Really, really open music: not actually that great?

I'm sure everyone who's looked into 'open music' for more than five minutes has found this, or at least something similar. There's quite a few open labels online that release albums royalty free, but jamendo seems to be one of the larger ones. According to their site, they have "over 346, 353 free music tracks!"

While that certainly doesn't seem like much compared to the iTunes store, or even my own music library for that matter, it represents a growing phenomena in the music industry where artists release their albums for free. A growing number of groups, such as the Indelicates, release their albums digitally, allowing buyers to set their own price ($0.00 being a legitimate choice) in hopes that fans will like them enough to support them, and even people who don't like it will be able to spread their music. Another group named, ironically enough, Bomb the Music Industry, does the same, but even goes so far as to open up their concerts, and will even allow anyone who's practiced the band's songs to some level of proficiency  up on stage to play with them. 

 

Unfortunately, it sounds awful. And looking through jamendo's library, the pickings there are pretty slim as well. It has been my experience so far that quality open source songs are few and far between.  Looking through copyright free images has yielded about the same results. As far as open culture goes, I have yet to see any real, genuine success outside of professionals that establish themselves commercially and then turn open. Is it really possible to establish something openly from the very beginning? I haven't found any examples yet, but if anyone is able to find them, I'd be very curious to see how they manage to stave off initial costs. I posted about Lastwear, an opensource clothing company. They recieved their funds through kickstarter, basically by asking for donations. They got their money, but according to their website and the financial information they've posted, it still hasn't been enough and they're close to going under. So while openness might be great in industry and the scientific world, I don't see it turning out any Mozarts in the near future. 

It's a good idea guys, but you're not quite there. Maybe if you had an incentive to practice, like... making money?

Open Sources

       My research started out with a Google search. I’m not afraid to admit it, since I’m sure most of yours did as well. After getting past the initial flood of news articles, I looked into post and links other people in the class had shared. I also looked up some ‘internet celebrities’ such as Randall Munroe, Cory Doctorow, and Richard Stallman, to see who they’d been talking with and about. But again, honestly my research process was more stumbling around a few reputable sources and checking out anything and everything that linked to them. I found some interesting sources that way, but the amount of noise in the results is a big damper on the research.

                As to how these sources relate to our claim, most of them are straight forward. Predictions of the digital future are numerous and varied, but these sources make educated arguments about how openness has developed, the way it has shaped society, and how it may develop in the future based on past examples. Our argument should make use of the evidence they present, and make note of their proposals, though we obviously won’t agree with them all.

• Hasan, Ragib. (History of Linux, https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/linux/)
Provides an interesting and entertaining look into the early development of Linux and the open source movement. It’s a good introduction into the open-source movement and there’s some good insight into how an open movement grows over time. [I looked for a few run-throughs of early Linux history, and this is one of the better ones.]
• Doctorow, Cory (Creativity versus Copyright) As an openness activist, Doctorow lays some very good arguments for openness, while at the same time establishing some good boundaries to it. I plan to make use of both the pros and cons he lists in this article. [I found his essays while investigating his other works.]
• Boyle, James. The Public Domain, 2008 Yale University Press– the concept of the public domain is one of the first legal recognitions of openness, and its development over time is an important part of our argument in how openness will shape society. Examples used here about how the public domain has been used positively and negatively can be used to help establish openness guidelines. [I looked at the list of books used in class that I hadn’t read, and this one looked promising.]
• Micheal Tiemann- He’s a board member for the Open Source Initiative, GNOME foundation, and Open Source America. His work with the OSI works to clarify what precisely defines open-source and openness. Also, his blog is a good source of ideas and new implementations of openness in today’s society.
•  Cory Doctorow
– in his own words (from his blog) “Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like FOR THE WIN and the bestselling LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.” He’s very active in the creative commons movement, and looks a lot into the social and political implications of openness. Some of his articles would be good sources for the discussion of when Openness is and is not appropriate.
• Randall Munroe (xkcd.com) – A NASA roboticist, comic artist, and internet celebrity. He isn’t exactly a leading figure per se in any particular field of openness, but he is definitely an influence among the ‘internet culture’ that makes up the active user-base of most open source movements, and his work has been mentioned in discussion among most, if not all open communities. I also went to school with his brother, so I’m still holding out that he’ll respond in time for the final product.

A China on Your Desktop

Imagine if instead of open information, the whole world was open. Imagine if, instead of downloading software and articles off the internet, you could downloaded that plastic piece that keeps breaking on your laptop. You clicked a button and it materialized in your hand. If you needed a hammer, you found one online, zapped it onto your desk, and went off to start using it. This isn't Star Trek- according to some, this is the near future.

http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/09/3d-printing-and-self-replicating-machines-in-your-living-room-seriously/

Reprap is just one example of the 3D printing movement. The goal is to create a device that can take a 3d object, made in any number of modeling programs (some of which are open source!) and convert it into a physical object. The applications of this kind of machine are endless (and really cool looking), but one of the most significant ones is the printing of the machine itself - self replication.

Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did....Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750—or theprinting press in 1450, or thetransistor in 1950—it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches.  - The Economist(2011)

As amazing of an idea this is, there is another darker side to the proposed 'revolution'. Randall Monroe sums it up right here. Basically, can the common man be trusted with ownership of production? The push for openness of information has been welcomed with open arms, and the effects have been positive for the most part. However, there has yet to be any manifestations of openness in the physical world that compare to that in the digital. This could be due to the less than stellar record for attempts at 'openness of production', i.e. communism.

Karl Marx's argument for a common possession of means of production was that the 'bourgeoisie', or those who had control of production, were promoted by greed to exploit people's labor for profit. However, attempts at this model have usually resulted in dictators such as Mao and Stalin. Various smaller organizations throughout history have attempted collective ownerships, such as Shakers in early America, Essine Jews in ancient Israel, Incas, and even the LDS church practiced it with the law of consecration for a short time. However, all examples have either been in isolated communities or short-lived failures. All of the early 19th century experiments in Utopian communities had the same results. What I'm getting at is perhaps entirely open production is detrimental to society. If every blog on the internet was converted into a physical object, how many worthless pieces of plastic would there be? Although openness can generate many great ideas and encourage their proliferation, it comes at the cost of numberless amounts of useless user-generated rubbish. Perhaps society simply isn't ready for a truly open means of production. This goes to show how important the need for control is in this wave of openness. I for one don't want to open my mailbox to find tons of plastic figurines showing me how I can 'flatten my belly with these 3 simple tricks!'

Weaponized Media

    You've all seen the Kony video by now, I'm sure. You've also heard all the arguments for and against it, so I'll leave decision to praise or criticize up to you. You're a smart person, you can do your own research, and I'd highly encourage that you do, because as soon as you watched that video, read that article, or checked all your friends' updates on facebook/twitter, you became part of an 'experiment'. It might do us all a bit of good to step back and look at what exactly this experiment is before we start jumping on any trains, be they for or against the cause.

What we have here is a cohesive and well aimed movement to draw attention to a cause; invisible children. But what's that you say? the facts are distorted? IC is a scam? Kony isn't the real bad-guy? Doesn't matter. The video could've been about refugees instead of kids, or animal cruelty, or even bird-food shortages in Central Park. What I mean is that the content of the video wasn't as important as the the presentation of it all.

In an interview with Jedediah Jenkins, one of the creators of the film, he says:

"...the reality is we would work so hard, and make all these videos, and pour so much effort into them, and they would get 3,000 views. But then a video with a cat flushing a toilet gets 40 million views. That left us going, "What are we doing wrong?" .... our goal was to make a movie you could watch online, that’s entertaining, and that tells the story in a digestible way. And we had no idea how hungry the global audience was for that. "

The cause never changed in all the years they worked on it. What did change is the medium, the nature of video that they put out. They intentionally made it a tear-jerker, the kind of emotive video we all forward to our friends and post on our blogs. They spent time and money designing it to be viral. However, there are plenty of videos that get millions more views and illicit no response. The important thing they did was to accompany this with a specific hook to take people's clicks and likes, and turn them into a political and physical force. They pointed people at their representatives, and made it possible to send a message with the click of a button, be it liking their facebook page or sending an email. They stream-lined donation, made a kit  for people who did, and did their best to make the kit viral with the "cover the night" event. They made taking action in the cause as easy and fashionable as possible, and it worked. Whether or not you looked into the facts and decided to support or decry them for frauds, you are participating in exactly the discussion they wanted you to. Every mention of the campaign makes it more of a success, because the nature of  click-activism is that as long as it's been discussed, good or bad, that discussion keeps it at the top of the web and on everybody's newsfeed. The Kony campaign is a prime example of how well designed media can turn the zeitgeist into a tool. It's been a success so far, and I expect to see it reduplicated in the near future, for everything from political campaigns to marketing. Politicians and the like already 'link in' to twitter, facebook, tumblr, you name it. However, this kind of mass promotion and media designed to be viral is going to become a trend. The future of advertising is here, and it is us- or at least our status updates.

Open Source Reality

I don't know about you guys, but I am pretty excited to be assigned to the openness group. If you couldn't tell from my thesis post, I think openness is a grand idea. I don't think it's necessarily a good idea in all cases, but I think it has the potential to bring about some very big changes, albeit over a long period of time. I'd like to expound on an example I shared earlier in a comment: the Arduino manufacturer.

In class we often talk about open-source government and software. Most open source projects are non-profits, or in rare cases for profits (like Mozilla Co.) However, I don't think we've yet discussed how open-source is manifested into the more physical world- like manufacturing for instance. It doesn't really make economic sense to have an open-source manufacturing plan. That doesn't stop Arduino, though.

we release all of the original design files (Eagle CAD) for the Arduino hardware. These files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, which allows for both personal and commercial derivative works, as long as they credit Arduino and release their designs under the same license.

Basically, anyone can recreate or change the board and sell it, including competing manufacturers (they only have to pay royalties of they use the Arduino name). Arduino is still around, so they're obviously doing something right. One thing that is clear from their model, though, is the one thing they aren't doing- worrying about profits. The purpose of most hardware companies, and arguably every company, is to pull a profit (because if they didn't, they would either cease to exist, or become a charity). However, The purpose of Arduino isn't to maintain its existance. It is to provide a programming board. Because the creators don't care who makes it, they make it open so that anyone can produce the board. If they go out of business, it will be because someone else is manufacturing a similar or superior board in a better way. Thus their product can be perpetuated beyond the original manufacturers, in the same way those dumb facebook memes are perpetuated beyond their original websites. And the best part is, whenever anyone improves the boards design, the improvements are open to be implemented by everyone, including Arduino. So it looks like open-source manufacturing isn't too bad of an idea after all. Maybe we'll see some application of it in other industries in the not-so-distant future. What do you think?

Stuxnet: the *real* modern warfare

So this isn't actually about government conspiracies or video-games or anything. Sorry, I just wrote that to get your attention; looks like it worked! But to whet your appetite for top-secret operations, here's a video explaining what stuxnet is. I don't know about all the facts he quotes, but stuxnet is real, and pretty darn interesting!

Again, I don't want to start a debate on politics, especially since I don't know it well enough to pass off being knowledgeable about it. Rather, I'd like to point out why this is important, because it's exactly what I was talking about with my thesis.

The German emperor Wilhelm II is quoted as saying "“I believe in horses….The automobile is a transient phenomenon”. Some European nations held onto the horse all the way into WWII, but I'm sure we've all heard plenty about disruptive technology. As soon as a new technology comes along, it replaces the old and everybody makes the switch over. But what if the switch changes the entire fabric of society? When tanks and trains replaced horses and wagons, it restructured entire populations. People could live in higher concentrations than ever before, and this changed everything from the way spread to people's health. What stuxnet represents is the next stage in disruptive innovation. Thanks to the digital revolution, everything is connected to the internet, from the phone in your hand to New York city's power grid. Now when a military wants to take down an enemy nuclear power plant, instead of sending in a squad of troops or unmanned drones, they can write a virus. When everything is connected digitally, physical troops and legal boundaries cease to be a factor in waging war. Guns and planes are still important for obvious reasons, just as horses continued to play an important role in communications and transportation after the advent of tanks. Since the new tank of digital age has been released, the civilian counterpart isn't far behind. As everything becomes more connected, physical boundaries will mean less and less. When preparing a presentation with the information group, we started a google+ hangout. Because of this, we were able to get input from Professor Burton, members of the group that weren't there, and someone in Korea (a bit unexpected, but he was nice!) Someone posted a while ago about how people in Korea can do their shopping while waiting for the train. I don't expect Ralphs to go out of business anytime soon, but I do expect more stores to make their goods available outside of the store. Who knows? maybe soon, you'll even get doctor check-ups online instead of in person.