Open-source, free culture, and the coming storm

For those of you that don't know me well, I am writing a book about the intersections of design culture, free culture, and creative production in 21st century - a little topic. Writing, as we can all remember from term papers and essay tests, is hard work. And, in the past 2 months, for every word I written, I have erased four.

Tonight, I was reminded why I started writing the book: people are doing some remarkably cool things and, in my opinion, changing the world (insert sinister laughter here).

I am not talking about something as piddly as eradicating polio or forgiving 3rd world debt. No, I am talking about makin' FREE SOFTWARE!

Let me explain. Tonight I found two new applications that are freeware or open-source projects. One is a painting application similar to Corel Painter unfortunately called Artrage. The other is an SVG production package called Inkscape. Although they may not have all the features of Painter or Illustrator or Freehand they are creative productions that simply give to a wider audience the tools for creative production. The result is a unique cultural system (that is the real brilliant design project) that encourages others to engage in creative work of their own.

The system is all about sharing, gift-giving, reputation, and doing things because we love to do them. The interesting thing is that as the technology advances it seems the quality of the products and the resulting productions (from those products) is not that far off from the big name commercial works (think Linux as opposed to Windows as an example). The coming storm is a time when the open source design projects compete directly with or that flavors of idiosyncratic products make redundant bloated commercial wares (think the Podcasting versions of game design, for instance).

The resulting changing to society could be significant. But more on that later....

BTW, the image above is a work done in Artrage by Duncan Pond (another unfortunate name. I certainly hope his parents didn't give him the middle name of Drowninda) Click on the thumbnail to see the higher resolution image.

Design in a small town part 4: The Webcam

There are instances when big-city life and small-town events are just as dull as one another. This perhaps highlights a deficiency in the way a technology is used to present place and event. Web-cams, for the most part, be they in New York or wherever pretty much fail to actually give us any real sense of place or feeling of presence.

I would like to see webcams that record nice high resolution images that are crisp when displayed (especially on large monitors). It will be a great day when we can actually see the paint drying as we watch it from 5000 miles away.

Rant: Neglect in a Northern Town

My sister and I have "viral song wars" wherein we try to get a catchy tune stuck in each other's head. Today I was telling her that the song stuck in my head intermittently for the past few days has been Dream Academy's Life in Northern Town.

We both agreed that it isn't really catchy but that we liked the song and that the video sticks in our minds after all these years. We talked about how depressing it seemed. The lyrics (about a father who comes to visit his children rarely maybe because the town is economically in the dumps so he has to find work elsewhere - that's the story I made up from the lyrics years ago) and the video (rainy English village) make it one of those songs that, for me, remind me of the sweetness of youth tinged with adult melancoly (we want to go back even if it wasn't the greatest time in our lives).

Or was I just putting more into a crappy video and song that I had forgotten about for two decades?

I came home and did a search for the video and, lo, yahoo has it. I click on the 'view video' only to get an error and message that if I want to view on a Macintosh I have to use Netscape 4.7!! Netscape 4.7 for the Macintosh running OS X, for those of you on PCs, requires that I run Classic (old school operating system emulation). So, I do this, download 4.7 and try to view the video again. Next it tells to download Windows media player. Well, to find the media player that will work on 4.7 is like going on an archeological dig.

At the end of this, my computer gets hung up during installation. The result is that my time machine only goes so far back and I am stuck in the mid-90s.

The song and the video then settle back into the recesses of my mind until three months from now when I am brushing my teeth.

BTW

BTW (by the way not bind torture weedwack), I am very disappointed that all 2 1/2 of you that read this blog haven't commented on the ugliest dog in the world. Can he (or she or it) not get any respect from you lot? So, it looks like something that the gates of hell opened up and burped out. Can't you find it in your cold, wicked hearts to look past its faults, its blemishes, its terrible dental hygiene to make...yeah, you're right it is disgusting. Sorry, about that.

Sharing Everything

The internet has always been a communal space. Even in the heady days of the dot.com bubble it was all about us - the general users not the corporate entities. This is continually reinforced through web applications such as Flickr, a site that allows people to upload and share their photographs with one another (and even specify that how they can be used by others).

Flickr is home to a lot of interesting stuff as people use it for a number of reasons: sketchbook storage, portfolios, family photo share, documentation....

In fact Flickr has arguable become the Wikipedia of social anthropology by capturing the visual culture of a global group of users. It fills the niche left by blogs and websites and often cuts through the crap that people use to puff themselves up on those types of sites.

What I find fascinating is the things people choose to document and how useful they can be without seeming to be useful at all. To explain visit this site. It is in essence a teeny visual narrative of one person's brain tumor removal surgery. The narrative ends happily and the way that it is presented, for instance the surgery pictures almost seem as though the operation was performed in this couple's bathroom or the smiling faces throughout the story allow us to read it as, I guess, a generally positive experience. This is a refreshing counterpoint to the sterility of most medical discourses.

If I had tumor and scared shitless of surgery, I think this set of photos would go a long way to alleviating my fears.

Visual Poetry and the online magazine

The first time that I saw Born Magazine I felt that we had reached milestone in the development of new media. To the uninitiated, Born Magazine features Flash and Quicktime movies used to give visual form to poetry. The results are often challenging, entertaining, thoughful, and, I might add, beautiful.

There have been a number of other similar magazines but not none really have the reputation or the quality of Born. Although Born has been around for a while the site is updated quarterly and always fresh.

Another online magazine that covers similar ground is Splotch. It is a beautifully constructed with well design visuals accompanying very interesting writing.

The Kids are alright

Hillary vs. the Xbox

Tuesday Lovin': Safe Sex is cute...

Japanese Condom Packaging reveals how embedded the culture of cute is in all facets of Japanese society.

Note: I don't think I will ever be able to eat a Kit Kat again.

Tuesday Tira Mi Su: World's Ugliest Dog

I kind of like him. Kind of...

The Trouble with Ordinariness

It has been difficult to think of something to say about the London bombings. One thing that sticks in my mind is the fact that London is under constant super surveillance. What results, then, is not the elimination of terrorists acts or any violence for that matter but instead an exposure of a sort of wicked dialectic of normalcy (even mundanity) and, well, death.

The image above is supposedly of the suicide bombers. There is nothing there to indicate that they will kill themselves and others. It is that fact alone that makes it an interesting image. We can look at it and say at that moment nothing had happened and life was going on as usual.

Terrorism works on this priniciple: take that ordinariness and shatter it. The irrational act then eliminates the ordinary.

Ok, but what about the death of the Brazilian electrician? With our definition could it not be argued that he experienced (at the hand of London Metro Police - who were in plain clothes, I might add) a similar sort of terror?

The dialectic then becomes one more about the illusion of order and the fragility of life when we start believing in the irrationality instilled by fear.

Launch Time

CNN's current cover story (10 am pst July 26, 2005) is the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

By now videos of shuttle launches are sort of ho hum. I remember as kid being herded into the gym at school to watch the shuttle launch and landing. It has become so routine (Mom used to say, "Did you clean your room? Brush your teeth? Watch the shuttle launch?") that the only thing to remind us of the spacecraft is something like its disintegration over Texas two years ago.

Well, for no apparent reason, I watched the launch online and noticed something different. Nasa now has something like over 120 cameras trained on the shuttle (some literally attached to the rocket boosters) to watch for any leaks, cracks, missing ceramic tiles, explosions, stowaways, whatever.

If you happen to get the NASA channel then I am sure they had even more spectacular coverage.

Update: NASA's launch video on their website is the same as CNN's. But you can view the NASA channel with live feed of astronauts doing exciting things like brushing their teeth here

The Best Blog, er, Website Ever!?!

Today, in Gregland, this is now officially the best website ever in the history of humankind.

(I love the losingest kittens.)

How Broadband Changed My Life...

In the past three or four months we've had cable and have become, basically, HGTV zombies. Barring the Daily Show we've found nothing worth watching except the 'your home is ugly and we'll redecorate it'™® channel. We have redecorated everything it seems and the only thing left to do is add window treatments to the cat. So, we've decided it is time to say good bye to our cable.

In its place we've finally installed broadband.

It is not that I hope to replace TV with passive, mind-numbing TV-ish internet entertainment. But the thought did cross my mind. My efforts to see what video is available has turned up this gem: TV4All

It provides links to hundreds of video streams from all over the world. This is a great resource especially for those of you out there that have missed those Belarussian Cooking Programs!

update: hey, european music video channels actually play music videos!

Framing and what it means to you!

Last Sunday's NYTimes magazine ran an article about the battle to control language in political discussions.

The article focuses on the cognitive linguistic work of George Lakoff. Some democrats are focusing on Lakoff's notion of Framing that simplifies concepts as keywords or metaphorical mental imagery as a better way of getting their ideas across to broader public.

It is an interesting discussion - one that merits reading the whole article - as it highlights two salient points:

- people are not really all that rational
- mental imagery is important when trying to get your point across

So, here is my attempt at framing: Read the article or your brain will shrivel up and blow away!

Tuesday Lovin': How it works...

Take a stroll through this book. I like page 26 of the 1971 edition. note about illustration: I think the woman is planning the man's demise.

It is a fun bit of 'biblioarcheology'.

Friday Lovin': Giant Table

Check it out.

Reasons for the decline of moviegoing

I don't often go out to the movies. Part of the reason is that I have wiggly kids. Also, to take the whole brood means putting my home in escrow (and if we buy treats, it means holding up the bank next to the theater). And in all honesty the experience really isn't that great. At home, we can really take our time, rewind the film, and, most importantly, we can watch foreign films that never, ever come to this dinky town.

Another reason for the sagging moviegoing numbers, I contend, is that we are quickly becoming a production-savvy society. We not only like good stories and captivating imagery but also we also look how the movie is made. All those DVD special features and our own experimentation with dv cameras and sophisticated imagemaking software has made us very picky consumers.

There are a gazillon reasons as to why we hate going to the movies. Here is a rant I found today.

One last idea: maybe when we deck ourselves out in gadgets (Ipods, in particular) and carry so much media around with us, we start to see our lives as movies.

INT. CAFE - DAY.

MED. SHOT of GREG as he sits at his laptop. He sighs and sits back looking off into space. He sips his coffee.

C.U. as he stares blankly.

FADE OUT.