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Last week the Least I Could Do webcomic (N always SFW) ran a series of strips which had one of their main characters (Rayne) doing a TED talk. (TED.com - Ideas worth sharing)
It starts with a premise that "the world we live in is driven by a sense of fear and a sense of entitlement"
5 strips, starting here
Follow-up blog post by the author of the strip
~~~
As a tangent, last week in the NZHerald Anthony* Doesburg asked Faster, wider bandwidth - but what will we do with it? He didn't answer the question directly, but I'd like to suggest that even getting the majority of the country on the same sort of speed I'm accustomed to (4Mb/s) would open up access to things like the TED talks. (OK, also need much cheaper data rates because y'know, streaming video glug glug glug).
*the fact that no-one at the herald has bothered correcting the blatant typo in his name in the headline irritates me.
Gosh, do I have a sense of entitlement about fast, cheap broadband? Probably, but I believe the benefits are so great that it need to be designated a public good* like electricity and in earlier years the telephone.
*I know I'm not using the proper economic definition here, but I can't recall the correct term. Nationalised good?
It starts with a premise that "the world we live in is driven by a sense of fear and a sense of entitlement"
5 strips, starting here
Follow-up blog post by the author of the strip
~~~
As a tangent, last week in the NZHerald Anthony* Doesburg asked Faster, wider bandwidth - but what will we do with it? He didn't answer the question directly, but I'd like to suggest that even getting the majority of the country on the same sort of speed I'm accustomed to (4Mb/s) would open up access to things like the TED talks. (OK, also need much cheaper data rates because y'know, streaming video glug glug glug).
*the fact that no-one at the herald has bothered correcting the blatant typo in his name in the headline irritates me.
Gosh, do I have a sense of entitlement about fast, cheap broadband? Probably, but I believe the benefits are so great that it need to be designated a public good* like electricity and in earlier years the telephone.
*I know I'm not using the proper economic definition here, but I can't recall the correct term. Nationalised good?
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 11:50 pm (UTC)From:I believe what really defines us is how we behave when there is no chance that we will be caught if we do something wrong.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 01:44 am (UTC)From:I've personally matured through several mindsets with regard to piracy (and things called piracy, like format shifting) over the years. I never understood 'because you could' though, which seems to be approach many take.
Actually being able to pay for things, or in the past having been able to pay for things, makes piracy, at least for me, a 'more wrong' option.
But why don't people fear getting caught? Because the size of any significant penalty compared to the value of what they've taken is ridiculous? Because they know cost of enforcement outweighs the value of what they've taken? What is the value of content?
Here is a tangentially relate read on how content + internet breaks the traditional economic model (http://blog.braintraffic.com/2009/09/the-value-of-content-part-1-adam-smith-never-expected-this/)
The internet has made content piracy trivial, but in recent years also removed any business case for it.
There have always been forgers & bootleggers, people for whom the risk of being caught was outweighed by the profit to be made from copying and selling a painting or a cassette or a dvd, and people who were willing to pay the cheaper price knowing they were getting a copy.
For music etc now the owner of the content can compete directly with the bootleggers on price (effectively negligible) - and if both are available and you are willing to pay for it at practically free why wouldn't you get the real thing?
The price you can charge has plummeted, but the potential market has exploded (and that's something else more internet connectivity will only help improve), and the cost of replication/delivery has vanished.
People will be copying mp3s from their friends for years to come, because the internet is not yet so pervasive that it's easier to pull up a link to a store than copy a file to a pendrive. I don't have a problem with that, because that's one way artist recognition develops. It's when they go home and torrent the album, to use Rayne's example, rather than picking it up for <99c per track (not that we can do that in NZ yet, even with the current exchange rate).
For computer applications there are good free alternatives out there to most expensive packages - certainly any that you'd want for any non-business use. 10 years ago perhaps that wasn't so much the case. Not-so-geeky me used a pirated copy of Windows 2000 for years before I could afford the $$$ for an updated legit copy (my first computer came with a legit copy of '95). If I was geekier I would have been running Linux, but I never got my head around it. Today I'd be running Ubuntu instead.
I think part of the problem lies in the perception of digital products. When you have a book or a cd in front of you it is a tangible representation of the effort that went into producing it.You know you own something (unless it's software, in which case your licence could be revoked at any time, but that's another rant). As a physical reminder of the production and distribution processes it represents everybody who put time into the content, even when you're not using it.
With a file on a computer you hear/see/use the content, then it's out of sight, out of mind. You think about the artist, but everyone else is invisible. With software, you never even think about the people who wrote it.
That's all long and disjointed and may or may not have a point. I may have to turn it into a post or posts of it's own :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 10:10 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 08:19 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 10:08 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 02:41 am (UTC)From:I think the difficulty with having people obey copyright laws is that it goes against how things usually work. It is a new concept, not one that has been around for very long. Copying, on the other hand, has been around since before we started using tools.
As far as music goes, the ability to make money of anything except live performance was something provided for by modern technology. Modern technology has taken some of that ability back. However, in it's place it has left the ability to be recognised for your art at a much earlier stage. To some extent file swapping helps new artists and hurts artists who are already famous... though some would say record companies hurt those artists more.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 02:58 am (UTC)From:The copyright laws are there to protect the investment put into a product before it becomes commercially available. Without it, there's not a lot of incentive for that investment and innovation to occur AND commercial prices need to be higher to cover the opportunity lost of those potential customers who might have paid for it but instead decide to take it for nothing.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 03:27 am (UTC)From:This is a commercial issue, not a moral issue. There is nothing morally wrong with self-sufficiency.
Personally, I think patents should have an expiration date of about 15 years. Anything more than that stunts innovation.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 01:26 am (UTC)From:The internet does make things easier, but it also makes me sad that sometimes I find that I know *everything* in my friends' lives without talking to them. On the plus side, you can also share things a lot easier. It definitely makes SCA communications easier, especially since NZ is in a Kingdom with Australia. What would I do with so much broadband? TGWTG http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/ would load a hell of a lot faster in the first place, and possibly not glitch so often!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 02:06 am (UTC)From:b) todays luxuries can become tomorrows 'things everyone should have', if we as a country are improving our standard of living. Fridges, washing machines, telephones ... not truly necessities by any means, but once they were luxuries and in many parts of the world still are.
The internet is one of those things. Entertainment in some form is one of those things. 'Art' is not, and that's really the closest analogue to most content which gets pirated.
Artists have always had a hard time getting paid. It used to be because only a few people could afford them, now it's because it's so easy to copy them.
c)
>Ok, so it means that I have nothing to talk to them about, but I didn't have an awful lot in the first place.
[gets out zimmer-frame] I remember when conversations around KAOS included philosophy and serious discussion of current events. Then the internet happened, and now it all seems to be about computers and the latest cool tv series.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 10:24 pm (UTC)From:Oh dear, sounds like I wouldn't do very well at an old KAOS party either - I get all my current events when I hear about them from someone else. I usually get enough interesting news just from what's going on in my friends' lives.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 02:51 am (UTC)From:What about tomorrow's world? The computer used to send men to the moon was far less advanced than the computers you find everywhere today. Most wouldn't have been able to imagine why we would need these computers.
Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-01 03:29 am (UTC)From:Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-01 03:43 am (UTC)From:I like self check-outs. Grocery shopping isn't really something I do for social interaction, so what little it provides isn't missed. Saying that though, I do start conversations with checkout workers and know the manager of my corner store by his first name.
Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-01 09:04 am (UTC)From:Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-01 09:16 am (UTC)From:Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-04 01:09 am (UTC)From:We're too hung up on 'jobs'. Weren't we all supposed to have lives of luxury by now, working (and yes, working in some form is necessary to the human psyche) and socalising as we wanted while machines took care of the chores? A civilisation of craftspeople, real public servants, scientists and artists?
Technology can now let you see the faces that matter and get to know people ~wherever they or you may be in the world, is that worth tired hellos from a wage slave behind a checkout whom you may never see again?
Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-05 10:41 pm (UTC)From:I personally don't like not seeing the faces of whom I'm talking to unless I know the person well enough that I can think of their expressions in my head. Hence my reluctance to have facebook, phones, LJ... etc. Static pictures don't help. Even video phones are off putting - although much better than a normal phone or a email. Of course, I mean this for in depth get to know you conversations, not the "When are we meeting?" ones!
My point with the jobs was, is that we aren't making lives of luxury, all we're doing is giving the smarter people more jobs, and the not so smart or maybe more manual people less jobs. Then these people have no income except the dole. Even getting into factory work these days requires a lot! Retail and the government seem to be the only place where you can go without any skills and upskill. Everywhere else requires you to have magically come up with experience from somewhere else.
Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-07 04:52 am (UTC)From:All the more reason to automate those job and let people do something that uses their brains. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
>we aren't making lives of luxury, all we're doing is giving the smarter people more jobs, and the not so smart or maybe more manual people less jobs.
There's a horrible duality in our society which groups people as 'working' or 'beneficiaries'. Why are there only two options, 'job' or 'not job'? The industrial age redefined what it meant to 'work'. Perhaps it's time the information age did the same.
I wasn't paying attention at the time so I only have a vague historical awareness, but it was one of the '90's governments which managed to demonise beneficiaries. It doesn't matter if it was National or Labour because since then they've both beaten the same drum and continued to cut the real value of benefits - unemployment, DPB, student allowance, sickness ... take your pick.
Social welfare should give people encouragement to explore their options, not loom over them with the threat that they must take any lousy job that comes along because they can't live otherwise. It should be enough to free them from worrying about the bills (as long as they are careful) so they can look forward rather than drive them into the ground with depression because there is never enough money.
>Even getting into factory work these days requires a lot!
There's no incentive to give people a chance any more - in fact exactly the opposite. If you make a bad choice as the employer it costs, big time, to get rid of someone. Naturally this has led to defensive hiring practices and an explicit demand for candidates with proven histories.
Straight out of school you're screwed and you can't even take a year off on the unemployment benefit to get your head straight any more.
Society needs to make the difference, but I feel we've started to reflect the whims of our governments rather than them reflecting the will of the people. I haven't figured out how to reverse that yet.
Re: Slightly tangental
Date: 2009-10-20 04:20 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 12:56 am (UTC)From:You don't need fast *broadband* to get along in today's world, but as you say dial-up isn't very helpful and no access to the internet can be a serious handicap.
And most people don't even have 'our' current broadband. We are spoilt living here in Christchurch, with some of the best internet access in the country (which is still pretty shitty (http://www.connectivityscorecard.org/countries/new_zealand) compared to the rest of the developed world).
Recent numbers indicate that 57% of households (http://www.tuanz.org.nz/blog/e379f711-b2b6-4423-9e32-4a8bf9f301db/ed7a5696-a076-494a-8903-758eeb2ea92e.html) have broadband, or (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/3CC35EFE80CD3F3DCC2574EB007E047C) which doesn't sound too bad until you realise that's just portions of our major cities, and heavily weighted towards smaller families, flatting students/young professionals and so on. By another measure we only have a bit more than 20 connections per 100 people (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/3CC35EFE80CD3F3DCC2574EB007E047C) (and that includes business connections).
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 10:46 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 02:34 am (UTC)From: