Copyright: Constantly shifting monstrosity since forever

Well, let's get some things out of the way. I've pirated games. I've downloaded shows, potentially illegally. I used and enjoyed services such as Ninja Video before they got taken down. Just this evening, I sussed out copies of the entire Scott Pilgrim series in anticipation of the movie, just so I could see what I was getting excited about.

(Seriously though, as an aside? I also ordered every one of the collections tonight, it's that good. Scott Pilgrim is the best love-fight-coming of age-NES era referencing comic of our generation. The original is incredibly good stuff, and the movie looks like it's going to feature a surprisingly competant Michael Cera. Plus it's by the guy who made Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. I don't  believe I can say no to this movie.)

Right, copyright. I can't really say that I'm on the right side of the law. What's worse? I, for all intents and purposes, agree with copyright law.

Now, I'm not necessarily for everything it's for. Artists, authors, and creators should get money for the difficult work of creation. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true. However, current copyright law has the time limits on something like lifetime plus 75 years. That's entirely too long, in my opinion. True, the creator's family deserves some recompense. But the overall creative market could do with some fresh infusion of existing works and archetypes.

Interestingly, the internet skirts around some of the regular copyright. Most notable in these skirting attempts (that's still legal anyway) is the Creative Commons license. With it, an artist can personally pick exactly how they want their work used by the public at large. For example, Jonathan Coulton has it so that his works can be used freely, so long as he's accredited accordingly.

And honestly, I can get behind Creative Commons. Artists still get paid, and the ability to leapfrog off of existing pieces is still available. At the very least parody laws exist. And I don't want to consider an alternate universe where they don't exist, because then we'd be without this:



And that would be terrible.

Rough Draft of paper

Note to self: Articles currently hyperlinked with a bit in the text later so I can add in proper MLA formatting. Whatever that means.

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Technology has a way of changing society and the way things are done. A written language changed how we remember things. Mass printing changed access to information. High speed communications changed the speed with which we could access information. Each of these innovations have, over time, redefined exactly how people define knowledge, literacy, information, sharing, and even community. Without these vital technologies, humanity would still be banging two stones together to create fire while making guttural sounds to warn others of impending danger.

It should be noted, however, that technology hasn't decided to just stop. Instead, technological advances continue trudging forward. Computers have, in recent years, taken all of the previous advances and placed them in one relatively convenient package. Prices have been dropping for entry level machines, high speed internet access has been expanding in markets across the world, and questions are being raised. Namely, how should these new technologies be incorporated into existing structures. Computers have, over the past four decades, wormed their ways into the existing hierarchies to the point where most corporations would be lost without the digital machines.

However, education is not one of those areas. While computers do inhabit more classrooms, and more and more classes are taking place at or around desktops, a good majority of schooling is still done using books, with notes that are taken by more manual means. In fact, despite the recent ubiquity of portable computing, including numerous models of laptops, netbooks, and tablets, many class rooms and professors are banning these machines. An article in the Washington Post noted: "Krahel plans to ban laptops from his classrooms, despite using his as an undergrad -- or perhaps because of it. He admits to getting caught up with distractions on his laptop and realizing what a waste it was, either because of a poor grade, "having to do a lot of catching up on my own time, or asking for other people's help." (WASHINGTON POST) However, if these machines are growing in ubiquity, should educational institutions restrict a students access to the machines? Or should schools instead foster an enviornment where access isn't restricted, and is in fact encouraged to help teach literacy in the new world?

Second fun thing of the day

So in my essay I posted.... a weekish ago? I discussed a little bit about how YouTube's set up was conducive to the spread of internet culture. Enter Quietube, a website that plays YouTube videos.... without comments, sidebar, search bar, logos, descriptions... Basically it plays only the videos. The existence of such a thing is interesting, I think.

I write like: Stephen King (Seriously?)

This is almost completely off topic of anything, but the other day I was introduced to one of the coolest (and most infuriating) websites I've ever had the (mis)fortune of discovering: I Write Like...

Not only can it look at anything that's as short as a few paragraphs, but it has a maddening number of authors stored up. The last blog entry (and somehow most of my political pieces as well) apparently shares similarities with one H.P. Lovecraft. Casual blog entries? Douglas Adams. Entirely too many pieces for my own good? Dan Brown. That last one burns, by the by.

However, I've also been told that I write like Margaret Atwood, Vladimir Nabokov, and even Tolkien. The worst part is that I'm not entirely sure how it works or what its criteria are. I would love to crack into its algorithms, break into its black box and see what makes it tick. Alas, that dream is likely not to pass. Sigh.

Again with the literacy

This previous spring semester, I took a course on literacy. While I'm not entirely clear on exactly what was accomplished (aside from much writing), we spent a lot of time focusing on the idea of "literacy". Everything about literacy, from its historical basis to its modern connotations to what exactly to how different individuals from different social classes/time periods have used it. Really, a fascinating study.

And here I find that I am reading, once more, about literacy. Though less about literacy and more about "fluency". Namely, the report author believes literacy to be too limited, that literacy is the expert that stands still and dies off (Thanks for the metaphor, McLuhan!), whereas fluency is the ability to take a set of skills and apply them elsewhere, even in areas that aren't necessarily related. Personally? I don't really see the difference. As far as I'm concerned, Literacy is the ability to learn and communicate effectively. One can never be fully literate, fully versed in any living language. And as easy as learning Latin would be, no one speaks it, so you can't really communicate. Literacy is, in my mind and in most of the reports' mind, a fluid, amorphous structure that is many things at once.

I find it funny that he establishes that there are forms of communication that are not "literacies", as if implying that there are forms of communication that we don't have to learn to communicate in. I'm not entirely sure what he means there. After all, what we know as text are really nothing more than squiggly images of ideas we collectively understand. And we have to learn how to interpret various visual cues, such as a red sign (Stop!) or a green light (Go!). Without learning these things, I would be lost in the modern world I happen to inhabit. The same applies to other images, body language, inflection, scent, touch, etc. We live in a world rich in sensory input coded information. Why do we focus so much on the written language when there are other learned means of communication?

I have a rather.. tenuous relationship with my father. He is very much of the old guard. Not necessarily a technophobe, but he doesn't really understand it. For example, we've always had a PC in our home. That PC, for the longest time, was an IBM box that only ran DOS. That didn't deter me from playing games on it, sometimes awful though they were. He saw the machine as a tool, something to be used for taxes and word processing, if you were lucky. Honestly, I'm probably lucky that he let me futz about with DOS so much.

This does expand into more areas than just technology, though. Another prime example is how we put things together. He will read an instruction manual cover to cover before he even so much as touches the base components. Me, I've put enough things together in my lifetime that I can at least look at what's included and make some (educated) guesses. And if I'm wrong, I can live with that! And I can look on YouTube to see what I did wrong. Or Google. Or WikiHow. Basically, anywhere except the actual place I'm supposed to be looking.

So I completely understand the Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants debate. It's something I've had the (dis)pleasure of experiencing in my own personal life. What's more interesting, I think, is noting that I don't believe that we necessarily know more than previous generations, thus failing their "intelligence" metric. Instead, and far more useful in our day and age, we know how to find it. How often have I been asked to find something, only to find it minutes later in a Google/Wiki/IMDB search? Far too often, but my father isn't the one with those skills.

I am.

The make-up of the internet is a fairly problematic issue. After all, we're all anonymous, to a certain extent, so clearly race isn't an issue anymore, right? Unfortunately, that's probably about as far from the truth as is possible. In a world where a rascist organization holds the name of one of the greatest civil rights leader with little to no indication as to who's hosting the material, we have issues.

As for myself, I find it difficult to really see past them, even beyond race. To me, the amorphous structure of the anonymous masses sitting across the keyboard from me does have a shape. I, personally, see them as largely white and largely male. This is due to the fact that in my years of use of the internet, that just happens to be the make up of people I've actually "met". I have preconceived notions of everyone on the internet, regardless of how true they are. As much as groups such as 4chan's anonymous wish to believe, they are not a faceless organization.

Unfortunately, this is also a rather difficult problem to solve. Blackmon discusses how the major problem is lack of access and education in the digital arts that prevents minorities from really "grabbing" the internet. This is fairly difficult to deal with though. I'm not saying it shouldn't, but to truly get a change that's more than just superficial, we'd need a societal change as well. I do believe that's happening, but society does not change or adapt quickly. Minorities still have a long way to go.