Original post at Boing Boing
In 1992, a man named Guy Coggins combined Kirlian photography with biofeedback and introduced Aura Imaging photography. He began selling cameras through his Redwood City company, Progen, and according to the company's FAQ, there are only about 250 owners of these in the US. One of the owners is in San Francisco's Japantown. You'd miss it if you didn't know what to look for. It's a small gift shop called Sharaku across from the plaza, filled with Japanese textiles, figurines, and replica instruments. The only clue that something else goes on in this shop are yellowed, letter-sized, photocopied signs on the window advertising aura photography. But for $15 (plus tax) the old lady who runs the shop will reluctantly take you into the back, set up her Biofeedback Imaging Color Spectrometer 3000, and photograph your aura. And yes, that is quite a profit margin. According to the camera company's site, the cost per photo is about $3.30 (including film and "functional warranty replacement" charge).
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine decided that getting his aura photographed would be the perfect way to say goodbye to 2009 and invited my husband-to-be and I to join.
There were a couple tourists in the claustrophobic shop, browsing the racks and shelves of knickknacks, but when we asked to have our auras photographed she took us straight to the shop's back room. This is where the camera lives along with a microwave on a table, a heater, some boxes, and a bookshelf lined with what look like old Japanese serial novels.
In front of a white background screen is a bench on which she set the biofeedback boxes and motioned for me to sit down. The camera she uses is a big rectangular box with a window on the front in which I could can see my reflection pretty clearly. I placed my hands on the metal finger guides and sat as still as possible. I made no effort to think anything other than trying not to look like I had a double chin -- my biggest fear in photographs. She made some adjustments with the camera and I half expected to feel something coming out of the metal under my hands, but after about 10 seconds she told me I was done.
As she pulled the Fuji instant film out of the camera and set it next to the microwave, a dot matrix printer began to print an ASCII diagram of my aura and I - with @'s for eyes and letters representing the colors - and explanations of the dominant colors representing future (left side), experience (above), and expression (right). The blue above my head means I am best described by "depth-of-feeling," while the blue to my right means I "put calm into the world". My orange left side means I am coming into a period of creativity and sensuality. Not bad!
After a few more minutes, she tore the plastic off the film and handed my aura photograph to me. The first thing I noticed was how colorful the image was. Then I noticed that the colors of my aura matched the colors of the hoodie I had on. Coincidence? Joe Nickell, Research Fellow at the Center for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote a piece for the Skeptical Inquirer in 2000 about his experience with aura photography, titled "Aura Photography: A Candid Shot." After having his first photo taken, Joe stepped away from the booth to talk to some students and decided to return and see if the photo came out the same. It didn't. In fact, far from it. The photographer suggested that he'd been "teaching" students between photos and that changed his aura. Joe was unconvinced, as I am not completely convinced that my aura wasn't based on my clothing.
Real aura or not, the pictures are far cooler than anything your mom made you have taken at Olan Mills.
Showing posts with label Online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
7x7 Clamour Blog
Since mid-April, I've been blogging about San Francisco arts & entertainment twice a week for 7x7 magazine's Clamour blog. All posts are available here.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Q&A with Thao Nguyen [Noise Pop]
Noise Pop Festival Program & website, 2009 [Link]
Thao Nguyen fronts the trio Thao with the Get Down Stay Down with Adam Thompson on bass and Willis Thompson on drums (no relation) whose second album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, came out on Kill Rock Stars in 2008. With Thao’s airy, animated voice dancing over jangly guitars and light, poppy rhythms, you can’t help but feel a little happier when you listen to them. Thao headlines solo at the Swedish American Hall on February 26 and promises to find out what puts the “Swedish” in Swedish American Hall.
Noise Pop: Are you excited to headline Noise Pop?
Thao: Am I headlining?
NP: Yes.
T: Really? Holy shit! No one tells me anything, I swear. I better be better than I thought I would have to be.
NP: So you’re excited.
T: Yes, totally. Sorry, it's just funny. If you knew the amount of things I don't know about what I'm doing for my job it would crack you up.
NP: Did opening for Rilo Kiley and Xiu Xiu in the beginning of 2008 pay off when you went out on your own later in the year?
T: When we released [We Brave Bee Stings and All], if we had gone on our own headlining tour it would have been just a string of shitboxes. But when we did that headlining tour a lot of people showed up who would not have had they not seen us otherwise with these other bands. There's no way that we had any sort of footing or clout. We used to play so many places with "tavern" in the name and it's just not that cool.
NP: Taverns can be tough. Any artists you’d love to play with?
T: I have a very deep affection for Andrew Bird, but I feel like if we shared the same bill I would be paralyzed because I'd feel too inadequate to play. And Mirah, I've always been a really big fan of her.
NP: How much songwriting does the rest of the band do?
T: I would say that I write all the songs. It's weird, I'm not really into control but definitely with songwriting I want it, so I prefer that the guys in the band not even hear the song until I feel like it is complete. And they write their own parts because they're much better at drums and bass than I am. I love that collaborative energy, it's just that the song—I need it to be my own.
NP: How did you find each other?
T: Willis and I went to college together and he was pretty much the first drummer I've ever played with. He's like my first rhythmic love and I think he's amazing. I know that he's irreplaceable because I've tried before and it didn't work out.
NP: And Adam?
T: We dated for a minute a long time ago. They are the best musicians that I have had the pleasure of working with. At the same time, we gel enough personality-wise, and we're of the same ethos and the same goals so it works, for the most part, really well.
NP: Working and traveling with these two guys all the time, do you sometimes crave the company of women?
T: I swear, for every 14,000 men there's one woman. Other bands you play with, the people in crews, the staff at venues—everyone is a dude. I know a lot of great female musicians but for whatever reason there's just less. When you do meet a woman that plays music—a touring musician, which is kind of a weird lifestyle—the camaraderie is almost immediate because we have so much to talk about, grievances and triumphs.
NP: I hear you’re looking for a fourth member, now’s your chance.
T: Yeah, and I would love if it was a woman. Mostly they have to be cool, but think I need that balance. Sometimes after three weeks or two weeks with these two dudes I haven't talked about my feelings in forever.
NP: Speaking of feelings, what music do you love?
T: Motown, late 50s and 60s soul and some pop, rock, and folk. That era and into the early 70s is primarily what I listen to, which is why it's such a disability for me to talk about new music that I might be interested in. I also listen to a lot of hip-hop and R&B and want to incorporate that more into the next album (not in an embarrassing way).
NP: No freestyling.
T: I’m not cool enough to do that.
NP: Are you glad you game out to the West Coast?
T: I'll say this about San Francisco: I think I've been to a lot of cities now—actually I'm pretty sure that they all blur together—but I only want to live here.
- JESS HEMERLY
NP: I hear you’re looking for a fourth member, now’s your chance.
T: Yeah, and I would love if it was a woman. Mostly they have to be cool, but think I need that balance. Sometimes after three weeks or two weeks with these two dudes I haven't talked about my feelings in forever.
Thao Nguyen fronts the trio Thao with the Get Down Stay Down with Adam Thompson on bass and Willis Thompson on drums (no relation) whose second album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, came out on Kill Rock Stars in 2008. With Thao’s airy, animated voice dancing over jangly guitars and light, poppy rhythms, you can’t help but feel a little happier when you listen to them. Thao headlines solo at the Swedish American Hall on February 26 and promises to find out what puts the “Swedish” in Swedish American Hall.
Noise Pop: Are you excited to headline Noise Pop?
Thao: Am I headlining?
NP: Yes.
T: Really? Holy shit! No one tells me anything, I swear. I better be better than I thought I would have to be.
NP: So you’re excited.
T: Yes, totally. Sorry, it's just funny. If you knew the amount of things I don't know about what I'm doing for my job it would crack you up.
NP: Did opening for Rilo Kiley and Xiu Xiu in the beginning of 2008 pay off when you went out on your own later in the year?
T: When we released [We Brave Bee Stings and All], if we had gone on our own headlining tour it would have been just a string of shitboxes. But when we did that headlining tour a lot of people showed up who would not have had they not seen us otherwise with these other bands. There's no way that we had any sort of footing or clout. We used to play so many places with "tavern" in the name and it's just not that cool.
NP: Taverns can be tough. Any artists you’d love to play with?
T: I have a very deep affection for Andrew Bird, but I feel like if we shared the same bill I would be paralyzed because I'd feel too inadequate to play. And Mirah, I've always been a really big fan of her.
NP: How much songwriting does the rest of the band do?
T: I would say that I write all the songs. It's weird, I'm not really into control but definitely with songwriting I want it, so I prefer that the guys in the band not even hear the song until I feel like it is complete. And they write their own parts because they're much better at drums and bass than I am. I love that collaborative energy, it's just that the song—I need it to be my own.
NP: How did you find each other?
T: Willis and I went to college together and he was pretty much the first drummer I've ever played with. He's like my first rhythmic love and I think he's amazing. I know that he's irreplaceable because I've tried before and it didn't work out.
NP: And Adam?
T: We dated for a minute a long time ago. They are the best musicians that I have had the pleasure of working with. At the same time, we gel enough personality-wise, and we're of the same ethos and the same goals so it works, for the most part, really well.
NP: Working and traveling with these two guys all the time, do you sometimes crave the company of women?
T: I swear, for every 14,000 men there's one woman. Other bands you play with, the people in crews, the staff at venues—everyone is a dude. I know a lot of great female musicians but for whatever reason there's just less. When you do meet a woman that plays music—a touring musician, which is kind of a weird lifestyle—the camaraderie is almost immediate because we have so much to talk about, grievances and triumphs.
NP: I hear you’re looking for a fourth member, now’s your chance.
T: Yeah, and I would love if it was a woman. Mostly they have to be cool, but think I need that balance. Sometimes after three weeks or two weeks with these two dudes I haven't talked about my feelings in forever.
NP: Speaking of feelings, what music do you love?
T: Motown, late 50s and 60s soul and some pop, rock, and folk. That era and into the early 70s is primarily what I listen to, which is why it's such a disability for me to talk about new music that I might be interested in. I also listen to a lot of hip-hop and R&B and want to incorporate that more into the next album (not in an embarrassing way).
NP: No freestyling.
T: I’m not cool enough to do that.
NP: Are you glad you game out to the West Coast?
T: I'll say this about San Francisco: I think I've been to a lot of cities now—actually I'm pretty sure that they all blur together—but I only want to live here.
- JESS HEMERLY
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
How I Had 15 Minutes of Internet Fame (Without Really Trying) [IFTF]
Institute for the Future, October 15, 2008 [Link]
In 1968, Andy Warhol declared, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Maybe everyone being famous for 15 minutes is still part of a future we haven't achieved yet, but we're getting closer to something like it thanks largely to the Internet. We've seen fame coming to a variety of unlikely corners of the net, from a book deal for the guy who writes about stuff white people like to a MySpace celebrity getting her own dating reality show on VH1. But for many of the things that become "Internet famous," the creators behind the phenomenon remain out of the spotlight while their blogs get all the fame. It's not about lack of recognition; it's about a blog or a website becoming viral and achieving a kind of fame that transcends the people who made it.
Last week, in the wake of one of the worst few days for Wall Street ever, a friend Chris made his Facebook status message read something about it being a bad year for Wall Street but a banner year for pictures of sad guys on trading floors. I pinged him and within 15 minutes of my IM he'd set up a blog for us on Tumblr: http://sadguysontradingfloors.tumblr.com. We immediately started to curate and caption photos of traders accompanying stories about the stock market's decline. There were lots of them. The inclusion of a sad-looking trader with an article about the end of the financial world as we know it was an instant Internet meme.
I sent the Sad Guys on Trading Floors link to my IFTF colleague, friend, and blogger extraordinaire David Pescovitz. David posted our blog to his, BoingBoing, which is one of the most widely read blogs on the web. From there, it took off like a highly contagious virus. Some of the blogs mentioned Chris and I by name, but once we started to get into the bigger publications' blogs like New York Times: Economix and Wall Street Journal: The Wallet, the bloggers talked about the site and its content but never about us. But the blog was linked on social sites like MetaFilter (who railed on the lameness of our comments, sorry MeFi!); on magazine blogs like Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish on TheAtlantic.com; Twittered by what seem to be a lot of people (and they're still Twittering us); and mentioned on CNBC.
On the first full day our blog was up on Tumblr, we had 259,390 page views. In Internet numbers, that's huge.
Chris and I were, and quite frankly still are, dumbfounded. All we did was agree on a noticeable phenomenon that we thought was funny (photos of distressed-looking traders accompanying stock market articles), open an account on Tumblr (Chris did that part), scour the web for pictures of sad traders (not hard to find; news site slideshows were a godsend), save the pics to our desktops, upload, write some captions that we at least found mildly amusing, and post. Our friends know we were behind it, but to most people, "we" are just some nameless people behind monitors who compiled a blog of pictures and captions. The blog kind of speaks for itself and became an entity unto itself. A few people took the time to find our email addresses and send us some "fan mail" and people on Tumblr reposted us. Some really good friends actually IMed me the link without knowing that I was a co-blogger until I told them.
On other sites some comments praised us, some made fun of our captions, and some comments pointed out that it was unfair to "blame the traders," since they were only at the behest of the big guys on top of Corruption Mountain. But that's not even what we were doing. We just thought it was funny that every single news article about the stock market was accompanied by a picture of a sad trader making a sad face, whether the expression was one of genuine dismay snapped during a time of actual crisis or had nothing to do with the declining stock market.
So does this count as my 15 minutes of fame? Who knows. A blog a friend and I made on a whim certainly got its 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not sure he and I personally did. But maybe this is what Warhol meant by 15 minutes of fame, that one day ideas and creations would take off—but only the people behind the ideas and their friends really know or care about who's behind the creation or creations. It's as if Warhol forecasted Internet fame before the Internet existed.
Somebody made a mashup with the images!
— Jess Hemerly, October 2008
In 1968, Andy Warhol declared, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Maybe everyone being famous for 15 minutes is still part of a future we haven't achieved yet, but we're getting closer to something like it thanks largely to the Internet.
In 1968, Andy Warhol declared, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Maybe everyone being famous for 15 minutes is still part of a future we haven't achieved yet, but we're getting closer to something like it thanks largely to the Internet. We've seen fame coming to a variety of unlikely corners of the net, from a book deal for the guy who writes about stuff white people like to a MySpace celebrity getting her own dating reality show on VH1. But for many of the things that become "Internet famous," the creators behind the phenomenon remain out of the spotlight while their blogs get all the fame. It's not about lack of recognition; it's about a blog or a website becoming viral and achieving a kind of fame that transcends the people who made it.
Last week, in the wake of one of the worst few days for Wall Street ever, a friend Chris made his Facebook status message read something about it being a bad year for Wall Street but a banner year for pictures of sad guys on trading floors. I pinged him and within 15 minutes of my IM he'd set up a blog for us on Tumblr: http://sadguysontradingfloors.tumblr.com. We immediately started to curate and caption photos of traders accompanying stories about the stock market's decline. There were lots of them. The inclusion of a sad-looking trader with an article about the end of the financial world as we know it was an instant Internet meme.
I sent the Sad Guys on Trading Floors link to my IFTF colleague, friend, and blogger extraordinaire David Pescovitz. David posted our blog to his, BoingBoing, which is one of the most widely read blogs on the web. From there, it took off like a highly contagious virus. Some of the blogs mentioned Chris and I by name, but once we started to get into the bigger publications' blogs like New York Times: Economix and Wall Street Journal: The Wallet, the bloggers talked about the site and its content but never about us. But the blog was linked on social sites like MetaFilter (who railed on the lameness of our comments, sorry MeFi!); on magazine blogs like Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish on TheAtlantic.com; Twittered by what seem to be a lot of people (and they're still Twittering us); and mentioned on CNBC.
On the first full day our blog was up on Tumblr, we had 259,390 page views. In Internet numbers, that's huge.
Chris and I were, and quite frankly still are, dumbfounded. All we did was agree on a noticeable phenomenon that we thought was funny (photos of distressed-looking traders accompanying stock market articles), open an account on Tumblr (Chris did that part), scour the web for pictures of sad traders (not hard to find; news site slideshows were a godsend), save the pics to our desktops, upload, write some captions that we at least found mildly amusing, and post. Our friends know we were behind it, but to most people, "we" are just some nameless people behind monitors who compiled a blog of pictures and captions. The blog kind of speaks for itself and became an entity unto itself. A few people took the time to find our email addresses and send us some "fan mail" and people on Tumblr reposted us. Some really good friends actually IMed me the link without knowing that I was a co-blogger until I told them.
On other sites some comments praised us, some made fun of our captions, and some comments pointed out that it was unfair to "blame the traders," since they were only at the behest of the big guys on top of Corruption Mountain. But that's not even what we were doing. We just thought it was funny that every single news article about the stock market was accompanied by a picture of a sad trader making a sad face, whether the expression was one of genuine dismay snapped during a time of actual crisis or had nothing to do with the declining stock market.
So does this count as my 15 minutes of fame? Who knows. A blog a friend and I made on a whim certainly got its 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not sure he and I personally did. But maybe this is what Warhol meant by 15 minutes of fame, that one day ideas and creations would take off—but only the people behind the ideas and their friends really know or care about who's behind the creation or creations. It's as if Warhol forecasted Internet fame before the Internet existed.
Somebody made a mashup with the images!
— Jess Hemerly, October 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Obama "First to Know" Text: Success or Sham? [IFTF]
Institute for the Future, August 25, 2008 [Link]
For some people, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. For me, it's presidential election season. There is no such thing as too much information or oversaturation. Given my obsession, it was only natural for me to sign up for Barack Obama's "First to Know" text message campaign.
I kept my phone out all day Friday anxiously awaiting the text between refreshes of Inkling's Obama-VP prediction markets. (I wasn't the only one.) But by the end of the work day, the text hadn't come, and word from the Internets said that the text would come Saturday.
At 1:53a on Saturday morning as I was putting shoes on and getting ready to leave a friend's house, I got the text:
There has been some criticism that it was a sham, that people didn't find out before the media and were disappointed, that it was a waste of time and anticipation. I strongly disagree.
First of all, anybody who thought that a large-scale SMS like this could be pulled off without a hitch is foolish. Different carriers have different delays. I frequently get text messages 4 hours after they are originally sent to me. That's just how it is right now. The Obama text was deployed just after 3am EST, midnight here in San Francisco. I didn't get it until 1:53a my time, just before last call. And not only were the networks flooded with the messages coming out from the Obama campaign, they were flooded with people immediately forwarding the message onto their friends and subsequent SMS exchanges. I sent and received at least 20 text messages within a half hour of receiving my text. I do think it's a bummer that some people never got the SMS but I hardly think that's grounds to call it a scam.
Second, while the New York Times and other major papers put the news online immediately, thus before many people had received their texts, the announcement was absent from some of the print editions of major papers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Why? Because the text was sent after most of the Saturday editions had long been put to bed and were peeling off the presses. Sending this kind of information after the major papers have gone to press has traditionally been considered political suicide, but the Obama campaign knew what they were doing. The information was disseminated digitally, not via newsstands. Some critics think the 3am timing was a last dig on Hillary, but I think it was less a dig and more recognizing the importance of that 3am response.
According to some complaints from people who never received the text, I was lucky to get mine at all. But I can honestly say that I've never been so excited to receive a text message. I was nowhere near a computer when the text came, and hadn't received any tips from friends elsewhere in the country, so it was nice to be able to go out, have fun, and receive news like this via 2am SMS. My only real disappointment is that the text didn't start with "Hi, this is Barry!"
It's important to keep in mind that this was an experiment and it was not executed perfectly, but it does serve as a proof of concept. But what other politician has tried something like this on such a large scale? It was a great way for the Obama campaign to harvest phone numbers and build quite a buzz, but it was also a bold use of mobile technology—and great practice for November. As a friend put it, "The blogosphere can't quite yet eclipse the major news media. Heck, twitterverse was convinced it was bloomberg before the runup that day."
Of course, Biden's support of the DMCA and his friendliness with the RIAA are whole different issues...
— Jess Hemerly, August 2008
For some people, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. For me, it's presidential election season. There is no such thing as too much information or oversaturation. Given my obsession, it was only natural for me to sign up for Barack Obama's "First to Know" text message campaign.
I kept my phone out all day Friday anxiously awaiting the text between refreshes of Inkling's Obama-VP prediction markets. (I wasn't the only one.) But by the end of the work day, the text hadn't come, and word from the Internets said that the text would come Saturday.
At 1:53a on Saturday morning as I was putting shoes on and getting ready to leave a friend's house, I got the text:
There has been some criticism that it was a sham, that people didn't find out before the media and were disappointed, that it was a waste of time and anticipation. I strongly disagree.
First of all, anybody who thought that a large-scale SMS like this could be pulled off without a hitch is foolish. Different carriers have different delays. I frequently get text messages 4 hours after they are originally sent to me. That's just how it is right now. The Obama text was deployed just after 3am EST, midnight here in San Francisco. I didn't get it until 1:53a my time, just before last call. And not only were the networks flooded with the messages coming out from the Obama campaign, they were flooded with people immediately forwarding the message onto their friends and subsequent SMS exchanges. I sent and received at least 20 text messages within a half hour of receiving my text. I do think it's a bummer that some people never got the SMS but I hardly think that's grounds to call it a scam.
Second, while the New York Times and other major papers put the news online immediately, thus before many people had received their texts, the announcement was absent from some of the print editions of major papers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Why? Because the text was sent after most of the Saturday editions had long been put to bed and were peeling off the presses. Sending this kind of information after the major papers have gone to press has traditionally been considered political suicide, but the Obama campaign knew what they were doing. The information was disseminated digitally, not via newsstands. Some critics think the 3am timing was a last dig on Hillary, but I think it was less a dig and more recognizing the importance of that 3am response.
According to some complaints from people who never received the text, I was lucky to get mine at all. But I can honestly say that I've never been so excited to receive a text message. I was nowhere near a computer when the text came, and hadn't received any tips from friends elsewhere in the country, so it was nice to be able to go out, have fun, and receive news like this via 2am SMS. My only real disappointment is that the text didn't start with "Hi, this is Barry!"
It's important to keep in mind that this was an experiment and it was not executed perfectly, but it does serve as a proof of concept. But what other politician has tried something like this on such a large scale? It was a great way for the Obama campaign to harvest phone numbers and build quite a buzz, but it was also a bold use of mobile technology—and great practice for November. As a friend put it, "The blogosphere can't quite yet eclipse the major news media. Heck, twitterverse was convinced it was bloomberg before the runup that day."
Of course, Biden's support of the DMCA and his friendliness with the RIAA are whole different issues...
— Jess Hemerly, August 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Rethinking Free Speech Online [IFTF]
Institute for the Future, July 7, 2008 [Link]
We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace are private companies with payrolls, investors, and ultimate ownership over the spaces we use to share and collect information. Are they limiting free speech? Or are we foolish to think of our speech as something that should be "free" in spaces that depend on subscriptions or advertising to stay alive?
Every community and service has its own terms of service, its own set of community guidelines. And for as much as people feel they are being wrongly censored and that their First Amendment rights are violated, community guidelines online are really the equivalent of "No shirt, no shoes, no service": if you don't like these rules, find another place to post.
Photo by jkoshi
For example, at a gathering at a local San Francisco bar a few months ago, I met a Flickr employee whose role is, in part, to field complaints about inappropriate behavior on Flickr. He follows Flickr's set of guidelines in determining what should be made private and what is appropriate for the Flickr public. When it comes to nudity, he must adhere to the "south of the border" rule, where any below-the-belt nudity is stricken from public access. Whether it is art or pornography doesn't matter—Flickr has decided to avoid that debate altogether and draw its own line.
On a much smaller scale, privately hosted community forums frequently develop strict rules of conduct for members and appoint moderators to delete incendiary posts and, in extreme cases, ban frequent offenders from the forum altogether. Even blogs have moderators who remove incendiary comments that they deem irrelevant to the dialog. Banned users frequently complain about their rights to free speech, but in the end, the site's rules reign.
The AP's Anick Jesdanun considers this matter in his July 3rd article, "'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights":
The implications become severe when you consider the accusations against Yahoo of working with the Chinese government to identify dissidents using the Internet to speak out against the government. That sort of activity may mar the company's image, but that doesn't undo the fact that users thought they were speaking anonymously in a worldwide forum, beyond the the scrutiny of the Chinese government. These companies know what you are doing online, and the recent Viacom v. YouTube ruling brings into question not only matters of free speech, but also privacy.
Jesdanun's article is an interesting read, and weighs the pros and cons of government intervention in assuring free speech rights online. But until those issues are worked out, as bottom-up as many of these services seem, there is always a ceiling: the company's bottom line.
— Jess Hemerly, July 2007
We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web.
We often think, talk, and write about social networking and public spaces online. But it's easy to forget an important part of the modern-day Internet: private companies rule the Web. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace are private companies with payrolls, investors, and ultimate ownership over the spaces we use to share and collect information. Are they limiting free speech? Or are we foolish to think of our speech as something that should be "free" in spaces that depend on subscriptions or advertising to stay alive?
Every community and service has its own terms of service, its own set of community guidelines. And for as much as people feel they are being wrongly censored and that their First Amendment rights are violated, community guidelines online are really the equivalent of "No shirt, no shoes, no service": if you don't like these rules, find another place to post.
Photo by jkoshi
For example, at a gathering at a local San Francisco bar a few months ago, I met a Flickr employee whose role is, in part, to field complaints about inappropriate behavior on Flickr. He follows Flickr's set of guidelines in determining what should be made private and what is appropriate for the Flickr public. When it comes to nudity, he must adhere to the "south of the border" rule, where any below-the-belt nudity is stricken from public access. Whether it is art or pornography doesn't matter—Flickr has decided to avoid that debate altogether and draw its own line.
On a much smaller scale, privately hosted community forums frequently develop strict rules of conduct for members and appoint moderators to delete incendiary posts and, in extreme cases, ban frequent offenders from the forum altogether. Even blogs have moderators who remove incendiary comments that they deem irrelevant to the dialog. Banned users frequently complain about their rights to free speech, but in the end, the site's rules reign.
The AP's Anick Jesdanun considers this matter in his July 3rd article, "'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights":
While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.
Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.
[...]
Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.
"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."
But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.
The implications become severe when you consider the accusations against Yahoo of working with the Chinese government to identify dissidents using the Internet to speak out against the government. That sort of activity may mar the company's image, but that doesn't undo the fact that users thought they were speaking anonymously in a worldwide forum, beyond the the scrutiny of the Chinese government. These companies know what you are doing online, and the recent Viacom v. YouTube ruling brings into question not only matters of free speech, but also privacy.
Jesdanun's article is an interesting read, and weighs the pros and cons of government intervention in assuring free speech rights online. But until those issues are worked out, as bottom-up as many of these services seem, there is always a ceiling: the company's bottom line.
— Jess Hemerly, July 2007
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Songbird: Future of the Free Media Web [IFTF]
Institute for the Future, April 4, 2008 [Link]
Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things. Songbird recently released its 0.5 version, and while not quite ready for consumers yet, it is building a strong community of developers and users.
From their website:
Built on Mozilla's XUL, Songbird is both a media player and web browser. By mashing up these applications, Songbird features a few interesting innovations. When surfing to an MP3 blog page, Songbird automatically sniffs out any media on the page and pops up a playlist of those tracks. Instead of having to download or play in a separate tab to test out the track, users can double click the song in the pop-up playlist to sample it. If you like it, you can simply click "Download" to save the song to your library. Once in your library, you can drag the track to a playlist or transfer it to a portable device. Songbird also lets you view your library in tag clouds and filter your library by metadata categories iTunes doesn't support.
Since it's open source, Songbird leverages an add-on platform for developers to create their own extensions and themes called "Feathers." There are already a good number of add-ons for Songbird, including a few that contextualize your music listening with metadata from all over the Web. My favorite thus far is an eMusic plugin that allows you to surf and download from eMusic directly through the player, bypassing eMusic's downloader, making the overall user experience much friendlier for eMusic users. Developers have also created device support for nearly every portable music device under the sun, including the iPod.
For audiophiles who scour the Internet for free media, Songbird is a great all-inclusive tool—a window to an Internet teeming with free media. The Internet provides the content, but Songbird helps your harvest, use, and make sense of it. As the community grows, it will be interesting to see what extensions people create and what kind of user base Songbird will foster. This recent release has brought them some good press, including MacLife and Wired. For more detailed information, check out the Songbird blog.
— Jess Hemerly,
Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things.
Two things we are beginning to talk about regularly at IFTF are open source and free media. Songbird, a media player in development by San Francisco's Pioneers of the Inevitable, harnesses both of these things. Songbird recently released its 0.5 version, and while not quite ready for consumers yet, it is building a strong community of developers and users.
From their website:
Play music. Play the Web.
Songbird is a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web. Songbird is committed to playing the music you want, from the sites you want, on the devices you want, challenging the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.
Songbird is a player and a platform. Like Firefox, Songbird is an open source, Open Web project built on the Mozilla platform. Songbird provides a public playground for Web media mash-ups by providing developers with both desktop and Web APIs, developer resources and fostering Open Web media standards, to wit, an Open Media Web.
Built on Mozilla's XUL, Songbird is both a media player and web browser. By mashing up these applications, Songbird features a few interesting innovations. When surfing to an MP3 blog page, Songbird automatically sniffs out any media on the page and pops up a playlist of those tracks. Instead of having to download or play in a separate tab to test out the track, users can double click the song in the pop-up playlist to sample it. If you like it, you can simply click "Download" to save the song to your library. Once in your library, you can drag the track to a playlist or transfer it to a portable device. Songbird also lets you view your library in tag clouds and filter your library by metadata categories iTunes doesn't support.
Since it's open source, Songbird leverages an add-on platform for developers to create their own extensions and themes called "Feathers." There are already a good number of add-ons for Songbird, including a few that contextualize your music listening with metadata from all over the Web. My favorite thus far is an eMusic plugin that allows you to surf and download from eMusic directly through the player, bypassing eMusic's downloader, making the overall user experience much friendlier for eMusic users. Developers have also created device support for nearly every portable music device under the sun, including the iPod.
For audiophiles who scour the Internet for free media, Songbird is a great all-inclusive tool—a window to an Internet teeming with free media. The Internet provides the content, but Songbird helps your harvest, use, and make sense of it. As the community grows, it will be interesting to see what extensions people create and what kind of user base Songbird will foster. This recent release has brought them some good press, including MacLife and Wired. For more detailed information, check out the Songbird blog.
— Jess Hemerly,
Sunday, September 23, 2007
IDFTF: Institute for Doing the Future [IFTF]
Institute for the Future, September 23, 2007 [Link]
David Pescovitz, Mike Love and I joined Bob Johansen at SQUID Labs today, where Bob talked about IFTF, our foresight/insight/action mantra, and his book, Get There Early. SQUID Labs is a unique breeding ground for innovation with a social bent. From their website:
While we at IFTF spend most of our time thinking about the future, the guys over at SQUID Labs are doing the future. IFTF is about foresight; SQUID Labs is about action. As one of the SQUID guys said today, you might think of them as the Institute for Doing the Future.
A great example of something to come out of their work is a SQUID spinoff company, Potenco. SQUID Labs co-founder Colin Bulthaup is the company's CEO. Their product is a pull-cord generator, intended for use with the XO Laptop (One Laptop Per Child Project). Check out their website for the specs. It's a great solution to the problem of providing electricity to places that lack an energy infrastructure.
One of the most interesting things that came out of today was an understanding of how the two organizations could really work together. We would be able to provide an idea of what areas or technology or engineering will present problems or dilemmas potentially needing solutions, and the SQUID Labs team could take cues from our forecasts to start working on these solutions before the problems really become problems.
They also happen to have a very cool location, in the control tower on the Alameda Naval Air Station.
— Jess Hemerly, September 2007
David Pescovitz, Mike Love and I joined Bob Johansen at SQUID Labs today, where Bob talked about IFTF, our foresight/insight/action mantra, and his book, Get There Early. SQUID Labs is a unique breeding ground for innovation with a social bent.
David Pescovitz, Mike Love and I joined Bob Johansen at SQUID Labs today, where Bob talked about IFTF, our foresight/insight/action mantra, and his book, Get There Early. SQUID Labs is a unique breeding ground for innovation with a social bent. From their website:
At SQUID Labs we develop breakthrough technologies and find solutions to unique engineering problems. Our exceptional team has expertise in a wide range of technical fields: from chip design and electronics to robotics, materials, embedded systems and manufacturing. We have created a highly dynamic and creative work environment which helps to inspire our consulting and contract research efforts.
In the course of our work (and play) we have developed novel and diverse technologies for a wide range of applications including printed electronics, lens molding, and high performance kites.
SQUID Labs is characterized by our multidisciplinary skill set and our ability to combine those diverse skills to create novel solutions.
"We're not a think tank, we're a do tank"
While we at IFTF spend most of our time thinking about the future, the guys over at SQUID Labs are doing the future. IFTF is about foresight; SQUID Labs is about action. As one of the SQUID guys said today, you might think of them as the Institute for Doing the Future.
A great example of something to come out of their work is a SQUID spinoff company, Potenco. SQUID Labs co-founder Colin Bulthaup is the company's CEO. Their product is a pull-cord generator, intended for use with the XO Laptop (One Laptop Per Child Project). Check out their website for the specs. It's a great solution to the problem of providing electricity to places that lack an energy infrastructure.
One of the most interesting things that came out of today was an understanding of how the two organizations could really work together. We would be able to provide an idea of what areas or technology or engineering will present problems or dilemmas potentially needing solutions, and the SQUID Labs team could take cues from our forecasts to start working on these solutions before the problems really become problems.
They also happen to have a very cool location, in the control tower on the Alameda Naval Air Station.
— Jess Hemerly, September 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Real World GarageBand [MacTribe]
MacTribe, June 2007
Studio time, marketing, promotion, pressing, packaging, distribution... all of these things require money and inside connections for up-and-coming musicians. But as technology advances and the phrase "famous on the Internet" begins to translate to dollars, do-it-yourself (DIY) musicians find more ways to work effectively outside of the music industry's traditional system. Enter Apple's GarageBand. This application has become a creative catalyst for everyone from the average tinkerer to the signed artist. From full album production to long-distance collaboration to sketching new songs on the road, Apple's music editing application has given new meaning to the term "garage band," allowing the company to further entrench itself in the music industry.
A perfect example of the DIY band, Los Angeles-based Bastard Fairies put their entire album together in one week using GarageBand. The band picked up Fisher Price toys from thrift stores to add texture to the music, threw in some socially conscious lyrics, stitched everything together in GarageBand, and offer the album as a free download. Band member Robin Davey loves the simplicity of the program and believes it served as an enabler for the band. "It's the quickest way to get your ideas down," he says. "Once you actually open it up and realize how quickly you can build a track it definitely enables that creative process and takes away the need for expensive studios and things like that. Everything is there in one package."
The Fairies advertised their free album on YouTube with videos assembled in Final Cut Pro. One of the videos, a "commercial" for the album, featured an eight-year old girl talking about the perils of religion and the failures of an educational system that pushes religion instead of empathy. The video quickly became popular on YouTube, and criticism from Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly unexpectedly boosted the DIY band's exposure. "People grabbed hold of [the video] and, because it was tagged at the end with the Bastard Fairies website, they discovered the album there," says Davey. "That led to it being most subscribed on YouTube."
Despite the popularity, the Bastard Fairies chose to keep with the DIY spirit and not profit off of the album in the wake of their celebrity status. They will offer a special version with five extra tracks and a bonus DVD for purchase, but the original album will always be free for download. "Because the album was done on a budget of about $10 there's no reason why we can't give it away," he says. "There's no one to tell us that we can't and also if we do that, people are going to download it. We're going to generate fans." Thanks to Apple's technology, they were able to successfully retain full control over the entire process, from recording to distribution and promotion.
Like cassette culture of the '80s, GarageBand is a way for new artists to record a demo, but unlike the '80s cassette culture, social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube allow artists to self-release and build a fan base before finding their way to the airwaves. An existing fan base gives them an advantage when it's time to shop for a label. "We're in this stage where you can do so much more by yourself and I think it's very empowering to be able to record yourself," says singer/songwriter Ari Heist. "As a musician, it's such a key thing because otherwise you'd be spending a whole lot of money to get other people to do it for you." Heist produced and recorded his 2006 EP, "The Green Room Sessions," in his Brooklyn apartment. He played every single instrument on the album—a feat in itself—and assembled the pieces with GarageBand. Unlike the Fairies, however, Heist has been signed to a major label, Columbia, for a few years. "I'm not the first to do this, but I'm really excited about it," he says, taking a break after performing at SXSW. "I use it all the time."
Even artists who don't record entire albums with the software find it a useful part of the creative process. Singer/songwriter Jann Klose uses GarageBand in conjunction with ProTools and Logic to collaborate on songs with his keyboardist. "When there’s a new song idea I usually dump it right into GarageBand," he says. Unlike Logic and Pro Tools, which consist of folders within a file, GarageBand creates a single all-inclusive file, making it easier for artists at different locations to collaborate. And since GarageBand files can be opened in Logic without needing conversion, Jann will open it up there in order to generate and print the arrangements for other parts of the ensemble. "My keyboardist and I go back and forth with the file and we can work on adding strings in MIDI thanks to the new MIDI capability in GarageBand."
GarageBand's ease of use combined with the portability of Mac laptops make it a great application for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they happen. For a touring musician, this is often the bus, the bar, or backstage. Adam Merrin of The 88 depended on GarageBand for the drums on his solo album, but his band, recently featured on the popular television show "The OC," also uses the application when they're on tour. "I remember being on the road and using it to record ideas while we were in the car," he says. "We can just open up the laptop and start creating melody ideas on it."
Apple's recent forays into music have proven incredibly successfully, and GarageBand is no exception. The program has already become popular with average Mac users who just like to geek out and play. Many companies also offer loops for users to download and manipulate. Communities on the Internet like MacJams and iCompositions provide forums for fans of the GarageBand to upload loops and tracks and share them with other members of the community. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has even gotten into the GarageBand spirit. He periodically releases tracks as GarageBand files and encourages user remixes. Since GarageBand is so easy to use, theoretically anyone can make music.
But could GarageBand make it too easy for anyone with a Mac and a mouse to have delusions of rock star grandeur? "No," says Adam Merrin. "The song is still the most important thing. It’s very easy and inexpensive for people to put out their own records but the best stuff is always well written." Robin Davey agrees there's no hope without some idea of what a song is all about. "That's the essential thing: the song that you start with," he says. "Without that you're not going to get anywhere."
As a viable option to expensive studio time, GarageBand will help good do-it-yourself artists emerge on little to no budgets. But unlike "American Idol," which offers the hope of three minutes of fame even if you sing like a jackal, some semblance of musical talent and a sense of creativity is a prerequisite for getting anywhere with the music you create, even in GarageBand. Still, the consensus is that it's worth digging into and exploring what GarageBand has to offer. "I couldn’t recommend it more," says Merrin. "The fact that it comes installed with all the Mac computers is the coolest thing of all." Robin Davey sees it as part of a trend in technology making artists more self-reliant. "I think that the more and more computers evolve, the easier it gets for artists to put their creativity down."
But while GarageBand won't replace the studio any time soon its rise is certainly not good news for everyone. Heist believes an easy and affordable program like GarageBand negatively impacts smaller independent studios who rely on the business of small up-and-coming bands. "You see a lot of studios going out of business, a lot of studios that were once very sought-after and had really nice stuff to offer, but you can create something that's as good or almost as good in your own home," he says. "It's a no brainer. You won't want to spend that much money everyday to go to a studio."
Jan Klose sees its accessibility as nothing but positive. "If you’re creative there’s a lot of things you can do with it right off the bat. The main thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get it since it comes with iLife and new Macs. The fact that it’s so fun and easy to use makes it an obvious choice."
Time will tell whether or not GarageBand will have a lasting impact on the music industry, but it's clear for now that Apple fortifies its place in the music scene with this DIY-inspired application. Combined with the ability to build a following on the Internet, GarageBand has the potential to revolutionize an entire segment of the digital music industry.
— Jess Hemerly, 2007
DIY finds some help.
Studio time, marketing, promotion, pressing, packaging, distribution... all of these things require money and inside connections for up-and-coming musicians. But as technology advances and the phrase "famous on the Internet" begins to translate to dollars, do-it-yourself (DIY) musicians find more ways to work effectively outside of the music industry's traditional system. Enter Apple's GarageBand. This application has become a creative catalyst for everyone from the average tinkerer to the signed artist. From full album production to long-distance collaboration to sketching new songs on the road, Apple's music editing application has given new meaning to the term "garage band," allowing the company to further entrench itself in the music industry.
A perfect example of the DIY band, Los Angeles-based Bastard Fairies put their entire album together in one week using GarageBand. The band picked up Fisher Price toys from thrift stores to add texture to the music, threw in some socially conscious lyrics, stitched everything together in GarageBand, and offer the album as a free download. Band member Robin Davey loves the simplicity of the program and believes it served as an enabler for the band. "It's the quickest way to get your ideas down," he says. "Once you actually open it up and realize how quickly you can build a track it definitely enables that creative process and takes away the need for expensive studios and things like that. Everything is there in one package."
The Fairies advertised their free album on YouTube with videos assembled in Final Cut Pro. One of the videos, a "commercial" for the album, featured an eight-year old girl talking about the perils of religion and the failures of an educational system that pushes religion instead of empathy. The video quickly became popular on YouTube, and criticism from Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly unexpectedly boosted the DIY band's exposure. "People grabbed hold of [the video] and, because it was tagged at the end with the Bastard Fairies website, they discovered the album there," says Davey. "That led to it being most subscribed on YouTube."
Despite the popularity, the Bastard Fairies chose to keep with the DIY spirit and not profit off of the album in the wake of their celebrity status. They will offer a special version with five extra tracks and a bonus DVD for purchase, but the original album will always be free for download. "Because the album was done on a budget of about $10 there's no reason why we can't give it away," he says. "There's no one to tell us that we can't and also if we do that, people are going to download it. We're going to generate fans." Thanks to Apple's technology, they were able to successfully retain full control over the entire process, from recording to distribution and promotion.
Like cassette culture of the '80s, GarageBand is a way for new artists to record a demo, but unlike the '80s cassette culture, social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube allow artists to self-release and build a fan base before finding their way to the airwaves. An existing fan base gives them an advantage when it's time to shop for a label. "We're in this stage where you can do so much more by yourself and I think it's very empowering to be able to record yourself," says singer/songwriter Ari Heist. "As a musician, it's such a key thing because otherwise you'd be spending a whole lot of money to get other people to do it for you." Heist produced and recorded his 2006 EP, "The Green Room Sessions," in his Brooklyn apartment. He played every single instrument on the album—a feat in itself—and assembled the pieces with GarageBand. Unlike the Fairies, however, Heist has been signed to a major label, Columbia, for a few years. "I'm not the first to do this, but I'm really excited about it," he says, taking a break after performing at SXSW. "I use it all the time."
Even artists who don't record entire albums with the software find it a useful part of the creative process. Singer/songwriter Jann Klose uses GarageBand in conjunction with ProTools and Logic to collaborate on songs with his keyboardist. "When there’s a new song idea I usually dump it right into GarageBand," he says. Unlike Logic and Pro Tools, which consist of folders within a file, GarageBand creates a single all-inclusive file, making it easier for artists at different locations to collaborate. And since GarageBand files can be opened in Logic without needing conversion, Jann will open it up there in order to generate and print the arrangements for other parts of the ensemble. "My keyboardist and I go back and forth with the file and we can work on adding strings in MIDI thanks to the new MIDI capability in GarageBand."
GarageBand's ease of use combined with the portability of Mac laptops make it a great application for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they happen. For a touring musician, this is often the bus, the bar, or backstage. Adam Merrin of The 88 depended on GarageBand for the drums on his solo album, but his band, recently featured on the popular television show "The OC," also uses the application when they're on tour. "I remember being on the road and using it to record ideas while we were in the car," he says. "We can just open up the laptop and start creating melody ideas on it."
Apple's recent forays into music have proven incredibly successfully, and GarageBand is no exception. The program has already become popular with average Mac users who just like to geek out and play. Many companies also offer loops for users to download and manipulate. Communities on the Internet like MacJams and iCompositions provide forums for fans of the GarageBand to upload loops and tracks and share them with other members of the community. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has even gotten into the GarageBand spirit. He periodically releases tracks as GarageBand files and encourages user remixes. Since GarageBand is so easy to use, theoretically anyone can make music.
But could GarageBand make it too easy for anyone with a Mac and a mouse to have delusions of rock star grandeur? "No," says Adam Merrin. "The song is still the most important thing. It’s very easy and inexpensive for people to put out their own records but the best stuff is always well written." Robin Davey agrees there's no hope without some idea of what a song is all about. "That's the essential thing: the song that you start with," he says. "Without that you're not going to get anywhere."
As a viable option to expensive studio time, GarageBand will help good do-it-yourself artists emerge on little to no budgets. But unlike "American Idol," which offers the hope of three minutes of fame even if you sing like a jackal, some semblance of musical talent and a sense of creativity is a prerequisite for getting anywhere with the music you create, even in GarageBand. Still, the consensus is that it's worth digging into and exploring what GarageBand has to offer. "I couldn’t recommend it more," says Merrin. "The fact that it comes installed with all the Mac computers is the coolest thing of all." Robin Davey sees it as part of a trend in technology making artists more self-reliant. "I think that the more and more computers evolve, the easier it gets for artists to put their creativity down."
But while GarageBand won't replace the studio any time soon its rise is certainly not good news for everyone. Heist believes an easy and affordable program like GarageBand negatively impacts smaller independent studios who rely on the business of small up-and-coming bands. "You see a lot of studios going out of business, a lot of studios that were once very sought-after and had really nice stuff to offer, but you can create something that's as good or almost as good in your own home," he says. "It's a no brainer. You won't want to spend that much money everyday to go to a studio."
Jan Klose sees its accessibility as nothing but positive. "If you’re creative there’s a lot of things you can do with it right off the bat. The main thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get it since it comes with iLife and new Macs. The fact that it’s so fun and easy to use makes it an obvious choice."
Time will tell whether or not GarageBand will have a lasting impact on the music industry, but it's clear for now that Apple fortifies its place in the music scene with this DIY-inspired application. Combined with the ability to build a following on the Internet, GarageBand has the potential to revolutionize an entire segment of the digital music industry.
— Jess Hemerly, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
Interview with David Pescovitz [MacTribe]
MacTribe, March 2007 [Links to Part 1 and Part 2]
MacTribe: Tell me about the Institute for the Future.
David Pescovitz: It's a non-profit think tank in Palo Alto that's been around since the late 60s. It spun out of RAND Corporation where some computer scientists and researchers were doing forecasting work but it was classified. They wanted to take the methodologies they were using and apply them in a more public way. So they formed the Institute. We help companies, governments, foundations, and other organizations think about the long-term future, often five to ten years out, and how developments in technology and culture may impact people's lives. Then based on that foresight they can hopefully make better decisions today.
MT: So there's some corporate responsibility stuff?
DP: We don't have a specific agenda that we're pushing. I'm part of the Technology Horizons Program where we look at everything from info tech all the way to synthetic biology, nanotech, neuro-prosthetics and brain implants, smart drugs, advanced simulations, these kind of things. The Institute also has a Ten-Year Forecast Program Program that focuses on discontinuities not just in tech but also in economics, health, and many other areas. Then we have a Health Horizons Program that focuses on the global health economy, medical technologies, and related societal forces.
MT: How do you come up with your forecasts?
DP: Nobody can predict the future, and we always tell people, "Don't believe anyone who says they can, especially if they're from California." The good news is that you don't have to predict the future. We look for what we call "weak signals." A weak signal could be a business deal; it could be a scientific paper that was published, or some kind of innovation or scientific breakthrough. When you look at these weak signals and combine them together as a complex ecology of interesting points, it's possible to find patterns and intersections and get a sense of where things may be headed. The future is a cone of uncertainty. The close you are, the clearer things are. But the further out you look, the foggier, the more uncertain, the future becomes. So using a variety of methodologies, we try to narrow that cone of uncertainty. So we do interviews, we do expert workshops where we bring in smart people from different fields to think about the future with us—scientists and journalists and researchers—and we read a lot of papers, we do ethnography. Several of my colleagues have spent time in Russia and South America and China hanging out with families and seeing how they use technology and how they live. So if you synthesize all of that together, it's possible to create a forecast, which we define as an "internally consistent, plausible view of what could happen."
MT: So in a strange way it's like informed science fiction?
DP: Science fiction is more like scenario planning, where you make up a very specific story of what could happen. That's one of the things we do but not the only thing. For example, one of my colleagues, Jason Tester, makes artifacts from the future, which are like physical objects that don't yet exist but embody some kind of technological trend. It helps people understand how the technology of the future might impact their lives. The idea really is to get people thinking systematically about the long-range future. I want people to participate in the conversation about the future so that they can help create the future that they want.
MT: Are a lot of corporations your partners?
DP: We have many large companies as our clients, and also governments, and other institutions. Last year, I contributed to a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Innovation where we took a broad look at how science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. A half-century is a very long time, so that was incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. One of the outcomes is an online forum of 100 outlook pages exploring a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies, from dark energy to climate change to technologies of cooperation to ecosystem modeling to programmable materials. In December, the forecast forum was opened to the public.
MT: And how have IFTF's predictions held up?
DP: We don't make predictions. We make forecasts.
MT: Right, forecasts.
DP: So we're the only futures organization that actually outlived its forecasts. We've done reasonably well. Some of the founders were actually involved in the ARPANET project that led to the Internet, and developed pioneering teleconferencing systems, and so we were spot on in terms of things like teleconferencing and groupware, which isn't unlike a wiki. One trend we missed was the popularity of SUVs.
MT: Oh really?
DP: We expected that by now people would have been driving much more fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead the pendulum swung the other way. Maybe it's swinging back.
MT: How long have you been working with the Institute?
DP: I've been working with the Institute in various ways—as an affiliate researcher and now as a part-time research director—for about a year and a half.
MT: That sounds very cool.
DP: It's an amazing job and I feel very fortunate to work with the people I do. It's also similar to journalism in a way. The reason I became a journalist was because there were too many things that interested me to pick one field. And at the Institute, if I'm curious about something or spot an unusual signal of some kind, I can research it and ask the experts to help me understand it. Then I get to do the synthesis to try and figure out what I might mean.
MT: That is fun.
DP: It's sort of like grad school but you get paid for it.
MT: And you don't really have to answer to anybody.
DP: Well we answer to the clients but a lot of the time our forecasts may not necessarily be pleasing to them either. And that's okay. Our aim is to provoke.
MT: So how did you get into working with MAKE: magazine?
DP: MAKE: is a DIY tech projects magazine published by O'Reilly Media. The Editor-in-Chief is Mark Frauenfelder, who is my best friend and my co-editor at BoingBoing. He was involved very early on and then me into the fold. I've been having a great time. And again, the work at MAKE: really is a natural fit with the main thing I've always been interested in, how people can use technology to empower themselves. MAKE: also has threads that lead back to the Whole Earth Review and the 60s counterculture and the personal computer revolution and hacking. It's people taking control of the tools that are around them and making those tools work they way they want. The founder and publisher of MAKE:, Dale Dougherty and I, have become close friends in part because we share this sense of wonder about how the world works. The satisfaction comes from knowing and learning and, of course, doing.
MT: Do you ever try to make some of the stuff?
DP: [laughs] You'd have to ask my wife if I ever succeed. Sadly, I don't have as much time as I would like to make things. My excuse is that I make words. I just have such a huge appreciation for the people who actually are making things.
MT: What are some of the coolest projects you've seen?
DP: Last year in April, we held a big Maker Faire where 20,000 people came to the San Mateo Fairgrounds and more than 150 makers presented their projects. It was really a celebration of DIY and the maker mindset. There were so many projects there that I liked. There was a great one where this recycling group made a supercomputer by networking together a bunch of outdated old PCs and powered the whole thing on a vegetable oil generator they made [EcoGeek link]. We're having another Bay Area Maker Faire in May this year and then one in Austin in November.
MT: That's cool.
DP: Yeah, the Maker Faire is pretty incredible. I have a secret love for robots, and there were a lot of interesting robots attending the Faire. I like it when people convert old junk into robots. We had a project in MAKE: on how to make Mousey the Junkbot, a little mobile robot built from an old computer mouse. [MAKE: editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder recently appeared on The Colbert Report and he brought Mousey the Junkbot to show Stephen Colbert. Video here.]
MT: Did you try that one?
DP: No but I plan to when my son's a little older. The fact is that a lot of people who read MAKE: may not necessarily make the projects in it. Many do, but a lot probably don't. I think that reading about how people do things and what astounding projects they've made is inspiring for anything that you do. It's really exciting to see what people are capable of making.
Part 2
David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this second of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his interest in technology, Boing Boing, and the success of Apple.
MacTribe: Where did your interest in technology and its potential to empower people begin?
DP: I was always very interested in science and understanding how the world works. In the very early '80s I got involved in personal computers. I'm sure your audience will appreciate that my first computer—well actually my first computer was a Texas Instruments, they probably don't appreciate that—but for my Bar Mitzvah I got an Apple II. And it didn't do anything interesting when you turned it on; there was just this blinking cursor. So one option was to buy software like games or other programs on a floppy, but those were expensive. Instead, we learned to program in BASIC and made our own games. I think that that something is lost today now that the computers have a curtain hiding the secret codes that make them work.
MT: When did you first go online?
DP: Once I got a modem in 1983, I became active on computer bulletin board systems and the weird information I could find there, mostly silly pirate and anarchist cookbook type stuff. In high school, I was also involved in 'zines and the punk scene. Then in college, I began writing about music and the counterculture. Around the time that I graduated, I became aware of a movement in San Francisco emerging at the intersection of counterculture and personal computers and drugs and music and young people empowering themselves with technology. I was already fascinated with San Francisco's history of avant garde art and industrial culture, so news of the emerging cyberculture was like a magnet and it brought me out here.
MT: Is that what you envisioned getting into as a kid?
DP: When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an engineer and go to MIT. For whatever reason, I blew off math in high school and my interests shifted. But I don't really have any regrets. Engineers often spend five or ten years on one or two problems and I think that would drive me crazy. I get to hop from one thing to the next at a moment's notice, following my curiosity wherever it takes me.
MT: I feel like the intellectuals in the Bay Area here are really the technology geeks and thinkers, whereas on the east coast the intellectuals are all about more “traditional” intellectual interests.
DP: There's definitely a culture of technological creativity, innovation, and experimentation in San Francisco. I think it survives whether the technology economy is bubbling or not. Money comes, money goes, but people continue to do “strange things with electricity," as the Dorkbot slogan goes. So the Bay Area is a fantastic place for someone like me who is constantly seeking novelty.
MT: That's why I like writing. You also don't have to commit to something for five years and see it fail but you do get to be a sort of participatory observer.
DP: Honestly, I don't even really like to write. I think I'm okay at it, but I much prefer to go out and meet people and learn interesting things from them. Of course, at some point I have to sit down and actually write about what I've learned. But I suppose that's also a good thing to do because if people hopefully read what I've written then I've done my part in sharing the knowledge too.
MT: Since you've been an Apple fan since the very beginning, how do you feel Apple's sudden success in the last couple years?
DP: I've been using an Apple since '82 so I literally grew up with them. In fact, when I still had my Texas Instruments computer, I drew an Apple logo on an index card and taped it to the top. I think it's amazing how successful Apple has become by paying attention to things like design and aesthetics, which other companies didn't seem to be caring much about. My friend Doug Rushkoff talks about the fact that advertising in the traditional sense doesn't work anymore because we're all clued in on the ways that companies try to coerce us. The only way you can really advertise a product is by making the product itself an advertisement for itself. I think that Apple does that extremely well.
MT: Are you going to get an iPhone?
DP: My Treo screen just cracked and June can't get here soon enough for me.
MT: What makes people so insanely passionate about their Macs?
DP: I wouldn't say I'm insanely passionate about Apple, but I do like most of their products. For me, the computer is just a tool, and the tool that I happen to like is made by this particular company. But I don't identify myself by the brand of computer that I use. I think that the Apple fan, literally someone who is fanatical about the company, really isn't that different from someone who is incredibly passionate about the car she drives or the brand of clothes that he wears. The brand becomes part of their identity. It embodies their lifestyle. What's more interesting to me is what people make with their tools, and Macs allow you to make a lot of very interesting things. That’s not to say that Apple isn’t without its problems,
particularly around their copy protection strategy in iTunes. However I was delighted to hear that Steve Jobs recently seems to be changing his, er, tune on DRM.
MT: I think the difference between somebody who's really fanatical about a brand of car and someone who's really fanatical about a brand of computer is that it's actually the thing that they're fanatical about that connects them to the place where they can be fanatical.
DP: That's a great insight. Is there a comparable fanaticism surrounding Windows?
MT: I haven't seen it but people claim it exists.
DP: You'd have to look at our stats, but I think around a quarter of our readers use Macintosh. [He's right about the stats, 23.8% of Boing Boing's visitors are on Macs.]
MT: Speaking of Boing Boing… how did it come about?
DP: Boing Boing is the blog that I co-edit with Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and Cory Doctorow. John Battelle is our band manager. Mark and his wife Carla Sinclair started bOING bOING as a print zine in the late 1980s. It was a photocopied zine about fringe culture, underground art, pranks, and that sort of thing. When I was in college, I absolutely loved bOING bOING. Then, shortly after I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to attend grad school at Berkeley, I started writing for Wired. That was around the third or fourth issue of Wired, I think. Mark was working at Wired and I introduced myself to him right away, bOING bOING had an office downstairs from Wired that it shared with a couple of other magazines. Mark brought me down to meet Carla and we became fast friends. They assigned me an article about the revival of Goth for the next issue of bOING bOING and then I became a contributing editor. Mark also created a Boing Boing Web site where we posted some archived articles and other random stuff. I worked on a few issues after that but it had become such a hassle to deal with distributors who owed you like $10 or whatever that Mark and Carla decided not to do the print edition any longer. So we started posting articles online that we wanted to write but couldn't find a home for anywhere else. For example, I wrote an article about people who drilled holes in their heads to achieve enlightenment.
MT: How did it become a proper blog?
DP: When Blogger was first developed, Mark tried it out for an article he was writing and converted Boing Boing to a blog. This was in January of 2000 and he started blogging pretty regularly, just very short descriptions of links he found interesting. When Mark went on vacation, he asked Cory Doctorow, whose science fiction he liked, to be the guest blogger. Cory stayed on and then I started blogging too but not nearly as often as those guys. We also had guest bloggers, including Xeni. Our readers liked her posts so much that we just asked her to be a permanent fixture. What's amazing is that at its biggest, bOING bOING the print 'zine was probably read by maybe 20,000 people, and now more than a million folks read the site every day. So Boing Boing is the overnight success that took almost twenty years. I like to imagine what it would be like if all the Boing Boing readers lived in one place. It'd probably be a very surreal city.
MT: And a little scary, for sure.
DP: But we all have our different reasons and mindsets about posting. For me, Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosities. Those were the predecessors to modern day museums. In the Victorian era, people would have these cabinets or even entire rooms devoted to unusual, natural, and man-made artifacts that they collected—strange coral formations, two-headed animals in jars, exotic weapons, weird plants, scientific specimens, that sort of thing. I love that whole mindset because it's really about appreciating the wonder of the world. So Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosity for me. I put things in it that I come across or that our readers are kind enough to share with me. I collect them there, on Boing Boing.
MT: Do you guys all sort through the submissions yourselves?
DP: Yes, the submissions go to all of us. And we get hundreds every day.
MT: Do you talk about who's going to post what?
DP: This surprises some people but we almost never talk about what we're going to post. In fact, we almost never have meetings of any kind. I think we've all been in the same room maybe five times. Ever. And we've probably been on the phone all together less than a dozen times. So the conversations between us on email are very rarely about editorial. They're more about formatting issues, technical glitches, or whether we want to accept a particular advertiser, but never about editorial plans.
MT: And you've never blogged the same thing?
DP: Oh yeah, we've blogged the same things many times. And then one person will notice it and say, "Hey, so and so already blogged that an hour ago," and then you just take it down.
MT: But you all do sort of have your own beats, right?
DP: Again, beats have never ever been discussed. We just have our own interests that we pursue and you can watch them change over time by looking at what we post. Of course, there are some obvious themes that are ongoing like Cory's copy-fight activism and Disney, Mark's interest in mid-century illustration and animation, Xeni's interest in technology in developing nations and alternative sex practices, and I'm obviously deep into weird science and strange phenomenon. And, um, Bigfoot. What I think is amazing is that there are so many people who share at least some of those interests with us. Not very long ago, it was tough if you didn't live in a huge metropolitan city to find people who shared some of the strange or obscure interests that you might have. A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." Boing Boing helps me do that.
— Jess Hemerly, 2007
David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this first of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his work at the Institute for the Future and MAKE: magazine.
MacTribe: Tell me about the Institute for the Future.
David Pescovitz: It's a non-profit think tank in Palo Alto that's been around since the late 60s. It spun out of RAND Corporation where some computer scientists and researchers were doing forecasting work but it was classified. They wanted to take the methodologies they were using and apply them in a more public way. So they formed the Institute. We help companies, governments, foundations, and other organizations think about the long-term future, often five to ten years out, and how developments in technology and culture may impact people's lives. Then based on that foresight they can hopefully make better decisions today.
MT: So there's some corporate responsibility stuff?
DP: We don't have a specific agenda that we're pushing. I'm part of the Technology Horizons Program where we look at everything from info tech all the way to synthetic biology, nanotech, neuro-prosthetics and brain implants, smart drugs, advanced simulations, these kind of things. The Institute also has a Ten-Year Forecast Program Program that focuses on discontinuities not just in tech but also in economics, health, and many other areas. Then we have a Health Horizons Program that focuses on the global health economy, medical technologies, and related societal forces.
MT: How do you come up with your forecasts?
DP: Nobody can predict the future, and we always tell people, "Don't believe anyone who says they can, especially if they're from California." The good news is that you don't have to predict the future. We look for what we call "weak signals." A weak signal could be a business deal; it could be a scientific paper that was published, or some kind of innovation or scientific breakthrough. When you look at these weak signals and combine them together as a complex ecology of interesting points, it's possible to find patterns and intersections and get a sense of where things may be headed. The future is a cone of uncertainty. The close you are, the clearer things are. But the further out you look, the foggier, the more uncertain, the future becomes. So using a variety of methodologies, we try to narrow that cone of uncertainty. So we do interviews, we do expert workshops where we bring in smart people from different fields to think about the future with us—scientists and journalists and researchers—and we read a lot of papers, we do ethnography. Several of my colleagues have spent time in Russia and South America and China hanging out with families and seeing how they use technology and how they live. So if you synthesize all of that together, it's possible to create a forecast, which we define as an "internally consistent, plausible view of what could happen."
MT: So in a strange way it's like informed science fiction?
DP: Science fiction is more like scenario planning, where you make up a very specific story of what could happen. That's one of the things we do but not the only thing. For example, one of my colleagues, Jason Tester, makes artifacts from the future, which are like physical objects that don't yet exist but embody some kind of technological trend. It helps people understand how the technology of the future might impact their lives. The idea really is to get people thinking systematically about the long-range future. I want people to participate in the conversation about the future so that they can help create the future that they want.
MT: Are a lot of corporations your partners?
DP: We have many large companies as our clients, and also governments, and other institutions. Last year, I contributed to a project for the Horizon Scanning Centre of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Innovation where we took a broad look at how science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. A half-century is a very long time, so that was incredibly challenging and a lot of fun. One of the outcomes is an online forum of 100 outlook pages exploring a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies, from dark energy to climate change to technologies of cooperation to ecosystem modeling to programmable materials. In December, the forecast forum was opened to the public.
MT: And how have IFTF's predictions held up?
DP: We don't make predictions. We make forecasts.
MT: Right, forecasts.
DP: So we're the only futures organization that actually outlived its forecasts. We've done reasonably well. Some of the founders were actually involved in the ARPANET project that led to the Internet, and developed pioneering teleconferencing systems, and so we were spot on in terms of things like teleconferencing and groupware, which isn't unlike a wiki. One trend we missed was the popularity of SUVs.
MT: Oh really?
DP: We expected that by now people would have been driving much more fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead the pendulum swung the other way. Maybe it's swinging back.
MT: How long have you been working with the Institute?
DP: I've been working with the Institute in various ways—as an affiliate researcher and now as a part-time research director—for about a year and a half.
MT: That sounds very cool.
DP: It's an amazing job and I feel very fortunate to work with the people I do. It's also similar to journalism in a way. The reason I became a journalist was because there were too many things that interested me to pick one field. And at the Institute, if I'm curious about something or spot an unusual signal of some kind, I can research it and ask the experts to help me understand it. Then I get to do the synthesis to try and figure out what I might mean.
MT: That is fun.
DP: It's sort of like grad school but you get paid for it.
MT: And you don't really have to answer to anybody.
DP: Well we answer to the clients but a lot of the time our forecasts may not necessarily be pleasing to them either. And that's okay. Our aim is to provoke.
MT: So how did you get into working with MAKE: magazine?
DP: MAKE: is a DIY tech projects magazine published by O'Reilly Media. The Editor-in-Chief is Mark Frauenfelder, who is my best friend and my co-editor at BoingBoing. He was involved very early on and then me into the fold. I've been having a great time. And again, the work at MAKE: really is a natural fit with the main thing I've always been interested in, how people can use technology to empower themselves. MAKE: also has threads that lead back to the Whole Earth Review and the 60s counterculture and the personal computer revolution and hacking. It's people taking control of the tools that are around them and making those tools work they way they want. The founder and publisher of MAKE:, Dale Dougherty and I, have become close friends in part because we share this sense of wonder about how the world works. The satisfaction comes from knowing and learning and, of course, doing.
MT: Do you ever try to make some of the stuff?
DP: [laughs] You'd have to ask my wife if I ever succeed. Sadly, I don't have as much time as I would like to make things. My excuse is that I make words. I just have such a huge appreciation for the people who actually are making things.
MT: What are some of the coolest projects you've seen?
DP: Last year in April, we held a big Maker Faire where 20,000 people came to the San Mateo Fairgrounds and more than 150 makers presented their projects. It was really a celebration of DIY and the maker mindset. There were so many projects there that I liked. There was a great one where this recycling group made a supercomputer by networking together a bunch of outdated old PCs and powered the whole thing on a vegetable oil generator they made [EcoGeek link]. We're having another Bay Area Maker Faire in May this year and then one in Austin in November.
MT: That's cool.
DP: Yeah, the Maker Faire is pretty incredible. I have a secret love for robots, and there were a lot of interesting robots attending the Faire. I like it when people convert old junk into robots. We had a project in MAKE: on how to make Mousey the Junkbot, a little mobile robot built from an old computer mouse. [MAKE: editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder recently appeared on The Colbert Report and he brought Mousey the Junkbot to show Stephen Colbert. Video here.]
MT: Did you try that one?
DP: No but I plan to when my son's a little older. The fact is that a lot of people who read MAKE: may not necessarily make the projects in it. Many do, but a lot probably don't. I think that reading about how people do things and what astounding projects they've made is inspiring for anything that you do. It's really exciting to see what people are capable of making.
Part 2
David Pescovitz is well known as a co-editor of the zine-turned-group-blog BoingBoing. But he is also a research director at the Institute for the Future, a technology think tank in Palo Alto, editor-at-large at MAKE: magazine, and a correspondent to Wired. In this second of a two-part interview, David talks to MacTribe about his interest in technology, Boing Boing, and the success of Apple.
MacTribe: Where did your interest in technology and its potential to empower people begin?
DP: I was always very interested in science and understanding how the world works. In the very early '80s I got involved in personal computers. I'm sure your audience will appreciate that my first computer—well actually my first computer was a Texas Instruments, they probably don't appreciate that—but for my Bar Mitzvah I got an Apple II. And it didn't do anything interesting when you turned it on; there was just this blinking cursor. So one option was to buy software like games or other programs on a floppy, but those were expensive. Instead, we learned to program in BASIC and made our own games. I think that that something is lost today now that the computers have a curtain hiding the secret codes that make them work.
MT: When did you first go online?
DP: Once I got a modem in 1983, I became active on computer bulletin board systems and the weird information I could find there, mostly silly pirate and anarchist cookbook type stuff. In high school, I was also involved in 'zines and the punk scene. Then in college, I began writing about music and the counterculture. Around the time that I graduated, I became aware of a movement in San Francisco emerging at the intersection of counterculture and personal computers and drugs and music and young people empowering themselves with technology. I was already fascinated with San Francisco's history of avant garde art and industrial culture, so news of the emerging cyberculture was like a magnet and it brought me out here.
MT: Is that what you envisioned getting into as a kid?
DP: When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an engineer and go to MIT. For whatever reason, I blew off math in high school and my interests shifted. But I don't really have any regrets. Engineers often spend five or ten years on one or two problems and I think that would drive me crazy. I get to hop from one thing to the next at a moment's notice, following my curiosity wherever it takes me.
MT: I feel like the intellectuals in the Bay Area here are really the technology geeks and thinkers, whereas on the east coast the intellectuals are all about more “traditional” intellectual interests.
DP: There's definitely a culture of technological creativity, innovation, and experimentation in San Francisco. I think it survives whether the technology economy is bubbling or not. Money comes, money goes, but people continue to do “strange things with electricity," as the Dorkbot slogan goes. So the Bay Area is a fantastic place for someone like me who is constantly seeking novelty.
MT: That's why I like writing. You also don't have to commit to something for five years and see it fail but you do get to be a sort of participatory observer.
DP: Honestly, I don't even really like to write. I think I'm okay at it, but I much prefer to go out and meet people and learn interesting things from them. Of course, at some point I have to sit down and actually write about what I've learned. But I suppose that's also a good thing to do because if people hopefully read what I've written then I've done my part in sharing the knowledge too.
MT: Since you've been an Apple fan since the very beginning, how do you feel Apple's sudden success in the last couple years?
DP: I've been using an Apple since '82 so I literally grew up with them. In fact, when I still had my Texas Instruments computer, I drew an Apple logo on an index card and taped it to the top. I think it's amazing how successful Apple has become by paying attention to things like design and aesthetics, which other companies didn't seem to be caring much about. My friend Doug Rushkoff talks about the fact that advertising in the traditional sense doesn't work anymore because we're all clued in on the ways that companies try to coerce us. The only way you can really advertise a product is by making the product itself an advertisement for itself. I think that Apple does that extremely well.
MT: Are you going to get an iPhone?
DP: My Treo screen just cracked and June can't get here soon enough for me.
MT: What makes people so insanely passionate about their Macs?
DP: I wouldn't say I'm insanely passionate about Apple, but I do like most of their products. For me, the computer is just a tool, and the tool that I happen to like is made by this particular company. But I don't identify myself by the brand of computer that I use. I think that the Apple fan, literally someone who is fanatical about the company, really isn't that different from someone who is incredibly passionate about the car she drives or the brand of clothes that he wears. The brand becomes part of their identity. It embodies their lifestyle. What's more interesting to me is what people make with their tools, and Macs allow you to make a lot of very interesting things. That’s not to say that Apple isn’t without its problems,
particularly around their copy protection strategy in iTunes. However I was delighted to hear that Steve Jobs recently seems to be changing his, er, tune on DRM.
MT: I think the difference between somebody who's really fanatical about a brand of car and someone who's really fanatical about a brand of computer is that it's actually the thing that they're fanatical about that connects them to the place where they can be fanatical.
DP: That's a great insight. Is there a comparable fanaticism surrounding Windows?
MT: I haven't seen it but people claim it exists.
DP: You'd have to look at our stats, but I think around a quarter of our readers use Macintosh. [He's right about the stats, 23.8% of Boing Boing's visitors are on Macs.]
MT: Speaking of Boing Boing… how did it come about?
DP: Boing Boing is the blog that I co-edit with Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and Cory Doctorow. John Battelle is our band manager. Mark and his wife Carla Sinclair started bOING bOING as a print zine in the late 1980s. It was a photocopied zine about fringe culture, underground art, pranks, and that sort of thing. When I was in college, I absolutely loved bOING bOING. Then, shortly after I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to attend grad school at Berkeley, I started writing for Wired. That was around the third or fourth issue of Wired, I think. Mark was working at Wired and I introduced myself to him right away, bOING bOING had an office downstairs from Wired that it shared with a couple of other magazines. Mark brought me down to meet Carla and we became fast friends. They assigned me an article about the revival of Goth for the next issue of bOING bOING and then I became a contributing editor. Mark also created a Boing Boing Web site where we posted some archived articles and other random stuff. I worked on a few issues after that but it had become such a hassle to deal with distributors who owed you like $10 or whatever that Mark and Carla decided not to do the print edition any longer. So we started posting articles online that we wanted to write but couldn't find a home for anywhere else. For example, I wrote an article about people who drilled holes in their heads to achieve enlightenment.
MT: How did it become a proper blog?
DP: When Blogger was first developed, Mark tried it out for an article he was writing and converted Boing Boing to a blog. This was in January of 2000 and he started blogging pretty regularly, just very short descriptions of links he found interesting. When Mark went on vacation, he asked Cory Doctorow, whose science fiction he liked, to be the guest blogger. Cory stayed on and then I started blogging too but not nearly as often as those guys. We also had guest bloggers, including Xeni. Our readers liked her posts so much that we just asked her to be a permanent fixture. What's amazing is that at its biggest, bOING bOING the print 'zine was probably read by maybe 20,000 people, and now more than a million folks read the site every day. So Boing Boing is the overnight success that took almost twenty years. I like to imagine what it would be like if all the Boing Boing readers lived in one place. It'd probably be a very surreal city.
MT: And a little scary, for sure.
DP: But we all have our different reasons and mindsets about posting. For me, Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosities. Those were the predecessors to modern day museums. In the Victorian era, people would have these cabinets or even entire rooms devoted to unusual, natural, and man-made artifacts that they collected—strange coral formations, two-headed animals in jars, exotic weapons, weird plants, scientific specimens, that sort of thing. I love that whole mindset because it's really about appreciating the wonder of the world. So Boing Boing is like a cabinet of curiosity for me. I put things in it that I come across or that our readers are kind enough to share with me. I collect them there, on Boing Boing.
MT: Do you guys all sort through the submissions yourselves?
DP: Yes, the submissions go to all of us. And we get hundreds every day.
MT: Do you talk about who's going to post what?
DP: This surprises some people but we almost never talk about what we're going to post. In fact, we almost never have meetings of any kind. I think we've all been in the same room maybe five times. Ever. And we've probably been on the phone all together less than a dozen times. So the conversations between us on email are very rarely about editorial. They're more about formatting issues, technical glitches, or whether we want to accept a particular advertiser, but never about editorial plans.
MT: And you've never blogged the same thing?
DP: Oh yeah, we've blogged the same things many times. And then one person will notice it and say, "Hey, so and so already blogged that an hour ago," and then you just take it down.
MT: But you all do sort of have your own beats, right?
DP: Again, beats have never ever been discussed. We just have our own interests that we pursue and you can watch them change over time by looking at what we post. Of course, there are some obvious themes that are ongoing like Cory's copy-fight activism and Disney, Mark's interest in mid-century illustration and animation, Xeni's interest in technology in developing nations and alternative sex practices, and I'm obviously deep into weird science and strange phenomenon. And, um, Bigfoot. What I think is amazing is that there are so many people who share at least some of those interests with us. Not very long ago, it was tough if you didn't live in a huge metropolitan city to find people who shared some of the strange or obscure interests that you might have. A journalist once asked Timothy Leary what people should do after they "turn on." Tim said, "Find the others." Boing Boing helps me do that.
— Jess Hemerly, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Readers Write: Can Apple and the Tech Industry Be 'Green'? [AlterNet]
AlterNet, February 3, 2007 [Link]
Response to "Apple Computers: Fun For You, Toxic for the Environment", by AlterNet staff, with my response at the end.
These days technology is so much a part of our lives that we sometimes forget to think about where it comes from -- and importantly, where it goes when we are done with it. This week we published a story by Jess Hemerly about Apple computers, which was recently ranked by Greenpeace at the bottom of the list of eco-friendly tech companies.
The story elicited a number of passionate responses from readers, some of whom felt the folks at Mac were unfairly targeted considering the rest of the industry's track record.
Greenman wrote:
In her article, Hemerly compared Apple's environmental policy to that of Dell, citing Dell's recent commitments to providing free recycling to their customers worldwide and their recent "Plant a Tree for Me" campaign that allows consumers to pay an extra $2 for their computer purchase to go towards reforestation.
But one reader said that that Dell's efforts were more symbolism than actually productive environmental efforts. Thoughtcriminal wrote:
Several other readers also thought that since Apple was abiding by the laws, they shouldn't be singled out for punishment, but did suggest that this is a problem that should be addressed with federal regulation.
TheGrunger wrote:
While some people felt that it was the government's job to legislate change, others found the article helpful in letting consumers know that they can begin demanding that Apple and other companies, start doing more to protect the environment.
Ghoulman, a Mac user, wrote: "I think all the right points are put out in this article. Computers, and electronics in general, are a dirty little landfill secret ... I'm glad someone is upping the environmental anti."
Likewise LarryGroff wrote:
Hemerly herself, responded to our readers' comments and asked that we see the bigger picture intended in her piece.
She wrote:
In the end, there is no doubt that the technology we use is toxic -- and that more can and should be done to ensure that it is made and disposed of as safely as possible. It is always easier to point to someone else to take the responsibility for making that happen -- but whether we want the government to regulate it or companies to prioritize it -- it is still up to us to make that happen.
Response to "Apple Computers: Fun For You, Toxic for the Environment", by AlterNet staff, with my response at the end.
Our readers questioned whether Apple deserved its low environmental rating from Greenpeace and what can be done to green the tech industry.
These days technology is so much a part of our lives that we sometimes forget to think about where it comes from -- and importantly, where it goes when we are done with it. This week we published a story by Jess Hemerly about Apple computers, which was recently ranked by Greenpeace at the bottom of the list of eco-friendly tech companies.
The story elicited a number of passionate responses from readers, some of whom felt the folks at Mac were unfairly targeted considering the rest of the industry's track record.
Greenman wrote:
Apple is certainly no worse than its peers, and is better than some, regarding the environment. Seriously, the idea that any computer is good for the environment is pretty crazy. There's nine times as many PC's as there are Apples in the trash heaps of the world, and there's not a nickel's worth of difference between an Apple carcass and a Dell carcass, I'd wager, in terms of harm to the environment.
As other posters have pointed out, what is needed for electronics and computers -- especially -- and for all products in general, is a pricing system that would include "cradle to grave" provisions for mitigating harm to the environment for the entire life of the product. Everything would quickly become of much higher quality, would last longer, and would be more expensive, too. That's the kind of carrot-and-stick regulation that government could impose, but doesn't for all the grubby reasons we are all too familiar with these days.
Other people also mentioned the issue of durability and thought that Apple's lifespan should be taken into consideration -- arguing that people go through their PCs quicker than their Macs.
In her article, Hemerly compared Apple's environmental policy to that of Dell, citing Dell's recent commitments to providing free recycling to their customers worldwide and their recent "Plant a Tree for Me" campaign that allows consumers to pay an extra $2 for their computer purchase to go towards reforestation.
But one reader said that that Dell's efforts were more symbolism than actually productive environmental efforts. Thoughtcriminal wrote:
Just because Dell allows you to make a $2 donation to a 'plant a tree campaign..." -- that makes them a responsible greenwashed company? What's needed is a generalized government-regulated e-waste recycling industry that provides safe working conditions; you could simply place a small tax on all computer and electronics gear sold in the U.S. to help fund such a program.
I mean, go down to your nursery, buy some trees, and plant them yourself -- your $2 feel-good donation to Dell is nothing but green marketing (that you get to pay for!)
Several other readers also thought that since Apple was abiding by the laws, they shouldn't be singled out for punishment, but did suggest that this is a problem that should be addressed with federal regulation.
TheGrunger wrote:
Dell may be marginally better than Apple -- but neither one is going to bend over backwards to do what is right if it cuts too far into their bottom line.
While I think it is valuable to point out things like this, unless they are actually breaking the law I don't see any value in singling out Apple or any other company. We cannot expect corporations to do the right thing (in any situation, environmental or otherwise) if there are not strict regulations in place to punish them harshly for doing the wrong thing.
The problem is the entire corporate system and the weak regulatory laws of our government -- that is where we should focus our efforts. That is the only way to force companies like Apple to pay attention.
While some people felt that it was the government's job to legislate change, others found the article helpful in letting consumers know that they can begin demanding that Apple and other companies, start doing more to protect the environment.
Ghoulman, a Mac user, wrote: "I think all the right points are put out in this article. Computers, and electronics in general, are a dirty little landfill secret ... I'm glad someone is upping the environmental anti."
Likewise LarryGroff wrote:
I am also a long time Mac and PC user who is very concerned about the environmental impact of my computers. I would agree with those who take Jess Hemerly to task for not investigating thoroughly enough about Apple's environmental record and the superficiality and grandstanding of Greenpeace's Green my Apple campaign.
However, Apple is a large corporation whose business goals are far ahead of any other concern, to think otherwise is naive. Apple is not a movement regardless of how we might wish it so. But it is good that Apple is getting the green lights blasted on its facade as it may prod them to indeed move ahead and make their environmental decisions even more carefully and boldly if they fear that their reputation and popularity are at risk.
Hemerly herself, responded to our readers' comments and asked that we see the bigger picture intended in her piece.
She wrote:
First, I can assure you that I did very thorough research that included conversations with both Apple and Greenpeace. The Apple spokesperson I talked to was very friendly but there was little room for discussion because that's simply how the company operates. She walked me through their site and I read everything. I wrote my piece based on the information I was provided. If Steve Jobs wants to sit down with me and talk about environmental policy and the Greenpeace campaign, I will jump at the chance. As it stands, that hasn't been presented as an option. The spokesperson from Apple directed me to the Roughly Drafted site, which is a great spin on things but it is, like my own piece, one writer's conclusions. As the reader, you are your own filter and it's up to you to choose what you want to accept or dismiss.
I do not envision Steve Jobs as some evil king looking down on a polluted world from his gleaming white polymer spire. I do envision Apple as a company of innovation and one that has in its own words asked people to "Think Different." And now that Greenpeace has decided to turn it around and ask them to do the same, everyone is up in arms. Is it because Greenpeace is the organization doing the asking? Greenpeace is not hurting Apple. Apple continues to gain market share and turn in record profits as a result of the Halo Effect the iPod spawned. Greenpeace is simply asking a company that champions innovation to pitch in and be as innovative when it comes to the environment.
Michael Dell and his company were used in this piece to contrast Apple's tight-lipped attitude toward environmental policy. Dell is not perfect and neither is Apple, or Nokia, or Fujitsu, or any of the companies who make the devices we take for granted everyday. They all have serious faults and questionable practices when it comes to various aspects of business. But is Dell bringing green ideas to the table? Absolutely. And a table full of ideas is where change begins.
Yes, better regulations should exist, and so should a litany of regulations that require all companies, technology and otherwise, to do more to help the environment. But given the political climate of the United States right now, it's unlikely that any progress will be made here anytime soon. Thus, Greenpeace has been forced to turn its efforts toward something that can produce results. Have we become so jaded that we are willing to give any company a bye just because it's "business as usual"?
Of course, Apple is not the only company contributing to the e-waste mess. But they are the only company that makes beautiful machines that people are willing to shell out extra money to carry with them for reasons ranging from cool factor to basic operation. Is it really so crazy to ask them to make their beautiful machines cleaner than the rest, to really go out and set the standard? They are not the "little guy" anymore. They're a serious contender and that becomes more evident every time they gain a percentage of the PC market share.
You ask me, "Why Apple?" I ask you, "Why NOT Apple?"
In the end, there is no doubt that the technology we use is toxic -- and that more can and should be done to ensure that it is made and disposed of as safely as possible. It is always easier to point to someone else to take the responsibility for making that happen -- but whether we want the government to regulate it or companies to prioritize it -- it is still up to us to make that happen.
Monday, January 8, 2007
MySpace Virtual Demo [MacTribe]
MacTribe, January 2007 [Link Part 1 & Part 2], also appeared in MacTribe's first print edition.
Teenagers adore it. Young adults use it to pass the time at lame desk jobs and track down people from their past. Predators use it to zero in on potential victims. Parents fear it more than any parent feared the Beatles and Elvis's gyrating hips combined, and other people just think it's a stupid waste of time and energy. So what could possibly make MySpace useful beyond worldwide Internet distraction?
Music, that's what.
Before the dawn of the Internet age, when everybody suddenly fancied themselves an expert in web site design, musicians looking to promote their work had to do so through analog means: demo tapes, flyers, performances at artist showcases, etc. And just because they got a gig or found an A&R exec who’d bite doesn’t mean they’d have the one thing that can keep a musician’s career going for a long time: fans.
The digital revolution made it easy to upload tracks to a server and put them on the Internet, where everybody has access to them. But band web pages required at least rudimentary HTML skills, and not everyone broke down and bought a copy of HTML for Dummies. Now, anybody with a few tracks, a computer, and an Internet connection can create a self-promotion music page thanks to the controversial juggernaut of a social networking site, MySpace.
A few months ago, I received a MySpace message from Karl Miles, a former high school classmate who I’ve been out of touch with for 7 years, asking me to go to his MySpace Music page and check out his tracks. He's starting a career as a solo folk artist and found me through the magic of MySpace. He wanted to know what I thought of his music so I went to his profile and listened to his tracks, played through the built-in mini player. Since he made them available for free I was also able to download them, save them to my computer, and play them for my friends.
Karl admits that part of the attraction to MySpace was its ease of use, having put off setting up a "real" site for far too long. And he doesn't subscribe to the delusion that MySpace will make him famous. "I find an open mic will generate more attention," he says. "It is more likely a person will hear about me some where else and check if I'm on MySpace." He certainly doesn't believe that MySpace is an easy way out of a musician's traditional struggle to be heard. "You still have to do leg work, play gigs," he says. "If you get a buzz outside MySpace maybe you can get one on MySpace. But I don't think MySpace will create one for you on its own."
Ezra Caraeff, owner of Portland-based indie label Slowdance Records, sees many bands are not as realistic as Miles. Instead they believe that a MySpace page and 400,000 friends is a quick ticket to Mick Jagger status. "I think a lot of bands think friends equal sales," he explains. "But those are the same bands who think emailing me to 'check them out' or 'you should sign us, we RoCk' [sic] is a good idea as well."
The problem with MySpace for many hopeful musicians is that the "adding friends" feature creates a false sense of audience, and with that false sense comes an inflated perception of fame. There are actually programs that crawl MySpace on a band’s behalf and add friends at random, an act equivalent to email spamming. "Since it's so lawless," says Caraeff, "it's a chance for these unknown bands to be on an even plane with known artists. Like, we don't have a record or play shows, but we have as many friends as Hoobastank." Caraeff also worries that the meaning of the word “friend” will be forever corrupted by the MySpace “friend” system.
Yet despite this grand delusion factor, Ezra's label insists that all of their artists have MySpace pages, most of which are maintained by interns. Even his label itself has a page, and Slowdance has used the bulletin feature to reach bands' audiences—although Ezra still thinks email blasts are more direct and consequently much more effective. A blog post on the profile—which touts the label as the "Best. Label. Ever."—begs musicians not to spam them with requests to listen to their tracks.
As the head of a label, Caraeff sees the proliferation of bands with little talent but a lot of friends as just another stage in the evolution of the music industry. "My brother used to work at Capitol Records and I remember going there when I was in like 10th grade and seeing crates of demos in this dumpster," he reminisces. "It's a very sobering thing. MySpace reminds me of that on a daily basis… so much delusion."
But not every band that’s active on MySpace is mired in delusion. One band that has found success via the Internet is Saosin, a post-hardcore band who got their start by posting tracks to a variety of Internet music forums. Their tracks caught on, and their first show was jammed with kids clamoring to see the band they'd heard on the Internet. They now have a deal Capitol Records and just finished their third Warped Tour.
Saosin maintains a MySpace page. In an interview with bassist Chris Sorensen he made it clear that the guys in the band actually use it. Part of the fun for Chris is the ability to listen to a band’s tracks on one page and then “go check out some hot babe’s page.” The band’s page boasts over 178,000 friends and actual band members answer messages.
Another up-and-coming band that actively uses MySpace is Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective, an Americana group from the San Diego area that tours widely all over California. Recently nominated for the title of Best American Band for the San Diego Music Awards, band member Louis Caverly says they use it for at least an hour every day when they’re not on the road. “MySpace is a community and for any community to work you have to talk to the people,” says Caverly. “It is pretty rad to talk directly with folks, be it potential fans or possibly a personal hero that you stumble upon.”
At first it just seemed like an easy place to upload tracks but Caverly now believes that it is a great tool to have in the arsenal as they build their career. They will solicit potential fans but not by using a “friend adder.” Instead, they take the time to surf the site for people with tastes that match their style and for bands that play a similar kind of music. For them, it’s really about logging on and making it work. “MySpace will help us to increase our audience because if you use it, it works.”
Shawn Hatfield, an experimental electronic musician in San Francisco, has a similar philosophy when it comes to reaching out through MySpace. "I already had a personal page and figured it would be a good place to give my fans access to information on upcoming projects and also a way for them to feel like they've had a personal connection with me that goes beyond just owning the CD or record," he says. Hatfield has had offers to play gigs overseas through MySpace and believes that MySpace has the potential to help him gain enough attention to score larger gigs.
But how realistic is it that the music industry sees these band pages as anything more than must-have novelties for their artists? Well, if an artist catches the eye of an active MySpace user who happens to work in A&R (artist and repertoire, in case you have always wondered what it stood for), it’s very realistic. And such A&R reps do exist. Tony Kiewel, head of A&R for indie label SubPop, is one active user who believes that MySpace is something more than just a project for interns or a collective unheard cry for attention. "I definitely look at it to hear new stuff both as a fan of music and as an A&R guy," he says. "If I like a band I'll look at their page and often times end up listening to their friends’ bands that they have in the top 10 or whatever that little list is." So there's no algorithm that converts MySpace friends to record sales but who a musician is connected to and how may lead to an important discovery by the right person.
Kiewell also relies on the site as a research tool and a quick way to zero in on what people are listening to. "You can't Google 'The Books' and find anything helpful about the band without some serious digging," Kiewell explains. “If I go to MySpace and do a band name search I can find them in seconds." And it's not just a band bio that you'll find; it’s an interactive page full of information. "I can hear them. I can see where they're from. I can see who they're fans of," says Kiewell.
And for musicians, the ability to check out who other musicians are into makes it an extremely useful networking tool. Solo artist Lia Rose experienced this first hand when one of her favorite indie musicians, Damien Jurado, left a comment on her MySpace music page. “I could hardly believe it, and of course returned the sentiment with a comment on his page,” she says. That comment led to an interesting chain of events for Rose. A member of a band in Holland, Winterbirds, found Rose’s comment on Jurado’s page and they added each other as friends. “After about a year of corresponding,” she tells me, “he gives me an internet music challenge by sending a song with just guitar and inviting me to write lyrics and melody and send some vocals back.” This correspondence turned into a project called Weatherkingdom that, naturally, has its own MySpace page too.
MySpace is more than just another venue for Internet voyeurism—it is actually a fantastic tool for labels, fans, and artists alike. “The real take-a-ways include finding other artists to play shows with, Internet radio stations to spin our songs, industry contacts, far away friends and folks that can help our career grow,” believes Louis Caverly. And the recent announcement that MySpace has teamed up with Snocap to allow artists to sell their tracks directly through MySpace pages will only make things more interesting. “I think it will be the great equalizer for those bands that hoard ‘friends,’” Caraeff contends. “They will soon find out the sobering results of 40,000 friends and $6.00 in total downloads.”
But will the day come when a label “discovers” a band through their MySpace page? "It's totally possible," Kiewell of SubPop predicts. "It hasn't happened yet but I bet it will soon.”
— Jess Hemerly 2007
How MySpace Connects Artists, Labels, and Fans
Teenagers adore it. Young adults use it to pass the time at lame desk jobs and track down people from their past. Predators use it to zero in on potential victims. Parents fear it more than any parent feared the Beatles and Elvis's gyrating hips combined, and other people just think it's a stupid waste of time and energy. So what could possibly make MySpace useful beyond worldwide Internet distraction?
Music, that's what.
Before the dawn of the Internet age, when everybody suddenly fancied themselves an expert in web site design, musicians looking to promote their work had to do so through analog means: demo tapes, flyers, performances at artist showcases, etc. And just because they got a gig or found an A&R exec who’d bite doesn’t mean they’d have the one thing that can keep a musician’s career going for a long time: fans.
The digital revolution made it easy to upload tracks to a server and put them on the Internet, where everybody has access to them. But band web pages required at least rudimentary HTML skills, and not everyone broke down and bought a copy of HTML for Dummies. Now, anybody with a few tracks, a computer, and an Internet connection can create a self-promotion music page thanks to the controversial juggernaut of a social networking site, MySpace.
A few months ago, I received a MySpace message from Karl Miles, a former high school classmate who I’ve been out of touch with for 7 years, asking me to go to his MySpace Music page and check out his tracks. He's starting a career as a solo folk artist and found me through the magic of MySpace. He wanted to know what I thought of his music so I went to his profile and listened to his tracks, played through the built-in mini player. Since he made them available for free I was also able to download them, save them to my computer, and play them for my friends.
Karl admits that part of the attraction to MySpace was its ease of use, having put off setting up a "real" site for far too long. And he doesn't subscribe to the delusion that MySpace will make him famous. "I find an open mic will generate more attention," he says. "It is more likely a person will hear about me some where else and check if I'm on MySpace." He certainly doesn't believe that MySpace is an easy way out of a musician's traditional struggle to be heard. "You still have to do leg work, play gigs," he says. "If you get a buzz outside MySpace maybe you can get one on MySpace. But I don't think MySpace will create one for you on its own."
Ezra Caraeff, owner of Portland-based indie label Slowdance Records, sees many bands are not as realistic as Miles. Instead they believe that a MySpace page and 400,000 friends is a quick ticket to Mick Jagger status. "I think a lot of bands think friends equal sales," he explains. "But those are the same bands who think emailing me to 'check them out' or 'you should sign us, we RoCk' [sic] is a good idea as well."
The problem with MySpace for many hopeful musicians is that the "adding friends" feature creates a false sense of audience, and with that false sense comes an inflated perception of fame. There are actually programs that crawl MySpace on a band’s behalf and add friends at random, an act equivalent to email spamming. "Since it's so lawless," says Caraeff, "it's a chance for these unknown bands to be on an even plane with known artists. Like, we don't have a record or play shows, but we have as many friends as Hoobastank." Caraeff also worries that the meaning of the word “friend” will be forever corrupted by the MySpace “friend” system.
Yet despite this grand delusion factor, Ezra's label insists that all of their artists have MySpace pages, most of which are maintained by interns. Even his label itself has a page, and Slowdance has used the bulletin feature to reach bands' audiences—although Ezra still thinks email blasts are more direct and consequently much more effective. A blog post on the profile—which touts the label as the "Best. Label. Ever."—begs musicians not to spam them with requests to listen to their tracks.
As the head of a label, Caraeff sees the proliferation of bands with little talent but a lot of friends as just another stage in the evolution of the music industry. "My brother used to work at Capitol Records and I remember going there when I was in like 10th grade and seeing crates of demos in this dumpster," he reminisces. "It's a very sobering thing. MySpace reminds me of that on a daily basis… so much delusion."
But not every band that’s active on MySpace is mired in delusion. One band that has found success via the Internet is Saosin, a post-hardcore band who got their start by posting tracks to a variety of Internet music forums. Their tracks caught on, and their first show was jammed with kids clamoring to see the band they'd heard on the Internet. They now have a deal Capitol Records and just finished their third Warped Tour.
Saosin maintains a MySpace page. In an interview with bassist Chris Sorensen he made it clear that the guys in the band actually use it. Part of the fun for Chris is the ability to listen to a band’s tracks on one page and then “go check out some hot babe’s page.” The band’s page boasts over 178,000 friends and actual band members answer messages.
Another up-and-coming band that actively uses MySpace is Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective, an Americana group from the San Diego area that tours widely all over California. Recently nominated for the title of Best American Band for the San Diego Music Awards, band member Louis Caverly says they use it for at least an hour every day when they’re not on the road. “MySpace is a community and for any community to work you have to talk to the people,” says Caverly. “It is pretty rad to talk directly with folks, be it potential fans or possibly a personal hero that you stumble upon.”
At first it just seemed like an easy place to upload tracks but Caverly now believes that it is a great tool to have in the arsenal as they build their career. They will solicit potential fans but not by using a “friend adder.” Instead, they take the time to surf the site for people with tastes that match their style and for bands that play a similar kind of music. For them, it’s really about logging on and making it work. “MySpace will help us to increase our audience because if you use it, it works.”
Shawn Hatfield, an experimental electronic musician in San Francisco, has a similar philosophy when it comes to reaching out through MySpace. "I already had a personal page and figured it would be a good place to give my fans access to information on upcoming projects and also a way for them to feel like they've had a personal connection with me that goes beyond just owning the CD or record," he says. Hatfield has had offers to play gigs overseas through MySpace and believes that MySpace has the potential to help him gain enough attention to score larger gigs.
But how realistic is it that the music industry sees these band pages as anything more than must-have novelties for their artists? Well, if an artist catches the eye of an active MySpace user who happens to work in A&R (artist and repertoire, in case you have always wondered what it stood for), it’s very realistic. And such A&R reps do exist. Tony Kiewel, head of A&R for indie label SubPop, is one active user who believes that MySpace is something more than just a project for interns or a collective unheard cry for attention. "I definitely look at it to hear new stuff both as a fan of music and as an A&R guy," he says. "If I like a band I'll look at their page and often times end up listening to their friends’ bands that they have in the top 10 or whatever that little list is." So there's no algorithm that converts MySpace friends to record sales but who a musician is connected to and how may lead to an important discovery by the right person.
Kiewell also relies on the site as a research tool and a quick way to zero in on what people are listening to. "You can't Google 'The Books' and find anything helpful about the band without some serious digging," Kiewell explains. “If I go to MySpace and do a band name search I can find them in seconds." And it's not just a band bio that you'll find; it’s an interactive page full of information. "I can hear them. I can see where they're from. I can see who they're fans of," says Kiewell.
And for musicians, the ability to check out who other musicians are into makes it an extremely useful networking tool. Solo artist Lia Rose experienced this first hand when one of her favorite indie musicians, Damien Jurado, left a comment on her MySpace music page. “I could hardly believe it, and of course returned the sentiment with a comment on his page,” she says. That comment led to an interesting chain of events for Rose. A member of a band in Holland, Winterbirds, found Rose’s comment on Jurado’s page and they added each other as friends. “After about a year of corresponding,” she tells me, “he gives me an internet music challenge by sending a song with just guitar and inviting me to write lyrics and melody and send some vocals back.” This correspondence turned into a project called Weatherkingdom that, naturally, has its own MySpace page too.
MySpace is more than just another venue for Internet voyeurism—it is actually a fantastic tool for labels, fans, and artists alike. “The real take-a-ways include finding other artists to play shows with, Internet radio stations to spin our songs, industry contacts, far away friends and folks that can help our career grow,” believes Louis Caverly. And the recent announcement that MySpace has teamed up with Snocap to allow artists to sell their tracks directly through MySpace pages will only make things more interesting. “I think it will be the great equalizer for those bands that hoard ‘friends,’” Caraeff contends. “They will soon find out the sobering results of 40,000 friends and $6.00 in total downloads.”
But will the day come when a label “discovers” a band through their MySpace page? "It's totally possible," Kiewell of SubPop predicts. "It hasn't happened yet but I bet it will soon.”
— Jess Hemerly 2007
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Thursday: Emo Boys Don't Cry [Noise Pop]
Noise Pop 2006 Festival Program
Starting out as a bunch of 19-year old boys from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Thursday quickly grew from gigging in VFW halls and basements to playing on the main stage at 2002's Warped Tour. But despite the success of the post-hardcore group, its members are still small town boys at heart. "Now, being on a major label and spending so much time on the road, we still feel that need for connection to our home more than ever," says frontman Geoff Rickly. "The truth is it's still quite shocking to have done so much so early on."
Perhaps it's their connection to home that's enabled the long-time friends to create such intensely personal music, going all the way back to Thursday's first release, Waiting, on Eyeball Records in 1999. Whatever the cause, the group's tightly-woven melodies—driven by the dynamic guitars of Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, the haunting bass of Tim Payne, and the thundering drums of Tucker Rule—bind with Rickly's soul-baring lyrics to make songs that connect.
While the Cure is an obvious inspiration of the band, Rickly credits a '60s legend with encouraging him to get behind the mic. "Touring with The Cure was an unbelievable honor, and they surely are a huge influence on us, but the truth is that seeing footage of Janis Joplin when I was young really made me want to sing more than anything else in the whole world. It was the first time that I saw pure unrestrained passion that wasn't connected directly to masculinity like it was with Led Zeppelin or even the Who." With a little help from his punk vocal coach, CBGB punk diva Melissa Cross of Bibi Wa Moto, Rickly found a way to sing as expressively as the lyrics he wrote.
Thursday just finished its fifth major album, A City By the Light Divided, with producer Dave Fridmann (known as "the fifth Flaming Lip" for his legendary work with that band). "I believe it's the most beautiful and intense thing that I've ever been a part of," says Rickly.
Rickly is also excited to bring the "Shirts for a Cure" tour to this year's Noise Pop. The jaunt is helping raise money and awareness for the Syrentha J. Savio Endowment, which provides financial assistance to underprivileged women with need of breast cancer treatment and therapy. Just another example of small town boys making good. JESS HEMERLY
Perhaps it's their connection to home that's enabled the long-time friends to create such intensely personal music, going all the way back to Thursday's first release, Waiting, on Eyeball Records in 1999. Whatever the cause, the group's tightly-woven melodies—driven by the dynamic guitars of Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, the haunting bass of Tim Payne, and the thundering drums of Tucker Rule—bind with Rickly's soul-baring lyrics to make songs that connect.
Starting out as a bunch of 19-year old boys from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Thursday quickly grew from gigging in VFW halls and basements to playing on the main stage at 2002's Warped Tour. But despite the success of the post-hardcore group, its members are still small town boys at heart. "Now, being on a major label and spending so much time on the road, we still feel that need for connection to our home more than ever," says frontman Geoff Rickly. "The truth is it's still quite shocking to have done so much so early on."
Perhaps it's their connection to home that's enabled the long-time friends to create such intensely personal music, going all the way back to Thursday's first release, Waiting, on Eyeball Records in 1999. Whatever the cause, the group's tightly-woven melodies—driven by the dynamic guitars of Tom Keeley and Steve Pedulla, the haunting bass of Tim Payne, and the thundering drums of Tucker Rule—bind with Rickly's soul-baring lyrics to make songs that connect.
While the Cure is an obvious inspiration of the band, Rickly credits a '60s legend with encouraging him to get behind the mic. "Touring with The Cure was an unbelievable honor, and they surely are a huge influence on us, but the truth is that seeing footage of Janis Joplin when I was young really made me want to sing more than anything else in the whole world. It was the first time that I saw pure unrestrained passion that wasn't connected directly to masculinity like it was with Led Zeppelin or even the Who." With a little help from his punk vocal coach, CBGB punk diva Melissa Cross of Bibi Wa Moto, Rickly found a way to sing as expressively as the lyrics he wrote.
Thursday just finished its fifth major album, A City By the Light Divided, with producer Dave Fridmann (known as "the fifth Flaming Lip" for his legendary work with that band). "I believe it's the most beautiful and intense thing that I've ever been a part of," says Rickly.
Rickly is also excited to bring the "Shirts for a Cure" tour to this year's Noise Pop. The jaunt is helping raise money and awareness for the Syrentha J. Savio Endowment, which provides financial assistance to underprivileged women with need of breast cancer treatment and therapy. Just another example of small town boys making good. JESS HEMERLY
Friday, April 2, 2004
Berkeley Commission Honors Fourteen ‘Outstanding Women’
Berkeley Daily Planet, April 02, 2004 [Link]
Berkeley’s Commission on the Status of Women (COSOW) honored fourteen Outstanding Berkeley Women at a public awards ceremony Wednesday evening at the North Berkeley Senior Center. The honorees were recognized before friends and family for their contributions to the Berkeley community in various fields of interest.
“These women certainly deserve this honor,” said Mayor Tom Bates in comments beginning the ceremony. “We’re so much better off and it’s so great to have them here.”
The Fifteenth Annual awards are part of the COSOW’s commemoration of National Women’s History Month.
For the last 15 years, the commission has chosen the Outstanding Berkeley Woman honor from a pool of women nominated by their peers for extraordinary devotion to their respective causes. This year’s honorees received certificates from both the commission and the California State Legislature. The 2004 winners work in fields ranging from public health to neighborhood organization and were presented at the ceremony by the people who nominated them.
Commissioner Rivka Polatnick said she believes that recognizing the “unsung heroines” of the community is an excellent way to celebrate women’s history.
This year’s award winners include long-time Berkeley community leaders like Sylvia McLaughlin, co-founder of Save the Bay, as well as a women from a new generation of community leaders like Brianna Georgi. A Berkeley High School senior, Georgi heads the Venture Crew 24, a coed, inclusive adventure program modeled after the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America.
Also honored was Margi Adam, a singer/songwriter known for her contributions to the women’s rights movement through her exploration and development of women’s music as a political force. Adam spoke about coming to Berkeley at the age of sixteen seeking acceptance in a diverse community, and emphasized the uniqueness and reputation of the city. “There are ideas grown from root in this town,” she said, “and ideas put to the test in this town.”
Ethel Gomez, 19 year boardmember of the Berkeley Boosters Police Athletics League, reflected on her motivation in helping the city’s youth. “I love Berkeley,” mused Gomez. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and as long as I can I’ll be out there.”
Environmental activist Sylvia McLaughlin explained her reason for continuing her long career of activism. “We may be activist visionaries, but there’s still work to do.”
Another young leader, tobacco prevention advocate Salita Mitchell, reminded the audience, “Us teenagers are the future.”
— "Jessica Hemerly Special to the Planet"
Berkeley’s Commission on the Status of Women (COSOW) honored fourteen Outstanding Berkeley Women at a public awards ceremony Wednesday evening at the North Berkeley Senior Center. The honorees were recognized before friends and family for their contributions to the Berkeley community in various fields of interest.
“These women certainly deserve this honor,” said Mayor Tom Bates in comments beginning the ceremony. “We’re so much better off and it’s so great to have them here.”
The Fifteenth Annual awards are part of the COSOW’s commemoration of National Women’s History Month.
For the last 15 years, the commission has chosen the Outstanding Berkeley Woman honor from a pool of women nominated by their peers for extraordinary devotion to their respective causes. This year’s honorees received certificates from both the commission and the California State Legislature. The 2004 winners work in fields ranging from public health to neighborhood organization and were presented at the ceremony by the people who nominated them.
Commissioner Rivka Polatnick said she believes that recognizing the “unsung heroines” of the community is an excellent way to celebrate women’s history.
This year’s award winners include long-time Berkeley community leaders like Sylvia McLaughlin, co-founder of Save the Bay, as well as a women from a new generation of community leaders like Brianna Georgi. A Berkeley High School senior, Georgi heads the Venture Crew 24, a coed, inclusive adventure program modeled after the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America.
Also honored was Margi Adam, a singer/songwriter known for her contributions to the women’s rights movement through her exploration and development of women’s music as a political force. Adam spoke about coming to Berkeley at the age of sixteen seeking acceptance in a diverse community, and emphasized the uniqueness and reputation of the city. “There are ideas grown from root in this town,” she said, “and ideas put to the test in this town.”
Ethel Gomez, 19 year boardmember of the Berkeley Boosters Police Athletics League, reflected on her motivation in helping the city’s youth. “I love Berkeley,” mused Gomez. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and as long as I can I’ll be out there.”
Environmental activist Sylvia McLaughlin explained her reason for continuing her long career of activism. “We may be activist visionaries, but there’s still work to do.”
Another young leader, tobacco prevention advocate Salita Mitchell, reminded the audience, “Us teenagers are the future.”
— "Jessica Hemerly Special to the Planet"
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