I am invited to hold the keynote speech at the Live Cinema Festival INiT Live in Toronto Canada as well as showcase Kalkin:Revelation. While I am over there I am also holding a talk at the Canadian Film Center about Live Cinema.
More Information can also be found on the proto.beamaz site.
There will be live twittering from the event under the #init09 tag.
Over at Spreeblick there is a good summary in english of where the current debate over censorship in germany is headed and what childpornography has to do with it.
Since there is a current and hot debate over a new law that’s about to be passed in Germany and a highly successful online petition against that law, I thought it might be a good idea to do a summary in english for non-german bloggers and journalists.
If you live in germany I encourage you to sign the petition (some fundamental german language skills are required to do so) - it has already helped to garner almost 80.000 signees and provided the german press with a reason to report about it instead of just printing the talking points of the clueless politicians - it actually feels like it is making a difference.
This is about the freedom of speech not a call to support child pornography - there are better ways to combat this then activating ineffective filters and monitoring the whole internet population and - worst of all - give the BKA (german CIA or equivalent to former Staatssicherheit (Stasi) in east germany) the power to censor and block all websites without public oversight (if the law passes it would be a crime to posses and distribute the list of blocked internet site).
More information in english as said in the Spreeblick article.
Update: Over 100.000 people have signed the petition by now creating a media storm and shifting the debate. As some commenters pointed out - even if you are not a german citizen you still can sign the petition - still some german language skills might be required to get through the petition signup form.
Please sign and help the german internet community get a respected voice.
Commenter M.A. has the following help to offer for non german speakers:
Hey everyone, you may knowing, that there is an online petition going on in Germany against this law. I just want to point out (or try to with my bad English) that EVERYONE in the whole world is allowed to support this petition, because german constitution grands everyone to write petitions to the german parliament (or any other public institution of germany). This right has the totality of a human right in germany (some might say, because we are a nation of complainers ;-)) - Even childern, foreigner ... may. Everyone means everyone. If you can read German, in this thread of the discussion site of the online-petition, you can read exactly the laws that grand you these rights: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?topic=1564.0 (starts with a discussion to fill out the registration correctly - later that foreigners are allowed to sign the petition also) So - why should foreigners sign a petition - THIS petetion - in germany:
1.) Even if you are a visitor in Germany, you have the right (again granted by german constitution) to get information by every (legal) public source you like - without censoring. Of course child porn illegal. But the mechanisms to block this content can easily exended to every content - and there are no general control mechanisms - the BKA (german FBI) decides by itself which sites should be blocked - the perfect mechanism for censoring.
2.) If you are in germany, and let’s say, go to an internet cáfe or use the connection of your hotel - and you reach a blocked website with bad luck, your IP is stored by the BKA. And the BKA has then officially thinks you are searching for cild porn - and because you are using internet not from home - there is the danger that it is not possible to find you the very next day. It might be not nice, if the police awaits you in the lobby of your hotel - only because some spambot or cyber-worm “helps” you to find illegal sites.
3.) The lists of blocked sites are secret. If you are not using a german provider, you will never know if YOUR homepage, blog, commercial website, ect. is blocked.
4.) This is an infrastructure for censoring - and we all know, if its installed, it will be used and extended. Do anyone in the world wants to have the germany Nation to be uninformed, wrong informed, censored? - AGAIN. History shows - we can do this quite effective and with uncontrolable consequences. sign the e-petition to show, that even foreigners don’t want Germany to be censored again.
1.) make an account on the petition portal of the german parliament: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=register email (repeat email), password (repeat password) And then your name and adress: Frau/Mann = Mrs./Mr. Name = sirname Vorname = first name organisation = institution, company… (optional) Titel = academic title if any (optional) Straße und Hausnummer = street and house number Postleitzahl = postual code/zip code Wohnort = place of residence/city Land = country Bundesland = federal state of germany/foreign countries - choose the last one (AUSLAND) if you are not living in germany Telefonnummer = telefon-number (optional) then activate option “Ich bin einverstanden” - which says, you are ok with the privacy-policy of the portal. At last prove, not to be a bot with: “Visuelle Verifizierung” - type in the letters you see in the picture on the bottom of the site, Then push “Registrien”-Button. Your username is generated automatically: “NutzerXXX” - XXX is a number.
2.) sign in with the username and your password.
3.) Sign the e-petition: You find the right one at: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=petition;sa=details;petition=3860 click on: “Petition mitzeichnen” - sign petition Its in the field “Anzahl Mitzeichnungen” (number of signings) - the forth blue box. Congratulations: You have signed a e-petition to the german parliament - against censoring the internet. greetings, M.A.
Wenn Ihr das lest, habt Ihr den harten Winter überstanden, wir auch. Wir starten wieder die Podcastsaison, welche viel zulange Winter schlief. Mit ein paar Freeknews (freekulturnews) heizt der Laubsägendrucker durchs Botanik Bücheregal, gefolgt von den protojektupdates mit Skinheadmusik, Kutiman und einem Fefitest. Labor, Schulgarten und Raum-E werden näher beleuchtet.
Alles weitere auf der Offiziellen Radio Prototypen Webseite.
We are proud to finally announce that we have teamed up with the E-Gruppe Berlin to deliver a fantastic crazy Berlin style open air event this Friday May 1st.
Raum - E originally an indoor event featuring a massive display of moving visual art and Berlin electronic music is now moving outdoors to bring you even more moving visual art under the summer sky of Berlin. The location - Die Sysiphos Hallen - is an absolutely crazy abandoned factory and has this Berlin underground flair that has been missing from the shiny sterile clubs of the city center. The party itself reflects this feeling with a lot of the people who grew up with in the scene and have since become artists supporting a lifestyle and a message that reflects that community feeling that had been predominant before the investors took over the party folks.
The E-Gruppe has been involved in making visuals and decoration and also organizing parties since 14 years and is celebrating its birthday. Prototypen has made a splash with the first massive open air at the abandoned russian military airport "Altes Lager" with its 1995 Planet Port and has since also supplied visuals, music and organization to a multitude of parties in and around Berlin and is this year celebrating its 15th birthday. Visual Berlin has grouped all the VJs and motion visual artists of Berlin and gave them a voice an a message - together with the help of friends and artist from the city we are bound to give everybody a great audiovisual feast into May.
If you have been helping the Prototypen in the past in any kind of project we would like to take this moment to thank you - please get in touch with us we will provide you with a free ticket. If that does not apply to you - we will give out 2x2 free tickets to the first people who follow us @prototypen on twitter.
The Event is located at Berlin/Germany Hauptstrasse 15. Nearest S-Bahn Station is Ostkreuz from there you take the shuttle or walk 15 minutes south (direction of the big chimneys with the blinking lights).
So bring some good spirit and we will see you all on Friday.
Audio LineUp:
area 1 - listening / aber auch beats:
22:00 - 23:00 uhr: Mex Schlüpfer - live
23:00 - 00:30 uhr: MoGreens
00:30 - 02:00 uhr: Das Kraftfuttermischwerk - live
02:00 - 03:30 uhr: Paskal
03:30 - 05:00 uhr: The Marx Trukker - live
05:00 - 07:00 uhr: ED 2000 + Vela
07:00 - 09:00 uhr: Gaya Kloud + MoGreens
area 2 - dancefloor:
22:00 - 00:00 uhr: Georg Wedel
00:00 - 01:00 uhr: Der Monotone Rauschzustand - live
01:00 - 02:00 uhr: Jaxson
02:00 - 03:00 uhr: Shackelton + Sin C.T. - live
03:00 - 04:00 uhr: Deph
04:00 - 05:00 uhr: Der Arzt
05:00 - 06:00 uhr: Sebastian Wolff
06:00 - 07:00 uhr: Morte
07:00 - 08:00 uhr: Johannes Palissa
08:00 - 09:00 uhr: Conocybe
Visual Artists (on THREE floors):
(visualberlin selection)
e-gruppe
fALk (proto.beamaz)
=ff=
lichtpiraten
pixel-royal aka leinwandler
hilmikillme
tofa
dr. mo
vj pixelschubser
vj king of chaos aka steffen baermann
jorgk
servando
cypher
lucas b.
austastlücke
christian sonntag
devon miles
tobi
illuminated art
c.a.f. + hollie & flockey
I love original ideas to circumvent the traditional structures and if you do it with style and message I am ALL out behind it.
There is this screenwriter who seems very fed up with Hollywood and "The Industry" and wants to do his own movie. To finance his endeavor he sells self made Lemonade with a great "disclaimer" text on the label that explains what he wants to do and how much he hates corporate Hollywood structure.
THANK YOU FOR INVESTING IN MY MOVIE!
My name is Matthew and I am one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the television networks and movie studios don't know that yet. As it stands, the decision of which films get produced are left in the hands of emotionally-immature, substance-abusing ex-lawyers who live in dread paranoia that everyone in the universe is out to get them. They spend the bulk of their time spying on their fellow executives, composing nasty counter-intelligence rumors and spreading them through their network of FA-BU-LOUS, yet cunning assistants.
Much of the actual work, like "reading" is left to a gaggle of twenty-something interns who are all the product of George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy. To these bimbos, nothing in the world existed before 1995, and the most reading they've done has been through text messages. They believe that good writing is something that fits into 160 characters, all performed with the thumbs. :)LOL!
Needless to say, I'm making my own damn movie and you just helped! All of the profits from this amazingly refreshing drink are going into my independent film. Why? Because I believe in the spirit of America - CONSUME AND DESTROY! POOR=BAD/RICH=GOOD! WAR IS PEACE! YOU-ESS-AY! YOU-ESS-AY! YEE-HAW!
Any-hoo, if you work in "THE INDUSTRY" as a common below-the-line slob and would like to work on my film for less than you're worth for no other reason but to satisfy my giant ego, send your resume to: malibu.monkey@verizon.net.
If you're a producer with a distribution deal, somewhat sober, and capable of actually reading a screenplay by yourself, shoot an email to me as well. I'll be happy to send a script to you along with your stupid submission release agreement boilerplate wank-rag.
If you are an actor, congratulations on making it this far. It's a lot of words. Who's a good boy? You! And you are very special. Plus, you serve specials at the restaurant. Special food served by special people to special people. Okay, I admit it. I'm just jealous because you are better looking than me and get all the hotties. Girls who go for me are all smart 'n' junk. Plus, they sag. And you're in SAG. Isn't that special?!
Agents, entertainment lawyers, managers and all other Pimps of The Antichrist can do us all a favor by simply killing yourselves. If you can, try to attempt a single moment of original, creative thought by finding an entertaining way to do it. Like performing seppuku with a champagne flute during the lunch rush at The Ivy. Or hang yourself from one of "O's" in the Hollywood sign with a noose made from your Kabbalah strings and rubber cancer-awareness bracelets. Either way, die bloodsucker! Die!
Cheers!
His lemonade is made up of the following:
A REFRESHING BLEND OF WATER, CERTIFIED ORGANIC LIMES, CERTIFIED ORGANIC CANE SUGAR, AND CERTIFIED ORGANIC BASIL.
sounds delicious. You can by a 1-quart bottle for $5 or a 10 bottle crate for $30.
@malibumonkey.
via boingboing.
The search for midi/osc controllers knows no limits around the world as everybody is struggling to get some manual control to the thousands of virtuals knobs and sliders and buttons. There are lots of wild tries to cram as many buttons in as portable rigs as possible. I think that most people would agree that there is nothing out there that is perfect. A step closer (until Apple frees us from the controller nightmare with a fully dual multitouch display or such) come the designers Young-Shin Lee & Hae-Jin Jung. They simply made a whole new computer that is just designed to be a musical instrument. I actually think they have something - if it would be ultra cheap and could be used as just a controller. I know that VJs would probably love it - imaging having a second screen with you loops and some nifty controller and some multitouch action and a keyboard in addition to your usual setup.
As a matter of silent protest I post hereby the alternative STOPP sign to protest against the censorship of the german internet by Germanys four biggest providers, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone/Arcor, Hansenet/Alice, Telefonica/O2 and Kabel Deutschland. I will also cancel my contract with Vodaphone/Arcor at the next possible date. I detest the idea that 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of East German governmental suppression this country is going along the same path again and there seems to be no big public outcry - especially since the involved politicians are susceptible of misusing such tools to push their own personal religious right-wing agenda.
For all german internet users there is now a free open DNS server run by foebud.org without censorship which can be reached under: 85.214.73.63 (thanks @murdelta)
There have been two noteworthy content additions to the internet yesterday that portray a story that I have been battling with for the last year and a bit. The big question these days for numerous people and whole industries is: How do you make money by creating novel content for the internet?
There is the newspaper industry mentioned in the last blog post, there is the tv industry, the bloggers, the musicians, the online-vjs, the painters, the photographers, the illustrators - about each and every person in the creative business has this big question mark over their head. For me I always thought that at least some have no big problem because they have big enough a brand that money just flows in no matter what they do. Such was my thinking with the NineInchNails (NIN) who have had such a huge meme going by untether
them-self from the grasp of a big music company and self publish their heralded music under a creative common license with a "pay what you want" model that included "pay nothing". As far as I heard they had millions of downloads and the whole thing was a huge success. Now I hear this really long substantial indepth interview with Trent Reznor - lead of NIN in the Digg Dialog Series (Digg users ask questions).
I encourage anyone making content on the internet and trying to make money to watch it. He explains a lot of the inside of the grant experiment with the internet and while he is - like many of us - absolutely enthralled by the possibilities of reaching out to millions of people and spreading his art to places that a generation before us could have never dreamed of - he makes it very clear - not even for a big brand like his is it possible to easily generate money and they barely made a profit with merchandise - donation and pay what you like has in his eyes completely failed - that means the 1000 fans rule that has been talked about is really not that true because NIN has definately more then 1000 fans. (yes they scrape by and probably better then most other musicians on the net judging from the massive amount of hardware in the background but he says twice that they are barely making a profit and I believe it 100%). Now he is reiterating what I thought when it comes to advertisement - there is so many and its not really that usefull for generating money and you loose people who are just sick and tired of seeing pages full of ads with a tiny bit of content in the middle - I will get back to that point in a second.
The most revealing thing he said for musicians out there is that its simply almost impossible to try to sell the music itself as music is comprised of bits and bytes there is certainly always a copy floating around the net for free and people prefer free over anything - the iTunes store does not help this situation at all - contrary to what the big press tries to spread. Very insightful interview an absolute must watch.
Some now might say "oh there are so many sites that are advertisment supported and seem to make a good living". I thought so too but another article from yesterday seems to absolutely ridicule that line of thought and makes you wonder if money and the net goes together in any kind of form or shape. The same article also supports another theory of mine - namely that you shouldn´t spend hours on for profit social media sites because they can go boom any minute and then all your content goes boom with it - all the time spend is then lost - you get nothing and you didn´t even do anything wrong (other then giving your time to a big company that is).
I am talking of nothing smaller then YouTube. The article in question is called "YouTube is Doomed". First I wanted to shrug it off as somebody seeking attention with such a headline but the reasoning is sound as it is scary, clear and probably quite right.
YouTube - and I hope you are tied to your seat - made a loss in revenue of roughly $500 million. That is after 3 years in googles hand. Not even Google can sustain such a lossleader for a very long time - no matter how much they paid for it in the first place. I completely agree with the article on that. Then the article does some real good investigative reporting by trying to see if YouTube could ever be profitable - and the clear answer is no. There is no math that would support this even if Google would plaster adverts over any and all videos and charge 3 times as much as they do today they would still loose money - especially with their operating costs multiplying as their catalog of dogs on skateboard movies grows.
Now if Google can´t make money on the internet with content that they don´t even need to pay for - how in the world would a content creator earn any money?
I mean its probably possible to survive but these two anecdotes by what is perceived the most successful in their niche on the net just show to me that there is no sound business model. Still all content comes to the net with full force. I would conclude that the internet and capitalism as it is right now just don´t go together and probably never will. Bits are free. You can´t cage them because then nobody sees them and then nobody knows that they exist. If you send them around with a cage around them somebody will find a way to help them be free - that is their nature and there is nothing that can be done about it except for caging the people them self.
YouTube is doomed @ business insider
Digg Dialogg with Trent Reznor
There is a fantastic rant / fictitious speech from Jeff Jarvis on what the Masters of the News have done wrong in the last 15-20 years and how they completely and utterly destroyed their businesses by failing to see the reality of the internet unfold in front of their eyes and failing to act accordingly. He calls the angry white old man out for their inability to adapt from a content economy to a link economy to the short sighted view that google should pay for aggregated headlines never mentioning that its also google that generates 1/3rd of the traffic to these sites.
If you are even remotely interested why its going downhill so fast and strong for the newspaper business that is the article to read and understand why.
Oh and this is how the article ends:
It's simply too late. The best thing some of you can do is get out of the way and make room for the next generation of net natives who understand this new economy and society and care about news and will reinvent it, building what comes after you from the ground up. There's huge opportunity there, for them.
Not much more to be said to this picture of the day that comes from the G20 summits via faz.de
VRML was once to be said the future of the web - everyone who ever tried that out back in the good days will agree with me that it was deemed to failure right from the beginning on. It went under and was never seen again with the second generation browsers. Modern browsers had other stuff to worry about - like passing acidic tests and such so 3d was not a main concern ever. Now word from the Game Developer Conference hits the street that the Kronos group is working together with the Mozilla foundation to bring accelerated 3d graphics inside the browser window. The Kronos group is responsible for OpenGL and OpenGL ES (iPhone is all I say here) and Mozilla of course for the Firefox. They formed an "accelerated 3d on the web working group" that will create a roalty free standard for browser makers to implement and webdevelopers to use. Hallejulia - now it might take some eons for a) a standard to form b) browser to adopt the standard c) 3d program letting you export stuff in the right format but the prospects for real 3d in the browser in a 3-5 year time frame are exiting to say the least. Personally for me this is bigger then vector (as it includes vector hopefully) - the possibilities are endless and truly exiting. Be sure to hear back from me if there is the earliest inclination of any beta or even alpha warez to try this out.
via internetnews.com
TASER International teams with EVIDENCE.com to create the AXON a secure police recording system that is fully portable and strapped on the head. Now there is multiple things going on here why this is noteworthy. For one it sends (streams?) the data directly to the servers of evidence.com in an encrypted secure way. That means nobody (also not the cops themself) can temper the footage. That means it could be an effective tool to watch the watchers and make them accountable for "mistakes" that might happen when an arrest or house search or such is being made. That of course would mean that evidence.com makes the videos available to the public at large but I think this might be even a business model for them so I actually do seem to think this is likely. Now there needs to be a law that prohibits the nice policemen from turning these things of in the heat - make it a felony punishable with a prison sentence or immediate suspension from the job to avoid the "oh I forgot to turn it back on" kind of moments that these fellow friends would likely have at times.
Now that this is covered I would like to raise a voice that this whole system needs to make it to the general market for everyone and the next best VJ to wear all day. Imagine not having to worry about how long the memory stick in your pocket has capacity but instead you can record you whole day onto a server of your choosing (probably your own home server for the more intimate moments) all wirelessly and you wear just a black blob over your ear - no fugly sunglasses or baseballcaps or fake eyes or such - yes that clearly means I WANT ONE :) but I am sure the bright people at Taser int. have figured that out already and present us a mass market version (probably sans encryption so to give back big brother what has been taken from him).
via engadget
Free fonts are such thing, most are ugly or just plain copies or incomplete or in the end have the same copyright restrictments as the for pay high quality fonts (mostly because the authors didn´t apply a alternative copyright to them) so its nice to see that there are more and more fonts coming to the table that have less restrictive copyright or are free in the whole sense. Even better it is when said fonts are of high quality - or if they are copying an already available font - make it even better quality. That happened to the Times New Roman - the most controversial font of modern time (or so some say). Blessed with an open source linux compatible license the creators made Linux Libertine even better then the original (and maybe even usable at all?). Everyone can grab a copy for free. Its in the OpenType format and spans all characters that you would ever need in a font and a regular, italic, bold, bolditalic, small caps and - hold you breath - a Organic Grotesk (non-linear sans-serif) version.
http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net
via @murdelta.
Things that used to cost around a million and one buck just a very short time ago seem to be available for almost nothing these days - especially if you roll your own. Such the case with 3d scanners it seems - while only 5 years ago its was inconcievable to even dream about owning a 3d printer - things started to get interesting 2 years ago when the prices dropped into the sub $5000 range and the first efforts of DIY open source 3d scanners appeared on the ether. Now we drop into the sub $300 range with a laser 3d scanner made out of the Lego NXT system. Oh good are the times.
via make blog.
Because I am a Berliner and I love subculture especially when it is at its best. It is at its best when its illegal, wild and sets statements. I must have missed the Reclaim Jannowitzbrücke event last year but it looks like a lot of fun. Flashmob meets Berlin electronic music scene meets "we make everything shiny and expensive" conservatism. I love it - its rumored that its going to happen again this year - I keep my ears wide open.
We kick off the Prototypen event year with a breakbeat party on march the 28th in the local Affenclub with some multiple twists. First you might have noticed the name - on March 28th 2009 multiple nongovernmental organisations are calling for protest against the current financial crisis and our current financial system. The protest will be under the motto "We don´t pay for your crisis" and naturally we here at prototypen believing in a future that is sustainable in synch with nature and with a (more) even distribution of wealth support the motto and the action and will do the Breakapitalism event as a show of support.
It wouldn´t be a prototypen event if there is not another media experiment happening as well - So I am proud to announce that we will have a virtual guest playing visuals at this party over the internet. Brian T Moore will join us virtually from Toronto/Canada and play his very locally themed visuals at the Kleinmachnow/Berlin/Germany Monkeyclub. This will be the second installment test of our virtual live media series which you will be hearing about more in the short future.
On top of all that expect some massive great broken beats from a wide range of music artists. (See Flyer).
I hope you all support the motto and show the action some support by dropping by and celebrate the crisis as a possibility of a new beginning.
(shouts go out to Captain Mulda for the great flyer design)
Quang from Exozet who I have written about before has finally come around and made himself a blog - grainy fx (making me aware to update my blogroll). In his third entry on the blog he talks about a current Previsulization project for a Polylux subseries trailer and how he used my trusty Faderfox DJ2 midi controller to let the cameraman of the show position his camera where he wants it. Its just 128 units is not really precise enough it seems - but it worked sufficiently as I heard and the team was happy after the meeting - I will have a look at the actual shooting on saturday because they are shooting with a RED camera (the RED one that is) on greenscreen and I would love to see how the cam performs in real life - I will report back here.
Here is the video of the controller in action Quang shared with the world.
Brian Viveros lets pretty girls with nasty habbits appear on convases. They are eery and strange and beautiful. Its like you look at them and want to like them but then something is in the way of liking them. Who needs eyelashes right?
Be sure to check out the other strange girls on his website. Via abduzeedo.
I was just pointed by captain mulda who is our new flyer designer to these amazing cutup videos - and the original reason for the journey to ThruYou was that our own MC Bastai is featured in one of the videos. The idea of the cutup videos is to take lots of different youtube videos with soundsamples in them and cut them up and remix them into one continuous new song. Bastai features in the fitting dubby song all complete with multiple dub sirens and some other really strange music gear from another dimension.
Be sure to check out the other creations with different music styles in the above link.
Quang pointed me to a picture of a new RED Scarlet camera in the "I emulate a photo camera"(dubbed DSMC by RED) configuration as a real preproduction model - not a 3d rendering. 4k godness (15Megapixels) at 150 fps here we come.
The vinyl clocks from the gratefull threads must be the perfect thing when you are a DJ. Its recycled vinyl - one could also call them old records. The pun is in the inhabitat headline with more pics of more clocks.
Abduzeedo has a feature on infrared photography and like HDR and fake tilt shift it will be a short lived beautiful hype until every combination of filters has been used. I also expect a combination of HDR and infrared and tilt shift at some point. While it lasts it sure is extremely pretty to look at that is why it gets a picture of the day honor from me. The picture shown is by Andross01 - no link given in the original article.
An article starting with the following lines naturally needs to have further scrutiny:
About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It's clear now that even by using the word "convergence" we were giving TV too much credit.
The article goes on to explain in very minute detail why the computers won and TV is a dying medium with absolutely zip zero future. Listing four main reason why it did/does die.
1.) open platform and the speed benefit to get things out there vs. a controlled environment with a hierarchical structure.
2.) Moores Law - Speed of the internet goes exponentially - that allowed for content to be streamed
3.) Piracy… yes piracy is good for spreading stuff and it made it clear that the future of media is free as in beer. There is no business model and there will never be one that competes with free - that does apply to news, books and music. Advertisments are not a business model and I might explain at one point why I think that is.
4.) social application. People are social creatures (not the artificial ones like me but the real humans seem so) and spending time to watch a series of tubes is just not a very social endeavor. Even sitting with friends in the same room watching the tubes is not very social - so people opt for the easy social things - Massive Multiplayer Online games social media sites etc. And that also makes you a broadcaster instead of a consumer and that is a very empowering feeling - one that tv will never ever be capable off for those on the outside of the glass tube.
These are the reasons stated in the article and they are very compelling reasons in its own but on top there are some that made tv irrelavant even faster here are my additional reasons:
5.) Greed. Trying to get the most advertisement dollars possible quite good programs where chopped up in first 30 then 15 then 10 then even 5 minutes parts and filled with horrific bright loud interludes of first 1 then 3 then 5 minute commercial breaks. Watching TV nowadays is like watching a commercial channel with some programming in between.
6.) More Greed. Trying to get the most advertisement dollars you had to get the most viewers and to do that you had to find the lowest common denominator. Which in the mind of programming executives in the "I am important" suits was game shows, reality tv and crappy talk shows, intermingled with some violence and of course meaningless sports. That made TV as a source of information and mind building almost completely irrelevant. Meaning that people started feeling that they lost time even faster.
7.) Failing to see niches and where it saw niches trying to maximize profit at all costs. Thats something the internet can do so much better - filling niches even if there are only 5 people interested. TV operation had become to expensive that filling a niche was just not profitable - something things on the internet do need to worry about too much. But even profitable bigger niches where tried to make into mainstream - which for most niches will never work - alianating the niches participants.
The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.
Yes and the boon for humanity will be greater understanding of human on the other side of the planet. Greater information share and a lot less wasted time on things that where pushed upon humanity and made it more stupid in the process.
The thing is the underlying forces are so great, TV has such a huge place in society with about everything "big" connected to it that loosing this medium will also mean social upheaval big time as there is nothing out there anymore controlling the masses and keeping them happy with football or that sunday night talk - and normal people might start engaging with each other - even internationally - can you imagine what would happen? Mutual understanding and knowledge sharing - the horror!
Read the whole article over at paulgraham.com
The Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) of Germany has made it clear that the use of electronic voting equipment currently in use is against the law. The last local election was also against the law. That means germans are going to cast their ballots on paper from here on out until e-voting machines comply with the law - which states that the transfer process of the votes and storage of the votes can be certified by EVERYONE not just an "expert" panel.
A big win for democracy and paper freedom fighters in germany - especially a big win for the Chaos Computer Club who has spearheaded the campaign and made sure that the court was well informed of the dangers e-voting poses. Thats the third judgment the court has cast in the last 12 month that is in favor of the people and showing the german government the boundaries of what they can do with their urge to overthrow the constitution and go straight to a police dictator state.
More at Netzpolitik.org (de).
After a defacement of their website that came on the day of the local state elections in Austria yesterday - the right wing party that was once led by neonazi and then drunk "I kill myself while under the influence" driver Jörg Haider the BZOE - said something really dangerous thought provoking and downright scary:
“[...] Wir verurteilen diese undemokratische Vorgangsweise linker Webterroristen auf das Schärfste”
translated that means roughly whats in the headline "We fiercely condemn the approach of the Left Web-Terrorists".
Now its clear that everybody using the internet in special ways will soon be criminalized by the right wing propaganda machine that just can´t stand letting loose of the media control it has enjoyed over the past century. Now this is extremely dangerous because that means there is a shift in the thought process of the ruling right elite that the foe might not be the afghanistan suicide bomber sitting in a cave anymore but "the left webterrorist" meaning everybody who tinkers with the web and has more knowledge then a politician (well that mean everybody who is on the web I guess). It seems it is time that they come after us.
Anyway Murdelta who has brought this to my attention wanted to have some webbanners and I thought I give it a shot - not pretty and totally stolen everywhere (the RAF keyboard logo is from the 18C3 Chaos Communication Conference aptly named "Hacking is not a crime") but I had some fun. And the "hardcore" reference comes from a meme last week where some right wing fashion design label that shall be unnamed trademarked the word "hardcore" - a term that has been used extensively in about any subculture scene there is and has nothing to do with right wing propaganda.
More at Murdelta.
And the Luddites are on our site too! (its a german wordplay on the word "weben" which means weaving - Webterror could theoretically in germany also mean "weavingterror" which brings us to the luddites).
