The Internet: Master of the Puppeteers

OK let’s have a look at another one of these documentaries. This time I watched an episode of  documentary series Download: the true story of the Internet titled People Power. This was the description posted with the video:

“The Internet has changed society and a new breed of entrepreneurs is shaping the digital future. Find out how it all started with Napster, a way of swapping music dreamt up by the teenaged Shawn Fanning.”

First reaction I had to the video was that the host, John Heilemann, came across as one of the most insufferable douchebags (sorry it really was the only word that suited) I’ve witnessed. He reminded me of your typical jock trying to compensate for his limited knowledge by shouting everything he says and calling some of the most influential internet entrepreneurs nerds and Doogie Howser’s. Turns out he’s a pretty successful political journalist and best-selling author. Look, I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice guy, I’m just glad he found himself behind the typewriter as opposed to in front of the camera.

Apologies to this guy..

Despite the host being ‘incredibly charismatic and slightly obnoxious’ (he actually describes himself as that) the episode actually features an impressive collection of internet entrepeneurs including Youtube’s Chad Hurley, Digg’s Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Napster’s Shawn Fanning. It is important to note that this was made in 2008, a time when Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth was a measly $1.5 billion and he had more time for low-budget Science Channel documentary series. In 2012, Zuckerberg is worth $10.2 billion (note this is following the Facebook IPO catastrophe which lost him about  $7 billion) and, due to his inflated, post-Social Network ego, is less likely to sink himself to this level.

After about ten minutes of Heilemann preaching to the power of the internet and explaining his theory that communication is the deepest human impulse we finally get to the focus of the story, the emergence of Napster and downfall at the hands of Metallica’s Lars Ulrich (booo!).

Worst.. bloke.. ever

In 1999, 18-year old Shawn Fanning released the peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing network Napster. Napster was originally created as a way for Fanning and his close friends to share music in digital mp3 format.  Prior to the legal battles with Metallica and Dr Dre alike, there were to be 75 million Napster users and approximately 10,000 music files shared per second using Napster by the end of 2000.

Lars Ulrich may have won that battle he did little to win the war. Today, Internet piracy is flourishing (can I say that?) through various peer-to-peer (p2p) networks that Napster paved the way for. Think of programs like Limewire and the ever popular BitTorrent services. Even congressman Lamar S. Smith and his SOPA legislation couldn’t put a dent in the ever-growing industry.

Lamar S. Smith

Smith planned to place the burden for policing user activity on websites and ISPs, requiring them to block access to a site that is accused of violating the law. The bill threatens freedom of speech, innovation and that the act could be used to block entire domains on the basis that one of the websites posts copyrighted material.

Luckily for us the people who run websites like Wikipedia and Reddit are pretty damn cool. They organised a blackout of their popular webpages as a protest against the bill, effectively scaring any support Smith had put together right out of Congress.

The Internet is here to stay and, regretfully for people like Mr Smith, that means piracy and pornography are here to stay too. With the emergence of legal music applications, like iTunes and Spotify, it appears the music industry is finally learning to adapt. This isn’t the death of the music industry, this is a revitalisation.

One with the machine

So I just learnt I’m apparently required to watch some online documentaries as a part of my Networked Media subject.. Luckily I’m a fan of crazy space docos and ‘Let’s find Atlantis’ shows so that’s all good with me. One of the options we were given was called, 2057: The City of the Future, and that was a wacky enough title to pique my interest. What the video entailed, along with some poorly acted ‘future’-based segments, was a collection of ‘experts’ with a whole bunch of letters after their names making crazy predictions of what society will be like in 50 years (45 years for those of us living in 2012). Predictions included the invention of self-driving cars, hologram AI buddies who follow you around everywhere and.. wait for it.. an online supermarket that will deliver items to your house (?).

The wonders of 2057: we can all have holographic shark friends!

It’s amusing to compare these predictions to those that were made 44 years ago in Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whilst Kubrick was almost Nostradamus-esque in some of his predictions of the future (namely flat-screen televisions, iPad like tablet devices, voice identification systems, video teleconferencing and in-flight entertainment), he dramatically overestimated human advances in space-travel and AI technology. It’s pretty goddamn exciting that NASA successfully landed the Curiosity rover on Mars a couple of weeks ago but it’s far from the manned mission to Jupiter that Kubrick predicated for us. And that was for 11 years ago, who knows where we would have been now at that rate!

Kubrick took us to Jupiter 48 years before Juno is set to arrive.

With all this talk of the future I am reminded of a book I read last summer, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Like the two texts I’ve mentioned previously, this book is bursting at the seams with predictions of the future. The most significant of these is the theory of a technological singularity which Kurzweil believes will become reality by the year 2045. In brief, the singularity occurs as artificial intelligence surpasses human beings as the smartest and most capable life form on the Earth. Technological development is taken over by the machines, who can think, act and communicate so quickly that normal humans cannot even comprehend what is going on. Essentially, it is the moment that machines achieve world domination.. This is sounds like an I, Robot apocalypse if you ask me.

Is this our future?

As scary as this sounds Kurzweil argues that this does not mean the end of human civilization for the simple fact that by this stage sharp distinctions between man and machine will no longer exist thanks to the existence of cybernetically enhanced humans and uploaded humans.

We will be one with machine.

…maybe. I guess only time will tell.

Get the garlic

Calm your horses vampires, this ain’t no cross bearing, garlic scented, stake wielding Abraham Lincoln. This, my friends, is the first glimpse we’ve had of Daniel Day Lewis in full nineteenth century presidential getup for a role that may deliver him an unprecedented third Best Actor gong.

A couple of days ago I set up my Google account to receive any alerts related to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming historical epic, Lincoln, which is set for a release in late 2012 (November 9th to be exact). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it delivered me with some pretty great updates, the most exciting of these being this image. DDL is my favourite actor. I don’t think I can argue with myself on that one. The man is a master and deserves all the accolades that are thrust upon him. Since his performance as cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan’s 1989 film My Left Foot he has dazzled us with amazing performance after amazing performance. After the admittedly disappointing musical, Nine, it is great to see the man back to what he does best.

DDL’s second Best Actor win came for his performance as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood and it’s interesting that it looks like he’s now up against a PTA film for the Oscar. Watch out Joaquin, this could be one for the ages.

Images courtesy of Touchstone Pictures, Paramount Vantage

 

Lawrence Lessig eat your heart out

I was watching an episode of The West Wing a while back and was quite surprised to see Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig being portrayed as a character by none other than Christopher Lloyd. Yes, that Christopher Lloyd.

Credit: thenewstribune.com

It struck me as odd  as the show barely ever had ‘guest appearences’ from real world characters. One of the only other example I can think of would be the episode in which magicians Penn & Teller cause a stir by apparently burning the stars and stripes at the White House.

Turns out a student from Lessig’s Constitutional Law class at Harvard ended up writing for The West Wing.. Lessig explained in his blog that the story portrayed on screen was actually based on truth and that he had been involved in the drafting of one early version of the Georgian constitution. Apparently, he had told this story once during a lecture to Law students at Harvard and it made it all the way to the small screen. Pretty cool thing to happen if you ask me.

Anyway on with what this post was actually meant to be about. In accordance to Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons, I have decided on that my ‘work’ is free to share, remix and make commercial use of as long as you credit me and distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

As for ways to manage all the spam I’m likely to encounter on my super popular blog (cue eye roll) I can either monitor it myself and delete the offending posts individually or I can take more proactive measures.  Akismet is a plugin that is built into WordPress. It’s very effective at blocking spammers – it marks suspicious comments as spam and files them away in a spam folder. That’s so easy.. Yaya!

The Master Cometh

As I was browsing Google Reader, looking for something notable to write about, I came across this post from the great Paul Thomas Anderson fan website Cigarettes and Red Vines.

PTA had a surprise for the moviegoers at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on August 3rd. Following a 7:30pm screening of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining the crowd in attendance were invited to stay on for the first public screening anywhere in the world of  PTA’s latest film, The Master, projected  in 70mm.

Not only was it revealed today that The Master will having its second surprise screening, this time at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago in 70mm on Thursday night, there has also been a new trailer released.

PTA is well known for cutting his own trailers and it is easy to see why he would take the time to do so. Each of the clips he has released so far have been spine-chillingly awesome and have increased my excitement for this film exponentially. To put this into context, I don’t think I can remember a film I’ve looked forward to this much and this was the case even before the film was cast.

According to Palace Films, The Master is set to be released around Australia on November 8th. There has yet to be any information as to whether it will be shown in 70mm anywhere but we’ve still got plenty of time for that to be announced. I hope. Fingers crossed.

Images courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Why Andy Kaufman was the greatest

A lot of people are confused by Andy Kaufman. Some argue he was an extremely overrated, unfunny narcissist whereas to others he was a criminally underrated, comic genius. There doesn’t seem to be many who think he is held in the esteem he deserves (which does make you wonder how one man can be concurrently overrated and underrated).

Kaufman’s style of comedy wasn’t the sort that just came out and hit you in the face. He wasn’t a laugh-at-me comedian like Jerry Lewis or Steve Martin, nor was he a laugh-with-me comedian like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin. Andy’s style of comedy can more accurately be described as laugh-at-you and for its time, it was ground breaking.

Unlike comedians we see these days who would just about cut off their own leg for a laugh, it almost seemed as if the less laughs Andy got, or the angrier the audience became, the happier he would be. He was fascinated by the relationship between entertainer and audience, which is never more sincere than when the entertainer is hated. Kaufman’s second appearance on Letterman in 1980 is, in my opinion, one of the most hilarious pieces of television ever produced.

The way he plays with the audience is a thing of beauty. One second they’re sure it’s all a joke and the next they’re not so certain. His unflinching commitment to character is something that had never been seen before and has scarcely been seen since. If you see similarities between this and some more recent Letterman appearances, I don’t blame you. Joaquin Phoenix’s February 2009 debut of his new, spaced out, bearded hip-hop persona, was surely a nod to Kaufman.

For me, the word troll has been thrown around way to much these days in descriptions of Andy Kaufman. To put him on the same level as these people who utilize the Internet as a mask to say whatever they want to get a rise out of others is, in my eyes, a form of slander. We need a new word for people like Kaufman, Stephen Colbert and (at times) Zach Galifianakis so we don’t have to associate them with these keyboard warriors.

Here’s a video of some early Kaufman stand-up I found recently.

You can find the rest of this clip on the posters channel. Hint: it may or may not contain an early appearance of one of Andy’s most famous characters.

Let’s get this started

I never intended to have a blog.  In fact, for years I have been quite opposed to the idea. I had a friend back in high school days who had one and would use it to tell the world all about her most personal thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately for her the existence of this blog (which she had thought to be anonymous) quickly became common knowledge to just about everyone. I won’t go into more detail but let’s just say it didn’t end to well for her or for her then-current boyfriend. But then is then and now is now so maybe this is for me.. Maybe I was destined all along to post meaningless stuff on a website nobody’s ever going to see. Yeah! I think I’m warming to the idea. I’ve even got an obscure, pop-culture influenced title. Let’s do this.

I just procured a copy of the newest EP from Brisbane-based indie rockers The Jungle Giants and I’ve got to say, it’s pretty funky. Check out their first single off it, ‘She’s a Riot’. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it figuring prominently on some end-of-year/Australia Day music polls.

Oh and here’s a link to their EP on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/shes-a-riot-ep/id538727896