Week 10 - Rainman

Week 9 - The camera adds ten pounds

Week 8 - Comically-oversised pointers.

Hans Rosling had an absurdly large pointer. He had to lay that sucker down across three chairs.

"Don't panic, it looks nasty..."

If I had been in one of the front rows of that presentation, I may have deserved a crack upside the head with Hans's five-foot pointer for getting bleary-eyed when he unleashed those first "nasty" looking graphs. I bet it was warm in that room. Those seats looked pretty comfortable. Even if infant mortality statistics were, like, as good as it got for me, I could still see having a hard time staying attentive while trying to interpret all of that data. My man Hans, though, he gets it. Make those same, boring graphs move around, and it's pretty much like watching a movie. Seriously. People friggen loved it. The bright colors didn't hurt, either. There must be something about witnessing data unfold that makes it more compelling than showing up once the party's over. Like, seeing exactly how the Swedish infant mortality rate fluctuated and ultimately fell--literally seeing it rise and fall--was much more satisfying than seeing that same data as a lifeless statistic. Kind of like how watching a sports game is more satisfying than just reading what the score was.

Hans summed things up at the end of his presentation and hit on like several different levels by saying "we need to have a modern concept that fits with the (modern) data." The most practical application of his modern concept are his moving bubbles. Infant mortality is certainly not a new phenomenon. Kids have been dying for as long as they've been being born! With a topic as seemingly old and rigid as that though, Rosling took the opportunity to conceptualize these long-running statistics in a modern way. "Averages are not a fair representation." That's right, Hans, because they're fricken boring. Give modern statistic viewers what they want and expand those averages in real time and narrate the whole thing like it's the Kentucky Derby. THAT will get people gassed about child mortality.

Just a cursory glance at some statistics can lead to generalizations that wouldn't necessarily occur if you were to expand the same data. I realize that a statistic is just that because it is a concise means of representing a large amount of data, but Hans showed that stats can sometimes misrepresent the data they were interpreting in the first place. When, for example, you lump sub-Saharan Africa into one category and measure it's decline in infant mortality, the resultant statistic is far less compelling than if you were to look at each sub-Saharan nation, individually. The bubbles showed three very different trajectories for the Congo, Kenya and Ghana. To combine the three nations statistics and derive an average is to deny credit where credit is due. Stats can be spun. Especially when they exists as static numbers.

The end result here is that I care way more about infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa than I did 20 minutes ago, and all it took for me were some colorful, moving graphs. Here is a very real example of how effective presentation methods can be used to convey a message that needs to be heard. Seriously, in less time than it takes to watch a TV show, Hans sufficiently informed me about this planet-sized problem.

Lisa, you're great, but I bet Hans would be a bitchin teacher.

Week 7 - Shut up Siri, you're driving me friggen nuts.

Ok so the crux of this whole e-reader controversy, for me, is the quality of the voice reading back. While I understand that developers may be close to developing a crazy, lifelike computervoice, they're just not there yet. Have you heard what the Kindle Read Aloud sounds like? Personally, I can think of like 14 kinds of gross, bodily harm I'd rather inflict upon myself than listen to an entire book being read by that robo-voice. That's the biggest thing that's making the Writer's Guild look like a bunch of Dingdongs. Like, seriously. Let this one go, guys. People willing to subject themselves to listening to 10 hours of that should be committed--or will need to be once they've finished a book. Forget water-boarding. Just hook up a Kindle loaded with like Finnegans Wake or something to a loudspeaker, make it read aloud, and lock the bad guy in a room with it. By the time robo is done reading "bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!", you'll know where all of the weapons of mass destruction are. 

I'm guessing that if and when software developers are ready to debut their strikingly lifelike read aloud voice, it's going to come at a price. The current generation of e-readers' ability to read back text is pretty old news. I remember being in 5th grade in my middle school computer lab on those colorful, bulbous Macs that were so hot in the 90's, and getting an absolute kick out of hearing the computer voice read back "fart" and "penis" after I typed it in. Seriously. Hours of entertainment. I imagine that if I was able to do that back then, on a public school budget, nonetheless, it couldn't have been the most expensive technology. Fast-forward 15 years, and $200 can buy you a whole lot of hand-held--probably more capable than those bubble Macs--and I bet whoever makes them in Taiwan throws the read-back voice in for free.

New technology = more money. If and when IBM ever completes or releases that oh-so-human voice they've been developing for like probably 20 years, I bet you it won't come cheap. Some of the success of e-readers can be attributed to their fairly low cost. If you read a lot of books, buying a $200 tablet can just about pay for itself before long. Make those suckers a little more expensive, though, and readers may start crawling back to print as a more economical option. 

The Writer's Guild needs to concern themselves more with weathering the digital storm if they want to stay on top of things. Finding ways to adapt and innovate could prove more beneficial than acting like sore losers.Give it ten years, and some new technology will have come along that makes e-readers and read aloud seem positively prehistoric. The times, they are a changing, Writer's Guild. Get with it. For a bunch of probably pretty smart boys and girls, the Guild needs to stop acting like such dummies.

Week 6 - I HOPE you like this entry

I remember the first time I saw Fairey's image. I was 19, about to drop out of college and completely disenchanted with everything about the world around me. The posters were being given away by something like a 'Students for Obama' group that swarmed the campus that fall semester. What drew me to it, first, were the colors. Something about the tinted red white and blue against the faded white background. I got back to the apartment I was living in and hung it up next to my bed. The corny part of the story, is that after seeing that image every day and absorbing the election buzz kind of through osmosis, I think I actually found a sliver hope in everything that was going on in my world. It got to be that I associated Fairey's image with the thought that maybe my future wasn't going to be the shit-pile that I thought it would. At that point, I didn't need the poster by me bed anymore. It had given birth to an outlook I carried with me until the night of the election.

Then the next six years happened. Not quite as hopeful as I would have liked, but hell, I'm doing ok. I think that there are a lot of people that share a similar experience to what I had with the colorful picture of Mr. Obama. That Fairey's rendition of Garcia's original image generated more emotion than it did currency is one aspect of this argument that makes it so legally messy. If Fairey's intention was to make as much money off of HOPE as possible, then the legal battle wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did. The Associated Press probably saw how much they could have made, had the idea been theirs, and proceeded on the war path. They were broke in 2009--selling off assets to keep their heads above water and still posting profits way lower than the year before.

All of this lawyer talk makes my head hurt. What do I think? Yes, fair use applies to Fairey's Obama poster. It looks different enough than the original. Fairey doesn't have a private jet full of money because of it. The AP's original wasn't doing much before Fairey sampled it, so no potential market loss there. Most importantly, as was the case with me, it "stimulate(d) creativity for the enrichment of the general public." (I can't quite find where Wikipedia pulled those words from, but they illustrate my point wonderfully)

If you want my opinion, money brings out the absolute worst in humanity, and The Associated Press is no exception. I may take a hit this week for not dissecting the legality of Fairey's case into as many pieces as I should have, but the degree to which my head won't be spinning by the time I go to sleep tonight will be worth it.

Oh, and here is a testament to Shepard Fairey's artistic abilities. I tried Obama-izing an attribution-liscenced pic of our Head Cheese, and it came out looking awful. By the looks of what came up in the Creative Commons image search I did, Fairey probably could have found a workable CC picture of Mr Obama. We don't choose when inspiration strikes, though, and have to work with what's available in the moment. I would imagine that he'll stop to think before he pulls another picture from the internet, though.    

This image is a derivative of "Obama Speaking (15)" by borman818, used under CC BY. "TIRED" is licensed under CC BY by Dan Smith.

Week 5 No Selfies, Please

I got an iPhone about two years ago and picture taking completely changed for me. I had always liked the idea of taking pictures of things--you know, that I thought looked interesting--but who wants to develop film or even carry around a digital camera everywhere they go? I guess carrying a small digital camera wouldn't be so horrible but GOD how inconvenient is it to upload pictures to a computer?

My iPhone was the first time I had a relatively high resolution digital camera at my disposal and I loved it. I was living in Charlotte, VT at the time, at the top of a big old hill with a gorgeous view looking over the lake. I would ride my bike home from work every day and by like halfway through my ride, the sky was just friggen blazing over the lake and BOOM I had a camera to take a picture of it. Maybe even more important than just having the camera on my phone was my ability to then share what I had captured with people.

On vacation for example, I was seeing the West Coast for the first time, and I knew my parents were going to want to hear all about it. Instead of having to call them after everyday, which I'm just awful at, even when I'm not on vacation, I was able to post the pictures I had taken to Instagram and Facebook--like, on the bus, going from one picturesque scene to the next. No stupid uploading to a computer involved-- and was able to include them in what I was doing, while it was happening.

While I think it's nifty that, now, I can take a picture of a sunset when I see it, there are others that aren't so tickled. Advances in technology always seem to spur resentment among those in the field. In my experience,  I've heard purists complain that the real art is drowning in the sea of amateur uploads, and soon enough, people won't know the difference. Or, the reaction is to get as far away from digital as possible. One of the hippest things a hipster photographer can do is find an old camera that takes old, distressed looking pictures that look like what people are churning out on Instagram and other photo apps, and say that they had been using it all along. Way before Instagram even came out.

Either way, it's gotten people more into photography. Whether its the former techie learning his roots with film, or the novice experiencing things for the first time because of the ease and accesibality of cameras on iPhones. It's not like photography is dying because quality digital cameras are now on millions of people's smartphones. Like, I'm sure there was that stubborn guy who wouldnt put down his abacus when calculators were really catching on. Sure, it's nice to do all of that work by yourself, but technology can make things a hell of a lot easier, too.

Week 4 - Fight The Power like Public Enemy.

My neighbors and I started our first band when we were 11. 14 years later, we're still playing, and we've made a total of like zero dollars. We played a show as recently as last night, and I'll have you know that we probably lost money. I guess the pipe-dream of making a living off of my music has always followed me, but it's certainly not something I ever anticipate happening. I've come to terms with that. I'll live out the rest of my days working jobs I don't really care that much about because my real "career" path will eventually lead to a life (or early death) as a musician. Now, why can't I really ever make a career for myself as a musician?

Let's take a look at the record. I started making music around the same time that digital recording became super easy for any idiot--myself, included-- to use. Soon, any asshole could grab his Dad's Macbook, record a miserably mediocre and really just awful sounding collection of songs in Garageband, and create a Myspace page for his cool new band. Without the need for expensive studios or production or someone to physically edit your stuff--like, actually cut the tape of what you just recorded and glue it back together so it sounds good--digital recording and the internet let you almost instantly bypass the checks and balances of the last 20 years that had kept so much bad music from reaching the public domain. This, according to John Buckman, is just one reason why it's so damn hard for musicians to make any money.

Today, if a musician wants to achieve commercial success--strictly in terms of making as much money as someone with probably a real career who went to a lot of school-- they need either to be unbelievably lucky, or have a fat wad of income they can use to try to propel themselves to a moderate, tepid success. If you are of the one in 1,000,000 who happens to be lucky (or talented, but not necessarily) enough to gain the support of a major record label, then sit back and let the music industry fulfill your every want and need until they run out of ways to squeeze money out of your popularity. The other 999,999 of us, though, continue to piss away our hard-earned income, trying to do, ourselves, what the industry could do with its toilet paper budget.

This situation creates desperate musicians, willing to give almost anything for a chance to have their music reach an audience that they couldn't by their own broke-ass means. Too often these dumb, desperate sonsofbitches gloss over the fine print in their contract with Joe Bigshot Records and end up signing over the rights to their material along with it.    

Magnatune, however, will not rape or pillage your musical dreams. They are a much-needed, benevolent force in the dark and scary music world. Now, just because John Buckman created Magnatune doesn't necessarily guarantee your discovery and fame, but your chances have sure as hell gone up--maybe from one in 1,000,000 to like 112 in 1,000,000 (That statement is by no means supported by any factual or scientific findings, btw.)