change

Is Spock a Professor of ethics at Oxford?

Podcasts are the best thing since sliced bread. So why is it that so few actually know what they are or how to use them? Strange. Or is it just difficult to break ingrained behavior? But this is not about trying to persuade those who don’t get it but I just want to push the amazing series of podcast being sent now on the BBC Arts & Ideas show.

With a focus on the theme of Change the show presents lectures and a following q&a session from people like Landscape architect Charles Jencks, Neuro-scientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (listening to her now), Psychotherapist Susie Orbach & Economist Aditya Chakrabortty.

All these were great but the lecture that really blew me away was by Professor Julian Savulescu who spoke about the duty of change and the case for human enhancement and genetic selection. What I liked was the way in which he, like some philosophers seem to do, took a logical thinking to its consequences. Most of the time we find it difficult to accept a logical chain of thought. Well ok, I do… I get to the beginning where I can lay out the foundations. A is true, B is true… (and so on) but when drawing out the consequences I often shy away from the obvious as I am steered by an irrational emotion. What a philosopher can do is to dare to think the unthinkable.

With his bold logic, I suspect that Julian Savulescu may actually be Spock.

 

 

Posted on by mklang

Notes from a lecture: Copyright – One size fits all?

The setting for my lecture yesterday was the venerable SERI and the event was the annual “birthday” lecture: It was 41 years ago that the first seminar on law and computers was held in Oslo and this event launched what is today SERI.

The title of my lecture was Copyright – One size fits all? Unpacking Sophocles. The goal was to demonstrate that by bending and twisting copyright to fit new technologies and expressions we will eventually “break” copyright.

 

Copyright: One Size Fits All?

The lecture began with a brief introduction to cultural relativism and presented a quote from Franz Boas

“…civilization is not something absolute, but … is relative, and … our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes.”

Franz Boas 1887 “Museums of Ethnology and their classification” Science 9: 589

To visualize this I showed a clip of Siberian/Thuvan throat singing and explained that while we lack the tools for judging the quality of this singing this was an example of Siberian/Thuvan singing and it is a genre quite different from other forms of throat singing.

The same applies to the concepts of right and wrong but we are so embedded in our values that we are, at times, unable to see what is right or wrong.

In addition to this we must, especially in the world of copyright, pay attention to technology. And in particular to the fact that technology is not neutral and comes with particular affordances (i.e. limitations and/or possibilities).

I showed the audience the image of the tube bench and asked if they saw the ethical problem.

image from Yumiko Hayakawa essay Public Benches Turn ‘Anti-Homeless’ (also recommend Design with Intent)

This is an excellent example of regulation without rules. There are no signs explaining how to use the bench, there is no need to patrol the park to ensure misuse. In fact you could argue that this bench is equally inviting to all. But this bench is unfair in its equality. If you do not fit in you are not welcome. A homeless person cannot sleep on the bench. Without specific – and unpleasant – rules we regulate “correct” behavior in this park.

Now if you mix technology and cultural production we get a heady mix. But skipping head we touched down just briefly in 1631 with an example of the dangers of technology (printing). The example was the Wicked Bible.

This bible was a reprint of the King James bible but contained a serious typo in Exodus 20:14, where the Seventh Commandment reads, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The printers were fined 300 pounds and their printers’ license was revoked. Today there are only 11 copies of the original 1,000.

It was not the event with the bible that created a need for copyright but there was a concern with the power of the printers and a recognition that society needed more cultural works. So in 1710 the Statute of Anne was enacted with the purpose of:

Wheras printers, booksellers, and other persons, have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing… books, and other writings, without the consent of the authors… to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families: For preventing therefore such practices for the future, and for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books…

The first copyright act was not about culture it was about science. It was for the production of useful books.

But this was too good to last. The gift of monopoly was going to be used in more and more places and ways. Copyright expanded from useful books to other forms of cultural writing. The length of time the monopoly lasted was increased. Copyright was made international via conventions. And most problematic it was tweaked to suit new forms of technological expression.

For the latter I told story of Napoleon Sarony and Oscar Wilde and the case of Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony where the US supreme court explained that photographs were equal to text and deserved protection under copyright.

Copyright became a natural part of our thinking. It became hegemonic and natural – we could not image a world without it.

At about the same time we began to embark on the social century. Everywhere common folks were demanding to be part of – and have a say in – life. In politics, in the workplace, in economics, in the schools… the people demanded their “right” to be part of the decision making process.

Aided by technology ordinary people entered the realm of professionals. Kodak nr 1 was released in 1888. It was the first mass-produced cheap easy to use camera. It was portable and had a short exposure. What this all meant was that Kodakers (amateur photographers, see “’Kodakers Lying in Wait’: Amateur Photography and the Right to Privacy in New York, 1885-1915”, American Quarterly, Vol 43, No 1 March 1991)

The problem was that even with the development of cheap recording devices for sound and vision – transmitting these to others was remained in the hands of larger organizations.

But technology was changing this too. With digitalization the expense of copying all but vanished, with connectivity the possibility of communicating to a wider audience became possible for “everyone”. With new digital devices we began to change our behavioral patterns. Here I exemplified with MP3 players that can contain so much music that choice is not an issue. It is interesting that we praise the selling of devices that almost cannot be used legally. What message does an iPod that has 160gb of storage (that’s 40 000 songs according to apple) send? (1) please go buy some music or, (2) download the internet here.

The final major change was storage. Storage is both similar to the iPod example and different to it. Storage means no longer having to decide what to remove. Storage today means that the only problems we have are how to organize our information so that it can be retrieved later. And what about letting people forget? Forgetting is a social necessity and is quickly becoming a scarce commodity (Mayer-Schönberger has written a fascinating book on the subject “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age”).

These changes pushed the social century into the next phase: the social decade. All the points made earlier come together. The theoretically possible becomes the inevitable.

At this point it is a clash of norms mainly in the form of an end of passive consumption. But what does it all mean? To ease into this stage I took the help of Douglas Adams and his amazing quote from The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

With this quote I wanted to point out that the Swedish Copyright Act was enacted in 1960. The group of people who thought long and hard about its content, form and scope were probably around 50 years old. The technological acceptance level (i.e. what is a normal use of technology) was developed before they were 35 so this means around 1945. Think about it – what level of technology was dominant in 1945?

It is not unfair to say that this group had no chance to enact legislation capable of suiting our technological reality today.

At this point in the lecture I wanted to bring in law and morality in relation to copyright so I drew a simple taxonomy

As an example of Homage I showed clips from the Odessa Steps scene in The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925) and the station steps scene in The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987). This is acceptable and praiseworthy. The artist building on the past, Eisenstein’s opinion does not matter.

In Cross Culture I showed a clip from the Kill Bill (Tarantino, 2003 & 2004) trailer and argued that we take offence when someone in Asia copies a dvd but profiteering from another’s culture is art. (Laikwan Pang: “Copying Kill Bill”, Social Text 83, Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 2005.)

In the remix corner I showed an Anime Music Video (AMV) combining ABBA and Anime cartoons called FMA AMV Gimme a Man After Midnight – Abba

Here is a form of cultural creation building on the past re-using and copying. It is unfortunate that this is not supported by law. The AMV practice is huge with groups and subgenres in the same way as Siberian Throat singing. It is culture, it is an entry point for artists and it is a legitimate form of artistic expression. (Check out The rewards of non–commercial production: Distinctions and status in the anime music video scene by Mizuko Ito. First Monday, Volume 15, Number 5 – 3 May 2010)

For pure downloading I did not show any clip. What I meant was of course illegally downloading copyrighted material. While I understand the desire… it is simply a parasitic behavior.

Now the problem is that when our technology makes it easier and easier to break the law there are cries from those who are invested in the current system and who profit well from it who cry that something must be done. Unfortunately you cannot put the technological genie back in the bottle. And this is not what they want. They want all the advantages of technology – but they don’t want it to change everyone’s behavior and negatively impact their business models. They want to have their (and our) cake and eat it. So they call upon the law to create artificial barriers.

In doing so they further twist and stretch copyright to the boundary of imagination.

The copyright industry/lobby (incredibly bad term so I ask you to understand me) also attempt to explain their actions to us – the consumers. This is done to lobby themselves into a better political position. Unfortunately this group seems to have forgotten themselves and the world in which they live.

The message they send is very top down. It comes, as if we were still living in the radio age, like mass media from one to many. To explain what I mean I showed the anti-piracy advertisement Piracy – it’s a crime

The problem with this advert is that is filled with the most bizarre and bad arguments. In attempting to portray illegal downloads as wrong they say things like: you wouldn’t steal a car.

Naturally today we no longer live in the top-down world. We the people no longer respect… We respond. One such response makes a joke out of the Piracy – it’s a crime advert. I showed a clip from The IT Crowd – Series 2 – Episode 3: Piracy warning parody

OK so what should we do?

Now the pirates (how’s that for another hugely vague and silly term) or anti-copyrighters may say “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” Shakespeare Henry VI (Part 2) Act 4, scene 2 but that may be going a bit too far.

Lawyers need to adapt in two main ways. (1) We need to be better a arguing and legitimizing and (2) we need to change the law.

First off we need to accept polycentric regulation. In Antigone the playwright Sophocles argued that if the law went against morals (natural law) then you could act in accordance with natural law. This gave a nice choice between following one or the other depending on the way you feel about a particular thing. In other words you could do what you like and find a way of legitimizing it later.

But Sophocles had it easy. Today it is not an either or situation. We are regulated and controlled by masses of factors from the law to culture to technology etc. Learning to navigate and understand this is incredibly important for any law that attempts to balance interests of several groups. But if the law fails to be relevant it is quickly going to become useless.

In the case of copyright this means abandoning the heavy-handed “one size fits all approach” in two ways. First copyright should not be used for everything and second it should not be applied in the same way on the things it is used for.

What we see today is a failure in these two areas and it is killing the usefulness of copyright.

I closed the lecture by presented a list of changes I would like to see in relation to copyright law.

Free Digitalization of cultural artifacts: There should be no additional copyright protection for simply digitalizing anything in the public domain. Also material bought and paid for by Public Service radio and tv should be released freely much earlier than today.
Limit terms of protection: Some copyrightable stuff is pointless and irrelevant as it is produced. Most is pointless and irrelevant and forgotten within five years. So 70 years after death is simply ridiculous. Sure some will suffer but today the few are supported at the cost of the many. The well known are pushing the obscure into the vacuum of the eternally forgotten.
Allow refusal of copyright: If you do not want to copyright something you should not have to! Freedom should be a default.
Allow creative use: Increased rights of fair use. Nordic law does not allow the quotation of images and video clips. This is a simple oversight which the legislators could not imagine that we would need when they enacted the law 50 years ago.
Public domain protections: There is no term for the concept public domain in Nordic languages. This means that the public domain – which is under attack everywhere – is handicapped in all discussions since there is no accepted term of reference. The default is copyright, this is not a level playing field upon which to have a discussion.
Resolve Orphan works problem: Seriously! Do it. Do it now!
Promote Multiple Creators: Copyright is built on the myth of the single author. The content creation of today is much wider. Recognize the fact that multiple creators exist and need to be supported.
Folklore & traditional knowledge: end cultural imperialism…

It was a great lecture with an interesting discussion that lasted well into the night. Thank you SERI.

Posted on by mklang

Things I shall miss

Saudade is a wonderful concept, its difficult to translate from Portugese but here is Aubrey Bell’s explanation from the book In Portugal (1912).

Vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.

So lets start with the obvious. I am a web person, my work, research and many of my interests would not have been relevant, or even possible, prior to the internet. Despite this I reserve the right to miss things that are slowly fading away – in a large part due to this technology we crave, admire and rely on.

Bookstores with more than bestsellers. The bookstore was dying for a time. It was hit hard from its monopolistic stance by the webstores and has transformed itself into a pop experience. Unfortunately with less knowledge and stock. Now for those of you lucky enough to live in cities in English speaking nations there is the mega store that gives the illusion of width (and they are gorgeous). But seen from the perspective of a small language state like Sweden it is easy to see first hand the decline of the book & store.

Some of the naive believe that if the market wants a book it will be published. The problem with this is that the large market required wants bestsellers. And historical works will be lost, they have been before but not on this scale. I used to think that second-hand stores would pick up the slack but they will eventually end up with what the market produces.

Languages are dying out at an alarming rate. They are small odd languages which most of us will never hear and now never get a chance to. With them dies there cultural significance and potential impact on the world. So this is sad, in the same way as the death of any culture. It’s sad, but that’s life. Obviously the smaller languages are doomed. Eventually Swedish will be a thing of the past. Swedish, Danish & Norwegian can almost be seen as dialects of each other but even then we are talking about a population of less than 20 million. But the question I have not seen posed is how many languages can a globalized world support?

Newspapers! Eventually the concept of sitting at breakfast with a thick, well written, argumentative, educational, cultural artifact of sheets of paper filled with the world will be gone the way of family dinners and the dodo. Can’t help it, I am a dead tree junky. The news I can get elsewhere but, ah, the format, the format.

Real old fashioned unnecessarily large, tackily decorated movie theaters. What am I saying? These are long gone.

Being able to read the collected letter of someone dead is a form of voyeurism which will be gone forever. In its place is the text message or tweet novel. Who wants that crap? Help me? Seriously it must be novelty value? Or is this just an unappreciated art form that I am too dumb to get?

Dead time This is straight from the Telegraph’s list of 50 things the Internet will kill. “When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet’s draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.”

Traveling to Local culture even before the web major stores were everywhere. The same stores appear all over and create an ubiquitous sense of style and culture. This is an old complaint but it ain’t getting any better. Mind you the “local” items I miss are probably made in China anyway.

Pens, pencils & notebooks. Sure these are still around. Quality notebooks were almost killed by the moleskine but a whole new generation of cool stuff is appearing. Unfortunately the good stuff will not survive. They will become unfashionable quality gifts given on serious occasions and never used. They will be back for short revivals as fashion accessories.

Snail mail. I am old enough to have sent and received actual letters. Hand written content about people I had actually met. Now its only marketing, bills and magazines that come through the letterbox.

—

For those of you with a theoretical slant. The inevitable I speak of is not a technological determinism in the sense that we are slaves to technology and cannot make human choices. But I adhere to the thoughts of Langford Winner (Autonomous Technology) that the thousands/millions of individual human decisions are all in the power of humans but together like a shoal of fish we move inevitably forward together. Only rarely can an individual alone change the course of technology and therefore we may seen technology as a whole as deterministic.

Posted on by mklang

50 dying things

The Telegraph has a wonderful list of “50 things that are being killed by the internet”. The name is a little misleading since it is not only the internet’s fault but it is an interesting and amusing look at the way in which our world is changing. Not that I will miss all the items on the list, but it’s still good to notice what is changing.

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.

2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity’s death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the “fans in mourning” mawkishness that otherwise predominates.

3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There’s no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will “album albums” like Radiohead’s Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?

4) Sarah Palin
Her train wreck interviews with NBC’s Katie Couric were watched and re-watched millions of times on the internet, cementing the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s reputation as a politician out of her depth. Palin’s uncomfortable relationship with the web continues; she has threatened to sue bloggers who republish rumours about the state of her marriage.

5) Punctuality
Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.

6) Ceefax/Teletext
All sports fans of a certain age can tell you their favourite Ceefax pages (p341 for Test match scores, p312 for football transfer gossip), but the service’s clunking graphics and four-paragraph articles have dated badly. ITV announced earlier this year that it was planning to pull Teletext, its version.

7) Adolescent nerves at first porn purchase
The ubiquity of free, hard-core pornography on the web has put an end to one of the most dreaded rights rites of passage for teenage boys – buying dirty magazines. Why tremble in the WHSmiths queue when you can download mountains of filth for free in your bedroom? The trend also threatens the future of “porn in the woods” – the grotty pages of Razzle and Penthouse that scatter the fringes of provincial towns and villages.

8) Telephone directories
You can find Fly Fishing by J R Hartley on Amazon.

9) The myth of cat intelligence
The proudest household pets are now the illiterate butts of caption-based jokes. Icanhasreputashunback?

10) Watches
Scrabbling around in your pocket to dig out a phone may not be as elegant as glancing at a watch, but it saves splashing out on two gadgets.

11) Music stores
In a world where people don’t want to pay anything for music, charging them £16.99 for 12 songs in a flimsy plastic case is no business model.

12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like “Yours faithfully” are being replaced by “Best” and “Thanks”.

13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the “mere” storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.

14) Dead time
When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet’s draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.

15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.

16) Hoaxes and conspiracy theories
The internet is often dismissed as awash with cranks, but it has proved far more potent at debunking conspiracy theories than perpetuating them. The excellent Snopes.com continues to deliver the final, sober, word on urban legends.

17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium’s most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.

18) Authoritative reference works
We still crave reliable information, but generally aren’t willing to pay for it.

19) The Innovations catalogue
Preposterous as its household gadgets may have been, the Innovations catalogue was always a diverting read. The magazine ceased printing in 2003, and its web presence is depressingly bland.

20) Order forms in the back pages of books
Amazon’s “Customers who bought this item also bought…” service seems the closest web equivalent.

21) Delayed knowledge of sporting results
When was the last time you bought a newspaper to find out who won the match, rather than for comment and analysis? There’s no need to fall silent for James Alexander Gordon on the way home from the game when everyone in the car has an iPhone.

22) Enforceable copyright
The record companies, film studios and news agencies are fighting back, but can the floodgates ever be closed?

23) Reading telegrams at weddings
Quoting from a wad of email printouts doesn’t have the same magic.

24) Dogging
Websites may have helped spread the word about dogging, but the internet offers a myriad of more convenient ways to organise no-strings sex with strangers. None of these involve spending the evening in lay-by near Aylesbury.

25) Aren’t they dead? Aren’t they gay?
Wikipedia allows us to confirm or disprove almost any celebrity rumour instantly. Only at festivals with no Wi-Fi signals can the gullible be tricked into believing that David Hasselhoff has passed away.

26) Holiday news ignorance
Glancing at the front pages after landing back at Heathrow used to be a thrilling experience – had anyone died? Was the government still standing? Now it takes a stern soul to resist the temptation to check the headlines at least once while you’re away.

27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart
After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again.

28) Respect for doctors and other professionals
The proliferation of health websites has undermined the status of GPs, whose diagnoses are now challenged by patients armed with printouts.

29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.

30) Geographical knowledge
With GPS systems spreading from cars to smartphones, knowing the way from A to B is a less prized skill. Just ask the London taxi drivers who spent years learning The Knowledge but are now undercut by minicabs.

31) Privacy
We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means.

32) Chuck Norris’s reputation
The absurdly heroic boasts on Chuck Norris Facts may be affectionate, but will anyone take him seriously again?

33) Pencil cricket
An old-fashioned schoolboy diversion swept away by the Stick Cricket behemoth

34) Mainstream media
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News in the US have already folded, and the UK’s Observer may follow. Free news and the migration of advertising to the web threaten the basic business models of almost all media organisations.

35) Concentration
What with tabbing between Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Google News, it’s a wonder anyone gets their work done. A disturbing trend captured by the wonderful XKCD webcomic.

36) Mr Alifi’s dignity
Twenty years ago, if you were a Sudanese man who was forced to marry a goat after having sex with it, you’d take solace that news of your shame would be unlikely to spread beyond the neighbouring villages. Unfortunately for Mr Alifi, his indiscretion came in the digital age – and became one of the first viral news stories.

37) Personal reinvention
How can you forge a new identity at university when your Facebook is plastered with photos of the “old” you?

38) Viktor Yanukovych
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was organised by a cabal of students and young activists who exploited the power of the web to mobilise resistance against the old regime, and sweep Viktor Yushchenko to power.

39) The insurance ring-round
Their adverts may grate, but insurance comparison websites have killed one of the most tedious annual chores

40) Undiscovered artists
Posting paintings to deviantART and Flickr – or poems to writebuzz – could not be easier. So now the garret-dwellers have no excuses.

41) The usefulness of reference pages at the front of diaries
If anyone still digs out their diaries to check what time zone Lisbon is in, or how many litres there are to a gallon, we don’t know them.

42) The nervous thrill of the reunion
You’ve spent the past five years tracking their weight-gain on Facebook, so meeting up with your first love doesn’t pack the emotional punch it once did.

43) Solitaire
The original computer timewaster has been superseded by the more alluring temptations of the web. Ditto Minesweeper.

44) Trust in Nigerian businessmen and princes
Some gift horses should have their mouths very closely inspected.

45) Prostitute calling cards/ kerb crawling
Sex can be marketed more cheaply, safely and efficiently on the web than the street corner.

46) Staggered product/film releases
Companies are becoming increasingly draconian in their anti-piracy measure, but are finally beginning to appreciate that forcing British consumers to wait six months to hand over their money is not a smart business plan.

47) Footnotes
Made superfluous by the link, although Wikipedia is fighting a brave rearguard action.

48) Grand National trips to the bookmaker
Having a little flutter is much more fun when you don’t have to wade though a shop of drunks and ne’er-do-wells

49) Fanzines
Blogs and fansites offer greater freedom and community interaction than paper fanzines, and can be read by many more people.

50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?

Posted on by mklang

Protesting change

Journalists and photographers in the United Kingdom are preparing a protest on the 16th February. The object of their protests is a new law that allows for the arrest – and potential imprisonment – of anyone who takes pictures of police officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. If found guilty the result could be imprisonment for up to 10 years.

The Home Office argues that the Terrorism Act 2000 already makes it an offence to ‘collect or make a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’ and that the new law will not change anything. However, photographers fear that the Counter-Terrorism Act will, by explicitly mentioning constables, give more power to police officers to stop photographers, including press photographers, from taking pictures in public places.

Read more about this and how to participate at the British Journal of Photography.

Posted on by mklang

Welcome President Obama

Like many others I watched President Obama’s inauguration. He was calm and collected, unsmiling, powerful – almost too much so. And then he slipped up twice while being sworn in – a human touch.

His inaugural address was magnificent and despite my skepticism I was impressed by the level of trust, sincerity optimism and gravity Obama delivered in his speech.

Here are some of the best bits (from a transcript):

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man…

Here is a fundamental point which must be addressed. For too long we have been fighting terror with methods that are destroying the very liberties we are supposed to be defending. I almost did not believe that a man in power today would say such a thing. With great power comes great responsibility.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.

Did you hear the last part? “and non-believers” Exclude non! Religious discrimination is evil and must be stopped everywhere.

…know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

This part of the speech was addressed to other countries but in stating this principle it is an important recognition that it applies to the states as well. The last eight years have been all about destruction and fostering more destruction.

…we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

A lovely phrase. Powerful.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you…

We pledge…

All in all it is very hopeful to have a thinking man in such a position of great power and I am looking forward to the change he promises.

Posted on by mklang

Environmentalism and Class

On the one hand environmentalism is science – irrefutable and extremely difficult to interpret socially, but it’s solutions are not. Well so I thought but my eyes were opened a bit wider after reading Monbiot’s article Flying Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on the connection between class struggle and environmentalism

If you understand and accept what climate science is saying, you need no further explanation for protests against airport expansion. But if… you refuse to accept that manmade climate change is real, you must show that the campaign to curb it is the result of an irrational impulse. The impulse they choose, because it’s an easy stereotype and it suits their prolier-than-thou posturing, is the urge to preserve the wonders of the world for the upper classes. “Cheap flights”, O’Neill claims, “has become code for lowlife scum, an issue through which you can attack the “underclass”, the working class and the nouveau riche with impunity.”(24)

The connection seems obvious, doesn’t it? More cheap flights must be of greatest benefit to the poor. A campaign against airport expansion must therefore be an attack on working-class aspirations. It might be obvious, but it’s wrong.

Working with empirical evidence Monbiot shows that the working class are not the primary users or even the intended users of cheap flights. The working class, it seems, does not fill the airlines of the world even when the tickets are priced at close to zero.

This is very interesting since confusing the science of climate change with issues of social and class justice are a wonderful way of creating counter arguments against “hard” science. If cheap air fares are not about class then the question is not about the “right to fly” but should be focused on making the travelers pay their own environmental costs.

Posted on by mklang

The Machine That Changed the World

Computer documentaries are usually overrated events with lots of graphical representations, big men in floral shirts and evil hackers sitting in dark basements. Thankfully not all are like this. Waxy has found a classic computer documentary. It was produced pre-web and has been difficult to find – until now:

The Machine That Changed the World is the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced, but since its release in 1992, it’s become virtually extinct. Out of print and never released online, the only remaining copies are VHS tapes floating around school libraries or in the homes of fans who dubbed the original shows when they aired.

An interesting copyright note is found at the bottom of the page:

Note: Like all the other materials I post here, these videos are completely out-of-print and unavailable commercially, digitized from old VHS recordings. If they ever come back into print, or the copyright holders contact me, I’ll take them down immediately.

While this is not in line with copyright law I salute both the sentiment and the action. What a great documentary – thanks Waxy.

Posted on by mklang