Between Kate Puzey and ACTA: The Middle Road for You and I

Two recent posts on BoingBoing are worthy of publicizing and demonstrate the need for more sophisticated and nuanced analysis about so-called "social media" and "social change". They also demonstrate a sad, yet in no way surprising, set of contrasts: two examples of American power, one with a graceful open spirit and the other with a closed, myopic one. Xeni Jardin memorializes the incredible life of Kate Puzey, a murdered Peace Corp activist in Benin, who also kept a blog and photo gallery of her experiences (link). The other by Cory Doctorow documents the ludicrous The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the corporate supporters behind this super-secret copyright treaty, which the Obama administration has claimed is a matter of "national security."

In the middle are the rest of us, who must decide how we want to impact the world, both using social media tools, but also recognizing the hype, the herd mentality, the obvious idea that social changes requires more than becoming a "fan" or some forms of online action. In the middle are the rest of us, who must decide if the free flow of information is to be controlled by corporate lawyers, some of whose brands are both supporting ACTA and employing the very social media gurus ironically reveling as we write at the geek-fest known as South by Southwest Interactive. Or, will we will embrace both these new forms of marketing, while also ensuring that those is distant lands, who in the past we would never have known of, will also have the same basic access to knowledge, information, and education as the rest of us? Will we finally move beyond the web 2.0, 3.0, yah, yah-hype and embrace the opportunity of more fundamental change?

As we move forward in this conversation, we should be careful not to set up simplistic us/them divisions or fall back on the tired cliches of corporations=corruption. The massive gap between these poles --- let's not simplify the challenge as an noble individual versus evil corporation, as there's a whole network of institutions behind Puzey's Peace Corp mission and there are so people within the corporate world who support innovation and change --- represents the awesome, complex challenge facing all of us. Each of us must negotiate this middle space.

We need more subtle forms of conversation and listening, ones with substance worthy of examining complex issues of networks, communication, individuals, institutions and power. We need new tools and institutions, social media and not, that truly empower global citizens (I'm curious if any of my LA social media peeps @ SXSW have heard of anything new along these lines?).

I'll be expanding more on this in the coming weeks, but I'd love to hear your initial thoughts.

But now it's time to get back to the job search.

Los Angeles Interactive Media Spotlight: Praise the Lord, Tracy, Dean and Jesus (TDJ) Have Come To Save Los Angeles

Tuesday night at the Comedy Central stage, Tracy, Dean and Jesus rolled into town, praise the lord, blessed be he. "Hailing from the Waldorph Christian Parish in Goshen, Ohio, [these warriors] are currently on a mission trip to turn blue states red, starting in the belly of the beast, Los Angeles. Join us for an evening of revival, preaching, the Lord's music, the destruction of Power-couples, and the devil."

Any sane individual who's has studied the powerful ways of the Hollywood movie/myth-making machine will give thanks that Tracy has arrived on our far, Western shores. Composed of Andre Hyland playing the youth minister and rock savior with Mike Mayfield and Paul Erling Oyen as supporting church members, the show opened with an inspiring travel video. Tracy journeyed to Monroe, OH, home of the largest Jesus statue in this Great Land at Solid Rock Mission and gave thanks.

The show then proceeded with Tracy leading the revival, calling up a blasphemous, female sinner - a self-declared PERVERT. But he saved her, forcing the devil out of her belly. Tracy brought the word of the lord to Hollywood and is on a mission. Hollywood has spread its images of glamour, celebrity, sex, hip-hop and more sex and violence around the world. The Hollywood power is immense; the seductive flame of Hollywood dreams still holds great power and Tracy is ready to challenge Hollywood's corruption, head-on

Storming around the room, Tracy railed against the devil, the Hollywood corruption that permeated the Comedy Central space. For a back-drop, this mission -- this desire to bring the Lord to Hollywood -- faces many obstacles. Hollywood is stubborn, determined to protect its own foundation in the face of disruption, whether that be preachers from Ohio or technologies from the World Wide Web. There examples of Hollywood's determination, of the "biz's" awesome power are:

• One, the studio's lobby, the MPAA, wants to break into the home of God-fearing, American Christians and take control of your home movie/television theater.
• Second, they're are attempting to limit Christian-loving European's ability to harness technology in the Lord's full majesty
• Three, their ideological myopia prevents studios from unleashing the glory of technology in its greatest splendor, ultimately enriching themselves and us. Oh, how did our lord love Napster and the musical bounty it unleashed!).

The climax is always the destruction of the card-board devil. This time, Tracy destroyed the devil in its Hollyweird incarnation: the evil-seed of Hollywood power-couples Bradgelina and TomKat.

Andre Hyland is creating true interactive media, exploiting "social media" in all its glory. TDJ has their own website; Hyland has created another persona, "his alter ego Tim Hutchins, a ponytailed douche with yogic aspirations in perpetual confab with his cell-phone headset. Cameras hidden, Hyland yammers improvised quips to no one, shushing passersby or asking for their help with one of Hutchins' ridiculous quests (a blind date, for instance). He invariably loses his New Age cool, screams and dunks his phone into the concrete. (link). Hyland and friends have their GooTube channel, BlondChili (in honor of Cincinnati, OH's Skyline Chili). Hyland exhibits a true anarchic, trickster-tricky spirit, exploiting the web in its most creative, remix-able ways. He challenges our sense of decorum in public, and theatrical, spaces.

God bless him.

PS: Their next show is September 15th at El Cid

Los Angeles Interactive Media News: Video Jungle TV Launches

When Tim Berners-Lee created the HTML coding necessary to power the World Wide Web fifteen years ago, he made a critical decision that is disrupting the film and television business as we know it. He chose to share his knowledge for free.

Sunday, September 7, 2008 at Lakay Studios in Burbank, Video Jungle TV launched a demonstration of live and on-demand interactive programming. Whether or not Berners-Lee imagined rich media being distributed over the web, a decade later, the flood of content represented by YouTube during the Web 2.0 period has proven to be only a precursor. More innovative, sophisticated, independent programming is just beginning.

Mic Espinoza came up with the idea for Video Jungle TV about five months ago. As a spin-off of IC News Television, a User-Generated Video site for news television stations and newspapers to upload live or recorded video, he wanted a place for affordable live, online digital broadcasting. “I wanted a programming space not limited to the small digital cameras, one with the same abilities as any other corporate television station.” The one missing piece was a production studio. "The rates were just too high everywhere," Espinoza said in a phone interview.

Creceda Lemaire, the owner of Layak Studios, created a space for Los Angeles' independent artists, a space to broadcast content for commercial and non-commercial use. “Three years ago, I started creating a TV show called, Great People Doing Great Things,” said Lemaire. Lemaire was looking to increase business and like many Angelenos, turns to Craigslist.

Adam Lightplay, the owner of LightPlay Production, saw the advertisement looking for an assistant studio manager. “I saw the ad and came and talked to her and it was a nice match cause I was looking for an office where I can edit, but here I could both edit and have a studio to shoot in.” Lightplay had been working with Espinoza for years, introduced the parties and the package was complete.

On Sunday, all the pieces came together and premiered a demo show with , stand-up comedian/host Sean Hennigan the Master of all Wackiness. The band, Ren Street, performed and showed that the technology pieces worked. Consisting of Ren Hemstreet Lead Vocalist/Guitar, and Rocc Thomas--Bass, Steve Price--Drums, the band was aware of Video Jungle TV for months. “Mic manages me and I got friends all over the world,” Ren said. "But I [now] can say, check me out here, see, listen, watch, learn. It’s a good way to keep people updated on the project.”

Live, online television is going back in time. Where once the national corporate broadcasting companies such as NBC, CBS and ABC promoted live, dynamic content, now it is web producers such as Espinoza, Lemaire and Lightplay who are changing the ball game. At the same time, as the digital broadcast flag and net neutrality struggles demonstrate, corporate television and motion picture actors are working to enclose these new channels. The key questions are: how many will watch and listen and how open will our telecommunication lines stay?

Amazing example: A librarian fined 4 legally protesting McCain on Public Property!!!

(If interested: UPDATE -- AMERICAN REPUBLIC LOST ALL LEGITIMACY; QUESTION: rebuilt; PROGNOSIS:..... (not good this week)

Richard Serra and Eli Broad: Why can't children play "freely" in your spirals and take pictures to share w/ friends?".

Click To Play

Want to know who top man John McCain really is:

who better to ask than a fellow Annapolis classmate who attended the Naval Academy from 1957 to 1961 and was also a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. Thanks to we can meet Doctor Phillip Butler.

He is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war.

After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Listen to what he says about McCain's character and personality:

Labor Day '08: Politics=Entertainment/Entertainment=LetItBurnRSublimeChimes

This past week has been, for me, profoundly depressing. The mainstream media's (MSM) absolute, fundamental collapse is a fact; the whole so-called journalistic "story-line" of the DNC convention was straight out of one of my Hollyweird Fox 2000 story meetings from ten years ago: take a inspiring, wide-eyed innocent immigrant's son, hide his synthetic, calculating nature, sky-rocket onto the "scene" and in four years, come from behind in the Presidential race and win one 4 the gipper.

Then, the week of his coronation, set up the feud with the evil bitch wife of a sex addict President, turn-bulley-turned-redeemed again and let them all come together 4 the grand finale convention, (and here the studio execs would say), "no, instead of setting the coronation in the convention hall, let's move it outside, hell it'll be right after the Olympics [movies r planned at least 4 years in advance so we'd have the calendar] & do it at the out-door stadium, like a true MESSIAH ARISING, hallelujah! Oh, by the way, let see if we can get to the two regal families, K & K to show up the convention & pass on the messianic torch, or shall way say, cross.").

There is NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that our democratic system of government, if one believes that an interested, EDUCATED citizenry should participate in and care about the stake raised in Presidential elections, is at grave risk.

MEMO TO MTV/Viacom and MSNBC/UNIVERSAL/GE: I DON'T CARE if Aaron Sorkin resembles Barack Obama in the most minuscule linguistic manner! IT DOESN'T MATTER. I WANT, but don't expect i'll get it from you, SUBSTANCE!

Politics long ago became entertainment, but now language itself, is being corrupted and MSM isn't blinking an eye. While some in the blogashere point out the pathetic, corrupted b.s. that passes on news on MSNBC and forget Fox, I wonder if the trains is so far past the station and hurtling towards the cliff, the tracks are so rusted and old (remember that bridge in the Midwest folks) that only real question is how bad will the destruction be while India, China, Russia and the top 20 or so countries ranked above us in digital infrastructure pass us by?

My only question is which vision will dominate the coming years: one hoping that we have some humility and listen to the voices long silent, found in the quiet of nature? Or, those will those voices of our civilized society, our social media, social communication, digital over-networked world that drives by burnt-out neighborhoods and into "Ivory Towers" while other have memories of want to let it burn? I'm going to try and stay hopeful, turning off the MSM completely and incorporaTING SOME soundscapes I took in Big Sur as a counter-point, but we shall see.....

Postscript: Thks, I guess, to BB for these posts on one more example of how far the US Government in our over-reaction to 9/11, but more fundamentally, our whole US democratic project is at risk. The flames of '92, the 2000 LA democratic convention cluster-fuck and other police-state over-reactions, combined with the "left's" failure, and almost adolescent, indie-media, post-Seattle provocation, leave Blue Mandy feeling quite down at the prospects of any Obama-esque revival of the American project.

Memo to Hollywood: Stop Dividing Up the World and Enclosing the Commons.

Why Not Join a True Global Commons, Ecology Movement?

In a series of Hollywood pictures and videos documenting the noise and images of life in Los Angeles -- particularly the opening night of the HollyShorts Film Festival -- the surreal, celebrity flows of light, sounds and images were revealed to me in powerful and disturbing fashion. I saw the incredible hunger that exists for more and more celebrity images. This celebrity machine, of course, exploits digital channels like the World Wide Web. At the same time, my graduate studies introduced me to the material consequences of corporate Hollywood's attempt to restrict how content flows through these new digital channels. When these phenomena encounter one another -- a closed, corporate logic that fears new disruptive technologies, yet promotes a hunger for worldwide celebrity images -- our common space becomes enclosed and the very light and sounds between us all becomes fragmented. This was evident in my photos. For those of us who care about a "knowledge ecology" movement and the emergence of a global digital commons, humility is called for as we move forward.

I've been exploring the sounds and spaces of LA in different locales, public and private, ranging from the downtown Disney Hall to the streets of Hollywood to our pubic parks, all seen and heard from a fresh angle, all contributed to this emerging digital commons. Thanks to Josh Kun and the larger sound studies school, I began this exploration.

In an audio culture seminar, Josh Kun instructed my fellow students and myself to keep a "sound journal." This meant shutting up and recording sounds heard everyday, semester-long. It was mind-blowing experience. We developed real critical listening skills. Previously, I had no real practice slowing down and taking a breath. Children play and fully engage their senses. But adults in an over-networked world easily forget the importance of slowing down, of play, of shutting up and listening to the amazing sounds around us. I saw and felt how much of my everyday life omitted a range of sensual, sound experiences. I began to hear the clinks and clanks of construction -- girders hitting girders, noises of skateboards whishing by, rhythms and rhymes of birds. We are all too over-networked, too plugged-in to our mobile or i-Pod blockages, and simply too busy, stressed and economically insecure to really slow down and listen. At least I was and still often am.

We live in a world where sounds and images flow through digital networks faster than ever before in history. These images and sounds can be of a young girl stoned to death in Iraq or the latest celebrity photo-shoot at the grand-old red carpet. My Hollyshorts opening night photographs reveal how our public, common spaces - here the courtyard at The Egyptian Theatre -- are distorted and fragmented.

The beautiful Egyptian Theatre's courtyard, its natural light, or darkness, was so overwhelmed and inundated by the streams of flashes that, if a photo was taken without a flash (as I did), then the actresses, actors and other human bodies, shapes, and figures appear fragmented and distorted. In other photos, the images are blurred and unclear and in all, the common space between us was roped off and enclosed. The photographic result created an almost Cubist, collage-like effect. Check out my photo-stream for examples. Of course, the flashes eventually move on, but traces remain in the images that zoom around the world.

It is human nature to want to share memories, to pass along images, to recommend sounds from one friend to another. Entrenched industries are always scared when technologies give consumers new, disruptive tools through which to use established products and services. In contrast to the spread of celebrity images, which when taken in their "natural" state reveal a distorted use of light and fragmented bodies and depend on enclosures around our public commons, there exists the emergence of a different network, one that wishes to open up access to knowledge, to promote a global commons - a knowledge ecology international movement. I discovered the existence of these networks in my Set Top Cop seminar with Cory Doctorow. One label used is the "Access to Knowledge" (A2K) movement.

As I looked at the fragmented images revealed by my photos, as I wondered how easily our commons spaces are purchased -- how fragile any common space truly is -- I realized just how often we all experience and accept the loss of such spaces (that night: our common courtyard). We settle for faux public squares, managed by private security guards and landscaped with Vegas fountains.

The corporate Hollywood studio mentality embraces this managerial, enclosed logic in the extreme. Hollywood enjoys having it both ways: feeding a celebrity culture and controlling how these images spread through the web and other channels. There is a specific ideological logic at work here: one that divides up of public spaces - red carpet and not; one that encourages the spread of images, but only under certain conditions, then sends its take-downs.

Seth Schoen, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, documented this specific, material Hollywood ideological reach and its resulting impact in his talk , which was part of Cory Doctorow's Fulbright series public talks. Seth compared how Spain and Portugal carved up the world via the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1492 to Hollywood. With the Pope as a trusted mediator, these countries allocated "the new world" for their colonial selves. Traces are still visible today in how Portuguese is spoken in Macao, African countries, Brazil and elsewhere. Of course, no one asked the Africans for their permission.

Hollywood, too, has carved up the world to fit its consumerist, corporate agenda (Seth begins this part in the 10th minute). This reach is evident when one examines the now historical artifact of the DVD region code map (Seth addresses this in the 10th minute). Back in the late 80s and 90s time preceding the introduction of DVD players, the globe was divided up into DVD Regions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Yet very few of us "see" the material impact of Hollywood's RIAA/MPAA ideological campaigns. While an amazing coalition over the last two decades composed of third world activists, first world NGOs (DC's Knowledge Ecology Intl. is a leader), feminists, artists, "DIY" video-makers and many others have been building a "knowledge ecology" or A2K human rights movement, Hollywood business affair lawyers and senior executives have been busy dividing up the globe to fit their mercenary logic and winning the propaganda war (no, students did not change with the advent of the WWW; they just want to share music like you did with tape cassettes, not "steal").

Later in the 90s when that thing called the Internet grew and that other thing called the World Wide Web became impossible to ignore, Hollywood tried to control and restrict the Internet, and only partially succeeded via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, the use of "take-down" clauses has resulted in a real, if misnamed, a chilling effect, one that prevents the World Wide Web from flourishing in all its digital commons potential.

Our age is one where, as Seth Schoen's talk illuminates, critical decisions are made by corporate entertainment industry senior executives behind closed doors, which have a huge impact on everyone, worldwide, on how we see, view and understand the world and our lives (it's not called a "dream factory" for nothing). These closed-door decisions effect how we can use technologies like HD-DVDs, our DVR set top boxes and computers. They determine the basic things: are we able to use our own digital tools as we like or are they pawned and managed by corporate benefactors?

Now we live in an age where a generation of young Americans are content to create cool digital "social network" identities in return for losing their privacy. While we all may "connect" via their space to MySpace from YourBook to their Facebook, our personal, private data is no longer in our control.

We are about to enter the next stage of technological, "social media" innovation and digital media convergence. The press may call this the "Web 3.0" phase or the "social web." In contrast to the hype, we should all step back, listen and look at our digital and public spaces and ask what images - of ourselves and our world - do we want our next generation to see? Do we finally want to take back some control over our own tools?

Final message to Hollywood powers that be: we are not your enemy; we simply want cool, interactive tools, ones we have control over. We want to be able to share content with our friends. A century too late, history, finally, may be on our side. Maybe.