You are here: Home / Archives for 2013

Monroe to Baker to Pikelny

November 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Bill Monroe, as pictured on his entry in the All Music Guide. Click on the pic to see the bio and his extensive discography.

Bill Monroe, as pictured on his entry in the All Music Guide. Click on the pic to see the bio and his extensive discography.

Let’s start with Bill Monroe. Bluegrass bandleader Doug Dillard said, “God only lays a Bill Monroe on you once in a lifetime, so pay attention.” He was born in 1911, grew up on a 655-acre farm in Kentucky, learned to sing and play the fiddle from his mom and his uncle Pen (Pendleton), an old-timey musician who took young Bill along on church and school gigs. His parents died young, so Uncle Pen raised him, then moved up north to find work near Chicago in the factories. By 1934, Bill and his brother Charlie were playing music full-time, among “country music’s first generation of professionals,” according to the extensive liner notes that came with my 4-CD box set, The Music of Bill Monroe from 1936 to 1994, essential for anyone with even the mildest hankering to hear bluegrass at home or in the car. His brothers wanted to play fiddle and guitar, so he concentrated on mandolin. Charlie sang lead, and Bill sang harmony. The first year, they stayed in the midwest and built a following on local radio in Iowa and Nebraska, then headed to Charleston, South Carolina (WIS) and Charlotte, North Carolina (WBT), where lots of live country music performances filled the airwaves. By 1936, they were recording for RCA Records, and in two years, they recorded sixty songs. The story is a good one, worth reading. It winds through local baseball, the Grand Ole Opry, and, eventually, stardom and reverence for his contribution to country music. Along the way, Monroe’s band, The Blue Grass Boys, included Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in the second half of the 1940s, and by 1957, a fiddler who stayed for twenty five years. His name was Kenny Baker.

Baker Plays MonroeYou can hear plenty of Baker’s work on the 4-CD box, and on many of the Monroe albums in the All Music discography. Baker’s name and work are held in very high esteem. Most knowledgeable fans agree that the one Baker album that everyone ought to own, or, at least, hear, is called Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe. Recorded in 1977 and not much more than a half hour long, the album is loving described in All Music Guide, and I really couldn’t say it any better:

Is this the best bluegrass album ever made? No matter what choice might be made in this regard, it would surely inflame the passions of some picker who wouldn’t agree. Nonetheless, consider some of the circumstances. The maestro Kenny Baker is one of the most straightforward, no-nonsense, clean and clear-cut players of bluegrass and old-time music.

There are twelve tracks. Do take the time to click on the album cover and listen to the samples of at least a few of them. I especially like “Road to Columbus,” “Cheyenne,” “Jerusalem Ridge” and “Ashland Breakdown,” but every track is magnificent. Also featured: Bob Black on banjo, Joe Stewart on guitar, and Randy Davis on bass. Bill Monroe sits in on mandolin.

So now it’s 2013. Watch this.

Noam Pikelny is playing “Big Sandy River,” a song that Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker recorded back in 1962 (they wrote the song, too). But he’s not playing it on fiddle, the way Baker did. He’s playing a note-for-note version of Baker’s fiddle arrangement on his banjo. In fact, there’s  whole album of note-for-note copies played by Pikelny on banjo. The album is called Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe.

These kinds of tribute albums are pretty unusual—the best-known in recent memory is probably Rufus Wainwright’s recreation of Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall Concert in 2006. But this album goes further than a simpler recreation.

Pikelny is a member of a particular class of musicians who have grown well beyond the homage into more rarefied artistic territory. I sensed this when I saw Pikelny’s partner in The Punch Brothers, Chris Thiele, playing with Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan (who plays fiddle on the Noam-Kenny-Bill album) last summer as Goat Rodeo. In their hands, this music (Americana, bluegrass, bluegrassical, whatever you would like to call it) becomes a kind of exalted, accessible art form, art music for the 21st century that’s fun to hear, deeply engaging, meticulously crafted, and so wide in its appeal, it is (in a term sometimes applied to Duke Ellington), “Beyond Category.”

Which is to say; here’s another of a select group of 2013 CDs that would make an absolutely perfect holiday gift. Enjoy.

Filed Under: Creative, Music Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Google Books vs. Every Published Author, Part III

November 26, 2013 by 1 Comment

(Be sure to read parts one and two.)

The world is changing. As an author and creative person, I want as much intellectual property protection as possible. As a creator, I want as much flexibility as possible.

Here’s the summary of a very significant intellectual property case decided this month by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin:

In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits.”

On the one hand, Google is providing a substantial public service by unearthing, scanning, and distributing works in the public domain that may otherwise be forgotten. What’s more, they’re placing everything into a searchable database that can be accessed by just about everyone who wants or needs it.

On the other, Google has gone too far by scanning and distributing works that are not in the public domain, but are, instead, owned and controlled by copyright holders. (Most are authors, who typically assign publishing rights to their publishers but retain their copyrights.) Here, in my view (not a lawyer, but an author and a business person), the solution is simple, reasonable, and available. Google must ask permission of copyright holders before freely distributing their work. (Yes, this is cumbersome, but Google is a company whose cleverness is exceeded only by its resources.) Of course, authors could be pro-active in making such grants because they believe, in their sole and reasonable judgment, that their work’s inclusion in the Google Books database would be in the public interest or would benefit the author’s work from a marketing point of view.

According to Joe Crawford of Moorpark, California, you are free: to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to remix (to adapt the work) Under the following conditions: attribution – (You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Joe established the rules for his copyrighted property. This is reasonable, and it is now done on a massive scale.

According to Joe Crawford of Moorpark, California, you are free: to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to remix (to adapt the work). Under the following conditions: attribution – (You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Joe established the rules for his copyrighted property. This is reasonable, and it is now done on a massive scale.

In fact, Creative Commons has done a lot of good work in this area, making it easy for copyright owners to establish rules with regard to sharing, copying and other uses of their property.

The issue is not whether Google Books should scan and distribute books, and the issue not whether this activity results in a public good. The issue is whether making full digital copies of a book in a public library that is still protected by copyright, and then distributing the digital copy without permission of a copyright holder is, under any reasonable interpretation of the law, more similar to a 21st century card catalog or more similar to copyright infringement on a massive scale.

As an author, I am strongly inclined to vote in favor of copyright protection and a requirement that Google, or any other party, affirmatively secure permission of my intellectual property prior to its distribution.

As a producer and businessperson, I could reconsider that position because the current decision may apply to future projects in some interesting ways. For example, one might contemplate an online system of recommended books that include substantial portions of copyrighted work—full chapters, perhaps, or more—as a kind of public literacy project. Or, one might translate entire works into other languages to provide greater access to those works. In both cases, if the works are scanned into a database so that researchers might use them for educational purposes, no permissions should be necessary.

Let’s take that a step further. There is so much video now available on the internet, and, for the most part, it is very difficult to search within those videos. If you were to create a database of, say, movie scripts or, in a more advanced form, movie dialogue, you might well be able to show the whole movie, perhaps in “snippets” (the term used by Google for its portions of larger works), or, at least, include these movie excerpts in a series of online documentaries that explore, for example, the mythology of the Star Wars films, or the role of animal characters in Disney or Pixar films. If it’s all for the public good, and it’s all part of a searchable database, Judge Chin’s ruling suggests that Fair Use is both a reasonable defense with regard to challenges, and, in a larger sense, that this sort of activity is to be encouraged if it serves a research need, promotes the films, and transforms the ways that people consume these films.

It’s easy to be glib or flippant about the tremendous reach of the judge’s decision, but in the end, this isn’t about books, or Google. It’s about whether creative professionals will be able to earn a living in the future. With each step into a new digital future, that future becomes just that much more murky. In doubt about that? Read this.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, International, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Google Book Chronicles vs. Every Published Author, Part II

November 25, 2013 by 2 Comments

(Be sure to read parts one and three.)

The statement from Google:

As we have long said., Google Books is in compliance with copyright law and acts like a card catalog for the digital age, giving users the ability to find books to buy or borrow.”

Baseball pitcher Jim Bouton wrote a popular book called Ball Four. The book is out of print, but it is available through Google Books. Jim Bouton is a plaintiff in the case against Google Books because the work was used without his permission.

Baseball pitcher Jim Bouton wrote a popular book called Ball Four. The book is out of print, but it is available through Google Books. Jim Bouton is a plaintiff in the case against Google Books because the work was used without his permission.

And from the Author’s Guild:

Google made unauthorized digital editions of nearly all of the world’s valuable copyright-protected literature and profits from displaying those works…In our view, such mass digitization and exploitation far exceeds the bounds of the fair use defense.”

Of course, the Author’s Guild plans to appeal the decision, but, for now, it stands.

The judgment was written by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Denny Chin, who has been working with Google and the Author’s Guild on the future of Fair Use as it applies to Google’s insistence upon scanning and posting intellectual property without permission of the copyright holder. (Be sure to read yesterday’s post because it sets the stage for this one.)

This wonderfully cluttered bookshop in Tenby, Wales, UK is precisely the sort of mess that Google Books tries to solve. In the bookstore, there is no search, no apparent organization whatsoever (except those lovely Penguin classics in the spinner rack). On Google Books, every word of every book is part of a searchable database. (Photo by Howard Blumenthal, all rights reserved, do not duplicate or distribute without written permission.)

This wonderfully cluttered bookshop in Tenby, Wales, UK is precisely the sort of mess that Google Books tries to solve. In the bookstore, there is no search, no apparent organization whatsoever (except those lovely Penguin classics in the spinner rack). On Google Books, every word of every book is part of a searchable database. (Photo by Howard Blumenthal, all rights reserved, do not duplicate or distribute without written permission.)

Happily, my book, The Creative Professional, has not been violated by Google, but I will borrow from my own work to review the four “prongs” of Fair Use of copyrighted material:

  •  The first is the character of the use. “The focus of this factor is ‘whether the new work merely supersedes the objects of the original creation… or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message; it asks, in other words, whether and to what extent the new work is transformative.’”
  •  The second is the “nature and copyright status of the plaintiff’s work.” A work that is factual receives more protection than a work that is imaginative. Remarkably, an unpublished work is more likely to be protected than a published work.
  •  The third Fair Use test is the amount of material used. Fair Use protection is more likely to be extended when the percentage of the original work used in the new work is comparatively small.
  •  The fourth judgment is an evaluation of market impact. If the Fair Use was allowed, how might this use impact the market for the copyrighted material? If the copyrighted material is not currently in the market, or if its sales are minor and the use was otherwise fair, this factor may lead to judgment in favor of the defendant who claims that no infringement has occurred. However, if the material is not in the market, and sales are minor, but the use, based on the above three factors, was unfair, then discussion of this fourth factor may not enter in the decision at all. This becomes complex; whether you are defendant or plaintiff, you will want a smart lawyer who is well-schooled in the subtle features of Fair Use and copyright law.

Let’s add it all up:

  • Character of the use. Google’s use adds nothing new, except the ability for anybody to read AND COPY any portion of the copyrighted work without paying for it. I can’t argue that this is not, somehow, “transformative” but I can imagine the use of the term mostly in terms of, say, opening the back of an ATM and transforming bank customers into people who can take money freely, as they wish.
  • Nature and copyright status of the plaintiff’s work. It’s factual, and it’s under copyright for a reason. Copyright provides creative people with protection against unauthorized use. (This is a more complicated idea than one would think, so I’ll leave it to the lawyers to elaborate.)
  • The amount of material used. All of it. Every word. Seriously, is this what we really want as a society?
  • An evaluation of market impact. If we define market impact in two ways: sales of books and promotion of the authors for potentially greater market value, I think I can speak as an expert with regard to my own creative work: sales of books have not been affected in any measurable way, and NOT ONE PERSON has ever told me that they bought the book because they first saw it on Google. And I am no more famous than I was on the day before Google entered my life with their interesting theories and practices about Fair Use.

And let’s have a look at what the judge wrote in his decision:

  • Character of the use. “Google’s use of the copyrighted works is highly transformative…Google Books has become an important tool for libraries and librarians and cite-checkers as it helps to identify and find books…Google Books is also transformative in the sense that it has transformed book text into data for purposes of substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new areas, thereby opening up new fields of research. Google Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books. Instead, it “adds value to the original” and allows for “the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings.”…even assuming Google’s principal motivation is profit, the fact is that Google Books serves several important educational purposes. Accordingly, I conclude that the first factor strongly favors a finding of fair use.“
  • Nature and copyright status of the plaintiff’s work. “the vast majority of the books in Google Books are non-fiction. Further, the books at issue are published and available to the public. These considerations favor a finding of fair use.” (Nonpublished works are subject to greater protection.)
  • The amount of material used. “Google scans the full text of books — the entire books — and it copies verbatim expression…Here, as one of the keys to Google Books is its offering of full-text search of books, full-work reproduction is critical to the functioning of Google Books. Significantly, Google limits the amount of text it displays in response to a search.  On balance, I conclude that the third factor weighs slightly against a finding of fair use.
  • An evaluation of market impact. “Here, plaintiffs argue that Google Books will negatively impact the market for books and that Google’s scans will serve as a “market replacement” for books… a reasonable factfinder could only find that Google Books enhances the sales of books to the benefit of copyright holders. An important factor in the success of an individual title is whether it is discovered — whether potential readers learn of its existence. Google Books provides a way for authors’ works to become noticed, much like traditional in-store book displays…Google provides convenient links to booksellers to make it easy for a reader to order a book. In this day and age of on-line shopping, there can be no doubt but that Google Books improves books sales. Hence, I conclude that the fourth factor weighs strongly in favor of a finding of fair use.

Clearly, this is a topic that warrants a third article. See you tomorrow.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, International, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Google Books vs. Every Published Author, Part I

November 24, 2013 by 2 Comments

I have written several books. Perhaps you have purchased one of them. If you did, thank you. As a result of your purchase, I probably collected about $1.25 in royalties. You may have read the book, and perhaps, you lent it to a friend. You may have copied a few pages, or used the book for research, maybe even quoted from my book in your own work. That’s fine with me, and I am sure it would be fine with just about any author.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to make copies of the book and distribute it, for free or for a fee, and I certainly wouldn’t expect you to publish some or all of my book’s contents on the web–even if you believed that what you were doing would make the world a better place. I expect that you think about my book in much the same way.

Denny_ChinHowever reasonable, that’s no longer the way things work. Now, it seems, making the world a better place is reason enough to freely distribute copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder. Here’s the logic and the new law of the land as set forth by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Denny Chin in a case decided this month in favor of Google (which scanned and distributed millions of books, without permission, in the public interest) and the Author’s Guild (which cried foul, lost, plans to appeal to a higher court, and may lose again).

“First, Google Books provides a new and efficient way for readers and researchers to find books. It makes tens of millions of books searchable by words and phrases. It provides a searchable index linking each word in any book to all books in which that word appears.” In short, Google Books completely transforms the use of books, especially in research, and it is currently in use in a great many research institutions.

Second, in addition to being an important reference tool, Google Books greatly promotes a type of research referred to as “data mining” or “text mining.” Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data — the literary record created by a collection of tens of millions of books. Researchers can examine word frequencies, syntactic patterns, and thematic markers to consider how literary style has changed over time.” So it’s fair to say that Google Books is a fantastic tool for scholars because it allows them to scan a lot of books quickly, identify and study patterns.

“Third, Google Books expands access to books. In particular, traditionally underserved populations will benefit as they gain knowledge of and access to far more books. Google Books provides print-disabled individuals with the potential to search for books and read them in a format that is compatible with text enlargement software, text-to-speech screen access software, and Braille devices. Digitization facilitates the conversion of books to audio and tactile formats, increasing access for individuals with disabilities. Google Books facilitates the identification and access of materials for remote and underfunded libraries that need to make efficient decisions as to which resources to procure for their own collections or through interlibrary loans.” Unquestionably, placing a lot of books in a gigantic database is very useful for all sorts of reasons and provides tremendous public interest benefits.

“Fourth…Google Books helps to preserve books and give them new life. Older books, many of which are out-of-print books that are falling apart buried in library stacks, are being scanned and saved.” Absolutely right, but “out-0f-print” and “public domain” are not the same thing. Many of my books are currently out-of-print, and I plan to republish some of them because they are my property. Anything that is in the public domain should be rescued for the good of the public. Anything that’s out-of-print, but still protected by copyright, cannot be reasonably treated in the same way.

“Finally, by helping readers and researchers identify books, Google Books benefits authors and publishers. When a user clicks on a search result and is directed to an “About the Book” page, the page will offer links to sellers of the book and/or libraries listing the book as part of their collections.” That’s nice, but let’s consider whether the copyrighted work should be there in the first place.

Somewhere along the way, my books were published, and a public library purchased a copy. We all understand that the library will buy one copy of the book and then distribute that book to any of its cardholders. Neither the publisher nor I, the author, granted the library any kind of right to digitize the book’s contents. Google borrowed my book from the library, scanned its contents (without my permission) and now distributes one book in whole and another in part (without my permission). And because my book is a useful book, a Federal judge has determined that this activity is not only permissible, but in the public interest.

The judge’s justification: the Fair Use doctrine that allows certain uses of copyrighted materials for the public interest. For more about that, be sure read part two (and part three).

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, International, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Old Reliable for Holiday Gifts

November 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Formula One SpeakerWhen I wrote my weekly newspaper column, I always wrote an article about the newest goodies in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. It’s a retailer whose history precedes the U.S. Civil War—not many companies still around from those days (Brooks Brothers is one, another good story for another day). The old New York store was gone for a while, but last week, it reappeared. So, too, did the company’s paper catalog, something I haven’t seen in a decade or more. Nice to find it in my U.S. mail.

Flip open the first page, and there it is, something goofy that I can’t imagine ever buying, but I’m happy to know that you can buy a pair of iPhone Binoculars. “The view through the eye piece transfers to the iPhone camera’s lens, turning the phone into a viewfinder for sharing the sights with friends or taking pictures of the action.” It costs a hundred dollars.

Next page, an iPhone slot machine, complete with the one-arm pull-down level. For $40—phone not included—it’s a fun thing that you might not find anywhere else. That’s always been the magic of Hammacher. One more iPhone thing and then we’ll move on: The Tricloptic iPhone Camera Lens. Huh? It’s a set of three lenses on a wheel that attaches to the back of the phone: a fisheye, a wide angle and a telephone lens, also for $100.

The 50-Foot Snowball Launcher looks tame here, but in the field, it’s a cold, powerful weapon.

The 50-Foot Snowball Launcher looks tame here, but in the field, it’s a cold, powerful weapon.

There’s a $25,000 billiard table built into a 1959 Corvette (actually, it’s not a real Corvette, but it was finished in a body shop and it includes four white wall tires with “genuine steel rims and chrome covers.” And, an $1,800 Super 8 to Digital Video converter. They’ll sell you a Chewbacca or R2-D2 bathrobe ($100 each), but I think the 50-Foot Snowball Launcher is a much better buy for just $30.Then again, the $40 Lexicographer’s Extended Scrabble Board (441 spaces on a 21 x 21 grid, larger than the 15×15 that you have at home) is probably a gift that people would actually use more than once (especially if they’re up for very long Scrabble evenings). The 3D Clue Game isn’t nearly as cool—I wanted to be able to walk my characters into the rooms, and maybe make use of a secret tunnel for real, but “players move their pieces across the tempered glass playing surface with a view down into the chambers.” Bummer.

Also in the category of things to buy for the person who has everything: The Indoor Flameless Marshmallow Roaster, which looks to me like an upside-down fondue setup ($70).

There’s a watch that talks ($99 for “The Best Talking Watch”—I didn’t realize we had options) and a set of two motorized Spinning Spaghetti Forks, a laser chase toy for the cats ($30), and a Handheld Digital Microscope (50x—pretty impressive—for $200).

I could go on, but it’s more fun to browse on your own. First thing I found on their website: the goofy Formula One Speaker Dock ($8,500) that’s pictured at the top of this article.

Filed Under: Products Tagged With: , , , ,

The New Economics of Quality Television

November 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The scheme worked. And it’s about to work again, this time in a way that nobody anticipated.

First time out, it was the early 1980s, and the new cable industry was winning a lot of franchises from municipal governments, and making a lot of promises. Among them: all sorts of new television channels. The scheme: customers pay a few dollars each month, and if enough households subscribe, there will be enough money for lots of new television programs. These days, over 100 million subscribers pay over $150 per month—that’s $150,000,000 x 12 months each year, enough money for Comcast to buy NBC and Universal Pictures.

Alpha House

Here comes the next scheme, the next game changer. You’ve probably heard about Amazon Prime’s entry into the television programming space. According to the NY Times, here’s how the process worked:

After an invitation by the company, some 5,000 scripts were submitted last year, and in the spring, 14 pilots were commissioned. Amazon then stood back and watched what 215 million active customers clicked on.

There are no commercials. There is a kind-of, sort-of subscription fee. Amazon is a company that sells a lot of products by mail. They compete with other companies that sell a lot of products by mail. One way to encourage Amazon customer loyalty is with a loyalty program that involves discounts. Amazon’s discount program is called Amazon Prime. You pay $79 per year, and you don’t have to pay for shopping. As an incentive, you can watch a growing number of television shows and movies. Some are free. Most are available pay-per-view for a few dollars.

In days past, television programs were produced to “sell soap.” The commercials paid the cost of operating the network and the cost of producing the program.

Now, television programs are being produced to “pay the shipping cost of the soap.” Somehow, this seems lower on the food chain. Will it work?

Amazon Prime offerYup. Why? Because Amazon, and Netflix, and to some extent Hulu, are not carrying 20th century baggage. They operate by analyze the actual viewing habits of real customers. It’s a good model and a not-so-good model. The good: their judgments will be right much more often than they are wrong. And that provides a solid foundation for a business. The not-so-good: gut instinct, loyalty, and softer judgments will ride a rougher road. In an extreme situation, where machines make all of the decisions, there would be no Seinfeld, no situation where an eager program convinced other executives to stick with a show despite its crumby ratings. In real world, that programmer’s ability to persuade will be blunted, not all of the time, but often, because the “data doesn’t lie.”

Of course, the arguments crumble when the actual process of making television programs enters the argument. Writers don’t much care about data, they care about story. As long as the distribution is reaching a large audience with sufficient promotion, and as long as they are paid a good fee, actors and directors don’t much care about the intricacies of new media distribution. Or do they? That’s the part where the game could change. The economics of Amazon and other data-based program services are vastly different from advertising and subscription models.

Why? Because data-based services do not solely rely upon the old-school revenue streams. Amazon’s game is global branding to drive mail order purchases for every available product in the world to every country in the world. If they need to pay John Goodman a dozen times what NBC would consider reasonable, that’s fine with Amazon. Their purpose changes the economics of the game. And because Amazon and its kin are working with data and  operating without the need to fill a 24/7 schedule, they can focus their resources on actual viewing habits, actual consumption patterns, and they can provide producers and writers and directors with moment-by-moment viewer data (when the viewer paused, when the viewer dumped out, how often the viewer re-watched the episode). When creative people learn to use this information in a productive way (imagine the creative battles before all of this settles down), the paradigm will shift, and no film student will graduate without a thorough understanding of data analysis in the creative process.

Armed with endless data, a global marketplace, (effectively) endless cash, and the ability to engage the biggest stars for whatever purpose Amazon deems necessary, the game change is about to begin.

BTW: I thought the Alpha House pilot was very good, entertaining, unpretentious, avoiding the nasty tedium that ultimately limited my fascination with House of Cards. Whether a computer made the judgement, or some clever program executives made it happen, I’ve gotta say “good job.” I look forward to watching the episodes in series, and discovering what else Amazon is unleashing.

Filed Under: Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Human Bodies and Wearable Computers

November 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
So let’s say you’re Leonardo Da Vinci, inventor and artist. You’ve been hired by Google, Apple, Samsung, or some other tech company to create computers that will be (a) useful and (b) worn by most of the people most of the time. Where are you going to put that computer?

So let’s say you’re Leonardo Da Vinci, inventor and artist. You’ve been hired by Google, Apple, Samsung, or some other tech company to create computers that will be (a) useful and (b) worn by most of the people most of the time. Where are you going to put that computer?

I don’t envy the designers responsible for the next digital revolution: wearable computers. Mostly, the human body is poorly suited for the attachment of devices. Google Glass makes sense for the (I’m guessing) fifty percent of people who wear eyeglasses, but why would the other half decide to wear them? To see in the internet 24/7? Seems like a shaky argument. Hats make sense, but only under limited circumstances. Earphones are a good idea, especially if they’re worn on a headband covering both ears, or hooked over the ear. Those that simply plug into the ear are always falling out, or dangling a cord in an awkward way. To work properly, they must either cover the entire ear (muff-style), or include noise cancellation technology. Belts are a not-bad way to hang stuff, as we’ve discovered with belt-packs for cell phones. Ankle and wrist bracelets make sense, in part for law enforcement (both ankle monitors and handcuffs), and also for decorative jewelry and wristwatches.

If you’re designing wearable stuff, and the stuff requires a screen to be seen by human eyes, or to be within the range of human voice, options are very limited. Perhaps attach something to the face, but that’s awkward. Wrists are better because whatever it is can worn as a kind of jewelry, or hidden under long sleeves, or made small enough to be noticeable only upon closer inspection.

I suppose that’s why Apple, Samsung, and what will probably be a dozen other manufacturers have jumped on the wrist as the new place for humans to carry their increasingly small computers. Apple kind-of, sort-of tried this once before with the nifty little square iPad Nano, and, of course, Casio’s digital watches, tiny keyboards included, were iconic 1980s gadgetry (for a rundown on the history of digital watches, click here).

All of this raises an interesting question: if a watch could be very, very smart and very, very capable, what might we want it to do? Tell time—that’s the obvious one. It’s probably reasonable to assume that a watch, when held close to the mouth or the ear, could double as a phone. This makes more sense to me with a Bluetooth headphone; external noise would probably make phone calls difficult to hear for both the sending and receiving parties. Casio used to use the watch as a calculator, but the buttons were always too tiny, and so was the display. Do I want to watch a video on my watch? Probably not. Listen to music? Sure, but again, I would need a headset. Pedometer? Sure, and that was part of the appeal of the little Apple Nano (which could be attached to a wristband). What if the little watch was a WiFi device with a connection to the cloud? Then, I might be able to receive a Netflix film and send it over to any specially-equipped projector. Cool idea, but I’m not so sure that I want the signal running through my body for two hours. Find my phone? Sure, why not? Dictation machine? Okay, but there’s that sound issue to be wrestled by designers. Do I need a smart watch? Well, let’s take a look at Samsung Galaxy Gear Smart Watch, in part to understand what is now available at the likes of Best Buy, and also to predict what Apple will try to do just that much better when it releases something that might be called an iWatch in 2014.

Samsung_watchLet’s deal with the “of course” list first: it displays the time, offers a stopwatch and an alarm clock. It can be used as a phone. It’s a remote control for your nearby phone or tablet so you can start and stop and choose music. It can find your device if you’ve lost it. You can take pictures (1.9 megapixel camera, and it also shoots bits of video). It displays text messages and Tweets. There are bits of a Facebook timeline, and promise of more apps (inevitably) that will display news, sports, and other data.

What else? Well, there will be apps. Apps for your phone, apps for your tablet, apps for you computer, apps for your smart television, and now, apps for your watch (soon: apps for your car, too). This is the promised land: the gee-wiz app that makes everybody wonder how it was possible to live even a single day without a very smart watch.

For more details about Samsung’s watch, read David Pogue’s story in the New York Times.

It’s still early days. This watch is only half the story: you must pair it with a Samsung Galaxy phone or tablet, and so far, only one of each of these is compatible with the new watch.

So there are two rather obvious hurdles. First, there isn’t much that I want or need my watch to do in the 21st century. Second, not many people wear watches these days because they carry cell phones that tell the time.

I think we all want to see something surprising and magical that changes our perception of technology and its relationship with the human body. Somehow, designers must  figure out how to make the wrist digital because that’s so very difficult to do on the head. There are many easier jobs.

Filed Under: Mobile, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The New Jim Crow

October 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
From Ohio State's website: Professor Alexander joined the OSU faculty in 2005. She holds a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the OSU faculty, she was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic. Professor Alexander has significant experience in the field of civil rights advocacy and litigation. She has litigated civil rights cases in private practice as well as engaged in innovative litigation and advocacy efforts in the non-profit sector. For several years, Professor Alexander served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement. While an associate at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, she specialized in plaintiff-side class action suits alleging race and gender discrimination. Professor Alexander is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

From Ohio State’s website: Professor Alexander joined the OSU faculty in 2005. She holds a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Prior to joining the OSU faculty, she was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic.
Professor Alexander has significant experience in the field of civil rights advocacy and litigation. She has litigated civil rights cases in private practice as well as engaged in innovative litigation and advocacy efforts in the non-profit sector. For several years, Professor Alexander served as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement. While an associate at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, she specialized in plaintiff-side class action suits alleging race and gender discrimination.
Professor Alexander is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Sometimes, a book is just the thing: a clear explanation running several hundred pages, written by an expert, vetted by other experts, building a powerful case to its logical conclusion. Several years ago, an associate professor at The Ohio State University wrote a book, a history, a manifesto based upon a dangerous idea. Her name is Michelle Alexander and her book, republished a year or so ago with a new forward by Cornel West, is entitled The New Jim Crow. The subtitle just begins to suggest the storyline: “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Often, when I read a nonfiction book, I dog-ear the parts I want to remember. I’ve dog-eared a third of this book. Here’s part of a dog-eared page, written by an American Bar Association task force and quoted by the author:

[The] offender may be sentences to a term of probation, community service and court costs. Unbeknownst to this offender, and perhaps, any other actor in the sentencing process, as a result of his conviction, he may be ineligible for many federally-funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing, and federal educational assistance. His driver’s license may be automatically suspended, and he may no longer qualify for certain employment and professional licenses. If he is convicted of another crime, he may be subject to imprisonment as a repeat offender. He will not be permitted to enlist in the military, or possess a firearm, or obtain a federal security clearance. If a citizen, he may lose the right to vote; if not [a citizen], he may become immediately deportable.”

On the surface, this may sound like get-tough-on-crime, perhaps stronger than some would like it to be, maybe not so surprising.

New Jim CrowProfessor Alexander’s point becomes clear when this idea is added:

…the system of incarceration operates with stunning efficiency to sweep people of color off the streets, lock them in cages, and then release them into an inferior second-class status.”

For the most part, she explains, incarceration is not due to violent crimes. Instead, mostly, incarceration is due to relatively small amounts of drugs, often found as a result of policies, rules, laws, and Supreme Court judgments that encourage law enforcement to focus their attention on minority (most often, Black) people, even though drug sales and drug use tend to be about equal among all racial and ethnic groups.

It’s one thing to understand the problem as a social issue. It’s another when you “Imagine you are Erma Faye Stewart, a thirty-one year old, single African American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne, Texas. All but one of the people arrested were African American. After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home. Your court-appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence. Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation order ordered to pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs. You are now also branded a drug felon. You are no eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care.”

Turns out, the  entire sweep was based upon a lie. Eventually, a judge dismissed all cases against the defendants–except those who pled guilty. “You, however, are still a drug felon, homeless, and desperate to regain custody of your children.”

Sure, we see stories like these all the time, mostly on TV, sometimes in the movies, but their truth, and the reasons behind their truth, are disturbing because we (all of us, that is) must face one of two nasty realities:

(1) We are comfortable with the system that we our society has in place, even though it is often severe and places a very high percentage of Black citizens into the system; or

(2) We are comfortable with the system because American continues to support a racial divide with unequal rights, and severe lifetime punishment for a large number of people who live in the United States.

I suppose most people are only vaguely aware of the issue–that was my excuse–but this book removes that defense. The legal system is ferociously complicated. We must be fair but we must also be safe. You know the arguments, but that’s not much of a starting place to make things right.

One positive step is to bring this important topic to a study group. There is a free study guide available for groups willing to engage. Details below:

Drawing from and expanding on the themes of Michelle Alexander’s acclaimed best-seller, The New Jim Crow, this in-depth guide provides a launching pad for groups wishing to engage in deep, meaningful dialogue about race, racism, and structural inequality in the age of mass incarceration.  The Study Guide and Call to Action spans the entirety of The New Jim Crow, engaging the critical questions of how we managed to create, nearly overnight, a penal system unprecedented in world history, and how that system actually functions — as opposed to the way it is advertised.  This important new resource also challenges us to search for and admit the truth about ourselves, our own biases, stereotypes, and misconceptions, and the many ways in which we might actually be part of the problem.


This is one of several video recordings of Dr. Alexander’s speeches. This one was delivered at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. You can find others on this page.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Did somebody say “Giverny?”

October 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I just stumbled onto a cache of more than 600 recent photos of Giverny, Monet’s home, surrounding town, delicious-looking French desserts, and watercolors. Not a bad way to end the day. Thought you would enjoy a look, in particular as an accompaniment to the previous blog post about this magical place.

Be sure to browse not only the photo collection but also the Paris Breakfasts blog, about which I will write a great deal at some point in the future.

Have fun!

Giverny-return

Filed Under: Creative, International, Travel & Food Tagged With: , , , ,

YouTube, The Future of Classical Music

October 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Valentina

For the millions who know her YouTube videos, this past Sunday’s full page article in The New York Times about classical pianist Valerie Lisitsa may be old news. I do love the quotes and the insights, mostly because the poke the sleeping bear that classical music has become.

“At pop events, audience members ubiquitously record the music, but the practice is invariably prohibited at formal classical spaces. At Carnegie Hall, ushers zealously race down the aisles to berate any device-toting offenders publicly.

I also admire the guts: when their bookings dried up, “they spent their life savings to hire the London Symphony Orchestra so Ms. Lisitsa could record the four Rachmaninoff concertos”

From Ms. Lisitsa:

There is a long train and we’re the last car on the train. Pop music is the first car. Now, any new song Lady Gaga does, she puts on YouTube first. And I don’t think she has any trouble selling her CDs.”

Here she is playing Rachmaninoff:

Filed Under: Creative, Music, Trends Tagged With: , ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»