check The Hedrons

Remember Sleater-Kinney? The Hedrons owe a lot to S-K, sure, but they've also innovated. "Be My Friend" has a story (tho that's a generous word here) that grabs you and involves you with the, um, narrative. It at first annoys in the same way that R.E.M.'s "Diminished" from UP annoyed during the first 100 listens -- it seems to pretend to know too much about an extremely unlikely predicament, and thereby barred the listener from immediately identifying with the situation. But that's not what The Hedrons do, after all. They somehow convice you that they really mean it. Repetitive and occasionally too full of vocal affectations that remind of the worst dog-days of the 1980s? Less than 1/3 of the time. Really bold? At least half the time. Worth listening to? F*ck yeah! Do it!

http://www.myspace.com/thehedrons

well, what sort of punishment, then?

No, we won't be pushing people around.

But we might be kicking them out. Even thinking of screwing some beady-eyed LED-flashing faux cameras to the ceiling and support struts. It's getting out of hand.

If books are for use, then libraries are for use. But for use for what? And who's to use the library? I'm liberal when it comes to social software and new media in libraries. But I'm conservative as hell when it comes to caring for the books (actually, the information, in whatever media) and the patrons.

Students are getting too loud. I'm stalking through the stacks like a fascist, hushing grown folks, asking them not to smear potato chips on pages, asking them to leave if they can't follow our rules.

This is changing things, and I don't like it. I didn't become a librarian to police people. I shush? Shush your damn self. We're all students here.

who blogged this? banned books from above.

I think it was The Lipstick Librarian. Anyways. Tell me Google ain't our friend.

http://books.google.com/googlebooks/banned/

comments on orderly global economies and intellectual property

Update: David (of Simulation Weblog) has weighed in on this with some really good points. Read the comments of this post for more -- & Librarians take note:

"...Sometimes growth comes from efficiency. (Look how EBay recycles junk! or - sorry! - how Google cuts down on the number of trips we have to make to reference libraries). What if we applied modern database/ surveillance/ simulation techniques to road traffic management instead of surveillance, for instance - how much gasoline, time and lives might this save?"












The conversation continues...

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In response to this post (link), Sven Johnson had plenty to say. It was worth posting as a new entry.

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csven said...

I disagree with the words, but agree with the idea. In today's world I'd use:

"Respecting intellectual property is a cornerstone of an orderly global economy"

There is no protection. Not from hackers and not from corporate corruption. Rather than fight corporate greed by trying to break DRM which protects their precious media, I say people should ignore their product altogether. Much of what's being fought over is a luxury. No one needs the latest Britney Spears mp3. No one needs to watch whatever movie they can download from Pirate Bay. Worse yet, there is still greed behind those activities. Whether it's a Russian website selling lower cost music (bc they have almost no overhead and a giant legal loophool) or whether it's Pirate Bay raking in bushels of ad money (which they don't like to talk about), someone is getting rich. And you can be sure a fair amount of that dirty money isn't going to social programs to feed the poor or organizations trying to stop the AIDs epidemic in Africa. It's most likely just going into some other corrupt person's bank account.

The best way to react imo is to a) buy the offerings of truly independent artists and b) respect their work by giving them control over it's distribution. Don't do it because it's the moral or ethical thing to do; that removes pragmatism, and I'm very pragmatic. Do it because our collective behavior will either help us or harm us in the years to come. Because just in the way cheap goods purchased by the working class sent their jobs to low-wage countries, the day will come when all things will be pirated as easily as an mp3. And the effects of that technology rippling through our social systems faster than we adjust to accomodate them will result in economic chaos. Something is going to rip if we're not more thoughtful.

Because I don't believe people can stop themselves, and because I believe selfishness trumps, I expect that we'll see some very difficult times ahead. The cornerstone will, in effect, crumble. How or even whether we reinforce or replace it is the real question in my mind.

Woody Evans said...

If we accept that disrespecting intellectual property really amounts to theiving, I have to ask: why is stealing a threat to the global economy?

Using strong arm tactics to gain rights (by way of legal loopholes, like you mention they do in Russia), doesn't seem so different from bending international treaties to invade a country for its resources (or whatever other reasons). These moves can destablize the system in the short term, but WHY do they threaten the longterm stability of the system?

Morality aside, how is theft bad for the global economy?

csven said...

If there's no incentive, progress slows. If nobody respects the inventiveness of creators, then the creators won't invest the energy. That's the lesson of the Soviet Union afaic.

Assume for a moment that you've spent three years developing something. You've sacrificed for this creation; not just time and money but perhaps a marriage. And your reward? Someone takes your work and claims it as their own and profits from it. And you have no recourse because that theft is acceptable to society; society approves of the tricksters and the bullies.

Do we really want social Darwinism? Do we really want to remove the protections that intellectual property laws are supposed to provide?

The United States is the powerhouse it is today because of those laws. Unfortunately, they've become corrupted. The solution is not to wrestle product from the corporations, because there are ways to profit from that attention. The solution is to remove those politicians who votes are being effectively bought by corporations. The solution is to stop giving any attention to the products offered by those corporations. Ignore them. Entirely.

The opposite of love isn't hate - it's apathy toward the individual.

The opposite of IP corruption isn't cracking DRM - it's apathy toward the product.

There's a very good reason so much money is spent on advertising. We should not underestimate the power of turning our backs on companies and their offerings. Apple is a good example. I don't own an iPod. I don't purchase my music through iTunes. The reason I don't is because I don't like the restrictions. So I ignore their product. What's baffling is seeing a bunch of iPod owners angry over the DRM. Huh? Like they didn't know this going in? And they're angry with Apple because they purchased something which clearly limited their options? I think it's idiotic. Nobody forced them to purchase this luxury product. What happened to taking responsibility for our own actions? They shouldn't blame Apple, they should kick themselves for giving Apple the market. Apple's dominance is a result of their attention and nothing else.

Now, I'll agree that there are times when IP laws should be set aside. South Africa and Brazil weighed those laws against the AIDs situation in their countries and took action. There's nothing wrong with this and afaic it was the right thing to do; there's a time when excess profit (and by no means were these companies in danger of going bankrupt) should be set aside for the common good in just the same way that IP laws are for the common good. But access to music, movies, software, etc is a long way from that situation. We live in a world where the privileged use the word "need" far too often. No one needs most of what's being taken. All we're doing is teaching younger generations a behavior that will have a dampening effect on the future.

Woody Evans said...

Okay, it makes much more sense when you put it like that. Respecting intellectual property keeps the innovators innovating. Without respecting their intellectual property the innovative lose an important carrot, feel undercut and cheated by the pirates...

The thing is, as important as it is to fairly reward innovation and to keep encouraging it with law and money, I don't necessarily agree with the assumption that innovation will decline if piracy goes up.

I think need is what drives innovation, not the promise of legal rights or recognition, or financial reward. I think 1.3 billion Chinese hack innovations from Korea, Japan, and the West because they have a need -- imagined or not -- for those goods and goodies. Obviously if we're talking about breaking a patent on a water filter, it's a much stronger and more 'real' need than digicamming a blockbuster in the theatre and selling burned discs of it... Certainly there exists wildly different levels of "need" in the world, and the attempt to solve probelms that comes from that need can be as simple as selling copied movies, or as horrifying and selfish as the common folk remedy for male AIDs victims in rural Africa -- which amounts to incest and rape of minors in the belief that sex with a virgin heals the disease.

What you said (csven) about times when i.p. laws should be set aside for the greater good -- maybe the way forward is to create a more lenient legal evironment in the first place. A Creative Commons for patents?

csven said...

"I think need is what drives innovation, not the promise of legal rights or recognition, or financial reward."

Then how do you explain the economic disaster in the former U.S.S.R.?

My mother is German. When the wall fell she heard quite a bit from friends back home about how difficult it was for the former East Germans to adapt to a society in which they couldn't simply walk away from the jobsite when they felt like it. If they ran out of bricks to lay and the truck wasn't there with more to unload, they didn't wait... they bailed. They had no incentive to wait for more and no initiative to determine when they might be needed. Their basic needs were usually met and so innovation crawled forward. They had no experience with the products being developed in the West, so they didn't perceive a need for them. And when they desired something, they could find that item on the blackmarket - which is where organized crime incubated until the system collapsed.

"I think 1.3 billion Chinese hack innovations from Korea, Japan, and the West because they have a need -- imagined or not -- for those goods and goodies."

I don't know if you've been keeping up, but the Chinese are becoming increasingly concerned with the effects piracy is having on their own development. Chinese software companies are often hit so hard they can't stay in business. If there's nothing to be gained, they don't even try. They're now trying to use the same means as companies like Valve and MS to ensure that their fellow countrymen don't put them out on the street. But we all know that software verification systems can be circumvented.

The Chinese are now reaping what Communism has sown: people don't think piracy is wrong. How is China going to stop it now when it's so firmly a part of their culture? How do you convince a billion people to change their habit and pay for what they can get for free? Is the Chairman going to make an argument for Capitalist innovation where people are rewarded for their ideas??? If not, he needs to. Otherwise China is in real trouble. The world is leveling. Labor is making demands. Salaries are rising along with lifestyles and expectations - and much of it is based on old industrial technology. Meanwhile, those smart Europeans are pushing new rapid-manufacturing solutions forward (the kind of thing you get from a system that rewards innovation) and in the not-too-distant future products made in China will be more expensive and less attractive than those which are RM'd at home.

"Certainly there exists wildly different levels of "need" in the world,..."

I disagree. People only need a few things; among them are food, shelter, safety. No one needs what Pirate Bay offers. No one needs Apple to change their business model to give them unlimited use of the content tied to their devices. All those protestors should be protesting real issues - like this one: Blood Diamonds.

We need to get our priorities straight. Music and movies aren't anywhere near being a priority.

...maybe the way forward is to create a more lenient legal evironment in the first place. A Creative Commons for patents?

I've been arguing for this since before Napster (because I was aware of MPEG Layer 3 almost immediately - being a filmmaking buff, I was following its development). I downloaded some music back when a search for "mp3" yielded maybe 30 returns. But it didn't take me long to realize that we had some serious problems. And the patent issues I've known about for much longer, given my occupation.

Yes, we need to fix the system. I've never defended corporate activity in this arena. But I also won't yield to those who take a militant approach; mainly, because it doesn't work. The way to fix this is to use the power we have: with our votes and with our pocketbook. But the sad truth is that people are lazy. Far easier to download whatever you want and excuse it (often with outright lies) than make a real effort to fix the system.

csven said...

"...with our pocketbook"

Correction: with our attention (because that's how corporations can still leverage what people steal).

Woody Evans said...

"Yes, we need to fix the system. I've never defended corporate activity in this arena. But I also won't yield to those who take a militant approach; mainly, because it doesn't work. The way to fix this is to use the power we have: with our votes and with our pocketbook. But the sad truth is that people are lazy. Far easier to download whatever you want and excuse it (often with outright lies) than make a real effort to fix the system."

Now you've got me worried. If the issue is as serious as it seems to be and the only thing that can change it is political will, things look pretty damn bleak.

csven said...

Agreed. Because now boycotting (or stealing from) a company may not be enough. In today's technological world, attention has value. I can't imagine that some piece of music hasn't already been sold for advertising purposes that didn't include as part of its valuation the number of illegal downloads that the music label has tracked.

So even if people think they're hurting the labels, they may not be. This is where the whole "I wouldn't buy it anyway" turns around and bites the pirates in the arse - because one could then say "Well, you still put money in their pocket. Nice job keeping the greedy suits in control."

--

Further comments are welcome.
And if you don't know Sven, you ought to.

Ricky Gervais on Creationism vs. Evolution (and stuff)

stingray cult

Dead stingrays with their tails cut off have been found in Australia, sparking concern that fans of naturalist Steve Irwin may be avenging his death. (link: news.bbc)

Remember Biko

18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977

5 kirkyan timesuits

Seems there's new action on the kirkyan front. Sven's been writing about kirkyan weaponry, picking up on a thread from some of Warren Ellis' work in Second Life and putting a proper kirkyan face on the matter. Seems his post may even be garnering interest from our military-industrial overlords. Don't ask how I know that.

It's bombs, then, not books. And this is gung-ho, buddy, gung-ho. Forget "kirkyan timesuits for books".

The notion of the kirkyan is now picking up weight and heft from deep pockets. And publishers, monied as they are, are squabbling with writers are squabbling with readers are squabbling with libraries about what the future of the book is going to be -- the debate has no direction, no coherent vision for the future. Meanwhile, the kirkyan has predictably taken on a much less benign demeanor. And it may now be that it has means to become actionable.

Show somebody how to educate more people and not much happens. Show somebody how to blow more people up, and the princes perk up and take notes. I still say let's have books, not bombs. I hope to remain so naive and idealistic until the end.

But here's an insider's tip, for free: The money? The smart money is on the viridian kirkyan that, for one thing, cleans up your oil spills.

Sven's notion has traction. It's a solid notion and it's going to grow and become increasingly useful. Librarians are ahead of the curve on this matter, though, because we already truck in kirkyans daily. The e-book is but a crude example of what's to come. You guys know that.

But to give the notion a name and talk about its attributes is helpful. Kirkyan books. What can a kirkyan book do that an e-book, a cell phone, a page of paper, a radio signal, a stack of html on a server can't?

Can libraries save the world? This question has something to do with whether or not we can co-opt the kirkyan for the good of all and build autopoietic networks of goopy, clinging, smart (well, at least as smart as a retarded dog) books, that kind of crawl in and out of our nervous systems, onto and off of our shelves, into and out of our phones, and swarm all the hell over Africa and rural China.

Let's get cracking. Most of you "next-gen" bastards are already off to a walloping good start.

orderly global economies

"Protecting intellectual property from piracy is a cornerstone of an orderly global economy" (O'Connor 381).

Is this neccessarily so? Why or why not? I'm trying to sort it out.
Comments welcome.

--
O'Connor, David E. Encyclopedia of the Global Economy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
--

Reading: about the antipopes
Feeling: overworked, underutilized.

10 teaching: b.i. platform

Today our library classroom got enlisted for a somewhat unusual endeavor.

A biology prof wants to use our classroom and laptops to demonstrate a cellular animation website and have the class do an assignment based on it -- in the library. We do frequently get profs bringing down their classes for instruction in library databases and use of the catalog, etc. But this will be the first time they've come to use our classroom as their own.

I'll take 10 or 20 minutes to demonstrate finding good biology resources in our databases and reference collection, but then it's out of my hands!

I think it's just delicious that they see us as a platform for their own uses. Maybe it's our smartboard...

Steve Irwin, rest in peace

He pulled the stingray's barb out of his heart before he died.
Thanks for the enthusiasm, Steve. Rest in peace.

2 ultraculture

quick fyi,
seems tomorrow (Sunday, the 3rd of September) is the second ultraculture massive.
d.i.y. ritual, if you Will.

13 info viz: scientometrics from drexel

Someone's jazzing up the viz of bibliometrics...
Via info aesthetics:

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CiteSpace: Visualizing Patterns and Trends in Scientific Literature /
Chaomei Chen

hi again myspace

The community college I work for has just unmade a decision to block MySpace.com from all campus computers.

This debacle was brief and ridiculous -- the computing administrators for our college unilaterally acted to block it -- and the librarians (among others) got all high-hackled and started growling. In side of, what, 3 days? they've backed off.

Well, we smell weakness now. They won't be able to censor so easily next time around. A very bad strategic move on their part, this was. If nothing else comes of it, they've lost their position of strength with this play, and that could hurt all of us one day.

--

Listening: Hobosapiens by Cale

free texts

From (my other blog) libSOS:

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free text books

From Library Journal:

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Freeload Press believes it has discovered a way to knock skyrocketing textbook prices down to nothing—literally! The rub is that the free downloads of thousands of books will include ads. The fledgling St. Paul, MN-based publisher (it launched in 2004) reasons that print products like magazines and newspapers traditionally have been able to keep their prices low, and in many cases free, thanks to ad sales. The AP reports that in exchange for filling out a quick survey, students will be able to freely download PDF files of eventually as many as 250,000 textbooks and study aids by 2007. To date, 25,000 students have registered and downloaded 50,000 titles.
---

So. Go get your 'free' texts.

9 teaching: briefly, on quality control

Back in June, Iris wrote about her experiences reading sophomore writing portfolios. She says:

"
So far, after reading only a couple of portfolios, I've learned that:

• underclassmen don't understand citation, but that they can do it if guided
  
• they are happy to use outside sources, but the sources control the writer rather than the other way around
• that they think of "fact" and "interpretation" as much more distinct categories than they really are...

"

I'm concerned about that second one, most. I've seen that happen to me. Once you recognize it, you can control the tendency. Teaching students how not to be so controlled is hard -- there's so much available information, that [it seems] almost as easy as stopping wherever you happen to land with a search, looking around, and grabbing what you need from that pile and forcing it to work for you.

Note to self: remember to stress this with your classes -- you control the search, not the other way around. You control the info you use; don't let the info you happen to find use you to spread without good reason.

topic flowers

Thanks to Information Aesthetics and Neoformix, it looks like we've had an "art and recreation" heavy month here at ISHUSH:

















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Weather: wild fermentation + heat again
Watching: no more Deadwood, for awhile. There's Shakespeare, and there's Milch. But I don't pay for no HBO.

buckyballs to buckypaper to buckybooks

Correction!
Doc Nokes points out in the comments that he confused 'buckypaper' with 'smartpaper'... I neglected to read this correction at his blog.
WE

--
Dr Nokes (at Unlocked Wordhoard) rocks the mike and spreads the meme for the future of paper and the future of the book:

"

Buckypaper and the End of Print Literature

Scribal Terror has a link to this article in Science Daily about buckypaper. I first heard about buckypaper a few years ago, but in a much different (and more significant) context.

Though it is not mentioned in the article, one of the potential uses for buckypaper that I heard discussed in those days was to make buckybooks (sorry, I have no link -- I heard this long ago). The idea, as I remember it, was to have paper made entirely of buckyballs that were dark on one side and light on the other. The "off" setting for the balls would be for the light side to be facing out. When current was run through the buckyballs, they would flip over so that the dark side was showing. By selectively turning some on and turning some off, you could create writing on the page (much as a marquee sign does by turning lights on and off).

The article talks about a lot of less important uses, like body armor, shielding airplanes from lightning strikes, etc. While all those things are nice, none of them will change the world. Buckypaper has the potential to change the world as significantly as Gutenberg's printing press...

"

blogging about this blog

In case you['re] new to ISHUSH... This blog isn't a work blog, and it isn't a personal blog -- but sometimes I talk about stuff related to work, and sometimes I talk about all kinds of other, more personal stuff. Mainly I talk about subjects that are somehow related to info-science in some kind of way. And I say "talk" because it feels more like talking than writing, most of the time. I think I "talk" to myself and to some of you loyal readers, to flesh-out notions and shore-up plans. These plans get implemented at work, at home, and elsewhere, times.

On the work front, things have been tough lately. I've spent the last two weeks in a perpetual bout of gland-handing with people in 'positions'. I've spent way, way too much time in meetings that concern me little or not at all, and way, way too much time listening to titled folks brag about their pet projects. It was driving me batty. I just wanted to get back to work in the library. The political side of things drives me crazy -- I find it so inane and insane, the meta-positioning the organization does to sustain itself as an organization, and the ego-tripping the positioned folks have to do to keep their positions within it. And so on.

On the home front, it's been tough too. Been a hard year. Been a hard three years. But we're getting our health put back together right, and things are blue skies again. And we've got a rascal of a new cat -- looks like a hunger-mad tarsier, and climbs legs and backs with its claws with great glee.

And the weather just broke. We hope.

So. Here's a new semester. I anticipate writing more here now that things are settling down a bit.

bye myspace

The community college I work for has just made a decision to block MySpace.com from all campus computers.