Oh wow! The BBC reports that Pope Benedict XVI will send religious text messages to thousands of young catholics. I wonder if this should be considered as SPAM? It’s strange to think of religious figures using technology – not that I know why it should be…
photo: “Very model of a modern mobile monk” by remittance_girl
For a long time there have been claims that the book is dead or at least terminally ill. The most recent revival of these claims was with the launch of the kindle ebook reader.
In the 1979 book The Micro Millennium, Christopher Evans forecasted that due to electronic media, “…the 1980s will see the book as we know it, and as our ancestors created and cherished it, begin a slow but steady slide into oblivion. . . . there are a number of reasons this is imminent.” Naturally Evans was wrong.
Again when the Internet became commonplace the book was given another obituary and again, judging from book sales, it was another premature prediction.
The thing is that technology will not kill the book. Technology has the ability to organize, reorganize information. It facilitates storage and searching but it will not kill the traditional book form. The book has other values that will not be easily replaced by technology. Steven Poole has written a great post on this.
photo: Old Spines by brighterorange
So the book is not dying but the bookshop is! So this was nothing new but it was driven home to me in force when I happened to walk past one of my favorite small bookstores, it was having a moving sale (not a closing down sale).
News of a book sale usually makes me happy, but after browsing the generous 30-50% sale offers I realized that even with the discount the books were cheaper to buy new ones online. So this is not something new but I thought that a discount this large would even things out – but it didn’t.
The Mayor of Graz in Austria has reacted to polls showing that almost half of the people in the city felt that listening to other people’s mobile calls highly irritating – he has now ordered that mobile phones have to be put on silent mode when their owners get on a bus or a tram. (BBC Online)
Sure it is irritating listening to other peoples mobile phone calls, but why limit ourselves to public transportation? Why not make it illegal in parks and public buildings? I am also irritated by bad taste in clothes, body odors, drunks, boisterous kids, angry pensioners and people who insist on standing in the way. So why don’t we ban the all?
Communication Age by credit: Dom Dada
Attempts at banning mobiles on public transport have been tested before and failed. In Stockholm the attempts failed and now the subway has excellent mobile coverage instead. Trains have silent compartments but this doesn’t stop people from talking on their phones. Its just something everyone will have to get used to.
The Mayor of Graz may not get this and even if he believes his ban it will fail (for so many reasons). All I can say is – thank god it’s Friday!
Techno Tuesday captures the reality of travel
Picture by Andy Rementer (CC BY-NC)
Wifi searching has become more common due to the costs being charged by commercial actors and the closing up of so many networks. This is mainly due to the default settings of the major Internet providers who are now automatically providing wifi routers with closed defaults (more about this stuff here). In addition to the scare tactics in the media. Using a scanner I walked around my new apartment and found 40 wireless networks but only two were open – these were too far away for me to be able to use.
Kalle posted this picture from Malmö on his flickr account
“Chain Graffiti Artists Here” Photo by Karl Jonsson (CC BY)
Old black and white photo’s are strangely interesting. Even the pictures which are bad become interesting given time. That’s why it is good news to read on the Creative Commons blog that the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia has become the first museum in the world to release publicly-held historical photographs for access on the Flickr: The Commons.
Powerhouse has released an initial 200 photographs from its Tyrrell Collection, and will continue to add more from this 7900+ image collection over the coming weeks. The Powerhouse Museum joins the Library of Congress in the ‘Commons’ initiative. The Library of Congress is sharing over 3,300 photos from its vast collection on the Flickr site.
Elizabeth St.
Format: Glass plate negative.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/collection=The_Tyrrell_Photographic
Part Of: Powerhouse Museum Collection
Persistent URL: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=28755
Read the Powerhouse announcement.
Via an email list I found out that James Boyle, the new Chairman of the Board at Creative Commons and a founder of Science Commons, is holding a contest to design a cover for his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. In the book, Boyle argues that more and more of material that used to be free to use without having to pay a fee or ask permission is becoming private property — at the expense of innovation, science, culture and politics.
Details, including specs and a link to some great source material for imagery, are available at the Worth1000 website. Both the book and the cover will be distributed under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial license.
Boyle is a great writer and enjoys exploring legal questions surrounding property in a way which makes it accessible and interesting to the reader. His book Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society was a real eye opener for me. I am definitely going to get his new book.
When my PhD was almost finished I announced a similar competition for the design of the book cover and was lucky to get it widely publicized. The whole idea of the competition was actually quite resented and discussed on my blog. Professional designers felt I was cutting them out of the market by asking for free work. Interesting discussions ensued. The results of the competition were posted on my blog and the winner was chosen by popular vote and used on the cover of my PhD.
Spent the morning doing hamster work – it’s the handling of emails and administrative tasks each so small that they do not really require much thought but taken collectively they can destroy any attempt to carry out real work (writing, researching etc). It’s called hamster work because after a day carrying it out you go home without having produced anything. It feels much like a hamster must feel after running in the treadmill. Lots of movement but no distance.
Photo: Cholate Loving Hamster by Steve_C (CC BY-NC-ND)
After two hours of attempting to empty my inbox, it now contains 92 essential emails (from the original 224). It isn’t fun discovering things have been forgotten but now at least I am (almost) on top of my email again.
By the way have you read Knuth on email? Here is a short quote:
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.
In many forum discussions the acronym ianal (I am not a lawyer) is used to denote that the writer is not a lawyer. In all fairness then I should begin this article by adding ianaa – I am not an artist. My interest in the definition of what is, can and should be art come mainly from my work in the field of copyright – even though I have an amateur interest in art.
When I first attempted to approach the question of art in 2003 I was naïve enough to think that there was a simple answer to be found and that it was just a question of locating it. Boy was I wrong. The only thing that I have found to be common to a definition of art at large and art in copyright is that it must have an expressive element.
Most often the artist must intend a work to be art for it to be considered art. But this is not always necessary. In some cases the viewers of the work may raise an aesthetic expression to the status of art despite their being no intention from the creator.
The utilitarian object: A dustpan in my house is not art. A dustpan hanging in the cleaning closet at the museum of modern art is not art. A dustpan hanging on the wall displayed among exhibits of the museum of modern art is art. The creator of the dustpan did not have the intention of creating art however the artist may use this everyday object as a piece of art and display it as art in order to create an aesthetic expression.
In 2004 a survey among 500 art experts chose Marcel Duchamp’s urinal to be the most influential modern art work of all time. The creator of the urinal does not have copyright in it – although he or she may have protection for its design but this protection can only be awarded for the elements of the design that are not their for solely functional use.
Left image of Duchamp’s urinal 1917 photo: Readymade by GriXx (CC by-nc-nd), Right image photo Urinal by Eatmorechips (CC by-nc-nd)
Copyright law is in trouble here since the object cannot be protected as it is and yet it is possible to protect the work via copyright. The photo’s here are the copyright of the photographers. The Duchamp urinal is made specific via his signature and making copies of it are limited since the rights to the work belong to the copyright holder.
Unintentional art: In an recent post about snowmen and copyright I discussed how a snowmen scene (two snowmen pushing and pulling a large wheel over a third snow figure lying in front of the wheel) could be seen as art even if it may not have been the intention of the creators to create anything beyond their own amusement. The creator may, for many reasons, not be intending to create art but the world at large may appreciate the results and classify the work as art. In this case the expression is awarded the full protection of copyright law despite the lack of author intention.
Koko is a lowland gorilla with a sign language vocabulary of 1000 words. Koko has also painted many pictures which have been sold in art auctions.
Bird Red Slice (abstract) by Koko (acrylic on canvas) 1984
The problem with copyright in unintentional art is interesting but it is made even more so by Koko. First, does copyright have a requirement of intent in the expression of art? Here the answer should be no. Second, and more specific to unintentional animal art (Koko is not alone) can animals be authors as understood by copyright law? There does not seem to be a formal requirement to be human in the law but I have been unable to find a non-human copyright holder.
The problem is that this is not the way in which art is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica (login required): “…the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others…” since this definition seems to require the intent of the creator.
Art and copyright are complicated subjects and I think that the only way to end this quote is with a Monty Python classic sketch with the pope discussing art with Michelangelo which ends with a comment by the pope (played by John Cleese): Look! I’m the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like!
Free Culture at NYU and Columbia are organizing a photo contest in New York. The idea is to document the city and provide images which can be later used for wikipedia articles. This is a great way to increase awareness and to provide a bank of images for others to use. Does anyone want to organize something similar in Göteborg?
On Friday, March 28th (April 4th rain date), join Free Culture @ NYU and Free Culture @ Columbia on a quest to get the best shots of NYC. Bring your camera and a way to get around town for the biggest scavenger hunt in Free Culture’s history.
All photos will be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons for inclusion into Wikipedia articles about NYC that need photos. We’ve got hundreds of locations, sites, and things to document for Wikipedia and it should be a really fun day.
Each member of the winning team will receive an iPod shuffle loaded with Creative Commons music! Second and third place teams will win copies of “Wikipedia, The Missing Manual” donated by O’Reilly.