Better Get This Down...

Posted by me on 6/21/09 to Twitter and Facebook:

The digital revolution has not created new problems; has merely exposed the unsustainability (i.e. illegitimacy) of the prevailing paradigm.

Better clarify. I was pondering a friend's offer to "share" some expensive software, and I was probing the roots of my gut discomfort with the idea of using software without paying for it. The question that gnaws at me: "Should I be entitled to use something just because it exists?"

This question is at the heart of the fair use/copyright/intellectual property debate that is one of the core conflicts of our epoch. Being both a creator and voracious consumer of digital music, visual art, and software, I relate to both sides of this issue.

One pillar of the entitlement argument is that since each digital copy is a new instance of the original creation and in no way diminishes or detracts from any other existing copy, no harm is done to other owners of the software or to the creator. This is not the same as me stealing a chair you bought from a craftsman, where the creator has already irrevocably been paid for the one-and-only object he created, but my possession of the chair deprives you, the rightful owner.

That got me thinking. In Nature, the abundance of a particular resource is a hard fact, with definite consequences in terms of consumption and valuation. Nature (mind that capital "N") does not pretend that an abundant resource is scarce. This is a uniquely human behavior. While the good/great/genius idea behind a piece of software may be rare indeed, once the software is instantiated into the digital world it becomes a freely replicated commodity, despite our efforts to impose "digital rights management" schemes upon it and make it seem limited and controlled.

In Nature, abundance is abundance and scarcity is scarcity and from each flows inevitable and logical consequence. Humans, hopelessly beholden to the artificial economies they have created, can no longer abide by the natural logarithmic cycles of abundance and scarcity. We are locked into an abstract valuation of digital goods that is based on an analogy with physical goods -- an untenable analogy from a bygone age.

For me, the logical conclusion is that the scarce resource is the creator of the digital goods, not the digital goods themselves. Maltreatment of the genius behind the goods may be likened to pouring poison into your own well, or killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. We have misplaced our values -- mainly because this misplacement has been very fruitful to those who constitute the distribution mechanism for original works and intellectual property, but who are not themselves the creators.

Still, Nature does not abide fraud for long. Show me one sandcastle or house of cards that has withstood Nature just because Man ordained it. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" indeed. Whatever you say, Mr. Trunkless Legs of Stone...

Why walk on water when you can part the seas?

Now that Apple's switch to Intel processors is a fait accompli, we might as well leverage our new Macintosh hardware to greatest effect.

Mac users in a mixed plaform workplace inevitably run into one Windows app we can't get around, and we've always had to resort to Windows emulators -- memory hogging programs like VirtualPC or SoftWindows that painstakingly re-map Intel-targeted processor instructions to Motorola or PowerPC instructions. However well-intentioned, Windows emulation has been a slow and unpleasant experience.

Parallels Desktop ushers in a new era of Windows compatibility without opcode emulation and without rebooting. This is the first Mac product to create a Windows session that uses native instructions -- plus it lets you share clipboard data and documents between the MacOS and the Windows session without resorting to network drives.

I've got an evaluation copy on my desk now that I haven't installed yet, but I'm willing to predict this with fair certainty: I will be getting rid of that PC in my office very soon.

Form and content

As we progress toward multi-channel delivery of news content we become increasingly mindful of the need to keep content separate from metadata that dictates a specific form. In the traditional Web publishing model, the content (e.g. the text of an article) was hopelessly intermixed in HTML files with code for tables and frames and other devices meant to express how the page would be displayed with a browser window.

We are starting to use publishing tools that hold content in channel independent databases until the delivery method is known, at which time content and formatting code are sent as a stream to the user. CSS Zen Garden is a site that showcases the ability of W3C Cascading Style Sheets to specify radically different presentations without altering the source HTML file. Thought-provoking stuff.

Survey says...

I never knew this organization existed -- The National Council on Public Polls -- but their Web site says they were established in 1969. I'm massively down with their purpose, which is "to set the highest professional standards for public opinion pollsters, and to advance the understanding, among politicians, the media and general public, of how polls are conducted and how to interpret poll results."

It's a mission that works hand-and-glove with journalism, and here they address journalists directly.

Buyer's remorse

The SUV fad continues to illuminate the worst aspects of the American character. Now Irresponsibility joins Stupidity and Arrogance to form the unholy triumvirate of core values...

The Philadelphia Experiment

A group of local investors has bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News (and let's not forget Philly.com) from McClatchy Co., resolving the most eagerly watched chapter of its recent round of selloffs. The company, called Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., comprises many local business people, all of whom presumably will continue to make money from their current gigs. From the Philly.com article:

Local ownership by a group with diversified business and political interests could cast the papers' editorial independence into doubt, some observers have worried.

Count me as "some observer," I guess. It's hard enough to do good journalism when your parent company is a huge media corporation. Imagine the added difficulties of having local interests at stake.

Intelligent noise you can dance to

Oh, good lordy, yes! Philadelphia gets the first TWO shows of Radiohead's newly-announced limited North American tour.

We Are Not Alone

"Our role will be to provide compelling content -- whether it’s coming from our towers, our streams, our multicast channels, or our podcasts."

Sound like something a newspaper industry executive would say? Yeah, but this quote comes from the self-proclaimed Voice of Radio Revolution. It's a comforting thought: as we struggle to find our next viable incarnation, our competition is doing the same thing...