you may clearly see the power that comes from landownership.

As I say, the man that owns the land is the master of those who must live on it. Here is a modern instance: you who are familiar with the history of the Scottish Church know that in the forties there was a disruption in the church. You who have read Hugh Miller's work on The Cruise of the Betsey know something about it; how a great body, led by Dr. Chalmers, came out from the Established Church and said they would set up a Free Church. In the Established Church were a great many of the landowners. Some of them, like the Duke of Buccleugh, owning miles and miles of land on which no common Scotsman had a right to put his foot, save by the Duke of Buccleugh's permission. These landowners refused not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have ground upon which to erect a church, but they would not let them stand on their land and worship God. You who have read The Cruise of the Betsey know that it is the story of a clergyman who was obliged to make his home in a boat on that wild sea because he was not allowed to have land enough to live on. In many places the people had to take the sacrament with the tide coming to their knees—many a man lost his life worshipping on the roads in rain and snow. They were not permitted to go on Mr. Landlord's land and worship God, and had to take to the roads. The Duke of Buccleugh stood out for seven years compelling people to worship in the roads, until finally relenting a little, he allowed them to worship God in a gravel pit; whereupon they passed a resolution of thanks to His Grace.

But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The thing that struck me was this significant fact: As soon as the disruption occurred, the Free Church, composed of a great many able men, at once sent a delegation to the landlords to ask permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland and in their own way. This delegation set out for London—they had to go to London, England, to get permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland, and in their own native home!

But that is not the most absurd thing. In one place where they were refused land upon which to stand and worship God, the late landowner had died and his estate was in the hands of the trustees, and the answer of the trustees was, that so far as they were concerned they would exceedingly like to allow them to have a place to put up a church to worship God, but they could not conscientiously do it because they knew that such a course would be very displeasing to the late Mr. Monaltie! Now this dead man had gone to heaven, let us hope; at any rate he had gone away from this world, but lest it might displease him men yet living could not worship God. Is it possible for absurdity to go any further?

You may say that those Scotch people are very absurd people, but they are not a whit more so than we are. I read only a little while ago of some Long Island fishermen who had been paying as rent for the privilege of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid it because they believed that James II, a dead man centuries ago, a man who never put his foot in America, a king who was kicked off the English throne, had said they had to pay it, and they got up a committee, went to the county town and searched the records. They could not find anything in the records to show that James II had ever ordered that they should give any of their fish to anybody, and so they refused to pay any longer. But if they had found that James II had really said they should they would have gone on paying. Can anything be more absurd?

There is a square in New York— Stuyvesant Square that is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on the long summer evenings. Why is it locked up? Why are the children not allowed to play there? Why because old Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know how many years ago, so willed it. Now can anything be more absurd?*

*After a popular agitation, the park authorities since decided to have the gates open later than six o'clock.

Yet that is not any more absurd than our land titles. From whom do they come? Dead man after dead man. Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council Bluffs or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage strewn over the seats. You say: Will you give me a seat, if you please, sir? He replies: No; I bought this seat. Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it? I bought it from the man who got out at the last station, That is the way we manage this earth of ours.

Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson said, that the land belongs in usufruct to the living, and that they who have died have left it, and have no power to say how it shall be disposed of? Title to land! Where can a man get any title which makes the earth his property? There is a sacred right to property—sacred because ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the laws of God, and necessary to social order and civilisation. That is the right of property in things produced by labour; it rests on the right of a man to himself. That which a man produces, that is his against all the world, to give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how can he get such a right to land when it was here before he came? Individual claims to land rest only on appropriation. I read in a recent number of the Nineteenth Century, possibly some of you may have read it, an article by an ex-prime minister of Australia in which there was a little story that attracted my attention. It was of a man named Galahard, who in the early days got up to the top of a high hill in one of the finest parts of western Australia. He got up there, looked all around, and made this proclamation: All the land that is in my sight from the top of this hill I claim for myself; and all the land that is out of sight I claim for my son John.

That story is of universal application. Land titles everywhere come from just such appropriations. Now, under certain circumstances, appropriation can give a right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner and you say to them: Be seated, gentlemen, and I get into this chair. Well, that seat for the time being is mine by the right of appropriation. It would be very ungentlemanly, it would be very wrong for any one of the other guests to come up and say: Get out of that chair; I want to sit there I But that right of possession, which is good so far as the chair is concerned, for the time, does not give me a right to appropriate all there is on the table before me. Grant that a man has a right to appropriate such natural elements as he can use, has he any right to appropriate more than he can use? Has a guest in such a case as I have supposed a right to appropriate more than he needs and make other people stand up? That is what is done.

Why, look all over this country—look at this town or any other town. If men only took what they wanted to use we should all have enough; but they take what they do not want to use at all. Here are a lot of Englishmen coming over here and getting titles to our land in vast tracts; what do they want with our land? They do not want it at all; it is not the land they want; they have no use for American land. What they want is the income that they know they can in a little while get from it. Where does that income come from? It comes from labour, from the labour of American citizens. What we are selling to these people is our children, not land.

Poverty! Can there be any doubt of its cause? Go, into the old countries—go into western Ireland, into the highlands of Scotland—these are purely primitive communities. There you will find people as poor as poor can be—living year after year on oatmeal or on potatoes, and often going hungry. I could tell you many a pathetic story. Speaking to a Scottish physician who was telling me how this diet was inducing among these people a disease similar to that which from the same cause is ravaging Italy (the Pellagra), I said to him: There is plenty of fish; why don't they catch fish? There is plenty of game; I know the laws are against it, but cannot they take it on the sly? That, he said, never enters their heads. Why, if a man was even suspected of having a taste for trout or grouse he would have to leave at once.

There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those people poor. They have no right to anything that nature gives them. All they can make above a living they must pay to the landlord. They not only have to pay for the land that they use, but they have to pay for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for any improvements they make are made an excuse for putting up the rent. These people who work hard live in hovels, and the landlords, who do not work at all—oh! they live in luxury in London or Paris. If they have hunting boxes there, why they are magnificent castles as compared with the hovels in which the men live who do the work. Is there any question as to the cause of poverty there?

Now go into the cities and what do you see! Why, you see even a lower depth of poverty; aye, if I would point out the worst of the evils of land monopoly I would not take you to Connemara; I would not take you to Skye or Kintire—I would take you to Dublin or Glasgow or London. There is something worse than physical deprivation, something worse than starvation; and that is the degradation of the mind, the death of the soul. That is what you will find in those cities.

Now, what is the cause of that? Why, it is plainly to be seen; the people driven off the land in the country are driven into the slums of the cities. For every man that is driven off the land the demand for the produce of the workmen of the cities is lessened; and the man himself with his wife and children, is forced among those workmen to compete upon any terms for a bare living and force wages down. Get work he must or starve—get work he must or do that which those people, so long as they maintain their manly feelings, dread more than death, go to the alms-houses. That is the reason, here as in Great Britain, that the cities are overcrowded. Open the land that is locked up, that is held by dogs in the manger, who will not use it themselves and will not allow anybody else to use it, and you would see no more of tramps and hear no more of over-production.

The utter absurdity of this thing of private property in land! I defy any one to show me any good from it, look where you please. Go out in the new lands, where my attention was first called to it, or go to the heart of the capital of the world—London. Everywhere, when your eyes are once opened, you will see its inequality and you will see its absurdity. You do not have to go farther than Burlington. You have here a most beautiful site for a city, but the city itself as compared with what it might be is a miserable, straggling town. A gentleman showed me to-day a big hole alongside one of your streets. The place has been filled up all around it and this hole is left. It is neither pretty nor useful. Why does that hole stay there? Well, it stays there because somebody claims it as his private property. There is a man, this gentleman told me, who wished to grade another lot and wanted somewhere to put the dirt he took off it, and he offered to buy this hole so that he might fill it up. Now it would have been a good thing for Burlington to have it filled up, a good thing for you all—your town would look better, and you yourself would be in no danger of tumbling into it some dark night. Why, my friend pointed out to me another similar hole in which water had collected and told me that two children had been drowned there. And he likewise told me that a drunken man some years ago had fallen into such a hole and had brought suit against the city which cost you taxpayers some $11,000. Clearly it is to the interest of you all to have that particular hole I am talking of filled up. The man who wanted to fill it up offered the hole owner $300. But the hole owner refused the offer and declared that he would hold out until he could get $1000; and in the meanwhile that unsightly and dangerous hole must remain. This is but an illustration of private property in land.

You may see the same thing all over this country. See how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing of private property in land afflects the roads and the distances between the people. A man does not take what land he wants, what he can use, but he takes all he can get, and the consequence is that his next neighbour has to go further along, people are separated from each other further than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty of production, to the loss of neighbourhood and companionship. They have more roads to maintain than they can decently maintain; they must do more work to get the same result, and life is in every way harder and drearier.

When you come to the cities it is just the other way. In the country the people are too much scattered; in the great cities they are too crowded. Go to a city like New York and there they are jammed together like sardines in a box, living family upon family, one above the other. It is an unnatural and unwholesome life. How can you have anything like a home in a tenement room, or two or three rooms? How can children be brought up healthily with no place to play? Two or three weeks ago I read of a New York judge who fined two little boys five dollars for playing hop-scotch on the street—where else could they play? Private property in land had robbed them of all place to play. Even a temperance man, who had investigated the subject, said that in his opinion the gin palaces of London were a positive good in this, that they enabled the people whose abodes were dark and squalid rooms to see a little brightness and thus prevent them from going wholly mad.

What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities? There is no natural reason. Take New York, one half its area is not built upon. Why, then, must people crowd together as they do there? Simply because of private ownership of land. There is plenty of room to build houses and plenty, of people who want to build houses, but before anybody can build a house a blackmail price must be paid to some dog in the manger. It costs in many cases more to get vacant ground upon which to build a house than it does to build the house. And then what happens to the man who pays this blackmail and builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines him for building the house.

It is so all over the United States—the men who improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms and the desert into gardens, the men who beautify your cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, nothing is clearer than that the people of New York want more houses; and I think that even here in Burlington you could get along with more houses. Why, then, should you fine a man who builds one? Look all over this country—the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the man who puts up a building, or establishes a factory, or cultivates a farm he is taxed for it; and not merely taxed for it, but I think in nine cases out of ten the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining lot or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is holding as a mere dog in the manger, not using it himself and not allowing anybody else to use it.

I am talking too long; but let me in a few words point out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, securing the right of all to the elements which are necessary for life. We could not divide the land. In a rude state of society, as among the ancient Hebrews. giving each family its lot and making it inalienable we might secure something like equality. But in a complex civilisation that will not suffice. It is not, however, necessary to divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide up the income that comes from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equality; nor could the adoption of this principle involve any rude shock or violent change. It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolishing taxes that now rest upon capital, labour and improvements, and raising all our public revenues by the taxation of land values; and the longer you think of it the clearer you will see that in every possible way will it he a benefit.

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values, what would be the effect? In the first place it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, capital and labour, from all those burdens that now bear upon them. What a start that would give to production! In the second place we could, from the value of the land, not merely pay all the present expenses of the government, but we could do infinitely more. In the city of San Francisco James Lick left a few blocks of ground to be used for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in the world, large public baths and other public buildings, and various costly works. If, instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land upon which the city is built had accrued to San Francisco what could she not do?

So in this little town, where land values are very low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San Francisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit and public improvement did you appropriate to public purposes the land values that now go to individuals. You could have a great free library; you could have an art gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a magnificent public park, too. You have here one of the finest natural sites for a beautiful town I know of, and I have travelled much. You might make on this site a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. You will not as you go now—oh, no! Why, the very fact that you have a magnificent view here will cause somebody to hold on all the more tightly to the land that commands this view and charge higher prices for it. The State of New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people to see Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it! Look at all the great cities; in Philadelphia, for instance, in order to build their great city hall they had to block up the only two wide streets they had in the city. Everywhere you go you may see how private property in land prevents public as well as private improvement.

But I have not time to enter into further details. I can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more you will see its desirability. As an English friend of mine puts it: No taxes and a pension for everybody; and why should it not be? To take land values for public purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for public purposes a value created by the community. And out of the fund which would thus accrue from the common property, we might, without degradation to anybody, provide enough to actually secure from want all who were deprived of their natural protectors or met with accident, or any man who should grow so old that he could not work. All prating that is heard from some quarters about its hurting the common people to give them what they do not work for is humbug. The truth is, that anything that injures self-respect, degrades, does harm; but if you give it as a right, as something to which every citizen is entitled to, it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade children that are sent to them, but public schools do not.

But all such benefits as these, while great, would be incidental. The great thing would be that the reform I propose would tend to open opportunities to labour and enable men to provide employment for themselves. That is the great advantage. We should gain the enormous productive power that is going to waste all over the country, the power of idle hands that would gladly be at work. And that removed, then you would see wages begin to mount. It is not that everyone would turn farmer, or everyone would build himself a house if he had an opportunity for doing so, but so many could and would, as to relieve the pressure on the labour market and provide employment for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels, then you would see the productive power increased. The country where wages are high is the country of greatest productive powers. Where wages are highest, there will invention be most active; there will labour be most intelligent; there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure of exertion. The more you think of it the more clearly you will see that what I say is true. I cannot hope to convince you in an hour or two, but I shall be content if I shall put you upon inquiry.

Think for yourselves; ask yourselves whether this wide-spread fact of poverty is not a crime, and a crime for which every one of us, man and woman, who does not do what he or she can do to call attention to it and do away with it, is responsible.

Via historyisaweapon.com

Shared via Posterous on December 14, 2011 at 11:33PM

Harvard ethics professor and Rootstrikers’ founder Lawrence Lessig was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. Rootstrikers is an organization that shares our goal of ending the domination of Big Money over the political process and which joined forces with United Republic in November of this year.

Lessig and Stewart first talked about how campaign financing, with only 0.05 percent of the electorate contributing the most to campaigns, corrupts Congress:

In an extended interview, Lessig explained some of the potential solutions to the problem: transparency, changes to funding, and a Constitutional amendment:

What do you think? Tell us on Twitter and Facebook.

Ekstra Bladet offentliggør lydfilen

Christoffer Guldbrandsens anklage i Ekko mod spindoktor bliver ifølge Ekstra Bladet dokumenteret i morgen kl. 12, hvor avisen offentliggør afgørende telefonsamtale.

Et år, ti måneder og nitten dage.

Så længe skulle der gå, før Danmarks mest omtalte og omstridte lydfil endelig blev tilgængelig.

Ekstra Bladet har annonceret, at netavisen i dag klokken 12, bortset fra nogle private passager, vil offentliggøre den sytten minutter lange telefonsamtale mellem TV 2-journalisten Rasmus Tantholdt og daværende DR-journalist Nils Giversen.

Under samtalen skal Tantholdt ifølge Ekstra Bladet slå fast med syvtommersøm, at det var forsvarsministerens spindoktor Jacob Winther, der i 2007 lækkede fortrolige oplysninger om udstationering af danske jægersoldater i Irak.

Dengang sagde oberstløjtnant Henrik H. Friis, at lækagen bragte soldaters liv i fare, og sagen fik en politisk drejning, da udenrigsminister Per Stig Møller beskyldte oppositionen for at stå bag lækagen.

Men nu foreligger der angivelig et bevis på, at lækagen stammede fra en af den borgerlige regerings egne spindoktorer, der efter al sandsynlighed har handlet på ordre fra forsvarsministeren.

TV 2 tav om magtmisbrug
Sagen startede, da Filmmagasinet Ekko den 25. januar kl. 12.01 udsendte en pressemeddelelse om et interview med Christoffer Guldbrandsen i #48.

I interviewet beretter filminstruktøren om, hvordan lækagen fandt sted. TV 2’s Rasmus Tantholdt havde besøgt militærlejren i Basra, og for rullende kamera måtte forsvarsminister Søren Gade (V) søge ly under et bord, da lejren blev angrebet.

Da Tantholdt landede i København, blev han kontaktet af Gades spindoktor, Jacob Winther, der afslørede, at forsvarsministeren ville udstationere jægersoldater i Irak for at stabilisere situationen. Formålet med at lække denne dybt fortrolige oplysning var tilsyneladende at få forsvarsministeren til at fremstå handlekraftig i medierne.

Tantholdt stod med en stor historie om en spindoktors magtmisbrug, der kunne involvere forsvarsministeren og dermed hele regeringen, men han og TV 2’s nyhedschef Michael Dyrby valgte alligevel at fortælle den lille historie om udstationering af jægersoldater.

Tantholdt afslørede kilden
Efter at have udsendt pressemeddelelsen forsøgte Ekko at få en kommentar fra Rasmus Tantholdt. Hen på eftermiddagen ringede han tilbage.

”Ligesom alle andre journalister beskytter jeg mine kilder, så derfor har jeg ingen kommentar til, hvordan TV 2 er kommet i besiddelse af de oplysninger, som medførte, at vi bragte historien,” sagde Rasmus Tantholdt, der kun ville bekræfte én ting, nemlig at han aldrig havde hørt om Filmmagasinet Ekko.

Forinden havde Tantholdt imidlertid ringet til sin kollega og ven, Nils Giversen, som dengang var ansat på DR. Han ville drøfte Ekkos interview med Guldbrandsen, og under samtalen, der blev båndet, bekræfter Tantholdt, at Jacob Winther er den hemmelige kilde.

”Jeg har begået en fejl. Det er, at jeg har fortalt til dig og til Matias (Seidelin, daværende journalist på Politiken, red. ),” indrømmer Rasmus Tantholdt på båndet ifølge Ekstra Bladet.

”Jeg har selvfølgelig ikke beskyttet mine kilder ordentligt. Ved at fortælle det til nogle journalister. Det er selvfølgelig dumt.”

Plummer og lydfilen
Netop kildebeskyttelsen blev ironisk det halmstrå, som Rasmus Tantholdt og Michael Dyrby fra TV 2 i de efterfølgende to år klyngede sig til, når de nægtede at svare på politiets spørgsmål.

Sagen blev for alvor politisk, da DR’s generaldirektør, Kenneth Plummer, konfiskerede lydfilen og fyrede Nils Giversen (inden Plummer selv måtte gå af som følge af en hemmeligholdt lydfil, men det er en helt anden historie).

På trods af, at DR gang på gang har forsvaret brugen af skjulte optagelser som journalistisk redskab, argumenterede Plummer og DR’s politisk udpegede bestyrelsesformand, Michael Christiansen, at optagelsen var i modstrid med DR’s etiske retningslinjer.

Men i morgen kan man så langt om længe høre, hvad det er, som Plummer, Christiansen, Tantholdt og Dyrby har kæmpet for at skjule. Og det har vi måske en såkaldt whistleblower at takke for.

Kildebeskyttelse — for hvem?
”Den her lydfil blev afleveret i porten, attention mig, fredag morgen. Det er dér, vi har den fra. Jeg ved ikke, hvem det er,” siger chefredaktør Poul Madsen til Politiken.

”For mig er det her en journalistisk historie – en whistleblower fra systemet ønsker, at en sag skal blive omtalt i medierne, fordi vedkommende mener, at der er noget, offentligheden skal vide,” fortsætter Poul Madsen.

Ekstra Bladet valgte forrige søndag selv at bryde kildebeskyttelsen for at fortælle sine læsere, at tidligere skatteminister Troels Lund Poulsens spindoktor, Peter Arnfeldt, for et år siden forsøgte at lække fortrolige oplysninger om Helle Thorning-Schmidts skattesag til Ekstra Bladet.

”Spindoktorer er en byld på systemet, som skal presses ud,” har Poul Madsen begrundet beslutningen om at bryde journalistikkens helligste princip: kildebeskyttelsen.

Det har vakt kritik – især i journalistkredse. Men der er dog også ved at brede sig en forståelse for det, som Ekko ved flere lejligheder har slået til lyd for: Kildebeskyttelsen har ikke til hensigt at beskytte magthaverne og deres håndlangere, men dem, der vil afsløre magtmisbrug.

Læs videre:

• Guldbrandsen: Svamp i sokkelen i Venstre
• Leder: Pressesvigt i lækagesagen
• TV2s syv fejl i lækagesagen
• Ekko-interviewet med Guldbrandsen
• Spindoktor bragte soldaters liv i fare

Via Ekkofilm.dk

Shared via Posterous on December 13, 2011 at 09:04PM

Sovjetunionens genfødsel

Det er 20 år siden, Sovjet fik dødsstødet. Men takket være Putins ihærdige genoplivningsforsøg er liget ved at få nyt liv

Demonstranter på Bolotnaya-pladsen i Moskva knytter næverne mod den formodede valgsvindel ved det seneste valg. Tålmodigheden med Putin-styret er ved at slippe op. Opgøret kan blive langt mere blodigt end Sovjetunionens fald i 1991, advarer dagens kronikør. Foto: Maria Pleshkova/Scanpix

Af: Boris Reitschuster

12. december 2011

Lagt på information.dk 12. december 2011 kl. 20:40. Bragt i den trykte udgave 13. december 2011 på side 18 i 1. sektion. Senest opdateret 13. december 2011 kl. 10:05.

MOSKVA — Da tre mænd med airbag-vomme 8. december 1991 satte sig til rette i en jagthytte og gav sig i kast med rigelige mængder vodka, kunne de ikke vide, at det ville lykkes for dem at skrive verdenshistorie. Som en af dem senere indrømmede, frygtede de mest af alt at blive arresteret.

I det afsides naturreservat, hvis navn er lige så svært at udtale, som den omgivende skov er at trænge igennem — Belovezhskaya Pushcha — blev russeren Boris Jeltsin, ukraineren Leonid Kravtsjuk og hviderusseren Stanislav Sjuskjevitj enige om at opløse Sovjetunionen. Præsident Mikhail Gorbatjov sad i det fjerne Kreml, men kunne udmærket have beordret de tre oprørere fængslet — de var trods alt kun formelle overhoveder for tre sovjetrepublikker.

Men på det tidspunkt havde Gorbatjov formentlig ikke længere magt til at stoppe sine modstandere. Afgørende blev det i al fald, at han ikke var villig til at bruge vold og risikere blodsudgydelser. Dermed indskrev han sig i historien som eneste sovjetiske magthaver, der gav afkald på magten. Gorbatjov blev feteret som helt i Vesten, og Boris Jeltsin lovede russerne en ny begyndelse og et bedre liv.

USSR-nostalgi

20 år efter kalder Ruslands tidligere og kommende præsident, Vladimir Putin, Sovjetunionens sammenbrud for »det 20. århundreds største geopolitiske katastrofe«, og Gorbatjov er et af sit eget lands mest forhadte politikere. I historiebøger skildres han som en svækling, der satte Stalins store arv over styr.

Hos Ruslands nye magtelite er opfattelsen, at Sovjetunionen gik under, fordi den blev forrådt af glasnosts og perestrojkas fædre. Ligesom tysk militær efter Første Verdenskrig nærede den såkaldte dolkestødslegende om den ubesejrede hær, der blev presset til kapitulation af feje politikere, cirkulerer i dag myten om det forrådte Sovjetunionen.

I Vesten blev sammenbruddet for Klodens største stat udlagt som frigørelse fra totalitarisme og diktatur. For millioner af sovjetborgere blev det en personlig tragedie. Det gjaldt ikke mindst for russerne i de tidligere sovjetrepublikker i Baltikum, Centralasien og Kaukasus, som nu stort set fra den ene dag til den anden var udlændinge og andenrangsborgere i lande, hvor deres forældre var født. Millioner mistede ikke blot opsparing, men også troen på gamle overbevisninger og værdier og følelsen af at have en sikker fremtid.

Offeret Putin slår igen

Et sådant ’offer’ var Vladimir Putin. Det, han som udstationeret for KGB i Dresden havde oplevet som en velordnet og meningsfuld verden, eksisterede ikke længere. Der var ikke brug for hans tjenester, og hans position og fremtid var usikker. Den oplevelse delte han med millioner af landsmænd. De følte nederlaget i Den Kolde Krig som en personlig fornærmelse. Demonteringen af den autoritære stat, der ordnede alt for den enkelte borger, blev set som en trussel.

I stedet for at få tildelt et job, måtte de selv finde et. Og ikke alle havde lige så meget held eller gode forbindelser som Putin, der gik i tjeneste hos St. Petersborgs guvernør.

Den Vilde Vesten-kapitalisme uden socialt ansvar, som præsident Jeltsins indfløjne konsulenter — de såkaldte Harvard-boys — indførte på den socialistiske stats ruiner, skulle snart forstærke russernes længsel efter Sovjetunionens tabte socialgoder som gratis behandling på sygehuse, gratis universitetsuddannelse og pension for fattige. Det kunne i det mindste holde sulten fra døren.

Det er ironisk, at det lige netop var Boris Jeltsin — oprøren fra den hviderussiske jagthytte — der nytårsdag 1999 lod den fuldstændig ukendte efterretningschef, Vladimir Putin, installere som sin efterfølger. Putin var nemlig sovjetnostalgiker og genindførte straks sovjethymnen som nationalsang.

Problemet for Jeltsin-klanen var imidlertid, at den var blevet så korrupt og upopulær, at kun en forståelse med den efterretningstjeneste, som Putin var chef for, kunne sikre Jeltsin og hans fortrolige imod indflydelsestab og strafforfølgelse.

Samme Jeltsin, som gav sovjetsystemet dødsstødet, afhændede nu magten til en repræsentant fra en organisation, som var fuldstændig dedikeret til at bevare dette system. KGB — partiets kampafdeling, som førhen var ansvarlig for rå og grimme metoder — var nu ved roret.

For Jeltsin-klanen gik ligningen op: Bortset fra tre åbenmundede oligarker kunne alle Jeltsin-æraens superrige finde sig fint til rette i den nye tid. Nok fik de mindre politisk indflydelse, og nok måtte de til at dele den fede olie- og gaskage med de tidligere KGB-officerer, der kom til magten med Putin. Men med milliardformuer var dette til at bære.

Status

20 år efter Sovjetunionens undergang er status blandet for de fleste russere følgende: De har en grad af personlig frihed, som før var utænkelig.

Har de penge, kan de rejse ,hvorhen de vil. På internettet kan alle sige deres mening. Efter 1980’ernes og 1990’ernes økonomiske nedture kom et hidtil uset opsving, hvor stigende oliepriser har mangedoblet Moskvas indtægter. Pensioner udbetales igen til tiden. Det ’demokratiske kaos’ er bragt til ophør. Nyhedsmedierne formidler atter samme indtryk som i sovjettiden: At herhjemme går alt nogenlunde rimeligt, mens befolkningerne i Europa og USA lider alle mulige fortrædeligheder.

Mens russerne under Jeltsin følte store fantomsmerter efter tab af imperium og verdensmagt, bringer hver nyhedsudsendelse dem i dag beviser på, hvor stærkt og respekteret Rusland igen er blevet. Der går ikke en uge uden historier om nye vidundervåben, der atter gør Ruslands hær stærk.

Med andre ord: 20 år efter USSR’s nedlæggelse er opstået et Sovjetunionen 2,0. Ganske vist er Rusland blevet så kapitalistisk, at USA til sammenligning ligner en forbilledlig velfærdsstat. Over for 0,5 pct. rige står 80 pct. fattige.

Fra vugge over børnehave, skole og universitet til sygdom og fattigdom må russerne betale alt af egen lomme, som regel i form af bestikkelse.

Ansættelsessikkerhed og fagforeninger er ukendte begreber, og den, der på egen hånd får succes i forretningslivet, kan forvente at blive afpresset af politifolk og anklagere og smidt i fængsel for opdigtede anklager, hvis han ikke betaler.

Det Vilde Vest er blevet til Det Vilde Øst. Rusland er et lovløst område, hvor de stærke, de rige og de magtfulde bestemmer alt.

Nomenklaturen har smidt irriterende social og ideologisk ballast overbord og kan anderledes uforstyrret end i sovjettiden berige sig i embeder uden embedspligter. De stuver penge af vejen på konti i Schweiz og slapper af i ferievillaer i Frankrig. Sovjetunionens sociale arv er væk.

Men når det gælder politik og samfund, lever Sovjetunionen videre. Kremlpartiet Forenet Rusland minder selv Mikhail Gorbatjov om SUKP — et meningsløst bureaukratisk organ, der alene har til opgave at få folket til at makke ret.

I modsætning til sovjettiden er der en opposition, men den er stærkt kontrolleret. Putin har tilsyneladende kopieret systemet fra DDR’s kunstige oppositionspartier. Løgn og falskhed er igen alment udbredt. Ved valghandlinger snydes og manipuleres i stor stil.

KGB-manualen følges

I modsætning til i sovjettiden låses anderledestænkende ikke inde i større tal, og kritik er ikke nødvendigvis forbudt. Og i modsætning til deres forgængere med de faste overbevisninger er KGB’s ledere, som har det sidste i ord, i dag langt mere fleksible og kompetente. Kritik er tilladt — på internettet, hvor det kun når en brøkdel af russerne. Kritiske tv-rapporter findes, men sendes aldrig på de store stationer. Kritiske aviser findes, men alle har små oplag.

Vil kritikere af Kreml demonstrere, lukkes den offentlige plads pludselig af på grund af ’anlægsarbejde’, eller studerende udkommanderes ud til pro-Putin-demonstrationer. Selv internettets kommentarspalter infiltreres af ’netbrigader’, som mod passende betaling bagtaler Kremls modstandere.

Den højeste læresætning for myndighedernes handlinger lader til at være KGB’s manual. Så infame og udspekulerede er metoderne, at vestlige iagttagere ikke ænser dem eller afviser meldinger om dem som ’opspind’.

I modsætning til i sovjettiden lader politikere og selv eksperter sig i dag dupere af den demokratiske maske. Måske fordi de økonomiske bånd er så stærke og afhængigheden af russisk gas og olie så stor, at det kan skade forretningsinteresserne at åbne øjnene.

At slå blikket ned kan dog være endnu farligere. Sovjetunionens pludselige død viste, hvor hurtigt selv tilsyneladende stabile systemer kan gå til grunde.

Putin-systemet lider af samme konstruktionsfejl som Sovjetunionen og er på længere sigt næppe mere overlevelsesdygtigt. Men denne gang sidder der ikke en voldsafholden Mikhail Gorbatjov i spidsen for regimet. Der er ingen garanti for, at næste systemsammenbrud forløber lige så fredeligt som den gang i 1991.

Boris Reitschuster er moskva-korrespondent for nyhedsmagasinet Focus

© Focus og Information

Oversat af Niels Ivare Larsen

Shared via Posterous on December 13, 2011 at 08:46PM

Seth Godin writes on the trap of social media :

If we put a number on it, people will try to make the number go up.

Now that everyone is a marketer, many people are looking for a louder megaphone, a chance to talk about their work, their career, their product… and social media looks like the ideal soapbox, a free opportunity to shout to the masses.

But first, we’re told to make that number go up. Increase the number of fans, friends and followers, so your shouts will be heard. (…)

This looks like winning (the numbers are going up!), but it’s actually a double-edged form of losing. First, you’re polluting a powerful space, turning signals into noise and bringing down the level of discourse for everyone. And second, you’re wasting your time when you could be building a tribe instead, could be earning permission, could be creating a channel where your voice is actually welcomed.

Leadership (even idea leadership) scares many people, because it requires you to own your words, to do work that matters. The alternative is to be a junk dealer.

The game theory pushes us into one of two directions: either be better at pump and dump than anyone else, get your numbers into the millions, outmass those that choose to use mass and always dance at the edge of spam (in which the number of those you offend or turn off forever keep increasing), or

Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares.

So, what I wondered when reading this, is this : is Seth Godin himself “polluting a powerful space” – or “building a tribe”? Who are cases of one or the other? What category does a Guy Kawasaki or Robert Scoble fall into? What case was Barack Obama’s use of social media? What case is Seth Godin?

I would have liked to ask Seth this on his blog, but his blog doesn’t allow comments, which I find smart, because it provokes me to write an entire blog post instead while I link back to his article, but somewhat paradoxical for someone who wants to build context, which is what I presume Seth Godin wants – and not as smart as allowing comments, which shows the ability and capability to listen as well as to “shout”.

It’s not that I am in complete disagreement with what Seth writes in the above, but I believe there is a bit more to the case. There is a thin thin line between ‘polluting a powerful space’ and ‘relentlessly focus’. Largely they depend on who is on the receiving end, what they expect from you and what they are looking for. And I do not see that they are so easily identifiable, except you know when there is a signal, and when there is noise. Thankfully, we all have the power to turn off noise and filter our incoming information streams ourselves. Increasingly, we rely less on the editorial filters of others, although we do rely a lot (too much, IMHO) on the information architectures built by others (especially when using social networks such as Facebook or Google+). The web that you describe and hope for, where we can focus relentlessly, is the same I want – but right now numbers are rewarded, and numbers are what makes the web (or large parts of it) a frantic race for PageRank, clicks and impressions. SEO, linkspam, noise, waste of time and waste of eyeballs. Lots of it comes from design faults of this space, which we can work to eradicate and improve upon. More so, than from the noise of any particular noisy individual ‘polluting’ our much-agreed-upon intensely ‘powerful space’.

Via Captain's log

If you’re using your smartphone or your tablet to read magazines, chances are you favorite aggregator had news for you this week.

It’s not a hard assumption to make, the past few days were perhaps the busiest ever in the increasingly crowded news aggregator space.

Not only did existing apps expand their reach, but new, potentially game-changing players entered the field. Let’s take a look back at what happened.

1. Flipboard, now available on the iPhone

Flipboard is one of the most popular digital magazine apps. We’ve learned this week that its iOS tablet version has been downloaded 4.5 million times – meaning it is now installed on a whopping one in ten iPads. Yet, Flipboard wasn’t available on Apple’s smartphones until a few days ago. When it finally released its long-awaited iPhone app, the anticipation was such that the service crashed for a few hours (see our post).

However, it seems it was well worth the wait and trouble. Flipboard is known for its beautiful and unique user experience, and this is something its iPhone app captures very well. Yet, it’s not a mere copy of the iPad version, and makes the most of the smartphone’s screen size.

As you can imagine, being available across multiple devices is only one part of Flipboard’s product strategy. While it may have gone almost unnoticed in such a busy week, the startup also introduced a new section alongside its iPhone app. Called Cover Stories, this section will display content tailored for each reader’s taste (see our post). While it will still aggregate content from different sources, Flipboard will work on sorting articles out and hiding duplicates. In other words, Flipboard is very close to becoming a curated magazine of its own.

2. Pulse, about to piggyback Kindle Fire’s sales

If you were impressed by Flipboard’s user base, it’s worth noting it’s not the only mobile news reader which has million users. So does Pulse, which should reach 10 million users by the end of the year, up from 1 million in January (see our story).

Besides this ten-fold growth, Pulse has also expanded to other devices, and its app was one of the three lucky ones to be pre-loaded on Amazon’s Kindle Fire. As we’ve learned this week, even Pulse’s founders were surprised to see their app featured on Amazon’s tablet’s home screen.

Yet, it’s not that surprising when you think of all what Pulse gets right, starting from its availability across the world on multiple platforms.

Another interesting Pulse’s feature is its integration with other apps such as Evernote, Instapaper and Read It Later. While it isn’t an absolute necessity since offline reading is available on Pulse, this is certainly a nice feature to have. Its impact actually goes beyond what you may think; for instance, Read It Later now has no less than 4 million users, and many of them use it to save content they like.

In this context, syncing with read-it-later apps can only add to Pulse’s user satisfaction, which is already sky-high. Perhaps the most telling numbers about Pulse’s popularity? As we reported, the app has 5 stars out of out of 2,500 ratings and is one of only 50 apps in the Apple App Store Hall of Fame.

3. Zite launching its first iPhone app

Flipboard isn’t the only news reader who debuted an iPhone app this week: so did Zite, one of its competitors (see our post). While Zite and Flipboard share several characteristics, there’s one element which is unique to Zite’s algorithm: its ability to listen from direct input from the app’s users.

The way Zite gets this feedback? It’s simply by asking for it, by letting users click on ‘thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” icons. Combined with passive feedback, this feature is essential to Zite’s efficiency as a news curation tool.

As an essential aspect of Zite’s identity and performance, this feature obviously made it to its iPhone app. This isn’t the case of many other features. Like Flipboard, the startup understood the necessity for its interface to be much simpler on a smartphone than on a tablet, and got rid of many unnecessary design elements. If you like simple design, spot-on personalization and dead-easy navigation, Zite may be the right news reading app for you.

4. Twitter Discover

When we first reported on Twitter Discover, we called it “a game-changer” (see our post). That’s not journalistic hyperbole; more than a new feature, Discover marks Twitter’s official entry into curated news. The new section is part of Twitter’s redesign, and will give users a chance to “discover” content produced outside of their contact circles.

The content Twitter displays in that section will be personalized – either because this user will search for a specific keyword, or via geo-location, since Twitter is able to display geo-aware trends and tweets. Twitter’s curation algorithm will improve over time as it learns from each user, but in a passive way (unlike Zite’s, which can also learn from input).

If you don’t have access to the latest version of Twitter yet (or “new new Twitter” as people call it), here’s what Discover looks like:

The Stories’ subsection is particularly interesting, as it shows how much Twitter has evolved over the last months. While its previous redesign already let us see images directly in the right column without leaving the platform, we can now read external content on Twitter itself. In other words, you can say goodbye to Twitter as a simple list of links, and welcome Twitter as a news destination.

5. Google Currents

Another player entered the mobile news reading space this week, and a huge one: Google. Its new app, Google Currents, is available in the US on Android and iOS (see our post). As soon as it was announced, comparisons with Flipboard mushroomed. Similarities are hard to deny: Google Currents aggregates content from different sources and makes it easy to read on a mobile device.

In terms of content, Google has partnered with 150 media outlets and websites, including The Next Web, which all offer full-length content on the app.

Yet, each reader’s experience will also be customized: besides choosing which sites to add, each user is able to integrate RSS feeds and public Google+’s streams to the app’s output.

Beyond aggregation and personalization, Google Currents also includes curation, as the app lets users follow personalized trends and read about breaking news in real time – albeit these won’t be geo-aware, something Twitter is the only player to offer at the moment.

If you’re not in the US, chances are you weren’t able to download the app yet, so here’s my personal take to give you an idea of what to expect. While Currents is still very new in my daily routine, I decided minutes after testing it that it deserved a place on my home screen. It sits there along the apps I use the most, and I have to confess Flipboard isn’t one of them. While I use Flipboard from time to time and enjoy its gorgeous looks, I tend to prefer Google’s fast, no-frills interface.

As a matter of fact, I like Google Currents so much that could very soon become a personal favorite of mine – although it’s worth noting I have been playing with it on an iPad. From the feedback we’ve collected, it makes a huge difference in terms of user satisfaction, and we’ve heard Google Currents isn’t as good on the iPhone, due to a lack of adaptation in its design.

If this is true, Google would likely have gained from approaching the smartphone the same way Flipboard did: as a completely different use case. We don’t use our phones like we use tablets, not do they look the same, and it’s something any outstanding reading application should take into account. This is undoubtedly a mistake, which we hope Google Currents’ next version will fix.

Which ones of these apps are you using? What’s your favorite one so far? Share your impressions in the comments.

Interview by Thom Chambers with Everett Bogue.

Thom has a digital magazine on the future of business on the web at In Treehouses. His two latest stories passed through my filter and into my radar, on how the web is becoming more beautiful with the addition of filter/social apps such as Instagr.am (which I use regularly) and how Colin Wright and Miles Fitzgerald are relaunching Ebookling.

Thom asked me to do an interview on how my platform is becoming multi-dimensional with the addition of my Letter.ly to the already fairly layered existence my second self has on the web.

Here is the interview:

Thom: Letter.ly is still quite unfamiliar to many. What made you decide to start up a letter.ly newsletter rather than putting that content on a blog?

Ev: A few months ago I discovered that I was a member of a group of people called ‘augmented humans’, a term that Eric Schmidt the soon-to-be-ex CEO of Google used at DLD2011 to discuss the future of human evolution. Augmented humans use mental cybernetic technologies, such as Twitter to extend their consciousness beyond themselves — creating personalities on the Internet called second selves, which allow them to unplug from the Internet.

While pre-augmented humanity is tethered to a computer screen answering emails, augmented humanity is having tea –discussing how to let technology do it’s thing, while we do our human thing.

I started the letter.ly because I began to realize that talking about advanced mental cybernetics to an audience of 85,000+ people was incredibly confusing for the audience. People were stumbling across the articles, and had no idea what I was talking about. At best this made people incredibly confused, at worst I was ripping people’s brains through the space/time continuum.

I had to make a choice: either dumb down the content for a mass audience, or ask people for a commitment before they entered the time-machine. Once I made this choice, it took a lot of the pressure off me to make sure everyone got it — which is impossible at this point. Augmented humanity is such a fringe topic that explaining it to a small audience is much easier than dealing with all of the backlash that came from proclaiming that there’s a generation of cyborgs living amongst us.

Thom: How hard was it to choose a price point? Have you got any advice for others considering a letter.ly newsletter when it comes to pricing?

Ev: Many people were charging $1.99 – $3.99 for their Letter.lys. My fellow-collective-buddy and augmented human @rosshill and I had a discussion (which for us is like two tweets) about how we could price our Letter.lys at a point where the people who received them felt like they were getting value from them. $25 seemed to be the right price point.

I’m teaching people how to create second selves that take care of them, essentially letting them earn a living without having to be tethered to a screen all day. The value return can be, when applied, many to the power of many times what the small group of people who subscribe are paying for.

When pricing a letter.ly, the biggest concern I had with extremely low price points is simply that it will just seem like an inconvenience to sign up. What is the difference between free and $1.99? Not much, it’s simply a barrier of entry. I think if you’re going to charge, you might as well charge a real amount.

This funds the research, and also creates a more dedicated following/interaction with the people who receive. If someone isn’t interested, they’re going to unsubscribe. This creates a stronger base of support for the work, because disinterested people leave naturally.

Thom: How have people reacted to the decision to charge for your content? In a world of so much free information, do you often find yourself having to justify the decision?

Ev: I don’t feel the need to justify the decision to anyone. If they want it, they can subscribe. If they feel like it’s not worth the value, I’d honestly rather them invest their money in another way. There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and research into augmented humanity really is only interesting to people who are either waking up to the fact that they are cybernetic life-forms, or are interested in becoming augmented themselves.

Thom: Without wishing to be too indelicate about it, how good is the income from the newsletter? Would you encourage others to take it up as a viable income stream?

Ev: The launch has been slow, purposefully. I haven’t been pushing the letter.ly on people, because I don’t think it’s necessary. That being said, while not revealing actual figures, the monthly revenue has quickly risen to become a significant amount of income for my business. It’s a nice bonus on top of e-book sales, occasional 1-to-1 consulting, and once-in-awhile affiliate revenue.

Everything is an experiment. I don’t think I necessarily would have started out with a letter.ly as the first product that I ever launched. It could work, but figure that I launched my letter.ly to a rather large audience with a significant number of extremely dedicated readers. Results will vary.

Julien Smith explains the economics of launching this kind of business in his article: The future of blogs is paid access.

Thom: Letter.ly allows people to unsubscribe at any time. Have you found that your audience is loyal or does the fact that it’s easy to leave make people more fickle, do you think?

Ev: I really hope anyone who isn’t interested in the content I’m writing will unsubscribe, it’s not worth their attention honestly to continue reading. The money, in my mind, is secondary to the attention that people are putting into the content they’re reading.

There’s an incredibly easy-to-click unsubscribe link on the bottom of every letter.ly. I hope everyone’s first instinct is to click it if they’re suddenly not vibing with the content.

That being said, I’ve only had a half a handful of people unsubscribe so far.

Thom: What are the benefits to a newsletter, do you think, over an ebook or a course or a blog? What excites you about the medium?

Ev: Information is traveling faster and faster. I’m noticing that a new idea that I have will be instantly adopted by my collective within a few hours of my writing it — and vis-versa. The internet is bringing us all closer together in our ideas, especially augmented humans. I know to some extent what is going on in the minds of a group of people who my 3rd brain is synced with in Melbourne Australia, and they know somewhat of what is going on in my mind.

This speed means that ebooks really need to be based around information that is timeless, instead of timely. I haven’t really ever taken a course, or given a course, so I can’t comment on that. However, when I look at the blog, I see information that floats just above the surface — enough to puzzle people a little about the possibilities available in their lives. When I look at the Letter.ly, I see a way of transporting people deeper into their understanding of a way of consciousness that’s just beginning to emerge in our culture. When I look at the ebooks, I see a complete story being told from beginning to end that takes your mind from this point to that point, and hopefully by the end you’ve jumped forward in evolution closer to where my collective is currently riding the wave.

Thom: In terms of content, have you found that particular themes or styles are more suited to the newsletter – or is it similar to blogging with its time-tested traditions of headlines and list posts?

Ev: I’m beginning to believe that “time-tested” traditions like list posts and impulsive headlines are going away. I want to write a headline that makes sense for my Letter.ly, I want to make a headline that makes sense for my blog, I want a book with a title that makes sense for the book.

This is a shift for me, because I wasn’t always approaching the work this way. I’m just finding that the more I travel into the future and bring information backwards down the evolutionary chain to people who need it, the more it’s not necessary to pad the content with superfluous techniques that they teach you in marketing school.

The web is becoming more intelligent to that stuff, and so are our minds. We won’t be tricked anymore, and we’re seeing that as some of the sites that rely on those techniques begin to fall in relevance.

Thom: Where do you see the newsletter going? Do you have a plan for it or do you run it more out of sheer enjoyment?

Ev: It’s an experiment, it’s also a stopgap. I have a major goal this year of eliminating email from my life completely (in order to show the world that it can be done, and so others can follow.) In order to that, I’m going to need to find another home for the Letter.ly content. I’ve made it clear for everyone involved that it may not be around forever.

Until then, I’m enjoying time-traveling with everyone much farther out than we could ever go on the blog. That’s incredibly fulfilling and enjoying for me, and for the people who are involved in the project.

–

Thank you Thom for allowing me to cross-post this interview on my blog. You can check out the new issue of In Treehouses on Febuary 14th.

My Letter.ly is here.

My three favorite Letter.lys right now are by Ross, Gwen, and Crystal.

Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 10:35 PM 23:31:53 GMT+0100

Can Occupy and the Tea Party team up?

In a Virginia art gallery, supporters of the two movements quietly explore the possibilities

By Chris Dovi

Occupy-Tea Party peace talks in Richmond, Virginia

Topics:Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party

RICHMOND, Va. — Members of the Occupy Richmond and local Tea Party movements found acres of common ground during an unlikely meeting held Tuesday at a police station-turned-art gallery in the city’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood.

But first and foremost, the 12 men and women from seemingly polar spots on the political spectrum agreed on this: The meeting never happened.

“I think it’s all very, very important that we state very clearly that this was not a meeting between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement,” declared Donald Rallis, an Occupy Richmond member, as the meeting wound to a close. His sotto-voce assertion meets with a flurry of “up twinkle” hands — or vigorous head nods — depending on the individual’s political leanings.

In the context of two political movements where individual thought is prized — and where surreal events often influence outcomes – Rallis’ denial of reality made perfect sense.

“None of us want to be open to the accusation that we are trying to hijack the movement,” he explained.

If there is a hijacker at this unlikely meeting of the minds, it may well be Tom Robinson, a self-described “Archie Bunker to the Richmond Occupy movement” and founder of the Peninsula Patriots Tea Party chapter in Matthews, Va. Robinson orchestrated this unlikely summit after having a number of one-on-one discussions with Occupy members.

His plan firmed up after the two movements joined forces at a recent Richmond City Council meeting. Occupy Richmond members came to support the local Tea Party’s efforts to recoup $8,544.82 that the conservative group paid for permits to hold a rally in a city park where occupiers later camped free for more than two weeks.

This was not the first time Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party members have met. But it was among the first such meetings to be held with a stated objective of determining whether the two groups might cooperate on certain common issues. Robinson said that he hoped to spark an evolution for both organizations, which thus far have largely confined their public interactions to attacks on one another’s ideologies or grooming habits.

“We need to kiss and make up a little bit,” said Robinson, a Richmond entrepreneur and developer with a baby-smooth pate and a self-described ADHD-truncated attention span. “It might be a small step, but I’m hoping we can make a little bit of history here tonight. When I listen to either side, it becomes very clear … I feel that we have a lot of similarities.”

That assertion found merit as the assembled Tea Partyers and occupiers introduced themselves and stated their hopes. Similarities far outweighed differences.

“Less government and more power to the people,” says Gilbert Wilkerson, explaining why he joined the executive board of the Richmond Tea Party.

Mark Wood, a middle-aged occupier, echoed the thought: “To return power to the people — that’s at the core of it for me.”

Salon and others have pontificated on the convergence of the Tea Party and Occupy agendas. While one blames big government run amok and the other accuses Wall Street, both see a system where power feeds on power at the expense of the common citizen. But concerns about personal hygiene or religious zealotry largely have kept the two groups siloed. A Facebook community page titled “Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Unite” boasts just 16 “likes,” an indicator that unity is not exactly trending.

But when Occupy Richmond members met on a cold night late last month in front of Ipanema, a popular vegetarian restaurant and watering hole, they debated Tom Robinson’s olive branch: an invitation to meet with members of the Richmond Tea Party.

“We would be pretty much the first Occupy group to sit and meet with the Tea Party,” said Bentley, a single-named woman with long flowing skirts as “up twinkle” hands silently wiggle in nervous agreement. A long and tense debate ensued, ending with a resolution stating that six Occupy Richmond members would accept the invitation  but attend only on condition that they would not be representing the Occupy Richmond organization.

Robinson’s effort to recruit Tea Party members for the meeting proved no less difficult. He recounted some ruffled feathers and angry words from some members who worried that their organization might be tainted by the stain of even casual association with Occupy members.

But once in the same room, any discomfort members of the two groups might have felt seemed to melt away.  The discussion proceeded straight toward questions of constitutional theory — whether the 220-year-old foundational document is best salvaged or scrapped after having been so pillaged by elected officials and corporate interests in the intervening years.

“You’re saying you want a new system,” said Elana Siddall to the occupiers. “The Tea Party is saying there already is a system — the Constitution. So why not go back to that?”

Because, says Josh Kadrich, one of the four Richmond occupiers arrested at the Oct. 31 eviction of their encampment, “the world of today is so drastically different than 250 years ago.” He points to globalization and the rise of multinational corporations that move easily across borders, taking their money and influence with them wherever they go.

“I think a constitutional convention might be something interesting to consider,” Kadrich suggests, prompting a suggestion from Philip Kelly, another occupier, that perhaps a new constitution might include a separation of corporations and state similar to the current church and state partition.

“In some respects, I agree with you,” said Freddy Boisseau, a member of the Chester Patriots Tea Party chapter, who blames politicians influenced by greed, corrupted by power, for straying from the Constitution’s intent.

Kadrich summarized a few things the two movements could agree on: that the common citizen is no longer represented by his elected officials; that holding political office tends to corrupt even well-intended people; and that political parties are taking advantage of voters by seeking to polarize issues that really are of minimal consequence.

Two hours later, no blood has been drawn. The cheese knife on a nearby hors d’oeuvres platter remains unused except to slice a few slivers of pepper jack.  Still, differences occasionally show through. Both sides speak in broad strokes about patriotism and devotion to country. But while both sides agree that the Constitution is a well-meaning and important document, the Tea Partyers are unyielding in their devotion, while occupiers say they’re ready to toss all or part of it.

And listening to their hopes and fears, another delineation emerges. The Tea Party members rely on their early American history classes, exhibiting an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Federalist Papers and obscure letters exchanged between the Founding Fathers as they make arguments to return to what they believe are strict interpretations of the Constitution’s intent. Their Occupy counterparts know plenty about applied constitutional theory, but they really only perk up when it comes to 20th century history. The occupiers paint the rise of the middle class after World War II, aided by the strength of unions, high taxes on the wealthy and a robust manufacturing-based economy, with vivid imagery that evokes memories of Rosie the Riveter. The movements emerge from two very different conceptions of what is important in American history.

Despite their differences and the cover story that the Tea Party and Occupy Richmond never met, members of the two groups seemed eager to plan a follow-up meting to talk some more.

“A team-up of the Tea Party and Occupy movement would be the biggest threat ever,” suggests Kadrich, half-joking, as emails are exchanged and plans are made to attend one another’s meetings.

Discussions about forming a Google group trail off, a reminder of one of the biggest differences between Occupy and Tea — tech-savvy youth versus aging dial-up users. But even the digital divide seems like a narrow gap as the meeting dissolves into the night.

“It started here in old sleepy Richmond, but hopefully it can move nationwide,” said Robinson, entertaining big dreams. “We could be the mothers and fathers of a second American Revolution. We know we have a common fight — the government has got to get scared of us.”

Close

Chris Dovi is a freelance journalist in Richmond, Va., who writes about government, politics, and education. You can reach him at dovidovidovi@gmail.com.  More Chris Dovi

Shared via Posterous on December 08, 2011 at 11:34PM

Time to resurrect an old idea: Economic Rent

by maddoggFollow

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Have you ever heard of the term “economic rent”?  No?  That’s probably because of the greatest political coup in the history of our republic.  In politics, true power comes – not from your argument – but from the ability to steer the conversation to what you want to talk about and away from what you don’t want to talk about.  The true elites in our society have continued “winning” the political debate by removing a very important concept from the political conversation.

I admit, reading the term,  “economic rent” can cause eyes to glaze over quickly.  A more accurate description is “unearned income”.  It is people and companies who make money by doing zero work and risk little or none of their own assets.

Taking Back Adam Smith and “Classic Liberalism”

Many conservative economists claim to be staunch followers of Adam Smith.  They shout slogans such as “Supply and Demand!”  “Capitalism”! “  “Let the markets work!”  However, for anyone who actually read Adam Smith, you would note that the “invisible hand” was not his only observation of the inner workings of capitalism.  Adam Smith recognized that many in the economy were making gobs of money, but weren’t contributing anything.  He was referring to what was eventually called “economic rent”.

Smith observed that all production required 3 things.  Land, Capital, and Labor.  A very simple example would be a brick factory.  The building and oven needed to create the bricks are the “capital” – the owners are the capitalists.  The people making the bricks is the “labor” – the people doing the actual work.  The Land the factory occupies and the clay used to make the bricks is the “land” – the owners of the land are the “Rentiers”.  Any money made by selling the bricks is then divided up between these three groups: the rentiers, the capitalists, and the workers.

Adam Smith observed that only 2 of the 3 groups made any real contribution to the production process.  The workers contributed their time.  The capitalists contributed their capital that they either bought, but is now used and worth less than before it was used.  The Rentiers contributed their land, but have lost nothing.  Once the manufacturing of the bricks is done, they get their land back and it is still worth the same as it was before.  Any income they made by renting out their land was made without work, and without risk to their assets.  There is a word for someone that only takes, but doesn’t give back: a parasite.  Smith and those who carried on his work used the nicer term, Rentier.  This is where the phrase “economic rent” originates.  It originally described a no value-ad landlord.

Adam Smith and future classical economists existed in a time where the noble families of medieval Europe were still the large landowners.  The nobles had just turned into Rentiers.  Because they owned the land, they were able to rent it out to capitalist and workers and claim a portion of their profits and wages by charging “rent”.  They were able to do this without ever working.  It was unearned income.

Much of the work done by economists from Adam Smith until the late 19th century was all about finding and identifying “rent-seeking”.  These classical economists didn’t want to overthrow capitalism, they wanted to free it from the “rent-seeking” parasites.

The Neoclassical School “loses” rent

Right before the turn of the 20th century a new school of economists appeared.  They were later named the Neoclassical school and it continues today.  When the transition from classical to neoclassical occurred, one of the things that was lost was the concept of “economic rent”.  The Neoclassicals started treating land and capital as the same thing and therefore interchangeable.  In a world without land, economic rent no longer makes sense.  Some would argue(e.g. Gaffney’s Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem against Henry George – pdf) that this was intentional.  If it was intentional, it was the greatest coup of ideas the elite class came up with to justify their existence since The Divine Right of Kings.  On the other hand, It may have just been a simple intellectual decision based on their new approach to economics.  In any case, the decision to treat land and capital as the same, haunts us to this day.  If land is treated as capital then the concept of “rent” goes away and rentiers can masquerade as capitalists and cloak their unearned “rent” income as justifiable profit.

John Maynard Keynes blew away everybody and what they thought they knew about economics in the 20s and 30s.  In response to Keynesian economics, the neoclassical economists didn’t die, they decided to fight back.    Milton Friedman is the most famous of this group.  To fight against keynesian economics, he and his contemporaries tried to lay claim as resurrecting the classic school of economics that said “less government is good”.  They even called themselves New Classicals.  However, this “revival” of the classical economics was actual a revival of the neoclassical school.  They, like the neoclassicals before, again conflated capital and land.  Therefore, many modern economists no longer make a distinction between land and capital.  They group together income from rent and income from capital and call it profit. This school remains in the mainstream and therefore the concept of economic rent is no longer discussed in our politics.

Rent-Seeking

In the late 60s and early 70s “economic rent” saw a small revival among select economists.  For those select few, “Rent-seeking” was no longer defined as just “ownership of the land”.  It can take several shapes.  Rent-seeking is any income that is unearned. An alternative definition is “profit without a corresponding cost of production”.  “Economic Rent” can come from ownership of land and just “renting” it out for money. It can also come from collecting so much capital that a firm now has a monopoly and can set the price independent of supplydemand considerations, It can be from government monopoly granting, control of other “land” like our rivers, broadband spectrum, or “mineral rights” of land.  It can come from control of financial assets like capital gains, dividends, and interest on loans(especially usury). It can also come from political favors from the government.

Political Implications

Economic rent was something I’d learned about in school several years ago and quickly forgot about it once the class was over.  Now in a post bank-bailout world, I ran across it again one day while researching another article, It was like a light-bulb clicking on in my head.  (A high-efficiency light bulb).  This is what progressives are currently fighting against.  This is the concept, the vocabulary, the name for the rage I feel in my gut at what’s happened.  The rentiers have taken over our country by masquerading as capitalists.

How did this happen?  It was simple, once the neoclassicals removed the entire concept of “rentier” from the economic, and eventually political, conversation. It was all capitalism and capitalists in their world.  Therefore, now when progressives rail against the unearned income of the rentiers, we lack the vocabulary to properly express what is happening.  Instead, conservatives try to make it look like liberals are railing against capitalism itself or against businesses in general.  In some cases we may even come to believe it ourselves.  Many times when we’re fighting against the “excesses of capitalism”, what we are actually fighting is parasitic rentiers that are hurting the true capitalists as much as the workers.

• When a company has a monopoly and can charge whatever they want, that’s not being a capitalist or an entrepreneur, that’s being a “Rentier”.
• When oil company’s make “windfall profits” as the price of oil goes up, that’s not profit, that’s “economic rent”.
• When a drug company can keep the government from negotiating lower prices, that isn’t capitalism, that’s classic “rent-seeking” behavior.
• 99% of the money made on wall street is nothing but pure rent-seeking.
• Companies lobbying for tax loop holes is just more unproductive rent-seeking.

Fortunately, some well known economists do talk about The Rentiers.  Unfortunately, not nearly enough are.  I’m guessing it’s because the vast majority of influential economists are still neoclassicals and don’t believe land and rentiers exist.  They can try to deny their existence, but when I see the top 1% of the country make more money in one night while they are sleeping then most will make working at their job for 6 months, it’s hard to deny their existence.  It’s unfortunately that our intellectual class “lost” these words and concepts from the mainstream discussion.

So where does that leave us now?  One could argue history is repeating itself.  200 years ago, the conservative vs. liberal mantra was that conservatives were fighting to keep the power of the nobles and large landlords intact.  The liberals were the ones trying to free themselves politically and economically from their control.  Today it’s the same.  Conservatives are fighting to maintain the privilege of the Rentiers by pretending to defend capitalism itself.  And once again, us liberals are fighting to free the market from the parasitical Rentiers.

Cross Posted Our Dime.

Originally posted to maddogg on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 08:34 AM PDT.

Also republished by

Money and Public Purpose and Community Spotlight.

Tags

• Adam Smith
• economic rent
• economics
• Economy
• history
• Recommended
• rentier
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• Wall Street

Shared via Posterous on December 08, 2011 at 09:58PM

A stunning directorial debut from actor Paddy Considine features some of the best acting you’ll see all year.

It explores what happens when an angry widower (Peter Mullan) stikes up a relationship with a Christian charity worker (Olivia Colman), who is married to a stern husband (Eddie Marsan).

Expanded from Considine’s 2007 short Dog Altogether, on the surface this may seem like another British exercise in urban misery.

But this is a film that manages to rise above expectations and is one of the most impressive dramas in recent years.

A brutal opening scene sets the mood that this isn’t going to be a barrel of laughs, but it blends its darker elements with an impressive sense of place and time.

Shot on location in Leeds with a piercing but humane eye for the murkier details of urban Britain, it presents a riveting tale of violence and redemption.

Part of its raw power is down to the astonishing performances, which rank amongst the best you’ll see this year.

Mullan has his best part since My Name is Joe (1998), channeling the rage and regret of his character with an honest conviction that is extraordinary to watch.

Olivia Colman makes for a compelling foil, managing to create that rarest of things on screen – a genuinely good, selfless person.

It is an astonishing performance filled emotion and nuance that ranks amongst the best given by any actress in years.

The chemistry between them is something to behold and the development of their relationship is as convincing as it is surprising.

Marsan has less screen time but still manages to create a completely chilling character, made scarier because he is as plausible as he is malevolent.

Like The Interrupters – another outstanding film out this year – it presents violence as a disease that spreads and infects people from all walks of life.

Touching upon issues of class, it is a distressing film to watch in places but an intenseley rewarding one, building up to a climax which is richly earned.

Considine previously starred in Jim Sheridan’s In America (2002) and had supporting roles in Cinderella Man (2005) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), but this is an extraordinarily assured directorial debut.

Not only are the dynamics between the characters handled with compassion and subtlety, but he doesn’t shy away from the harshness of the violence, which is never gratuitous but deeply affecting.

The understated score by Chris Baldwin and Dan Baker, featuring heavy use of acoustic guitars, provides an effective contrast to the bouts of violence which occasionaly erupt.

Cinematographer Erik Alexander Wilson presents the action with deceptively simple lighting which feels wholly appropriate for the subject matter.

In between the darker scenes, there is an uplifting humanity to the film which is down to a combination of sharp writing and the emotion the actors bring to their roles.

In some ways it marks a progression from the tougher films of Shane Meadows, with humour and observation mixed in with the harsher realities of daily existence.

There are numerous little details which are expertly done, ranging from Mullan’s relationships with his neighbours and ill friend and a moving speech which explains the film’s title.

Although it is about violence, the film doesn’t present it irresponsibly and instead draws a believable picture of where it can come from.

A remarkable and deeply affecting portrait of people struggling to cope with their demons, it promises a great deal for Considine’s future career behind the camera.

> Tyrannosaur at the IMDb
> Official Facebook page

Business without a vision is like a car without a driver.  So what is the goal of social business? Of social marketing? Of social communications?

How do your measure your success? Are your metrics reflective of your goals and objectives?

Let’s put it this way: if your benchmark report card is about growth in “reads” and “shares” without service of a greater goal, you’re missing the point.

Over the past five years I have asked the questions above to dozens of brand and agency marketers. Most were still in the process of putting the pieces together. Year after year, businesses continue to invest in building platforms with little thought towards big picture or long term vision. Social was thought to best be left to organic progression rather than engineered towards a greater vision. While flexibility and capitalizing organic opportunities are core elements to social, relying on them as a mission or vision is nothing short of laziness.

The point of social is not to grow social, or to grow your business. It is to find the synthesis between the two in a living, breathing new organism. Smart communicators are designing and shaping this new organism into something remarkable. An alarming number of marketers however, are creating childish frank-communities driven by short term business objectives, campaigns, promotions and growth for the sake of growth.

When management lacks a vision, the troops on the ground are left to ramble in pursuit of tactics. When speaking with community managers, a remarkable number of them have been unable to clearly and succinctly explain their business objectives or bigger vision for the platforms they are tasked with managing. They viewed their job as engaging the community or coordinating content publication. We can do better than line cooks. We owe it to them. We owe it to our communities

Social needs to be greater than tactics in pursuit of a strategy.

Otherwise, communities will view marketers as nothing more than a series of tactics.

As long as social marketing continues to be about the campaign, the community will continue to view their relationship with the brand on those terms. Meaningful, sustainable relationships must be built on something greater than this year’s branding campaign or product launch. Conversations must be about more than product news, social promotions and the banalities or “what are you doing this weekend”?

Great communicators make you believe. They make you want to belong. They invite and enable contribution. They build momentum. All in service of a vision, a roadmap. The road doesn’t lead to a destination, it leads to a milestone, a marker along a broader journey. Because great movements don’t die.

Your fan numbers, engagement rates, share numbers, view numbers, comment numbers, follower numbers, sentiment scores and category indeces are all great metrics. But you are not in business to generate “reads” or “shares”. These are signs that you are doing something right (or wrong), but should not be your end goal.

If you haven’t yet, build your social vision based on your ideal cultural vision. Think less communications objectives and more mission statement. Elevate your dialogue by working towards that cultural objective, that bigger story. Set your campaigns up as stepping stones towards a greater vision. Your posts are small steps in a greater journey. It’s fine to talk about the mundane, but don’t forget the sublime. Think less marketing and more religion.

Tell me what you are really about, and I may just buy in.

So I’m happy to say that Markets Not Capitalism is now available for sale on the shelves of my favorite bookstore, The Gnu’s Room, here in Auburn. The Gnu’s Room has also very generously agreed to host a local author reading / discussion / book-signing / market anarchist hootenanny this Wednesday, November 30^th. I’ll be there to do a brief talk and a reading; and Roderick Long will be there to do much the same. Books will be sold, books will be signed, discussion to be had, caffeine to be consumed. Come on down! Invite yr friends!

Here’s the schedule:

Here’s the event description from The Gnu’s Room:

Co-Editor Charles Johnson and major contributor Roderick Long to the book Markets Not Capitalism (2011) will be at The Gnu’s Room for a discussion of the topics addressed in the book. The economic crisis needs fresh new responses, which emphasize the ways in which poverty and economic inequality have resulted from collusion between government and big business, which has enriched a few corporate giants at the expense of the rest of us. Rather than turning back to politics, the authors argue that working people must begin to free themselves of the mistakes of the past, and work together to take back control over their own lives and livelihoods through individual freedom, mutual exchange, and nonviolent grassroots social activism.

Last weekend, 37 hackers, including Prezi employees and students from around the world, spent two days in the Prezi office to create fun, and (sometimes) useful projects using Prezi.

After two days, teams presented their incredible projects:

• Prezi Kinect Hack: Control your prezi using body gestures
• Prezi Wars: Use Prezi Meeting to play a third-person shooter with your friends
• WebGL Prezi: The results are in, our developers tackled creating a rough version of Prezi in WebGL!
• Prezi Usage Map: A zoomable map of prezi creations, visits, and tweets about Prezi
• Whiteboard to Prezi application: Automatically create a prezi from a photo you’ve taken
• Hipchat bot: Type in a command in hipchat, our HP bot will let the office know what’s up; break something in Prezi, sirens and lights!
• Democratic Voting in Prezi: Make life’s toughest decisions using Prezi voting
• Prezi Logo from Post-its: See the Prezi logo, made “pixel by pixel” from Post-it notes

Jeg kommer aldrig for sent. Aldrig … altså lige bortset fra i dag, hvor en kombination af skingrende glatte veje og kø på Randersvej gjorde, at jeg var 4 minutter for sent da jeg trådte ind af døren på Arosgården. Jeg var blevet bedt om at holde foredrag om sociale medier og personlig branding. Og så stod jeg altså der – fire minutter for sent på den og med et rum fuld af utålmodige tilhørere.

En af grundene til, at jeg aldrig kommer for sent er, at jeg hader oplægsholdere og undervisere der står og fumler med at sætte computeren til projektoren og ikke lige kan få det til at virke. Det er sikkert en arv fra min skolegang i 80erne, hvor enhver kompetent underviser kunne komme til at fremstå som lallende tosse, når han/hun skulle have videoen til at virke for at vise os  dokumentarfilm om de socioøkonomiske vilkår i Nepal. Den form for larmende amatørisme forsøger jeg for hver en pris at undgå når jeg underviser. Og derfor kommer jeg altid i god tid.

Men altså ikke i dag. Og dette var så endda dagen, hvor jeg havde besluttet mig for at min iPad skulle have debut som præsentationsværktøj. Så måtte jeg jo bare krydser fingre for at det virkede …

Og her kommer så pointen. For det ikke bare virkede – det reddede min elendige entre. Jeg kommer ind. Tager min iPad op, sætter VGA-adapteren til projektoren, trykker på Keynote og vælger præsentationen. BOOM. Præsentation på væg. Samlet setup fra “iPad i taske” til “Slide på væg” under 1 minut! Havde det været med min bærbare, så ville det have taget meget længere. Så skulle jeg have fundet stikkontakt, bootet maskinen, fået slået den over på at køre med to skærme – og med den konstante risiko for at et eller andet uforklarligt går galt og opløsningen er håbløs. Men ikke i dag …

Men nu er opstart jo ikke alt, selvom godt begyndt, som bekendt, er halvt fuldendt. Hvordan var det så at arbejde med under foredraget. Igen må jeg sige “upåklageligt”. Slides kom hurtigt og glidende, jeg kunne se mine noter op iPad’ens skærm mens jeg præsenterede og det hele forløb i det hele taget smertefrit. Og efter en times præsentation havde min iPad drænet 5% af sit batteri(!) Så jeg kunne faktisk have præsenteret en hel dag uden at kigge mig om efter ekstern strøm.

Så hvis der sidder nogle foredragsholdere / undervisere / sælgere og leder efter en usecase til en iPad, så har jeg den her. Det er uden sammenligning det bedste værktøj jeg har haft i de 15 år jeg har undervist. Naturligvis er der meget man ikke kan. Nej, man kan ikke vise websider (men man kan vise screenshots og video). Man kan heller ikke vise forskellige iPad-apps. Så det dur ikke til software og webside-demonstrationer. Det er temmelig tåbeligt, men hvis man som underviser først og fremmest skal vise slides – så er det perfekt.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world. At my local specialty coffee bean store, it sells for $420 per pound—or $10 for a 10 oz. brewed cup.

Kopi Luwak is very different from that cheap, gauche coffee you and I drink every day. This is because each hand-harvested bean of Kopi Luwak has been artisanally shat out of the digestive system of a small Indonesian pseudo-cat.

Yesterday, my husband and I split a cup of Kopi Luwak in an attempt to figure out whether having cat butt all over your coffee beans really did noticeably improve the flavor, or whether this was all just an elaborate practical joke on the part of Indonesian farmers.

The Asian Palm Civet is not really a cat, per se. It’s a viverrid, a family of animals not found in North America. Viverrids belong to the same suborder as cats, so they are related. But, if you’re not from Asian or African tropics, these animals will probably look a little weird to you. Imagine what might happen if the bastard love child of a ferret and a lemur had babies with your house cat. That’s an Asian Palm Civet.

And Asian Palm Civets, as it turns out, really like to eat the fruits off of coffee plants. Although the civet can digest the fruit itself, the same can not be said for the bean at the center. Coffee beans pass through the civet whole. But they don’t leave unchanged. Enzymes in the civet digestive tract break down proteins in the coffee beans. We know this because researchers at the University of Guelph actually did a detailed analysis in 2002, comparing Kopi Luwak and normal Columbian coffee beans. (You will be pleased to note that the same study confirmed that Kopi Luwak is safe to drink.)

Civets poop out coffee beans. This can happen on farms, or in the wild. Either way, once the pooping is done, somebody comes along to harvest the “processed” beans, cleans them, and roasts them. And then you have Kopi Luwak.

Here are the two things you need to know about the taste of Kopi Luwak:

• There is a difference in flavor. Kopi Luwak is noticeably not bitter. Swallow a sip, and it’s like you just drank some water. There’s no sting or heavy flavor left in the back of your throat. That makes sense. Proteins are part of what is responsible for the bitterness of coffee. Kopi Luwak beans have fewer whole proteins than normal beans. So they’re less bitter, but still taste good. As my husband put it, “Everything that is wrong with cheap gas station coffee is right about this.”

• That difference is totally not worth the price. Again, to quote my husband, “If I were a Russian oligarch or an investment banker or something, and $420 a pound represented a much smaller amount of my time worked, I’d probably drink this. As it is, not worth it.”*

Cat-butt coffee: The coffee of the 1%?

Interestingly, Wikipedia tells me that Kopi Luwak originated during Dutch colonization of Indonesia, when Indonesians were banned from drinking any of the coffee they worked to grow and harvest. Instead, they gathered beans from civet poop and brewed that. And they talked about how great this cat-butt coffee was. Eventually, the Dutch colonists got curious, tried it for themselves, and then pretty much took it over. That’s how Kopi Luwak became a luxury item. It’s been expensive since the 19th century.

Of course, that history also lends a little more evidence to the theory that, somewhere, Indonesian farmers are having a good, long chuckle.

• • • •

Read more about Kopi Luwak in a 2010 New York Times story.

If you’d like a smoother brew at a more reasonable price, I’d recommend the Aerobie AeroPress. It’s $30, makes a damn fine cup of coffee, and does not contain any cat butt.

Image: Kopi Luwak, Kaffee, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from ohallmann’s photostream

My latest Publishers Weekly column is “Copyrights vs. Human Rights.” In honor of Human Rights Day on Dec 10, I’ve written a piece on publishing’s shameful support of SOPA, a law that will punish the online services that are so key to coordinating and publicizing human rights struggles around the world.

The U.N. characterizes access to the Internet as a human right, and government research in the U.K. and in the U.S. shows the enormous humanitarian benefits of network access for poor and vulnerable families: better nutrition, education, and jobs; more social mobility and opportunity; and civic and political engagement. Yet the services that provide the bulk of these benefits—search engines, Web hosts, and online service providers like Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikipedia, and YouTube—could never satisfy the requirements set out in SOPA. The only way for these platforms to satisfy SOPA would be to all but shut off the public’s ability to contribute and to throttle free expression for all but those entities that can afford to pay a lawyer to certify that their uploaded material will not attract a copyright complaint.

Another group of important entities that could never satisfy SOPA are the civic-minded hackers and security researchers scrambling to improve the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). In 2011, the DNS was attacked several times, including a breach attributed to the Iranian secret police, which used forged certificates to allow them to impersonate governments, banks, and online e-mail providers like Gmail and Hotmail. If passed, SOPA would ban the production or dissemination of tools that could subvert its blocks, and that would include tools the world’s technologists are creating specifically to help defeat government censorship and surveillance. Many of these efforts and tools are actually funded by the U.S. government, and some, like the Onion Router (TOR), are used by U.S. armed forces intelligence services as well as struggling Arab Spring revolutionaries.

Cory Doctorow: Copyrights vs. Human Rights

Allister Heath rants on in today’s City AM:

If anything, today’s problem is even greater than that: it is clear from the global government debt crisis that fiat money – currencies entirely detached from any commodity or anchor and produced entirely at the discretion of government agencies – has failed. (1)

Its adoption has abolished all restraints on governments and has meant that currencies keep being devalued and inflated away.(2) Eventually, we will need a new monetary system more in tune with the principles of capitalism and sound money – until then, expect tensions between central bankers and governments to rise and rise.(3)

1) Not true. Although superficially a government cannot finance itself by handing out bits of paper, on the facts it works surprisingly well.

Sometimes governments introduce paper currencies by accident, and people work out how to use them: for example, food rationing vouchers. Ignoring undeclared production and the grey market, we know that each household or each person has different preferences, so those people who don’t need to redeem the full value of their vouchers can sell them to those people who want more than their state-allocated ration. So the former group sells their surplus vouchers to the latter group.

You can see handing out the vouchers as a universal benefit/Citizen’s Income as well as a tax on buying food; if you want more, you have to pay somebody for their surplus vouchers.

2) True. So although the physical vouchers have no intrinsic value, the fact that the government does not just create them but also taxes them away again gives them value. And the same basic principle applies to any paper currency: as long as the government is not running a deficit (i.e. it is printing/spending at the same rate as it is taxing/collecting them) the value of the vouchers is largely stable.

It is only when the government prints more vouchers/bank notes/government bonds than it is collecting back in again (as taxes) that the value of vouchers is diluted.

3) Missing the point completely. I’m no big fan of deficit spending as a long term plan, and would prefer UK government spending to be reduced by about a quarter*, down to the level of taxes it currently collects (easily do-able if you chuck out all the theft and waste).

But government deficits (to which there is always an equal and opposite asset, such as money deposited with National Savings & Investments or held in the form of government bonds or even bank notes and coins) are not the largest debts of all; the total value of outstanding debts secured on land and buildings (and the corresponding assets) are about twice as much* by volume.

As illustrated above, government debts are secured on publicly collected taxes and mortgage debts are secured on privately collected taxes, i.e. ground rents. The total value of UK ground rents has barely increased over the last ten or fifteen years*, so how come the total value of mortgage debts has doubled or trebled*? That’s where the bulk of your [monetary] inflation comes in.

* Don’t quote me on the exact fractions and percentages, I’m talking ball park figures here.

Mødte fornylig dette argument imod jordværdibeskatning, som jeg gerne vil addressere her :

Vi lever i en global verden hvor produktion, værditilvækst m.m. forlængst er afkoblet fra jordbesiddelser. Vi er defor ikke afhængige af en bestemt adresse (lejet eller ejet) for at tjene til udkommet eller for den sags skyld at drive en virksomhed.

Argumentet er forsåvidt ikke et egentligt argument, men røber snarere en antagelse om, at beskatningen altid skal følge produktion, værditilvækst og udkomme – hvilket ud fra en overfladisk betragtning giver mening – for hvor ellers skulle man finde pengene? Samtidig negligeres den økonomiske betydning af ejerskab til jord – uden hvilket vi dog ikke kunne hverken bo eller arbejde nogen steder. Den negligering er der sikkert mange store jord- og ejendomsbesiddere som er glade for, og helst ser fortsætter.

Jeg er som udgangspunkt ikke uenig i den første del af argumentet, forstået på den måde, at det er muligt at skabe værdi i vores samfund selvom man ikke ejer jord (og også uafhængigt af en bestemt lokalitet). Det er faktisk bl.a. netop derfor at jeg finder vores skattesystem dybt urimeligt. For hvorfor i alverden skal grundejere så begunstiges økonomisk i vores skattesystem – på bekostning af det arbejde som udføres (af såvel virksomhedsejere som lavtlønnede) og som reelt tilfører reelle værdier til vores samfund? Det er forkasteligt og umoralsk, især fordi denne snylten på vores produktivitet som samfund betragtet udover at belaste produktionen også driver i forvejen marginaliserede grupper (f.eks. lavtlønnede og socialt dårligt stillede) ud i endnu ringere kår – og hertil belaster de offentlige udgifter urimeligt og unødvendigt – hvilket er det sidste vi har brug for i den nuværende situation.

Problemet er lige præcis – at selvom vi i udgangspunktet ikke er “afhængige af en bestemt adresse (lejet eller ejet) for at tjene til udkommet eller for den sags skyld at drive en virksomhed” så tvinges vi (om vi vil det eller ej – jeg ville helst ikke, hvis jeg kunne undgå det!) til at forholde os til denne problematik, fordi vore aktiviteter fører til at de lokaliteter vi befinder os i og i nærheden af, stiger i værdi og pris bl.a. pga. vore aktiviteter, og dermed er vores egen produktivitet med til at fordyre produktiviteten – og ultimativt (hvis stigningerne bliver ved længe nok) at drive os ud af produktivitet, idet overskuddet på denne måde konstant vil havne i de forkerte lommer. Det er en unødvendig belastning af vores økonomi og kilden til de ulykkelige tilbagevendende “bobler” og kriser i den kapitalistiske økonomi. Skattesystemet gør os “afhængige” af lokaliteten, da vi aldrig kan tjene nok på vores produktivitet, til at forpagtningsværdien og huslejen ikke altid vil følge med – og til sidst, fordi grundejeren vil spekulere i de stigende værdier, vil blive højere end det vi formår at betale, og dermed drive os fra hus og hjem, og virksomheden ud i en konkurs.

Via Ildhavet

Historien om internet 5:24. Den første webserver stod på forskningscenteret Cern, hvor Tim Berners-Lee udviklede HTML, og den første side på web var info.cern.ch.

Det var i 1991. Ved udgangen af 1993 var der 623 websteder. Et af dem var IMDb, Internet Movie Database, med det ambitiøse mål at katalogisere alle film. IMDb udsprang af nyhedsgruppen rec.arts.movies, hvor filminteresserede i slutningen af 1980erne diskuterede deres fælles interesse. En af deltagerne, Col Needham, udviklede i 1990 en måde at søge informationer om skuespillere i nyhedsgruppen, og denne database blev grundlaget for IMDb, som hurtigt blev – og stadig er – den foretrukne kilde til information om film. IMDb blev i 1998 solgt til Amazon og har i dag over 100 mio. forskellige besøgende hver måneden.

IMDb er et eksempel på, at almindelige mennesker kan producere noget værdifuldt. Man behøver ikke andet end engagement og en god portion tid.

I år efter myldrede det frem med hjemmesider. Alle havde en hobby eller interesse, og for første gang i verdenshistorien kunne alle ytre sig til et globalt publikum uden filtre som forlag og læserbrevsredaktører. Man behøvede end ikke startkapital. Det var ægte ytringsfrihed, og den blev brugt.

Mange internetudbydere stillede en hjemmeside til rådighed for abonnenterne, men der var også uafhængige tilbud. Det største var GeoCities, som blev etableret i 1994 og tilbød alle en gratis hjemmeside. Der var sider om modeljernbaner, UFOer, kæledyr, fansider for hollywoodstjerner og billedgallerier med supermodeller. Der var sider om alt, og det blev en stor succes. I 1999 var GeoCities det tredjemest besøgte websted, kun overgået af AOL og Yahoo! Sidstnævnte købte GeoCities for 3,5 mia. dollar, men den annoncefinansierede tjeneste gav aldrig overskud og lukkede i 2009.

GeoCities.com i december 1996. Et lille udpluk af brugernes sider kan ses på Internet Archaeology. Skærmbillede: The Wayback Machine.

Professionelle kommunikatører havde ikke meget til overs for folkets udfoldelser. Hjemmesiderne var grimme, teksterne var elendige, og man kunne bestemt ikke regne med, hvad der stod. Øverst på siderne stod der ofte “Under Construction” suppleret med et billede af vejarbejde. Der var en forestilling om, at en hjemmeside var en publikation, som skulle skrives en gang for alle. De fleste udgav dog, før de var færdige, derfor meddelelsen, og de færreste blev nogen sinde færdige.

Tidstypisk skilt, der skulle gøre opmærksom på, at siden ikke var færdig. Primitive animationer var temmelig populære, og der var ofte mange på samme side. Illustration: animatedGIF.net.

Denne forstilling om web som publiceringsplatform blev delt af professionelle. Virksomheder begyndte at oprette websteder og afsatte penge til at udvikle og udgive webstedet, men der blev ikke budgetteret med drift og vedligeholdelse. Webstedet blev opfattet som en statisk brochure, men virksomhederne fandt dog ud af – som de glade amatører – at man aldrig bliver færdig.

Virksomhederne gav it-afdelingerne opgaven, og i de følgende år var titlen webmaster blandt de hotteste i branchen – der skulle gå nogle år, før webredaktøren kom på banen. Opgaven var, lidt forenklet, at kopiere brochurer, årsberetninger, pressemeddelelser og anden statisk information om virksomheden til web. Aviserne skrev notitser, når en større virksomhed oprettede et websted, men ingen vidste rigtig, hvad de skulle med dem – ud over at signalere, at virksomheden var moderne.

Internet var blevet et sted – cyberspace. Denne betegnelse blev introduceret af forfatteren William Gibson, som skrev science fiction, og når man spurgte ham, hvad cyberspace var, svarede han, at det var der, bankerne gemte deres penge.

Der blev hurtigt brug for oversigter over websteder på samme måde som telefonbøger, og i 1994 åbnede Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web, som kort efter blev omdøbt til Yahoo!

Yahoo! i december 1996. Skærmbillede: The Wayback Machine.

Dette er et afsnit i følgetonen Historien om internet. Gå til:

• Forrige afsnit: Kontrafaktisk – hvad hvis vi ikke fik internet;
• Indholdsfortegnelse.

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An issue many organizations face is how to keep innovating in an environment of economic and skill scarcity. Open source changes that equation in regard to the development process. With open source comes abundance — more than 500,000+ projects are freely available today, and that number’s growing rapidly.

Open source and innovation are locked in a dynamic and symbiotic relationship.

Open source, community-based development evolved to meet developer needs for access and openness. While early open source represented innovation in development processes — and, of course, was enabled by the emergence of the Internet and Web search — it did not always result in innovation in terms of breakthrough new technologies.

Today, the dynamic has changed. As community-based development evolves and matures, communities and companies recognize the opportunity to apply this highly effective development process to their work. The realization that code reuse — assembling open source components into new applications and relying on open source to power new business models — drives innovation has been accepted. In the process, FOSS has, in some cases, changed the way we work, live and do business. Examples of “the great disruptor” can be found in mobile apps, gaming, collaboration apps, applications to manage big data, virtualization and cloud apps.

Scarcity and Abundance

An issue many organizations face is how to keep innovating in an environment of economic and skill scarcity. Interestingly, open source changes that equation too.

With open source comes abundance — more than 500,000+ projects are freely available today, and that number’s growing rapidly. Clearly the confluence between developers, communities and businesses turning to open source has provided a way for enterprises to grow and speed development, even with constrained resources.

Transparency = Engagement

The open source ethos of collaborative development leads to organizational transparency, which in turn leads to greater insight and engagement with IT, customers, partners the software supply chain and a business’ industry peers. In this model, software development centers on component reuse, the process of customizing and packaging one of the 500,000+ FOSS components out there to meet a business’ very specific needs.

Spending some time looking through those 500,000+ open source components, however, leads to the realization that only a small percentage may be applicable to a given business need. But even 10 percent relevance to a particular development effort represents a significant number of projects which need to be sorted through, understood and managed. Abundance is a positive thing, to be sure, but it also creates additional work and responsibilities.

Developers and product managers alike understand that most products can be built smarter and faster through open source development. These days, you must assume a product is enriched with third-party open source code.

Top to Bottom Innovation

If anyone out there is still questioning the strategic importance of open source software among enterprise development organizations, the findings of an Accenture survey provide another validation point that innovation in enterprise use of open source shows no signs of slowing down. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company (a competitor of Olliance Group).

Accenture’s survey of executives at 300 large organizations in both the private and public sector found that 69 percent expect to increase OSS investment. More than a third said they plan to migrate mission-critical software to open source by the end of 2011.

The reasons for greater use of OSS cited by respondents also point to a maturing marketplace. Cost savings have historically been the prime motivator, but that’s changed according to Accenture’s findings. Respondents cited software quality, improved reliability and better security/bug fixing as the top benefits, pointing to the growing strategic value of OSS.

Developers have been and continue to be the trailblazers and early adopters of FOSS, in addition to being chief advocates for more widespread usage across the enterprise. In fact, many developers and development organizations have been increasing OSS consumption for quite some time, but due to a lack of OSS policies within the enterprise have no mechanism for reporting, monitoring and managing usage.

Lack of senior management awareness and advocacy remain a key barrier, as opposed to developers. Once senior management becomes aware and accepts the fact that OSS plays a crucial role in the development process, the next logical step is to develop policies for usage, licensing, monitoring, reporting and contributing back to the community. Once these governance policies are in place, true innovation within open source can exist.

For companies refreshing their brands, or startups building products on a shoestring, open source and its many communities offer the opportunity to develop better products, faster. Speed to market comes via innovation and collaboration with partners, third-party developers and the greater FOSS community. Turning to open source to accelerate the development of projects and products not only makes it more cost-effective for companies to compete, but also unlocks a host of creativity by tapping the communities of developers in FOSS communities.

For many companies, the technological aspects of turning to open source are not as challenging as the organizational and cultural changes necessary to benefit from the innovation and creativity available from the FOSS community. The trick is to let the technology come quickly, see and realize the benefits of innovation and creativity from having a much broader participant base, and prepare the organization internally for the organizational and cultural changes necessary to spur innovation.

Source: Tim Yeaton

A felt home. Central Aisa, circa 1910.

Felt is said to be the oldest man-made material: its story goes back 8,000 years. It’s used in everything from carpets to garments to chalkboard erasers. Felt is basically the matted fibers of sheep, so it has all the virtues of wool — warm, waterproof, resilient, durable — but denser, more compact and much more versatile. It is extremely adaptable and can be made with little more than a pair of hands for tools.

Wool “felts” because the animal fibers have natural directional scales and kinks (like a lizard, or a pine cone) that bristle into action when water and friction is applied. The scales reach up to the source of friction at a 90 degree angle and then back again, which causes the fibers to stitch together and form felt.

In India, felt is made for the mass market by laying down wool in shallow pools of water and going over it with giant steamrollers. Watch a modern-day Mongolian tribe demonstrate the process of building a traditional home out of felt in this YouTube video. The entire process is recorded, from herding and shearing the sheep, to beating pelts of unprocessed wool with long reeds, to erecting a ger, or yurt, just like the Xanadu pleasure palace of Kublai Khan, or the mighty military bases of Ghengis Khan. Felt is moisture-wicking and insulating, because even the badasses of the Mongolian plain desired a cozy and durable dwelling.

A Turkemen horse, cozy in a felt coat.

It’s hard to say exactly who made felt first, but it was so long ago that it was on Noah’s Ark. On the ark, woolen creatures, like goats, sheep and camels, naturally shed their coats. Beasts that they are, they urinated on the floor then trampled around on the wool. Once the flood receded, Noah to discovered the animals had gifted the Ark with a carpet of felt.

Kneading wool into felt. One of man’s simplest processes.

Another legend attributes the discovery of wool to Pope Clement I. Also known as Saint Clement, the fourth pope had blister-prone feet and stuffed wool into his shoes for extra padding. The combination of sweat and compression made felt. Enthralled by the new material, he and his monks set-up a feltmaking workshop in Rome. Earlier and more concrete evidence of the making and use of felt dates to ancient fresco painting in Pompeii, where images of quactiliarii (feltmakers) have been found decorating the walls of homes and shops. It is possible that these fabricators dressed marble sculptures of Venus, goddess of love and beauty, and Cybele, Earth Mother, in felt robes as an advertisement of their goods. In fact, the supple, silken drapery that we usually imagine in the ancient world are incorrect — the Romans swathed themselves in togas made of heavy wool felt.

A felt hat if nothing else. Collecting surplus goods in Arizona. Photo by Russell Lee via The Denver Post.

FROM FURNITURE TO FINGERS

Despite being such an old technology, felt is still used all over the world for all sorts of things — from purely utilitarian use in car parts and musical instruments, to furniture and art. Impressively, this material — which (possibly) came from animal excrement and clomping — is now used to achieve elegant design. And therein lies the crux of felt’s virtuosity: the juxtaposition of its humble origins with its current use in high art and design, made possible by its incredible versatility and application in any number of fields, objects and aspects. In the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s 2009 exhibition Fashioning Felt, this extraordinary material was molded into a futuristic coat, a bench, high-concept chairs and even a palace.

Ilkka Suppanen’s Magic Carpet chair in felt and metal. The felt forms to your body for better lounging.

Kathryn Walter of the Toronto-based FELT Studio pushes felt into heretofore unexplored territory, designing felt into stools the shape of spools, diffusing lampshades  and softly undulating wall paneling. Artist Kedmi Hanan makes rings by combining soft, pliable felt with high-tech heat sinks, a metal computer part used to prevent overheating. Designer Aurelie Tu, uses felt for its historical handicraft lineage and environmental integrity. Her vases, flooring, wall pieces and lighting, are handmade in Portland, Oregon, using an interlocking system without sewing or glue.

The variety and range of products out on the current market attest to the incredible possibilities of felt in function and design. This much is sure: felt is not a fad, but forever.

Felt wall paneling at the auditorium of the Museum of Tolerance

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Andy Carvin originally shared this post:

I can't even begin to articulate this video's awesomeness.

Mariachi Connecticut Serenades a Beluga Whale

youtube.com – Mariachi Connecticut performing for a beluga whale at Mystic Aquarium, where they were performing during a wedding.

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 11:27PM

Medier 4. dec. 2011 KL. 08.40

Google censurerer pirattjenester

Google er i gang med at fjerne alle ‘piratrelaterede termer’ fra deres såkaldte ‘autocomplete’- og ‘instant’-tjenester. – Foto: JENS DRESLING (arkiv)

Google er i gang med at fjerne alle ‘piratrelaterede termer’ fra deres såkaldte ‘autocomplete’- og ‘instant’-tjenester. – Foto: JENS DRESLING (arkiv)

Google vil ikke hjælpe brugere med at finde vej til pirattjenester.

AF Jakob Elkjær, medieredaktør

Når du søger på Google, er danskernes foretrukne søgetjeneste flink til at hjælpe til. Skriver man blot ‘Peter L’, foreslår søgetjenesten en søgning på ‘Peter Lundin’. Skriver man derimod ‘The Pirate Ba’, hjælper Google ikke til ved at foreslå fildelingstjenesten ‘The Pirate Bay’.

Google er nemlig i gang med at fjerne alle ‘piratrelaterede termer’ fra deres såkaldte ‘autocomplete’- og ‘instant’-tjenester.

Politisk pres

Andreas Ekström, der er forfatter til bogen ‘Google-koden’, understreger, at Google åbner en ladeport for politisk pres.

Google skal fremover kunne svare klart på, hvilke etiske begrundelser, der ligger til grund for, hvad de hjælper folk med at finde.

LÆS OGSÅ Antipirater vil lukke for ulovlig musik

»Hvis jeg søger på Holocaust, er det så rimeligt, at Google hjælper mig frem til hjemmesider, som benægter, at det har fundet sted. Hvis jeg søger på 11. september, skal Google så vise vej til hjemmesider, som hævder, at det var George Bush, som stod bag?«, lyder spørgsmålene fra den svenske journalist og forfatter.

Protester fra underholdningsindustrien

Google har indført den nye politik efter protester fra underholdningsindustrien. For eksempel anklagede interesseorganisationen The British Phonographic Industry sidste år Google for at lede kunderne til ulovlige download.

Søgte man på Top 20 singler, ledte 17 ud af de første 20 første resultater brugerne til ulovlige download, sagde pladeindustrien.

LÆS OGSÅ Pirate Bay-dom er virkningsløs

Siden januar i år har Google fjernet en lang række tjenester som ‘BitTorrent’, ‘Megaupload’, ‘Rapidshare’ og ‘Mediafire’ fra deres instant service. Og i slutningen af november blev The Pirate Bay og flere andre sites føjet til listen.

Beskytter ophavsretten

Selv om man stadig kan finde tjenesterne, hvis man gennemfører Google-søgningen, så har den nye politik ført til omtrent en halvering af Google-henvisningerne til de censurerede nøgleord.

»Det her er et af mange initiativer, vi sætter i værk for at begrænse krænkelser af ophavsretten. Vi har kigget på det, og har opdaget, at vi kunne gøre det med enkle ændringer«, siger Google-talsmand Mistique Cano til TorrentFreak.com.

Hvis interesser tjener Google?

Fildelingstjenesterne har peget på, at Googles initiativ også påvirker lovlig fildeling af gratis værker. De argumenterer med, at Googles søgeresultater bør afspejle brugernes interesser og ikke underholdningsindustriens.

LÆS OGSÅ19-årig fik ransaget hjem i jagten på nettets pirater

»Det er enkelt. Vores yndlingssøgemonopol udviser mindre omsorg for de tusinder af uafhængige kunstnere, som ønsker at distribuere lovligt gratis
indhold, end de gør for den dødsmærkede medieindustri«, siger Jamie King, som er grundlægger af fildelingssitet ‘Vodo’.

En utopi

Ifølge journalist og forfatter Andreas Ekström er ønsket om ‘objektive’ søgeresultater en utopi.

»Googles rolle er ikke længere at være rebel. Det er en af verdens mægtigste virksomheder. De arbejder under konstant trussel om begrænsende lovgivning og specialafgifter«, siger Andreas Ekström.

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 11:02PM

‘Om 15 år er aviser lige så forældede som telegrammer’

Brugerbetalt onlineadgang til aviser er en dødssejler, fremtiden tilhører de nye sociale medier, og internettet har stadig et kæmpestort uforløst potentiale for demokratisk borgerinddragelse, siger internetguruen Clay Shirky

• Fritidssamfundets skyggeside

I stedet for at beklage os over de sociale online-massemedier bør vi være begejstrede over de spontane kollektive kampagner og den nye sociale aktivisme, som de også har skabt, siger Clay Shirky. Foto: Torben Klint/Scanpix

Af: Decca Aitkenhead

1. august 2010 | Om denne artikel

Lagt på information.dk 1. august 2010 kl. 19:00. Bragt i den trykte udgave 2. august 2010 på side 16 i 1. sektion. Senest opdateret 4. august 2010 kl. 08:58.

Opslag til denne artikel

Emneord:	internettet, sociale medier
Steder:	Danmark

Hvis De læser denne artikel i et trykt eksemplar af Information, sidder De med noget i hånden, som om kun 15 år vil tage sig lige så besynderligt antikveret ud, som et telegram gør i dag. Ja, om mindre end 50 år vil aviser slet ikke eksistere, spår Clay Shirky. Grunden til det, siger han, er meget enkel og meget indlysende:

»Hvis du er 25 år eller yngre, læser du sikkert allerede i forvejen dette på computerskærmen. Og for nu at sammenfatte det hele i én brutal sætning: Intet medie har nogensinde overlevet ligegyldighed fra 25-årige.«

Når jeg beder Clay Shirky om at definere, hvad han egentlig laver, griner han bare og indrømmer, at netop det spørgsmål, får han ofte stillet. Hans standardsvar – »Jeg arbejder med sociale mediers teori og praksis« – er ikke blot bevidst uigennemsigtigt. Det er nærmest lammende intetsigende, hvilket er ganske paradoksalt, for Shirky er et af de mest oplysende mennesker, jeg nogensinde har mødt.

Mennesker, som kender Shirky, kalder ham gerne »internetguru«. Shirky er i dag 46 år, har en karriere i New Yorks teaterliv bag sig og fik først sin første computer som 29-årig. Det var en gave fra hans mor, der samtidig introducerede ham til internettet.

Shirky har skrevet om internettet siden 1996. Som teknologichef for flere web-designfirmaer op igennem 1990’erne blev han snart hyret som konsulent af de store amerikanske medievirksomheder – News Corporation, Time Warner, Hearst – som alle var nysgerrige efter at få mere at vide om, hvad man kunne vente sig af denne nye spændende ting ved navn world wide web. I 2000 »efter intuitivt at have skimtet, at internettet ville tage en drejning imod det sociale«, rettede Shirky sin opmærksomhed imod det spæde fænomen ‘sociale online-netværk’, der dengang endnu var et ret dunkelt begreb, men som i mellemtiden har udviklet sig til MySpace, Facebook og Twitter og efterhånden er blevet internettets primære formål for milliarder af mennesker verden over. Shirky underviser nu i nye medier på New York University.

Blodbad for aviser

Hans forudsigelser af den skæbne, som venter print- medie-organisationer, har vist sig uhyggeligt nøjagtige. 2009 ville blive et sandt blodbad for aviser, advarede han. Og ganske rigtigt. Sidste år lukkede snesevis af amerikanske aviser, mens flere andre som Christian Science Monitor, flyttede alle deres publicistiske aktiviteter til onlineplatforme. Avisernes traditionelle forretnings- model er ifølge Shirky brudt uigenkaldeligt sammen, i og med at det nyhedsmonopol, som de har nydt godt af siden trykpressens opfindelse, er lige så uddødt som dronten.

Ikke desto mindre er mediemogulen Rupert Murdoch netop begyndt at afkræve betaling for online-adgang til The Times – det såkaldte paywall-princip. Shirky er overbevist om, at eksperimentet vil mislykkes.

»Lad mig forklare, hvad der bekymrer mig mest ved paywall. Når vi taler om aviser, plejer vi at sige, at deres altafgørende rolle er at informere offentligheden. Vi siger aldrig, at deres altafgørende rolle er at informere deres kunder, for vi antager, at deres journalistiske dækning er så værdifuld, at den vil forgrene sig fra deres læsere og ud til samfundet som helhed. O.k., den køber jeg gerne. Men det, Murdoch gør, er at forhindre den værdi i at smitte af. Han vil kun oplyse sine kunder, han ønsker ikke, at historier fra hans avis skal deles vidt og bredt. Ved at opkræve betaling via paywall, udelukker han den generelle offentlighed fra at deltage i den demokratiske samtale, som The Times lægger op til.«

Den kritik falder helt i tråd med den grundstemning, som gennemsyrer Shirkys nye bog, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Bogen hævder, at de sociale onlinemediers popularitet overtrumfer alle vore gamle antagelser om det fagligt kvalificerede indholds overlegenhed og den finansielle motivations styrende rolle. Det har vist sig, hævder Shirky, at folk er mere kreative og generøse, end vi nogensinde havde forestillet os, at de ville være. Og at de gerne vil bruge al deres fritid på at deltage i online-amatøraktiviteter som Wikipedia – uden finansiel belønning – fordi de hermed får afløb for en grundlæggende menneskelig trang til kreativitet og forbundethed.

På samme måde som opfindelsen af trykpressen forvandlede samfundet, har internettet også gjort det. Dets evne til at levere »ubegrænsede mængder af omkostningsfrie reproduktioner af et hvilket som helst digitalt element fra hvem som helst, der ejer en computer« har fjernet alle de gamle barrierer for universel deltagelse og afsløret, at mennesker hellere vil være medskabende og aktivitetsdelende væsener end passive forbrugere af, hvad en privilegeret elite synes, de bør se. I stedet for at beklage os over den ufattelige dumhed ved mange sociale onlinemassemedier bør vi være begejstrede over de spontane kollektive kampagner og den nye sociale aktivisme, som de også har skabt. Den potentielle samfundsnytte af den øgede borgermobilisering er intet mindre end revolutionerende, konkluderer Shirky.

Frisættelse

På det ene punkt, hvor internetutopister og internetskeptikere dog er enige – nemlig i den teknodeterministiske antagelse om, at internettet fundamentalt har ændret menneskers adfærd – indtager Shirky en helt anden position:

»Begge parter tager fejl. It-entusiasterne er gået ud fra den fejlslutning, at hvis man føjer ny teknologi til en eksisterende situation, og ny adfærd bliver resultatet, så er det teknologien, som har skabt den nye adfærd. Men jeg siger, at hvis ny teknologi skaber ny adfærd, så er det, fordi den har frisat eksisterende tilbøjeligheder og motiver, som tidligere var låst fast.«

Men selv om han måtte have ret, og internettet virkelig blot har afsløret gamle sandheder om menneskelig adfærd, er det så ikke stadig legitimt at føle sig en lille smule chokeret eller skuffet over Facebooks åbenbaringer af en næsten uendelig narcissisme? Shirky udstøder et høfligt, men træt suk.

»Ville verden virkelig være bedre, hvis vi forsøgte at skjule den kendsgerning, at teenagere spilder en masse tid på at iscenesætte sig selv, og flirte eller lave fis med hinanden?« griner han i godmodig forbløffelse.

»Fik vi måske ikke erotiske romaner, lige så snart trykpressen var opfundet, mens det tog halvandet århundrede, før Royal Society offentliggjorde det første videnskabelige tidsskrift på engelsk? Så selv den hellige trykpresse blev altså med det samme medium for de laveste menneskelige drifter. Tilstedeværelsen af erotiske romaner forhindrede os dog ikke i at bruge trykpressen i videnskabelige revolutioners tjeneste.«

Shirky erkender, at nettets evne til at forbinde mennesker igennem en fælles entusiasme for ofte bizarre mål, kan skabe et farlig fordrejet indtryk af, hvad der er sundt eller normalt.

»Men det afgørende spørgsmål må altid være: Er nettoresultatet, når alt kommer til alt, bedre eller værre for samfundet? Jeg har aldrig været cyberutopist. Jeg har altid forstået, at dette her virker begge veje. Internettet har givet os organiserede pædofiliringe, men det har også betydet, at homoseksuelle, som vokser op i snæversynede og fordømmende miljøer, har fået en mulighed for at forstå, at de ikke er abnorme. Det forekommer mig, at nettets mindskelse af samfundets evne til at projicere en følelse af normalitet, som ingen alligevel kan leve op til, faktisk er en rigtig god ting.«

Skadeligt for børn

Neurologen Susan Green- field udsendte sidste år en rapport, hvori hun angiveligt dokumenterede, at sociale onlinemedier har en skadelig virkning på børns hjerne, især på deres evne til at føle empati. Shirky har to børn i alderen ni og seks år, og siger, at de lever i »en husstand med begrænset medieadgang« – og kun en voksenovervåget adgang til en fælles computer.

»Alt det, vi ikke dyrker med mådehold, kan altid have negative virkninger. Men sortsynet omkring, at Facebook skulle være ved at ændre vores hjerner, forekommer mig at være en slags historisk bedrag. For vi ved nu fra hjerneforskningen, at alt hvad vi gør, ændrer vores hjerner. At køre på cykel ændrer vores hjerner. At se tv ændrer vores hjerner. Hvis der er en skærm, vi skal bekymre os for i vores husstand, er det ikke den, som er forbundet med en mus. Som jeg siger i bogen, er selv den dummest mulige kreative handling stadig en kreativ handling.«

- Men hvis internettet virkelig er stand til at låse op for hele dette menneskelige potentiale for generøsitet og fællesskab, hvordan kan det så være, at mange af de mennesker, som bruger det med størst ihærdighed, anvender en så forfærdelig tone over for til hinanden?

Shirky smiler, overbevist om, at selv dette kan han svare på:

»Der er to sider af dette paradoks. Den ene er, at sådanne samtaler altid har fundet sted. Folk sagde også grimme ting til hinanden på pubben, ikke sandt? Vi har bare ikke lagt så meget mærke til dem før. Så dette er en ændring i vores bevidsthed om et stykke menneskelig virkelighed, ikke en ændring i den menneskelige virkelighed.«

»Men så er der også det forhold, at anonymiteten har det med at få folk til at opføre sig endnu mere ondskabsfuldt. Det, som jeg tror vil komme til at ske, er, at vi langsomt vil skabe os øer af mere høflig diskurs. Der er ingen metode til at afanonymisere internettet, og hvis der var, ville de mest entusiastiske brugere af denne teknologi være den iranske, kinesiske og myanmarske regering. Men der findes måder til at kommunikere det budskab, at mens du er her, så brug venligst din rigtige identitet. Vi har brug for at skabe sociale normer, der siger, at her på dette sted har vi brug for en ordentlig henvendelsesform, hvor du skriver under eget navn eller et eller andet kendt alter ego.«

»Hver gang man siger det, er der straks nogen, der råber op om censur. Men helt ærligt? Den er for langt ude!« Han bryder ud i latter. »Det afgørende er at få helheden med her. Er internettet en god ting eller en dårlig ting? Det spørgsmål er vi færdige med. Det er bare en ting. Hvordan vi kan maksimere den tings demokratiske potentiale for inddragelse af hele fællesskabet, det er den store udfordring.«

© The Guardian og Information Oversat af Niels Ivar Larsen

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 10:36PM

Trey Ratcliff originally shared this post:

The Secret Lair of Jules Verne – my favorite find in France this trip…

So, this a the rarely visited and off-the-map location in Paris. I would not have ever thought to go there. But, a friend cornered me by grabbing my shoulders in a serious way, saying, "Trey, you must visit."

This is the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, and it is certainly worth exploration… really one of the most amazing museums I have ever visited! I want to go back and spend many many more hours. Also, security completely swamped me when I tried to use a tripod. Wow, they did not like that, so this was a handheld-shot.

BTW, I always upload the full size if you want more details – in this case, it was 5676×3741. Also note that I don't post it twice, but it appears twice in your stream as soon as someone comments on the Picasa pic too, where the full size is easier to get!

Smarty Google+ users: What is the best way to explain to people how to see the full size image?

The secret lair of Jules Verne… from Trey Ratcliff at http://www.StuckInCustoms.com

More photos from Trey Ratcliff

Via Google+

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 10:04PM

+Kevin Rose – Yesterday 9:58 PM (edited Yesterday 10:00 PM) – Public

My [last] response to +Robert Scoble.
—

Robert, I agree w/you in that duplicate content left ungrouped can cause users to get frustrated if any one topic dominates their reading experience — if this was lacking from Google News, Techmeme, etc., it would be a nightmare.

That said, this issue only occurs when multiple users post the same story. Thus, the more users you're following, the bigger the potential issue. I'm following 345 people on Twitter (people I actually know) and 137 people on G+. For me I see the occasional duplicate story, no biggie. You're following 32,306 people on Twitter and 4,270 on G+. Obviously as you browse your circles, lists, groups, whatever, you're going to get a lot more duplicate content.

My point: I see your problem, but you use these social services a lot differently than most, you're an edge case. That's not a bad thing, it's what makes you, you. I just believe Google has bigger fish to fry right now (think business pages) before getting to your duplicate content issue.

PS. The using the internet thing was a joke, kinda..

Robert Scoble originally shared this post:

My reply to +Kevin Rose

He told me "Dude, you're using the internet wrong. You can't follow 4,000+ people and not expect to get duplicate content. Would, eventually, grouping similar stories make sense…sure. You have to realize that you're an edge case. This reminds me of when you got pissed at twitter for not being able to follow more than X thousand people (25?). I love ya Scoble, but you can't demand features that only apply to a few." In a post over here: https://plus.google.com/110318982509514011806/posts/Reuegm3LGVp

I quite enjoy being told by Kevin Rose that I'm doing the Internet wrong. I think there should be a Foursquare badge for that!

But, Kevin, here's some facts you might not consider:

1. I'm studying and talking with a large number of people, most of whom are NOT Internet edge cases.

2. I have several accounts, so I can study this from different points of view.

3. I have several circles with fewer than 100 people in them, including circles of family, friends, coworkers, Venture Capitalists/Investors (you're in that one) etc.

In EVERY CASE there is the kind of noise I talked about this morning. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Do you need me to pull out my video camera and show you?

My wife got so fed up with various types of noise that she called me an Internet asshole and went back to Facebook. Believe me, I've seen this from many points of view.

But, to take you directly on. Yes, I am an edge case.

I was the first person to follow 1,000 people over on Twitter. You might forget that, but I haven't. Many people wrote me the same bulls**t that you did back then. They said I was an edge case and hitting problems that no one else in human history ever will hit.

They were wrong. You are wrong in the same way now.

Today millions follow more than 1,000 over on Twitter and Facebook.

Tomorrow the rest of you will catch up and see the noise problems I'm seeing on Google+.

Oh, and you are using the Internet wrong too. :-)

Via Google+

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 09:26PM

Bjarne Panduro Tveskov originally shared this post:

+Dorte Toft skriver: http://bizzen.blogs.business.dk/2011/07/21/kommentarkloak-pa-nettet-selvforskyldt-klik-gradighed-og-naivitet/

» Kommentarkloak på nettet selvforskyldt. Klik-grådighed og naivitet.. – Bizzen – IT & Business

Dorte Toft. IT-kommentator på Berlingske Business, free lance journalist og forfatter. Var programmør, men skiftede til journalistikken med Berlingske Tidende, DR, dagbladet Børsen og Computerworld på…

Via Google+

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 09:22PM

Papers from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, fro (download torrent) – TPB

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 09:15PM

The Economist – World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance

#socialemedier

Via Google+

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 08:57PM

From the FAQ at Google’s Data Liberation Front

Why did you start The Data Liberation Front?

For a couple of reasons. The first reason is that we heard our CEO, Eric Schmidt, speak out against lock-in time and time again:

How do you be big without being evil? We don’t trap end users.
So if you don’t like Google, if for whatever reason we do a bad
job for you, we make it easy for you to move to our competitor.

We started looking at our products and discovered that while the door to leave wasn’t locked, in some cases it was a bit “stuck” and we thought that we could do better.

#socialemedier #thefutureoftheinternetEdit

FAQ – the Data Liberation Front

the Data Liberation Front

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 08:44PM

Fra fælles rum til isolerende passivitetsmaskine

Peter Svarre om nettets udvikling :

“… internettet som agora er nu truet af nye og hastigt ekspanderende monopoler, som er i færd med at samle uanede mængder af detaljerede data om alle menneskers personlige præferencer og brug af websider. De personlige data bliver altid brugt i det godes navn –det handler jo om at gøre Googles søgeresultater bedre eller Facebooks nyhedsstrøm mere relevant, men problemet er, at jo mere målrettede og relevante vores nyheder og søgeresultater bliver, jo mere bliver vi lukket inde i en filterboble, som filtrerer alt det væk, som vi ikke har umiddelbar interesse i at bruge tid på. Og konsekvensen er, at internettet ophører med at være et fælles rum og i stedet bliver en isolerende passivitetsmaskine, der er langt mere skadelig for demokratiet end fjernsynet nogensinde har været.”

http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/artikler/personaliserede-websider

#copyfight #socialemedier

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 08:43PM

Børn skal også kende livets dystre sider | information.dk

Som en af de yngste nogensinde bliver Morten Albæk forfremmet til underdirektør i Danske Bank i en alder af 31 år. Kort efter henter han sin far, Ole Albæk, i lufthavnen. Det er første gang, de to ser hinanden efter Mortens karrierespring. I bilen siger Ole ud af det blå:

»Det er en underlig virksomhed, du er ansat i.«

»Hvorfor,« spørger Morten.

Ole siger, at Morten er en dygtig og flittig dreng, men »regne har du aldrig rigtig kunnet, og bankdirektør bliver du aldrig, og du har fortalt, at der er mere end 20.000 ansat i den virksomhed … der må da være én, der er mere kvalificeret til den fornemme titel, end du er«.

»Far, jeg er fyldt 31 år, har fået børn, er blevet gift og er voksen. Der er ikke længere nogen grund til, at du skal løbe rundt og dunke mig i hovedet og holde mig nede.«

Herefter tager Ole den fulde volumen af sin korpulente krop og kaster sig tilbage i sædet, så bilen praktisk taget stopper. Morten bliver så chokeret, at han holder ind til siden. Faren ser på ham med insisterende øjne og siger:

»Holde dig nede? Jeg har aldrig holdt dig nede. Men jeg har været strengen i dit livs bue, hvori du er pilen og jo længere jeg trækker strengen tilbage, jo længere kan du flyve, når jeg slipper!«

http://information.dk/273650

Shared via Posterous on December 04, 2011 at 08:21PM

Journalister mener tilsyneladende, at Journalisters ytringsfrihed presses. Det er temmelig besynderligt, for vi har aldrig haft større ytringsfrihed og bedre mulighed for at bruge den.

Takket være nettet kan alle få en stemme, og hvis journalister mener, at deres ytringsfrihed er presset på deres arbejdsplads, er der mange andre muligheder for at gøre brug af den, omend visse arbejdsgivere forsøger at lægge pres på deres medarbejdere: Berlingske Tidende får guidelines til sociale medier.

Der er også en vis bekymring i mediekredse over, at stadig flere sportsfolk, politikere og kendisser siger nej til interwiews, især kritiske. De vil ikke længere lade journalisterne redigere deres udtalelser og har nu langt bedre mulighed for at få deres egen version af historien ud ad andre kanaler.

Journalisterne føler på den ene side deres egen ytringsfrihed presset og på den anden side er de utilfredse over, at vi andre ikke længere lader dem forvalte vores.

Samtidig hylder medievirksomheder Apples nye iPad, og nogle ser den som en mulig redning for de trængte medievirksomheder. De vil udvikle applikationer, som de kan sælge gennem Apples butik til formålet. Alle applikationer skal dog godkendes af Apple først, så hvis medierne skriver noget, Apple ikke bryder sig om, bliver applikationen ikke godkendt.

Det er ikke nyt, sådan er det også med applikationerne til iPhone, men i denne uge kom det frem, at Apple i december sidste år afviste en applikation fra satiretegneren Mark Fiore, der siden vandt Pulitzer-prisen: Mark Fiore can win a Pulitzer Prize, but he can’t get his iPhone cartoon app past Apple’s satire police.

Apple begrundede afvisningen af applikationen med, at tegningerne latterliggjorde offentlige personer – den slags tegninger bringer danske medier hver dag. Apple har nu sagt, at det var en fejl, men historien kan forhåbentlig få mediebossernes øjne op – som om det ikke var nok, at Apple vil have 30 procent af omsætningen.

Det hænger alt sammen meget godt sammen. Journalister og deres arbejdsgivere er bange for internet, fordi det fratager dem deres informationsmonopol. De vil tilsyneladende gøre alt for at komme ud – de vil faktisk hellere være i lommen på Apple.

Det er temmelig aparte men også underholdende.

Illustration: Mark Fiore.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

I ugens udgave af radioprogrammet Mennesker og Medier siger den nyudnævnte leder af center for journalistik ved Syddansk Universitet, Peter Bro, følgende:

Vi skal have folk tilbage ind i de journalistik redigerede medier. Det er en af ambitionerne for mit vedkommende.

Centerlederen vil tage kampen op mod Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia og blogs. Det er meget ambitiøst. Held og lykke.

Han burde efter min mening have sagt noget i denne stil:

Vi skal have journalister ind i de nye medier. Vi skal være der, hvor folk er og tilpasse os de nye medievaner. Vi skal deltage i samtalen og gøre brug af den fælles viden. Vi skal redefinere vores rolle og blive bedre til at tale med folk – ikke til folk. Vi skal forstå og deltage i netværket.

Inden ovenstående citat sagde Peter Bro:

Vi har nogle konkrete udfordringer med, at nye medier har betydet, at det er blevet stadig nemmere for borgere at lave noget, der minder om nyhedsformidling. Altså de opdaterer deres egen hjemmeside, de blogger, de laver facebookopdateringer og så videre. Samtidig med, at mange organisationer og virksomheder og partier, som vi snakkede om tidligere, selv begynder at lave noget, der også minder om journalistik. Og det er alt sammen ting og initiativer, der tager folks opmærksomhed væk fra journalistiske produkter. (…) Vi kan simpelthen lære journalister at producere bedre. Simpelthen sørge for at blive mere for flere mennesker. Blive bedre til at få fat i folk. Blive bedre til at lave relevant journalistik. Blive bedre til at lave projekter eller kampagner eller lignende som simpelthen sikrer, at læsere, lyttere, seere og netklikkere bliver i de journalistiske universer i stedet for at stikke ind på deres egne hjemmesider eller holde sammen i små klubber på diverse websites.

Centerlederen tror, at journalistikkens fremtid er at gøre det, de altid har gjort -bare bedre. Han har ikke forstået, at verden har ændret sig. Vi er ikke længere læserlytterseere, og det bliver vi aldrig igen.

Hør hele udsendelsen her: Facebook-journalistik, og spol frem til minut 40.20, hvis du kun vil høre ovenstående.

Og læs Clay Shirky: Aviser og at tænke det utænkelige.

Peter Bros holdninger er desværre temmelig udbredte i mediebranchen, men der er dog håb, hvad udsendelsen også viste. Den begynder med et indslag om brug af Facebook og andre nye medier i journalistikken. Her siger Lars Damgaard Nielsen fra DR, Astrid Haug fra Berlingske Media og Lars Holmgaard Christensen fra Journalisthøjskolen anderledes fornuftige ting, som ironisk nok er i lodret modstrid med Peter Bro.

Se også:

• 3 nye formater for journalistik;
• Begyndelsen til enden for nyheder på web;
• Medierne har brug for et produkt, ikke en forretningsmodel.

Foto: hairymuseummatt.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

Samfundet har ikke brug for aviser. Vi har brug for journalistik. “I vil savne os, når vi er borte!” har aldrig været meget af en forretningsmodel.

Når vi flytter vores opmærksomhed fra at “redde aviser” til at “redde samfundet”, skifter det væsentlige fra at “bevare de nuværende institutioner” til at “gøre det, der virker”. Og hvad der virker i dag er ikke det samme som det, der plejede at virke.

Dette indlæg er min oversættelse af Clay Shirkys Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable og gengivet her med forfatterens tilladelse.

Det er efter min mening den mest klarsynede analyse af mediernes situation og et indlæg, jeg ofte citerer – med eller uden kildeangivelse – så nu mente jeg, at det var på tide med en dansk oversættelse. Jeg kan ikke tænke mig et bedre tidspunkt end op til forhandlingerne om det kommende medieforlig.

Clay Shirky er forfatter, foredragsholder og underviser ved universitet i New York. Han har udgivet seks bøger, primært om de sociale og økonomiske konsekvenser af internet. Hans seneste bog er Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Tilbage i 1993 begyndte den amerikanske aviskæde Knight-Ridder at efterforske pirateri af Dave Barrys populære klumme, som blev bragt i avisen Miami Herald og syndikeret bredt. Under arbejdet med at opspore kilderne til uautoriseret distribution fandt de mange ting, herunder kopiering af hans klumme til alt.fan.dave_barry på Usenet, en 2000-personer stor nyhedsgruppe med blandt andet piratkopieret materiale, og en teenager i midtvesten som selv foretog nogle af kopieringerne, fordi han elskede Barrys arbejde så højt, at han ønskede, at alle skulle have mulighed for at læse det.

Et af de mennesker, jeg hang ud med online dengang, var Gordy Thompson, der forvaltede internettjenester på New York Times. Jeg husker Thompson sige noget i retning af “når en 14-årig knægt kan ødelægge din virksomhed i sin fritid, ikke fordi han hader dig, men fordi han elsker dig, så du har et problem.” Jeg tænker meget på den samtale i disse dage.

Det problem, aviser står overfor, er ikke, at de ikke ser internettet komme. De ikke blot så det i miles afstand, de regnede på et tidligt tidspunkt ud, at de havde brug for en plan til at håndtere det, og i begyndelsen af 90′erne kom de ikke bare med en plan, men flere. Den ene var at samarbejde med virksomheder som America Online, en hurtigt voksende abonnementstjeneste, der var mindre kaotisk end det åbne internet. En anden plan var at oplyse offentligheden om den adfærd, der kræves af dem ifølge lov om ophavsret. Nye betalingsmodeller som mikrobetalinger blev foreslået. Alternativt kunne de forsøge at få de avancer, radio og TV nyder godt af, hvis de blev rent annoncefinansierede. Endnu en plan var at overbevise højteknologiske virksomheder om at gøre deres hardware og software mindre egnet til at dele informationer eller at samarbejde med de virksomheder, der driver datanetværk, for at nå det samme mål. Så var der den nukleare mulighed: at sagsøge alle, der krænkede ophavsretten, og bruge dem som afskrækkende eksempler.

Da disse tanker blev formuleret, opstod der en intens debat om fordelene ved forskellige scenarier. Ville DRM eller betalingsmure fungere bedst? Skal vi ikke prøve en gulerod-og-pisk tilgang med uddannelse og retsforfølgning? Og så videre. I hele denne diskussion var der et scenario, der bredt blev betragtet som utænkeligt, et scenario, som ikke fik megen diskussion i landets redaktionslokaler, af en indlysende grund.

Det utænkelige scenarie udfoldede sig nogenlunde således: Evnen til at dele indhold ville ikke blive mindre, den vil blive større. Betalingsmure ville være upopulært. Digital reklame vil reducere ineffektivitet og dermed overskud. Modvilje mod mikrobetalinger ville forhindre udbredelse. Folk ville ikke lade sig uddanne til at handle mod deres egne ønsker. Gamle vaner hos annoncører og læsere kunne ikke overføres til nettet. Selv glubske retssager ville være utilstrækkelige til at begrænse massive, vedvarende lovovertrædelser. Hardware- og softwareleverandører ville ikke betragte rettighedshavere som allierede, de ville heller ikke betragte kunder som fjender. DRMs krav om, at hackeren får lov til at afkode indholdet ville være en uovervindelig svaghed. Og, ifølge Thompson, at sagsøge folk, der elsker noget så meget, at de ønsker at dele det, ville gøre dem rasende.

Revolutioner skaber et underligt omvendt perspektiv. I almindelige tider anses folk, som ikke gør andet end at beskrive verden omkring dem, som pragmatikere, mens de, der forestiller sig en fantastisk alternativ fremtid, ses som radikale. De sidste par årtier har dog ikke været almindelige. På aviserne var pragmatikere dem, der bare kiggede ud af vinduet og så, at den virkelige verden i stigende grad lignede det utænkelige scenarie. Disse mennesker blev behandlet, som om de var gale. Imens folk med visioner om populære betalingsmure og entusiastisk accept af mikrobetaling, visioner der ikke var understøttet af virkeligheden, blev betragtet ikke som charlataner, men frelsere.

Når virkeligheden får mærkatet utænkeligt, skaber det en form for sygdom i en branche. Lederskab bliver trosbaseret, mens medarbejdere, der har den dristighed at antyde, at hvad der ser ud til at ske faktisk sker, bliver jaget ind i udviklingsafdelinger, hvor de over en bred kam kan ignoreres. Denne tilsidesættelse af realisterne til fordel for fabuleringerne har forskellige virkninger i forskellige brancher på forskellige tidspunkter. En af virkningerne på aviser er, at mange af deres mest lidenskabelige forkæmpere ikke er i stand til, selv nu, at planlægge til en verden, hvor branchen de kender, er ved at forsvinde.

* * *

Det mærkelige ved de forskellige planer, der blev udklækket i 90′erne er, at de grundlæggende alle var den samme plan: “Sådan vil vi bevare de gamle organisationsformer i en verden af billige perfekte kopier!” Detaljerne varierede, men den centrale antagelse bag alle de forestillede resultater (bortset fra den utænkelige), var, at avisens organisatoriske form, som en generel platform til offentliggørelse af nyheder og holdninger, var grundlæggende sund og kun havde brug for en digital ansigtsløftning. Som et resultat heraf har samtalen udartet sig til en entusiastisk griben efter halmstrå fulgt af skeptiske reaktioner.

“The Wall Street Journal har en betalingsmur, så vi kan også!” (Finansielle oplysninger er en af de få former for oplysninger, modtagerne ikke ønsker at dele). “Mikrobetalinger virker for iTunes, så de vil virke for os!” (mikrobetalinger virker kun, hvis tjenesteudbyderen kan undgå konkurrencedygtige forretningsmodeller). “The New York Times, bør tage penge for indhold!” (De har forsøgt, med Qpass og senere TimesSelect). “Cook’s Illustrated og Consumer Reports klarer sig fint på abonnementer! ” (Disse publikationer giver afkald på annonceindtægter, brugerne betaler ikke kun for indhold, men for unimpeachability). “Vi vil danne et kartel!” (… og give en konkurrencemæssig fordel til alle annoncefinansierede medier i verden).

Rundt og rundt kører det, og de mennesker, der har sat sig for at redde aviserne, kræver at vide: “Hvis den gamle model er i stykker, hvad vil så fungere i stedet?”, Hvortil svaret er: Ingenting. Intet vil fungere. Der er ingen generel model for aviser som erstatning for den, internet netop har nedbrudt.

Med den gamle økonomi ødelagt skal organisationsformer, perfektioneret til industriel produktion, erstattes med strukturer, optimeret til digitale data. Det giver stadig mindre mening at tale om en udgivelsessbranche, fordi det centrale problem udgivelse løser – det utroligt svære, komplekse og omkostningstunge ved at stille information til rådighed for offentligheden – ikke længere er et problem.

* * *

Elizabeth Eisensteins afhandling om Gutenbergs opfindelse, trykpressen som en forandringsagent, åbner med et resume af hendes forskning af trykpressens tidlige historie. Hun kunne finde mange beskrivelser af livet i begyndelsen af 1400-tallet, æraen inden Movable Type. De fleste mennesker var analfabeter, den katolske kirke var den pan-europæiske politiske kraft, Messen foregik på latin, og den mest almindelige bog var Bibelen. Hun var også i stand til at finde endeløse beskrivelser af livet i slutningen af 1500-tallet, efter Gutenbergs opfindelse var begyndt at sprede sig. Analfabetismen var i tilbagegang, og der udkom flere bøger skrevet i moderne sprog, Kopernikus havde udgivet sit skelsættende arbejde om astronomi, og Martin Luthers brug af pressen til at reformere kirken rystede både den religiøse og politiske stabilitet.

Hvad Eisenstein fokuserede på, var dog, hvor mange historikere der ignorerede overgangen fra den ene tidsalder til den anden. At beskrive verden før og efter udbredelsen af trykte bøger var barnemad; disse datoer var i sikker afstand fra omvæltningerne. Men hvad skete der i 1500? Den svære spørgsmål Eisensteins bog stiller “Hvordan gik vi fra verden før trykpressen til verden efter? Hvordan var revolutionen?”

Kaotisk, viste det sig. Bibelen blev oversat til lokale sprog, var dette en pædagogisk velsignelse eller djævelens værk? Der kom erotiske romaner, hvilket rejste samme spørgsmål. Kopier af Aristoteles og Galen cirkulerede bredt, men det direkte møde med de relevante tekster viste, at de to kilder stødte sammen og ødelagde troen på antikken. Når noget nyt udbredes, synes gamle institutioner trætte, mens nye synes utroværdige, og som følge deraf vidste folk næsten bogstaveligt ikke, hvad de skulle tro. Hvis du ikke kan stole på Aristoteles, hvem kan du så stole på?

Under den dramatiske overgang til tryk, blev eksperimenter først i bakspejlet afsløret som vendepunkter. Aldus Manutius, den venetianske bogtrykker, opfandt det mindre format octavo sammen med kursiv. Hvad der virkede som en mindre ændring – at tage en bog og gøre den mindre – var i bakspejlet en vigtig nyskabelse i demokratiseringen af det trykte ord. Når bøger blev billigere, mere transportable, og derfor mere attraktive, udvidede de markedet for alle udgivere, hvilket øgede værdien af læsefærdigheder yderligere.

Sådan er rigtige revolutioner. De gamle ting bliver nedbrudt hurtigere, end de nye ting erstatter dem. Betydningen af et givet eksperiment viser sig imidlertid ikke med det samme, store ændringer sker langsomt, små ændringer hurtigt. Selv de revolutionære kan ikke forudsige, hvad der vil ske. Aftaler på alle sider om, at centrale institutioner skal beskyttes, bliver tømt for indhold af de samme folk, som indgår aftalerne. (Luther og kirken insisterede begge i årevis på, at uanset hvad der ellers skete, var der ingen, der talte om et skisma). Når gamle sociale mønstre bliver forstyrret, kan de hverken rettes op eller udskiftes hurtigt, da enhver sådan handel tager årtier at gennemføre.

Og i dag. Når nogen ønsker at vide, hvordan vi vil erstatte aviser, kræver de i virkeligheden at få at vide, at vi ikke gennemlever en revolution. De kræver at få at vide, at gamle systemer ikke vil bryde sammen før nye systemer er på plads. De kræver at få at vide, at gamle sociale mønstre ikke er i fare, at centrale institutioner vil blive skånet, at nye metoder til at sprede oplysninger vil forbedre tidligere praksis, snarere end udskifte dem. De kræver at blive løjet for.

Der er færre og færre mennesker, der på overbevisende måde kan fortælle sådan en løgn.

* * *

Hvis du vil vide, hvorfor aviser har disse problemer, er det mest iøjnefaldende faktum dette: Trykpresser er fantastisk dyre at etablere og drive. Denne økonomi, almindelig siden Gutenberg, begrænser konkurrencen og skaber samtidig positive afkast for trykpressens ejer, et lykkeligt par af økonomiske virkninger, der lever af hinanden. I en fiktiv by med to perfekt afbalancerede aviser, vil en avis i sidste ende skabe nogle små fordele – et god historie, et vigtigt interview – som på et tidspunkt får både annoncører og læsere til at foretrække den, bare en smule. Denne avis vil så lettere fange den næste reklamekrone til lavere omkostninger end konkurrenten. Dette vil øge avisens dominans, hvilket yderligere vil gøre fordelene større, gentag omkvædet. Slutresultatet er enten geografisk eller demografisk segmentering blandt aviser, eller at en avis får monopol på det lokale publikum.

I lang tid, faktisk længere end nogen i avisbranchen har levet, er print-journalistik blevet blandet af denne økonomi. Trykomkostningerne har skabt et miljø, hvor Wal-Mart var villig til at yde tilskud til korrespondenten i Bagdad. Det var ikke på grund af en dyb sammenhæng mellem reklame og journalistik, det var heller ikke en reel vilje hos Wal-Mart om at lade deres markedsføringsbudget gå til internationale korrespondenter. Det var bare et tilfælde. Annoncører havde ikke meget andet valg end at lade deres penge bruge på den måde, da de ikke rigtig har andre steder at vise annoncer.

De gamle vanskeligheder og omkostninger ved trykning tvang alle til tilsvarende sæt af organisatoriske modeller, det var denne lighed, der fik os til at opfatte Daily Racing Form og L’Osservatore Romano som værende i samme branche. At forholdet mellem annoncører, udgivere og journalister er blevet ratificeret af et århundrede med den kulturelle praksis, gør det ikke mindre tilfældigt.

De konkurrencebegrænsende virkninger af trykomkostninger blev ødelagt af internettet, hvor alle betaler for infrastruktur, som alle så kan bruge. Og da Wal-Mart, og den lokale Maytagforhandler, og advokatfirmaet der vil ansætte en sekretær, og knægten nede ad gaden, der vil sælge sin cykel, var i stand til at benytte denne infrastruktur til at komme ud af deres gamle afhængighed af udgiveren, gjorde de det. De havde alligevel aldrig rigtig tilmeldt sig finansieringen af korrespondenten i Bagdad.

* * *

Trykte medier udfører en stor del af samfundets tunge journalistiske løft, fra at dække området – finde alle sider af en stor historie – til den daglige trummerum med at deltage i byrådets møder, hvis der mod forventning skulle ske noget. Denne dækning skaber fordele, selv for folk, som ikke læser aviser, fordi arbejdet i trykte medier bruges af alle lige fra politikere til advokater til radioværter til bloggere. Avisfolk konstaterer ofte, at aviser gavner samfundet som helhed. Det er sandt, men irrelevant for det aktuelle problem, “I vil savne os, når vi er borte!” har aldrig været meget af en forretningsmodel. Så hvem dækker alle nyhederne, hvis en væsentlig del af de nuværende journalister mister deres job?

Jeg ved det ikke. Ingen ved det. Vi lever kollektivt i 1500, hvor det er nemmere at se, hvad der er nedbrudt, end hvad der vil erstatte det. Internettet fylder 40 dette efterår. Adgang for den brede offentlighed er mindre end halvt så gammelt. Brug af web som en normal del af livet for et flertal af den udviklede verden er igen mindre end halvt så gammelt. Vi er lige begyndt. Selv de revolutionære kan ikke forudsige, hvad der vil ske.

Forestil dig, i 1996, at bede en net-kyndig sjæl forklare Craigslists potentiale, på daværende tidspunkt et år gammel og endnu ikke indarbejdet. Det svar, du næsten helt sikkert ville få, ville være en ekstrapolering: “Postlister kan blive stærke redskaber”, “sociale virkninger blandes med digitale net”, blah blah blah. Hvad ingen ville have fortalt dig, kunne have fortalt dig, var, hvad der virkelig skete: Craiglist blev et kritisk stykke infrastruktur. Ikke tanken om Craigslist eller forretningsmodellen eller endog softwaren. Craigslist selv spredes til at dække hundredvis af byer og er blevet en del af den offentlige bevidsthed om, hvad der nu er muligt. Eksperimenter viser sig først i bakspejlet at være vendepunkter.

I Craigslist gradvise overgang fra “interessant, ihvertfald lidt” til “væsentlig og transformativ”, er der ét muligt svar på spørgsmålet “Hvis den gamle model er i stykker, hvad vil fungere i stedet?” Svaret er: Intet vil fungere, men alt kan. Nu er det tid til eksperimenter, masser og masser af eksperimenter, som hver især vil virke små ved lanceringen, som Craigslist gjorde, som Wikipedia gjorde, som octavo gjorde.

Journalistik har altid været subsidieret. Nogle gange har det været Wal-Mart og knægten med cyklen. Nogle gange har det været Richard Mellon Scaife. I stigende grad, er det dig og mig, som donerer vores tid. Listen over modeller, der helt klart fungerer i dag, kan ligesom Consumer Reports og NPR, ligesom ProPublica og WikiLeaks, ikke udvides til generelle regler, og det er der intet, der kan.

Samfundet har ikke brug for aviser. Vi har brug for journalistik. I et århundrede har kravene til at styrke journalistik og styrke aviser været så tæt forbundne, at de ikke kunne skelnes. Det har været et tilfælde, men når dette tilfælde stopper, som det gør for øjnene af os, får vi brug for masser af andre måder til at styrke journalistik i stedet.

Når vi flytter vores opmærksomhed fra at “redde aviser” til at “redde samfundet”, skifter det væsentlige fra at “bevare de nuværende institutioner” til at “gøre det, der virker”. Og hvad der virker i dag er ikke det samme som det, der plejede at virke.

Vi ved ikke, hvem nutidens Aldus Manutius er. Det kunne være Craig Newmark, eller Caterina Fake. Det kunne være Martin Nisenholtz, eller Emily Bell. Det kunne være en 19-årig knægt kun få af os har hørt om, der arbejder på noget, vi ikke vil anerkende som afgørende før om ti år. Ethvert forsøg, skabt til at opbygge nye modeller for journalistik, vil dog være bedre end at gemme sig for virkeligheden, især i et år, hvor den utænkelige fremtid allerede er fortid for mange aviser.

I de næste årtier vil journalistik bestå af overlappende særlige tilfælde. Mange af disse modeller vil basere sig på amatører som forskere og forfattere. Mange af disse modeller vil basere sig på sponsorering eller tilskud eller i form af donationer i stedet for indtægter. Mange af disse modeller vil basere sig på overgearede 14-årige, der distribuerer resultaterne. Mange af disse modeller vil mislykkes. Intet eksperiment vil erstatte, hvad vi mister nu med afskaffelsen af nyheder på papir, men over tid kan summen af nye eksperimenter, der fungerer, give os den journalistik, vi har brug for.

Se også:

• 3 nye formater for journalistik;
• Her er fremtidens nyheder;
• Medierne har brug for et produkt, ikke en forretningsmodel.

Køb Here Comes Everybody hos Saxo.

Foto: dsearls.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

Skoler og gymnasier skal anskaffe e-læsere til eleverne og indgå aftaler med forlag, så eleverne kan shoppe e-bøger efter behov. Så skal eleverne nok finde det materiale, der passer bedst til dem – hos forlagene eller på nettet – under kyndig vejledning selvsagt.

Lærerstanden har en udbredt modvilje mod Wikipedia, Google Translate og andre websteder, hvor elever kan finde information eller løsninger til deres opgaver.

Lærerne mener, at eleverne skal benytte det undervisningsmateriale, der bliver udleveret. Det er nemlig pålideligt, mens fanden har skabt disse tvivlsomme tjenester på nettet.

De burde revidere den opfattelse, for sådan er virkeligheden ikke. Når eleverne kommer ud af skolen og får et job, bliver der ikke udleveret bøger eller andet materiale. Henne i virkeligheden får man en opgave, så må man selv finde den nødvendige information.

Da jeg gik på studenterkursus, havde jeg store problemer med matematik. Jeg forstod ikke et ord eller en ligning i den udleverede bog, og undervisningen gik hen over hovedet på mig. Jeg gik på sproglig linje, så niveauet i matematik var ikke højt, og faget interesserede mig ikke. Jeg købte en matematikbog for folkeskolens 8-9. klasse, og så forstod jeg pludselig det hele. Flere af mine medstuderende mente, at jeg snød, fordi jeg ikke brugte den udleverede bog, men jeg fik 9 i årskarakter (og kom heldigvis ikke til eksamen i faget), og det havde jeg aldrig fået uden den bog, jeg selv anskaffede.

Jeg mente, at mine medstuderende snød sig selv, men jeg mente først og fremmest, at skolen svigtede mig ved at tage udgangspunkt i en bog og ikke mit behov og niveau. Jeg klarede mig bedre på gymnasieniveau med en bog på folkeskoleniveau, men det skulle jeg selv finde ud af.

Alle elever skal lære at finde det materiale, der passer bedst til dem. Skoler skal ikke udlevere noget materiale og forbyde noget andet. De skal hjælpe eleverne med at hjælpe sig selv.

Man stimulerer ikke kildekritik ved at udlevere autoriseret undervisningsmateriale og forbyde andet, og kildekritik er noget af det vigtigste i en tid, hvor kilderne er legio.

Giv eleverne en e-læser og få forlagene til at udgive alle undervisningsbøger som e-bøger. Lad eleverne bruge, hvad de finder bedst hos autoriserede forlag eller hvorsomhelst på nettet. De skal ikke have en bog, de skal udvikle en effektiv lortedetektor.

Se også Elever snyder med Google Translate. Forbud er ikke vejen – undervis i korrekt brug.

Foto: storebukkebruse.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

I går stillede Anders Lassen, adm. direktør for Infomedia følgende spørgsmål: Anerkender du ophavsret som en legitim ret og et effektivt redskab til at skabe værdifuldt indhold?

Han stillede ikke spørgsmålet til mig – hvad der ikke skal forhindre mig i at svare – men til Philipp Schindler, som er Googles boss i Nordeuropa og var i København i går: Google har alt – også lidt gode råd til medierne.

Spørgsmålet indeholder en påstand; at ophavsret fremmer produktion af kvalitet.

Den påstand er temmelig almindelig men så vidt jeg ved aldrig dokumenteret, og jeg tillader mig at tvivle på den.

En bog er beskyttet af ophavsret 70 år efter forfatterens død. Er der i fuld alvor nogen, der tror, at en forfatter ville skrive færre eller dårligere bøger, hvis ophavsretten blev sænket til 10 år efter bogens udgivelse – eller fjernet helt? Og bruger forfatterens arvinger indtægterne fra værket til at skabe nyt indhold af høj kvalitet?

Måske ville det gå omvendt. På nettet kan gamle værker indgå i nye sammenhænge og være grundlag for ny kvalitet. Som det er nu, er gamle værker gemt væk og utilgængelige – blandt andet hos Infomedia. De færreste har en økonomisk værdi i sig selv – det er ikke mange tekster, der sælger et år efter udgivelsen. Hvis de lå på nettet uden ophavsret, kunne de måske bruges til noget.

Jeg tvivler på, at Anders Lassen virkelig mener, at ophavsretten er “et effektivt redskab til at skabe værdifuldt indhold”. Jeg tror, han prøver at beskytte sin forretning, som er en database med artikler.

Det er selvfølgelig legitimt at beskytte sin forretning, men måske er det bedre at udvikle den frem for at bygge mure omkring den.

Er ophavsretten god for Infomedia? Det tvivler jeg faktisk også på.

Vi har altid opfattet en bog eller en artikel som et værk med sin egen kvalitet. Det nye er, at disse værker kan indgå i sammenhænge. De er ikke isolerede. Ved hjælp af en simpel teknologi – et link – kan de knyttes sammen.

Det er en kvalitet, som man ignorerer, når man opfatter en tekst som et isoleret værk. Ophavsretten forhindrer, at værkerne indgår i sammenhænge og dermed hæmmer ophavsretten kreativiteten og kvaliteten. At oprette et link er en kreativ handling, og et link kan have høj kvalitet og være meget værdifuldt.

Ophavsretten understøtter gamle forretningsmodeller, der er under voldsomt pres. Det er sket før, at gamle forretningsmodeller blev presset, men så vidt jeg ved, er det aldrig lykkes at forhindre det nye, og det nye har altid vist sig at skabe nye forretningsmodeller – omend det var svært at se, da de var nye.

Se denne underholdende og lærerige gennemgang af den teknologske udvikling: Falder himlen ned over musikbranchen, medier, film, tv, radio, forlag?

Og ovenstående indlæg er netop et eksempel på min pointe. Det er skrevet af en amerikansk professor og oprindeligt udgivet i amerikansk, juridisk tidsskrift. Jeg har fundet det på nettet via et link, jeg har oversat det og genudgivet det her med forfatterens tilladelse. Det er ikke gemt væk i en lukket database som fx. Infomedia, og det har i kraft af et link og min oversættelse fået en udbredelse, det ikke ville have fået, hvis det var gemt væk.

Jeg tvivler på, at lukkede systemer som Infomedia har en fremtid, og jeg tvivler på, at ophavsretten er god.

De tunge drenge fra den gamle verden vil kæmpe for den, men den er allerede under pres nedefra. Creative Commons er en mere lempelig ordning og et opgør med den meget restriktive ophavsret. Jeg har en fornemmelse af, at stadig flere forfattere vil benytte Creative Commons, fordi de ser klare fordele.

Tilbage står de tunge drenge fra den gamle verden med deres lukkede systemer, som langsomt tømmes for indhold, fordi al kvaliteten siver ud, hvor det kan indgå i sammenhænge – den nye kvalitet.

Foto: kerto.co.uk.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

Googles annoncer optræder både på Googles egne tjenester og på andre, fx. her på dSeneste. Google har ikke hidtil afsløret, hvor stor en del af kagen, de giver videre blogs og andre, som benytter Google AdSense.

I dag har de så afsløret tallene, og de er 51 procent for søgeannoncer og 68 procent for andre: The AdSense revenue share.

Det anslås, at Google vil omsætte 2 mia. kroner i Danmark i 2010: Google presser tv og dagblade, men ikke alle pengene går til Google. En lille del af dem ender i min lomme – omkring 2.000 kroner om måneden – og det vil sige, at Google fakturerer små 3.000 kroner til annoncørerne for at give de 2.000 videre til mig.

Jeg har ingen anelse om, hvor stor en del af Googles omsætning i Danmark, der ligger på Googles egne tjenester – hvor de ikke giver en del af omsætningen videre – og hvor meget de omsætter på tredjeparts websteder som denne blog. Men når vi diskuterer Googles omsætning og – og som nogle gør – mener at alle disse penge forsvinder ud af landet, så er det altså ikke helt rigtigt.

Via BuzzMachine: Google’s AdSense cut.

Foto: AMagill.

Siden 2006 har modkraft.dk i samarbejde med tidsskriftcentret bedrevet linkjournalistik – forstået på den måde, at man ikke skriver noget selv men samler de bedste links om et emne.

På Modkraft kalder de det Linkboxe. Der er temmelig mange, for eksempel en om Michael Moores film ’Kapitalismen – en kærlighedshistorie’ med links til anmeldelser, interviews og videoer. Det er formodentlig den bedste, danske kilde til information om filmen.

Blandt de mange links er et til Berlingske Tidende: Det mener anmelderne om Michael Moore, som forsøger det samme – altså at sammenfatte, hvad der er sagt om filmen. Artiklen i Berlingske har et link til Berlingskes egen anmedelse, men hverken til Politiken, JP, Weekendavisen, Kristeligt Dagblad, Information, B.T. eller Ekstra Bladet, som de i vanlig stil citerer uden at linke (dog er ikke alle anmeldelser på nettet).

Hvad er bedst – Modkraft eller Berlingske Tidende? Vil du vende tilbage til webstedet med de mange links eller det uden?

Se også:

• Men vi kunne ikke drømme om at linke til hinanden;
• Medierne melder sig ud af samfundet.

• Dette indlæg er fra dSeneste.dk.
• Abonner også på Dagens links med udvalgte artikler fra danske, svenske og norske medier og blogs.

Note:  Today marks the start of our series “Images of Freedom.”  In this lead, Edward Miller discusses the virtues of Georgist political economy, and how structural inequality, especially through land value, can be a threat to liberty.  


We have a forthcoming response essay from Zachary Gochenour which will be presented in the coming days. 

Let the conversation begin!

We Can Have It All:  The Beauty of Value Capture

by Edward B. Miller

As anyone familiar with classical political economy knows, true property rights are rooted in self-ownership. You own yourself, and by extension you own what you make through labor or voluntary transactions thereof. Land, however, is not a fruit of labor.

One might reasonably suppose that land, being unlike other things that are called “property,” would have special economic characteristics. Classical economists recognized this to be the case, and spoke at length about the implications of it. Neoclassicals and their Austrian copycats insisted on lumping everything together under the solitary label of “property,” which served to obscure these implications. They simply bicker about how best to achieve equilibrium and Pareto efficiency, given value-free analysis of the system that exists. Some might call that dispassionate analysis; others might call that bean-counting for elites.

Unlike the priesthood of the status quo, I am interested in making moral judgments about the system we live under. I am not talking about a revenue model. I’m talking about a revolution: a revolution of liberty, of prosperity, of human relationships, of ecological relationships.

We can eliminate taxes and debt, poverty and special privilege. Contrary to the dour pronouncements from the curators of the dismal science, we can have it all.

The Basic Properties of Land

In terms of political economy, “land” refers to access rights over everything that was here before us humans. When you buy land, what you are really buying is a bundle of rights, be they air rights, mineral rights, drilling rights, surface rights, spectrum rights, right of way, you name it. Such rights are necessary for all production, and even life itself.

Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners, have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers.

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- Herbert Spencer, Social Statics

That is a simple illustration of the absurdity of the current system, when taken to its logical conclusion. Indeed, we aren’t far from that.

When land is made into a commodity, the progress of society, be it in terms of productivity, philanthropy, or the rule of law, tends to be encapsulated in land values.

…every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends either directly or indirectly to raise the real rent of land, to increase the real wealth of the landlord, his power of purchasing the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people.

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- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

So the community as a whole is what generates all this value, and yet the windfall gains accrue only to the holders of these access rights. In fact, under feudalism land titles were the root of noble privilege, and although we have left behind the aesthetic trappings of feudalism, we have yet to be rid of the core component.

That means in practice the payments which can be demanded for these access rights are not like other sorts of payments.

Moreover, wages and interest, when there is no rent, are regulated strictly by free competition; but rent is a monopoly-charge, and hence is always “all the traffic will bear.”

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- Albert Jay Nock, Henry George: Unorthodox American

Essentially, when private individuals get to levy a charge on others for the mere privilege of existing on the planet, this creates an endemic state of poverty for large masses of people. Just as land titles are the essence of noble privilege, so is landlessness the essence of serfdom.

It is through this logic that David Ricardo debunked Thomas Malthus’s “Iron Law of Wages.” He developed his own “Law of Rent” to show that when the produce obtainable on the best available rent-free land (the margin of production) is high, wages will also be high since everyone’s next best alternative to wage labor is improved.

When Malthus and Ricardo were debating, the Old World was all built up and many people were living in Dickensian squalor. Yet, the New World of America had lots of free land, and it witnessed growth rates comparable to those of China today. Unemployment wasn’t even part of our vocabulary. True, many homesteaders did not have an easy life, but everyone who was willing and able to work could simply go work. Why is that no longer possible?

The Remedy

The commodification of land itself is not the issue. The issue is who gets the benefits of the access rights. Anything less than an equal share is a violation of the Law of Equal Liberty, for any exclusive claim over natural opportunities necessarily reduces the opportunities available for everyone else. There is only one way to ensure equality of opportunity: for the community to recapture the value of land.

It is for these reasons that virtually all the notable classical liberal political economists supported the idea of the community recapturing the land values, using the discourse of taxation.

A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground.

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- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

A tax on rent would affect rent only; it would fall wholly on landlords, and could not be shifted to any class of consumers. The landlord could not raise his rent, because he would leave unaltered the difference between the produce obtained from the least productive land in cultivation, and that obtained from land of every quality.

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- David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

When you impose costs on man-made objects, you see a reduction in supply. The supply of land, on the other hand, is fixed.

Income taxes discourage production, sales taxes discourage consumption (which drives production), tariffs discourage trade (which is really a form of production), but value capture only discourages the unproductive holding of land.

Instead of hampering production, it would boost it. Think of every vacant lot or surface level parking lot in a city, every abandoned building, every single-story fast food franchise amidst skyscrapers. Those are all examples of the waste and underdevelopment of the current system. These things occur simply because it is cheaper to sit on the land and hope others put in the work necessary to make it valuable, compared to the expense of undertaking a risky entrepreneurial venture.

Taxes? What Taxes? We Don’t Need No Stinking Taxes!

Landholding ought not be seen as a no-strings-attached sovereignty. A true libertarian position recognizes that landholding comes with obligations: obligations to internalize negative externalities, and obligations to respect the Law of Equal Liberty. Sure both of those things may be difficult to do, and may not be accomplished perfectly, yet we must try to achieve them one way or another.

My goal is not to say exactly how the land value should be recaptured. Whether this is done by a municipality, a nation-state, or a Charter City is not the topic of this paper. I only aim to spread a general recognition that it is an essential prerequisite for a just and sustainable socioeconomic order.

Value Capture is most commonly advocated as “Land Value Taxation.” However, it is a tax only in the sense that Pigovian “Taxes” are. It is not a tax on production, and thus there is nothing objectionable about it from the perspective of classical liberalism. Indeed, I’d argue that without it, classical liberalism is a cruel joke. Value capture is simply a reconceptualization of who owns the value of the access rights over the Earth.

Rent is not a tax. It is payment for the use of a location, determined by the higgling and haggling of the market, and it makes no difference to the land user whether he pays rent to the city fathers or to a private owner.

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- Frank Chodorov, Out of Step

Under the current system, rent is like an extractive force upon laborers and capitalists, and that can only be fixed by preventing the private appropriation of land rent. I care not whether the person pocketing the rent is an ideal Lockean homesteader or Donald Trump, it is unjust either way, just as it would be unjust for either of them to unaccountably create negative externalities.

The land value must be recaptured to the fullest extent possible, not simply as a means for funding essential services. If the government is limited enough and well-managed enough to not require all of the land rent, it should still recapture all of it and distribute the surplus as a flat Citizen’s Dividend, since that value truly does belong equally to all. This dividend would not only be essential for justice, but would provide a strong incentive for all parties to keep public services lean and efficient.

That which makes public services more efficient would be of direct interest to citizens. That which makes land values higher, would be of direct interest to bureaucrats, which means their incentive would be to create value for the community, rather than to take from productive activity. The incentives between individuals and their community are aligned.

Steady Growth

The ideal of steady growth is completely feasible. Monetary policy is not the root cause of the business cycle. Borrowing fuels speculation, but it isn’t the ability to borrow which creates the business cycle. That merely amplifies it. You have to ask why they are borrowing. If the borrowing were for normal productive purposes, the borrowing wouldn’t be inflationary.

No, the root cause of the cycles isn’t borrowing, it’s when we leave for the taking a giant pile of community-generated wealth. We shouldn’t find it unusual that people should want to pocket unearned wealth. Or even that they should want to undertake bouts of debt-fueled speculation. “Safe” unearned income sure beats working. Who wouldn’t want that? It is the system which is corrupt.

Land shouldn’t be seen as this “safe” investment, which grows over time with the progress of civilization. No other asset works like that. It ought not even be seen as an investment; if anything, it should be seen as a liability. That we have obligations when we take on the duty of landholding might come as a shock to some, but it is the only position consistent with liberty, and key to our success.

Though it isn’t calculated in official statistics like the CPI, rent is what drives much of the increase in living expenses, and why the working classes often never see a piece of their increased productivity during booms. What good is it that the GDP has risen if the general level of wages do not rise as well? That is not the sort of steady growth I’m interested in.

Unemployment during busts is a result of the market correcting for the inflated cost of production resulting from land speculation and other rent-taking. Remember, land is necessary for all production, and life itself. I don’t care if your business is all Internet-based, you and your employees still require access rights to the Earth, as do all the producers of the capital goods you consume. Conversely, if people have access to land, there can be no unemployment.

Really Smart Growth

Another cruel joke of the current system is the notion of Smart Growth. We cannot possibly curb sprawl as long as land speculation occurs. Let’s say a really nice community is developing. Businesses are sprouting up. This increases the land values. Before you know it, the land values exceed the ability for many people to pay. Even though the transportation infrastructure isn’t anywhere near capacity, and density living is far more ecologically efficient, people begin to go elsewhere in search of a place to live. It is simply too expensive in town.

They buy up land outside of town. Yet, before you know it, the new settlement is getting built up, the community is generating lots of value, and they begin construction on new infrastructure, and again before you know it the land values exceed the ability for people to pay. How could anyone believe that people would make different decisions simply because a few do-gooders built pedestrian friendly development? It is absurd to believe this process of sprawl can be halted through zoning, light rail projects, philanthropy, or any sort of central planning. It can only be halted through systemic change.

Land is artificially scarce under the current system of land tenure. We’ve already discussed the issue of vacant lots, abandoned buildings, and underdevelopment. Those are just the most visible signs. What about the things we don’t see?

For instance, think about our industrialized agriculture system. It is probably the most land-intensive production there is. Wasteful production practices are essentially subsidized by this system. Why aren’t we moving towards more high-tech and efficient forms of production? You may have heard about the concept of vertical farming. People often ask why it isn’t common practice, and the answer given is that it is “not economically viable.” A primary reason why it isn’t viable is that holding lots of land is under our system is very cheap, and even profitable.

This insanity isn’t just contained domestically either. All the waste of the current system creates this compulsion to expand abroad, to continue fueling the land speculation Ponzi schemes. This creates international resource conflicts, and may even trigger war. It is no wonder that the Old World, where all the land was parceled out and the Commons long-enclosed, became the aggressors in the Scramble for Africa. Of course, eventually they gobbled up all of Africa, and finally turned inward on themselves in the form of the First World War.

What does this mean in practical terms?

You don’t have to be a political economist to see the common sense truth of the matter. Some people just care about practical or personal concerns, and value capture is just as relevant from this perspective. Through it we can replace income taxation with a straightforward, efficient, and non-invasive revenue source.

It doesn’t require teams of IRS auditors to snoop into every transaction you’ve ever made. You can’t hide your land in a Costa Rican bank account. The current “property tax” system isn’t even that different from a methodological perspective; it would only need to change in two ways. It would need to stop including improvements as part of the taxable value of real estate, and it must raise the rates up to near the full annual rental value of the location.

The one thing basically all economists agree on is that “incentives matter.” The shift in incentives under value capture would cause dramatic and positive changes in the relationship between citizens and their community.

Well, then, since natural, resource values are purely social in their origin, created by the community, should not rent go to the community rather than to the Individual? Why tax industry and enterprise at all–why not just charge rent

---

- Albert Jay Nock, Henry George: Unorthodox American

Our current system has very perverse incentives. Want to go build a restaurant? Pay up. Want to buy up a prime location and hold it out of production? Under laws like Prop 13 we’ve made sure you get to keep nearly the full value of your precious title. Want to build a community center to help the poor? Congratulations, you’ve just raised the rents for all the landless people in the area, and may have just “helped” them right out of a home.

As a landless person you have essentially no stake in your community. I walked through a poor neighborhood once and was shocked to find a big pile of garbage sitting out in the open in a vacant lot. I then saw one of the local residents walk by and chuck yet more garbage into it. I was puzzled by why anyone would do such a thing, but it makes perfect sense now. Even caring for the cleanliness of one’s community is of little benefit to the landless. Cleanliness raises rents, and littering lowers them.

You can see the same thing with the contentious issue of gentrification. Have you ever wondered why gentrification is so despised? Why should people hate that their community is improving? They should be rejoicing! Right?

Well, they would be under any sensible economic arrangement, but now it merely causes displacement and hardship. Wouldn’t it be great if improving the community actually… you know… improved the community. What a thought!

Inequality

I do not claim that George’s remedy is a panacea that will cure by itself all our ailments. But I do claim that we cannot get rid of our basic troubles without it.”

---

- John Dewey, Steps to Economic Recovery

Given the fundamental nature of land, and access rights over it, unless the land question is taken into account, one of the primary consequences of any otherwise-positive economic reform, including the repeal of other special privileges, will be an increase in rent to landlords.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

---

- Henry George, Progress and Poverty

Inequality is dangerous to liberty, and can enable vicious feedback loops of rent-seeking, which sets the stage for corporatism on one hand and state socialist counter-reactions on the other. Vast fortunes should not be worshipped by those who love liberty. They should be looked at skeptically, and seen as a red flag that something is amiss. Most great fortunes are not the result of voluntary interactions in the market, but by direct or indirect state intervention on behalf of the powerful. The mother of all those privileges is land speculation.

It’s time we heed the actual words of the classical liberals, so that we may create a system that works for everyone. No more compromises between prosperity and equality, freedom and justice. We can have it all.

Recently, Doc Searls, for whom I have the deepest respect, summed up a recent piece on his blog with this :

Here’s where I’m going with this: The marketplace that matters is the primary one where we live and work and shop. Not the secondary one where people we don’t know are sniffing our digital butts to see what we’ve consumed and might want to consume instead (or again).

To which I had to add the following comment (replicated in this space for convenience) :

Is the world really this simple?

I believe one of the great promises of the internet/web is to help us create a much more pinpointed communication and accordingly a much more efficient and less wasteful distribution : in other words, let producers sell their products to their customers in more targeted ways, and let their customers more easily find what they’re looking for (and find what they’re not looking for, but are intensely interested in). In other words, a more connected world, with less waste of eyeballs, time, energy and ressources. Local producers need to reach their potential customers on the other end of the internet, especially if they’re producing within a niche, which does not make economically sense if based solely on their local customers (say, those within driving distance).

I agree very much the “sniffing of digital butts” (what a magnificent expression!) has come much too far. It extends and twists the thinking of conventional one-way marketing to “fit” an internet context and sees internet users as nothing but consumers in need of convincing to (occasionally) click on banner ads. It is indeed one-dimensional and short-sighted.

But where I disagree is that “local” businesses won’t need to connect with their current and potential customers on the other end of the internet, and in the process collect data on their transactions along the way. I believe you can do this respectfully and transparently, and partly have to, because you want to deliver the best possible (and less wasteful) communication and service.

Via Captain's log

When we say “social” these days, we mostly mean the sites and services of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other commercial entities. Not talking on the phone or in person. Not meeting at a café. Not blogging, or emailing or even texting. Those things are all retro and passé. Worse, they’re not what marketers get high off of these days. Meaning they’re outside the Big Data ecosystem, most of which is devoted to improving the vast business of guesswork we call advertising, flowing outward increasingly through digital media.

The marketplace where all the Big Bux are being spent these day is not the public one where culture is made and goods are bought and sold. It’s the marketing marketplace.

Go to SelectOut.org. See who and what is tracking you right now. Chances are it’s more than a few of the hundreds of companies listed here. The market they’re in is putting better crosshairs on your back and your wallet. Not the one where you live and you shop.

Their market is in selling your ass to advertisers. So is Twitter’s, for that matter. It’s not serving you as a customer. You are a consumer. Your job is to consume “content,” and hopefully every once in awhile also click on stuff you might buy. That’s it. Yes, it’s a trade-off, but it’s not a very conscious one, and it’s not very “social,” either. Not when you don’t really know the company, or have a relationship with human beings there. Ever tried to call customer service at Facebook? Or hell, at Google? They don’t do that. They don’t want to get personal with you, even if they give you free personal services. Again, you’re not the customer. You’re inventory.

What’s missing here is real innovation in the real marketplace. (Besides what’s going on in VRM, of course.)

This became clear to me yesterday when John Wilbanks mentioned an amazing idea he had posted recently, titled Consumption Offsets and Sustainable Loyalty Cards. Here are the key paragraphs:

I had two ideas today. One is that if we can trade emissions at a corporate level, we should be able to trade consumption. So if we can track consumption of goods, and the sustainability of those goods, we have the rudiments of a market for consumption. So why not offer (wealthy, western, northern) people the chance to pay extra for an offset for their iPad like they do with their plane ticket?

My other idea was based on the ever present loyalty cards for grocery stores, pharmacies, and even cupcake shops in the US. You give away your personal data in return for lower prices (although I often use the algorithm of [local area code of store] + 867-5309). Why not something similar for sustainable goods? Either you pay the full price, or you pony up your data to save the world. Also you get a sticker to put on your computer to show how much better you are than other people – and that’s big, because being proud of being a sustainable consumer is currently, and unfortunately, densely tied to being one.

Both here and in conversation, John posed an interesting question: If personal data really is an “asset class,” as the World Economic Forum says it is, shouldn’t we be able to sell it? Or to make it fungible in some other way?

John’s second idea raises two interesting questions:

• Who would buy your personal data?
• What would they use it for?

Especially when, right now, lots of companies you don’t know (and a few you do) are getting that data for free. Would they pay more than nothing for it? If not, is it possible that it really is worth nothing?

When I ask questions like the two above, the answer I usually get is marketers and marketing. Some of the data you shed in the course of surfing and shopping helps sellers remember and serve you. Amazon always comes up as a canonical example. But even there Amazon is often suggesting books I’ve already bought or would hardly be interested in. Grocery stores, meanwhile, mostly use my shopping data to push coupons for stuff I bought once and might never buy again. The whole loyalty card game is one reason we do most of our grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, which doesn’t bother with any gimmicks, and gives great service as well.

Here’s where I’m going with this: The marketplace that matters is the primary one where we live and work and shop. Not the secondary one where people we don’t know are sniffing our digital butts to see what we’ve consumed and might want to consume instead (or again).

I’m about to lead a session at the Social Business Jam, on Seamless Integration of Social. In the spirit of Dave Winer’s bailing from Facebook today, I’d like to suggest that we look at how social works in real markets, and why we keep mistaking closed private markets on the Web for real ones.

For evidence of how far off base we are, here’s Zemanta‘s list of articles related to what I’ve been writing about here:

Related articles

• Now this is how you launch your new social startup [Video]  thenextweb.com)
• PlacePop Releases Virtual Loyalty Card Application for Android Smartphones  prweb.com)
• Social Passport Reinvents QR Codes  prweb.com)
• How Much Are Social Networks Really Impacting Shopping Habits?  paidcontent.org)
• What’s the Social Marketplace & Why Should You Care  hubspot.com)
• iPhone App First to Allow Businesses to Replace Traditional Loyalty Cards  prweb.com)
• How to Build Brand Loyalty in a Digital Marketplace  blogs.forbes.com)
• Accel Launches “Big Data” Initiative  blogs.wsj.com)
• ATG launches theatre loyalty card (guardian.co.uk)
• 4 Valuable Link Building Services (Zemanta, MyBlogGuest, EightfoldLogic & Whitespark)  seomoz.org)
• Top SEOmoz Posts, Comments & Users of 2010  seomoz.org)
• Robert Scoble: A note to Dave Winer and Fred Wilson  scobleizer.com)
• Facebook And eBay Team Up To Breathe New Life Into Social Commerce  techcrunch.com)
• Trick to Use When You Don’t Have a Loyalty Card  twofrugalfairfielders.wordpress.com)
• Identity Bureau, transferable synthetic British natural person  we-make-money-not-art.com)
• Trada Brings Crowdsourced Advertising Marketplace To Facebook  techcrunch.com)
• Facebook Backer Launches ‘Big Data’ Fund  adweek.com)
• With $3 Million Raised, Flow Aims To Connect The World’s Apps, Through Data  techcrunch.com)
• ATG launches theatre loyalty card (guardian.co.uk)
• Infolinks Launches World’s First In-Text Ads Marketplace  johnchow.com)
• Small Coffee, Large Bill  gilliansblog.wordpress.com)
• Crowdsource Facebook Ad Campaigns With Trada  allfacebook.com)
• Is the cloud driving the new marketplace?  venturebeat.com)
• ARM Insight Introduces Unique Prepaid Card Loyalty Service  prweb.com)
• Changers Debuts World’s First Social Energy Marketplace: Changers.com  prweb.com)
• And All That Stuff  runway.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Loyalty cards: how do they compare?  confused.com)
• Yardsellr, The eBay For Facebook, Grows To 5 Million Strong, Rebrands; Launches Marketplace For Fashion  techcrunch.com)

And, as a small counterweight to that dollarfall of investment and buzz, A Sense of Bewronging.

See ya at the jam.

TAXES

Just saw on TV… Taxes last year in the UK:

Total raised by HMG – £549 bn

These raised: Income Tax – 152 bn National Insurance – 97 bn VAT – 86 bn Corporation – Tax 43 bn Council Tax – 36 bn

Income Tax was initially temporary for only the wealthy paying 10% of their earnings – for the Napoleonic wars, 1799. Most is raised via Income Tax.

National Insurance does not pay exclusively for Health & pensions any longer. It is just tax for general use and goes into the same tax koffers as the rest.

Thatcher in 1988 – top rates was slashed for the rich. The only budget speech where the Commons sitting suspended because of unruly behavior.

Only 1% of the population earn over £100,000 per ann. 0.6% of pop earn less than £10,000 per ann. Top 10% of earners pay 90% of the tax. Richest 1% pay 27% of the tax.

BUT! the rich tend to avoid taxes, while PAYE cannot dodge tax. This makes the figures untrue. Many of the rich complicate their affairs to avoid paying tax and pay less than average earners. Taxes are voluntary for the rich as they can easily avoid tax – operate from off-shore.

ex Tory finance man Lawson, says their is an economic rationale for a "property tax", but political suicide. Well he is Tory. People do not like to pay tax on something they have already bought says David Laws of the LibDems. This was the nearest they came to LVT.

"People do not like to pay tax on something they have already bought". LVT is reclaiming economic growth created community activity. Not mentioned. I expected the LibDem man to be better than that, but I suppose he never edited the TV programme.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LandCafe/message/12589

Shared via Posterous on December 01, 2011 at 11:33AM

(c) 2009 The Muppets Studio, LLC
Official Website: http://muppets.com
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“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen + The Muppets
Purchase here: http://bit.ly/77LV1D

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
Purchase here: US: http://tinyurl.com/y87s9tq Int’l http://bit.ly/5SZIJT
UK Fans – Queen Online http://bit.ly/QueenAGon or at Amazon http://bit.ly/AGQueenUK

(c) 2010 The Muppets Studio, LLC
Official Website: http://muppets.com
Official Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MuppetsStudio
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My channel has lots of fun for little kids!

http://drhowey.com

http://drhowey.com

Dartmouth professor Dr. Hany Farid and Ph.D. student Eric Kee have developed an algorithm that rates images on a scale of 1 to 5 based on the level of post production varnish applied to it using tools like Adobe Photoshop, according an article in The New York Times.

Dr. Farid got the inspiration when he read about feminist legislators in Britain, France and Norway who were trying to get legislation passed that required digitally altered photographs to be labeled as such. Similarly, the American Medical Association has a policy which discourages advertisers from excessively modifying images of models, because they “promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image”.

The Dartmouth research is being published this week in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the university has already made public the before and after stages of some of the hundreds of images gathered for the study that show the various levels to which images are being altered today.

The algorithm is supposed to give an objective rating between 1 and 5 to distinguish between images that have only been slightly touched up to ones that have been given a complete makeover. To make the rankings correspond with human perceptions, the professor and student team brought in hundreds of people and had them rate the many before and after pictures they had gathered from online portfolios for the purpose.

Those ratings were then used to train the software, which its developers hope will one day lead to models being able to say whether they want their retouched photographs to be a 1 or a 4. It may also help with the passing of a legislation in USA that Seth and Eva Matlins, the founders of women’s online magazine Off Your Chests, are trying to gain support for.

Seth Matlins, like his European counterparts mentioned earlier, wants photographs that have been significantly edited to be labeled as such. He says that while he does not discourage the creative use of Photoshop, the widespread practice of completely overhauling the subject’s appearance results in photographs where “what you’re seeing is about as true as what you saw in Avatar”.

While that may be an exaggeration, it can hardly be questioned that a lot of the photographs we see in advertising and media today are so heavily altered that they portray a wildly inaccurate version of the people involved. So much so, in fact, that readers have become jaded by the overly enhanced images and want editors to go back to the basics.

The editor-in-chief of More—a magazine for women over the age of 40—Lesley Jane Seymour, said that due to the increased online publicity of before and after images that betray the real person behind the beautifying mask of Photoshop, readers have become sophisticated enough to figure out the deception involved when photo editors go a little too far with their digital scalpels.

While readers want their celebrities to look good, they also want them to look like real people instead of plasticised Barbie dolls. “Readers aren’t fooled if you really sculpt the images,” Seymour said. “If you’re a good editor, you don’t go too far these days.”

Becoming ‘multi-temporal’, rather than multi-cultural: it used to be a very big problem for historians that they supposedly could not divide themselves from the outlooks and interests of their own age. I think we are approaching a situation where the outlooks and interests of our own age make very little sense. They just don’t bind us to anything in particular. We don’t have a coherent outlook or interest that can enslave us. This means we are closer to a potentially objective history than anybody has ever been.

Excerpted from Bruce Sterling:

” There are new asynchronous communication forms that are globalized and offshored, and there is the loss of a canon and a record. There is no single authoritative voice of history. Instead we get wildly empowered cranks, lunatics, and every kind of long-tail intellectual market appearing in network culture. Everything from brilliant insight to scurillous rumor.

This really changes the narrative, and the organized presentations of history in a way that history cannot recover from. This is the source of our gnawing discontent.

It means the end of post-modernism. It means the end of the New World Order, which is about civilizing the entire planet, stopping all the land wars, repressing the terrorism. It means the end of the Washington Consensus of the nineteen nineties. It means the end of the WTO. It means the end of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’; it ended. And it’s moving in a completely different and unexpected direction.

The idea that history ended, and that the market sorts that out, and that the Pentagon bombs it if that doesn’t work – it’s gone. The situation now is one of growing disorder. A failed state, a potentially failed globe, a collapsed WTO, a collapsed Copenhagen, financial collapses, lifeboat economics, transition to nowhere. Historical narrative, it is simply no longer mapped onto the objective facts of the decade. The maps in our hands don’t match the territory, and that’s why we are upset.

Now, a new master narrative could arise on paper. That would be easy. On paper, if it were just a matter of paper, we could do it. But to do that via the Internet is about as likely as the Internet becoming a single state-controlled television channel. Because a single historical narrative is a paper narrative.

I don’t think we are going to get one. We could conceivably get a new ideology or a new business model that is able to seize control of the course of events and reinstate some clear path to progress, that gets a democratic consensus behind it. I don’t think that’s likely. At least not for ten years. I could be wrong, but it’s not on the near-term radar.

What we are facing over a decade is a decade of emergency rescue, of resiliency, of attempts at sustainability, rather than some kind of clear march toward advanced heights of civilization. We are into an era of decay and repurposing of broken structures, of new social inventions within networks, a world of ‘Gothic High-Tech’ and ‘Favela Chic’ (as I’ve called it), a crooked networked bazaar of history and futurity, rather than a cathedral of history, and a utopia of futurity.

That’s just the situation on the ground. I don’t want to belabor this point. I don’t want to go on and on about the fact that this is a new historical situation. If you don’t get it by now, you will be forced to get it; you will have no other choice.

The question is: now what? Given that we have atemporal organized representations of verbal structures, what can we actually do? Where is the fun part?

Where is the fun part? And I think there could be some, actually. We are living in an atemporal network culture, and I don’t think that requires a moral panic. I think it ought to be regarded as something like moving into a new town.

We’ve moved into a new town, and the first order of business is like : ok, what gives around here? Well, there seems to be this sort of decayed castle, and there’s also a lot of slums…. That’s not the sort of thing which requires a punk ‘no-future’ rage. Like: ‘You’ve taken away my future, and I am going to kill you, or kill myself, and throw a brick at a cop!’ I don’t really think that is helpful.

What’s needed here is like a kind of atemporality that’s like agnosticism. Just a calm, pragmatic, serene skepticism about the historical narratives. I mean: they just don’t map onto what is going on.

So how do we just — like — sound out our new scene? What can we do to liven things up, especially as creative artists?

Well, the immediate impulse is going to be the ‘Frankenstein Mashup.’ Because that’s the native expression of network culture. The “Frankenstein mashup” is to just take elements of past, present, and future and just collide ‘em together, in sort of a collage. More or less semi-randomly, like a Surrealist “exquisite corpse.”

You can do useful and interesting things in that way, but I don’t really think that offers us a great deal. Even when it’s done very deftly, it tends to lead to the kind of levelling blandness of ‘world music.’ That kind of world music that’s middle-of-the-road disco music which includes pygmy nose-flutes or sitars.

The kind of thing is tragically easy to do, but not really very effective. It’s cheap to do. It’s very punk rock. It’s very safety pins and plastic bags. But it’s missing a philosophical high-end, really an atemporal meaning of life. High-art.

And I would like to see some of that. I think there is a large hole there that could be filled, from an atemporal perspective. Not at the lowest end of artistic expression, but way up at the top philosophical end.

Then there are things like that increasing vogue we have for ‘lost futures’: steampunk, atompunk, dieselpunk. You’re finding earlier methods of production, pretending that they’d never become defunct, and then adding on to those. I would add to those: you could do a lot of good work with the materiality of dead regimes and also with colonialism.

These have been hobby activities, and even sci-fi fan activities, I think they could be classed up very considerably.

Then there are other elements which are native to our period that didn’t really work before, such as generative art. I take generative art quite seriously. I’d like to see it move into areas like generative law, or may be generative philosophy. The thing I like about generative art is that it drains human intentionality out of the art project.

Say, in generative manufacturing, you are writing code for a computer fabricator, and you yourself don’t know the outcome of this code. You do not know how it will physically manifest itself. Therefore you end up with creative objects that are bleached of human intent.

Now there is tremendous artistic intent — within the software. But the software is not visible in the finished generative product. To me, it’s of great interest that these objects and designs and animations and so forth now exist among us. Because they are, in a strange way, divorced from any kind of historical ideology. They are just not human.

There are potential and new forms of collaborative art that have no single authors. Open source arts, multiplayer arts, multimedia collaboration. Online world building is of great interest. That was not physically possible before. It’s something we can do that nobody else can do.

I am listing these methods; some of them will work, some of them will turn out to be dead-ends. The thing that interests me is that they could be done from this particular perspective, and they can be fresh.

The ‘pre-distressed antique futurity’. William Gibson wrote about this when we was writing about atemporality, associating it with his ‘Zero History’ novel that he is working on. Gibson was saying that if you have a genuinely avant garde idea, something that’s really new, you should write about it or create about it as if it were being read twenty years from now. In other words, if you want to do this, you want to strip away the sci-fi chrome, the sense of wonder. You want it to be antique before it hits the page or the screen. Imagine that it was twenty years gone into the future. Just approach it from that perspective.

No longer allow yourself to be hypnotized by the sense of technical novelty. Just refuse to go there. Accept that it is already passe’, and create it from that point of view. Try to make it news that stays news.

Refuse the awe of the future. Refuse reverence to the past. If they are really the same thing, you need to approach them from the same perspective.”

With well over 100 million active users a month, uTorrent is without doubt the most-used BitTorrent client.

Thus far all versions of uTorrent have been free of charge, but earlier this year uTorrent’s parent company announced the forthcoming release of ‘Plus’, a paid version of the client with additional features.

Plus will enable users to convert videos and transfer files to external devices. It also comes with built in anti-virus, remote file-transfers and a built in media player. Today BitTorrent Inc. announced that Plus will be released before the holidays and the client has been put on pre-sale for $24.95 a year.

“uTorrent Plus was specially designed to give our users access to often-requested features. If they are seeking a very easy way to convert files to popular formats to watch on other devices, plus a safer torrenting experience with integrated antivirus (and more), it’s a no-brainer,” BitTorrent spokesperson Allison Wagda told TorrentFreak.

“The free uTorrent client still offers all the essential functionality and continues to receive significant attention from the development team. uTorrent Plus is exactly what its name implies: everything you love about uTorrent *plus* great new features,” she added.

For the San Francisco company uTorrent Plus is a attempt to add an additional revenue stream aside from the money it makes from toolbar installs. How much is guesswork, but considering the target audience they will probably “suffer” a bit from piracy, although we doubt that they will complain much about that.

uTorrent Plus sale

uTorrent is not the first mainstream file-sharing application to be launched with a paid version. Before it was shut down LimeWire sold a pro version, and uTorrent’s main competitor Vuze also sells a pro version of their client for $24.99 which enables users to burn DVDs.

Generally these pro-clients are not targeted towards savvy BitTorrent users, but to relative newcomers who are willing to pay a little bit to make their lives easier. That said, paid BitTorrent clients are certainly not the norm, so it will be interesting to see how uTorrent Plus will be received by the public.

Are you a uTorrent user? Let us know what you think about Plus in the comments.

Source: uTorrent Plus Goes on Pre-Sale for $24.95

Writer marketplace Scripted.com is announcing $700K in seed funding today, from Crosslink Capital, Shopzilla CIO Jody Mulkey and Douglas Feirstein.

Starting out as an offshoot of scriptwriting community Scripped, Scripted pays writers a flat rate to create blog posts, articles, copywriting and tweets for various small business clients. The company, which says it vets writers according to wants and needs of its clients, provides a thousand posts a month for customers like Mailchimp and Levi’s.

Having amassed a grand community of writers from its days as primarily a screenwriting resource, the startup now boasts a writing userbase of 80K and claims that 80% of those writers are US based. It adds a new writer to its userbase every 2 seconds, it says.

Scripped plans on using the cash to focus on customer growth, both on the writing and client side.

With around 70m monthly readers, The Daily Mail’s website – Mail Online – is one of the world’s most popular news websites, based on inbound traffic. And now it has announced a dedicated Android app as it looks to consolidate its position in the online news space.

The app is free download and use in the UK for now, though it says it may consider introducing a charge in the future. It has been optimised for Android 2.1 onwards though it will likely work in earlier versions of too.

The Daily Mail has already released a native iOS app, and it also has a mobile-optimized website designed to work across various mobile devices. The Android app, as with the iOS app, will support offline reading, as it can pre-load content so you can access articles if you are somewhere without a 3G or WiFi connection.

Regions

Users can choose to receive news for two specific regions – the UK or US, or select the rest of the world. This will tailor the Home and Showbiz channel for your chosen region at the start of the app.

There’s a menu along the bottom edge of the screen, that lets you choose options such as Showbiz, Femail, Sport and World News. When reading an article, you simply swipe left or right to navigate through the stories, though the ‘back’ button will also let you return to the previous page.

Photos also get a big look-in on the Android App.

You tap on the little ‘camera’ icons in an article and you can see all the photos contained within, and once you’re inside the gallery you can scroll or swipe your way through the images.

Naturally, MailOnline makes it easy for you to share stories with friends, through Facebook, Twitter or email from within the app. It’s probably worth noting that the app doesn’t have user comments integrated at the moment, however it says it may introduce this feature at some point in the future.

Though the Android app will work overseas, the Daily Mail suggests the MailOnline Android app can only be downloaded within the UK, though that seems a little odd considering the app has a strong US focus in terms of regional settings.

You can download the MailOnline Android app for free now.

µTorrent users on Windows who go to several different programs after downloading a file from BitTorrent to scan it for viruses, play back media or move it to mobile devices, may want to look into µTorrent Plus.

The new client has been in alpha state since it was first introduced last month, and BitTorrent is still mum about its release date. Nevertheless, it is now available for purchase on the company’s website at $24.95 per year. If you preorder it now, it promises to throw in a 6-month extension of service for free.

Here’s what you get for your money:

• Built-in antivirus protection, so the app can flag a downloaded file if it contains any malicious code in it and shield you from viruses.
• An HD media player with a bunch of codecs thrown in, so you can play any media files you download right out of the box.
• A media converter that will re-encode your file into a format compatible with your mobile devices.
• A remote interface so you can download content through the µTorrent Plus client even if you are not sitting in front of the computer it is running on.

BitTorrent says that the development of the free version of the client will continue unabated alongside the Plus version, so users who are savvy enough to handle separate antivirus protection, playback and conversion need not shell out the dough. And while µTorrent exists on the Mac as well, it is not getting entry into the Plus club just yet.

➤µTorrent Plus | via TorrentFreak