Aram Sinnreich

My new book project: PiracyCrusade.com

My new book project, loosely based on my LimeWire expert testimony, is called "The Piracy Crusade." Although it will be published as a paper book next year by University of Massachusetts Press, I'm also publishing draft chapters as I write them on an open, Creative Commons-licensed, comments-enabled platform hosted by the MediaCommons project.

This kind of prepublication is increasingly being used as "peer-to-peer review," a crowdsourced alternative to the traditional academic "peer review" process, in which 2-3 anonymous readers with unclear motives and levels of interest weigh in on your work after 6-12 months of waiting. Obviously, when you're covering something fast-moving like law, technology, culture, or all three, that kind of a waiting process can be deadly.

If you have any interest, experience, or opinions regarding music, intellectual property law, new technologies, or the digital media industry, I encourage you to take a look, and leave a comment. All constructive commenters will get a shout-out in the final version of the book's Acknowledgments section.

The first two chapters are already up, and Chapter 3 is in process. Check it out on PiracyCrusade.com!

p.s. I'm also looking for some cover art -- if you're interested in creating something (I can't pay you, but I'll give you a credit on the cover), let me know.

Aram to Russian Gov: Ease Up On the Capitalism, OK? [audio + slides]

A few weeks ago, I had the honor and pleasure to give a talk in Moscow for the Russian Government, who are in the process of assessing their Intellectual Property policy, as well as Google, who co-organized the event.

While most of the other speakers (record and movie execs, WIPO officials, IP attorneys, think tankers, etc) focused on specific IP policy items, I chose instead to focus on creative communities themselves, in whose name intellectual property law is enacted and enforced. Specifically, I focused on six creative communities (three traditional, three emerging) that have thrived in the absence of copyright control or enforcement, both in terms of cultural innovation and economic benefit. (For more in-depth analysis, see the book chapter about music and fashion I co-authored with Marissa Gluck a few years back).

The specific creative communities I discussed included quilting, food, fashion, mashups, doujinshi, fansubbing, and Filipino cover bands.

The talk went over well, but whether I swayed the Russians away from potential copyright maximalism remains to be seen. Below are audio from my talk, as well as my PowerPoint slides.

You can listen to the audio here: http://bit.ly/sinnrussia2011

And here are the slides: http://slidesha.re/jKSMJM

UPDATE:

A few weeks after my talk, President Medvedev addressed the G8 summit, and expressed his doubts about the strategic value of copyright maximalism. In his words:

"The declaration reflects an absolutely conservative position that intellectual property rights should be protected according to the existing conventions. No one questions that, but I have repeatedly stated that, unfortunately, those conventions were written 50 or almost 100 years ago, and they are unable to regulate the whole complex of relations between the copyright owner and users. . . Unfortunately, this was not included in the declaration because, in my opinion, my colleagues have a more conservative opinion than is necessary at the moment. Or maybe they just don't use the Internet and have little understanding of it."

I'm sure I can't take full credit for this, but I'd like to think I played a small role.

Audio of my artists panel at EMP Pop Conference 2011

I was in LA last week for the annual EMP Pop Conference, which was pretty awesome. My roundtable, "Look Ma, No Contract: Making Money Making Music in the Post-Label Economy," featured a diverse bunch of professional musicians, including Zoe Keating, Ahmed Best, Chris Murray and DJ Shyboy. I also added Professor Nancy Baym, who studies musical cultures, to add some extra brainpower and perspective.

They didn't take video of our panel, but fortunately, I recorded the audio of the entire conversation. You can download it here.

Video of my keynote at World's Fair Use Day 2011

Yesterday, I gave a keynote presentation based on "Mashed Up" at World's Fair Use Day, hosted by Public Knowledge. The video of the talk (introduced by my former NYU student, Katy Tasker, a PK staffer), is now available on UStream, as are the other excellent panels and presentations.

(The slides from the presentation can be accessed online here: http://bit.ly/aramwfud)

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Five years ago, I taught a class I loved at USC called "Music as Communication." I've substantially revamped the syllabus, and am now teaching "Musical Cultures and Industries" to my Rutgers undergrads this Spring.

Below is a draft of the syllabus. I welcome your comments.

1/18: Introduction

1/25: I Am What I Play: Music and Identity

• Turnbull, C. M. (1968). The Forest People. Chapter 4, pp 73-93.
• Lipsitz, G. (1990). Cruising around the historical bloc: postmodern and popular music in East Los Angeles. In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 29, pp. 371-388

OPTIONAL:

• Mingus, C. (1971). Beneath the Underdog. New York: Vintage. Chapter 31, pp. 283-304.

 2/1: Blinding You With Science: What Makes Music Work?

• Levitin, D. This is Your Brain on Music. Chapters 1 & 3
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 4

2/8: The Song Remains the Same: Where Music Comes From

• D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret Lore of Music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Chapter 4.
• Dylan, B. (2004). Chronicles, Volume One. Chapter 5.
• Carter, S. (2010). Jay-Z: Decoded, pp. 22-31; 54-59
• Demers, J. (2006). Steal This Music. Chapter 2

2/15: A Love Supreme: Music and Spirituality

• Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London: Comedia, Chapters 5-6, pp. 29-44)
• Berendt, J.-E. (1983). The World is Sound: Nada Brahma (Insla Verla, trans.). Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Chapter 11, pp. 173-182
• Shaw, G. B. (1990). “A Messiah for Heathens” in J. Sullivan (ed.), Words on Music. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. pp. 76-79
  
  OPTIONAL:
• d'Olivet, Chapter 6-7, pp. 94-109

2/22: Babylon Burning: Music and Politics

Guest: Vivien Goldman, Veteran Punk Journalist

• Goldman, V. (2006). The Book of Exodus. Chapter 9.
• Scherzinger, M., & Smith, S. (2007). From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna's ‘American Life’. Popular Music, 26(2), 211-29.
• Crist, S. A. (2009). Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics. The Journal of Musicology, 26(2), pp. 133-174.

3/1: Music Industry, Side A: 20^th Century Lockdown

• Caves, R. E. (2002) Creative Industries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapters 3 & 9 &18 (music sections thereof), pp. 61-67, 146-160, 286-296
• Dannen, F. (1990). Hit men: power brokers and fast money inside the music business. New York: Times Books. Chapter 1, pp. 3-17.
• Albini, S. (1997). The Problem of Music. In Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds.) Commodify your dissent: salvos from the Baffler. New York: Norton. pp. 164-176.

3/8: Music Industry, Side B: 21^st Century Freakout

Guest: [name redacted], VP, VH1

• Sinnreich, A. (2011). Written testimony in Arista Records v. Lime Group.
• Charnas, D. (2010). The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. Chapter 8.

SPRING BREAK

3/22: FIELD TRIP: TBA

 Take-home Midterm Due

3/29: Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Music and Race

• Kun, J. Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Chapter 2.
• Cateforis, T. Performing the Avant-Garde Groove: Devo and the Whiteness of the New Wave. American Music, 22(4), 564-588.
• Kelley, R. D. G. (1994). Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. Chapter 8.

OPTIONAL

• Saul, S. (2003). Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. By Scott Saul. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 2, pp. 61-96

4/5: I Wanna Be a Macho Man: Music, Gender and Sexuality

• Frank, G. (2007). Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), pp. 276-306
• Ehrenreich, et al. (1992). Beatlemania: A Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture? In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Peter Watrous (1994). Why Women Remain At the Back of the Bus. New York Times
• Von Bingen, H. (1994). The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (J. L. Baird & R. K. Ehrman, trans.). New York: Oxford. Letter # 23, pp. 76-80.

4/12: Do You Believe in Bed Intruders? Music, Authenticity and Technology

• Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text (Stephen Heath, Ed. and trans.). New York: Hill. Chapter: “The Grain of the Voice,” pp. 179-189
• Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. Chapter 5.
• Auner, J. (2003). Sing it for me: Posthuman ventriloquism in recent popular music. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128, 98-122.

4/19: Two Turntables and a Microphone: Mixing and Mashing

• Sinnreich, A. (2010). Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. University of Massachusetts Press.
• New York Times, 2011. The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up.

4/26: Conclusion: Listening Party

Recently, I gave my "Music in the Network Age" talk for Evan Korth's "Computers and Society" class at NYU's Comp Sci department. I was honored to be one of Evan's speakers -- his list is deep and impressive.

Below is the video, courtesy of Joly MacFie:

Previously: [Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

I taught this course as a Masters-level class at NYU a year ago, and the syllabus worked very nicely. Now, my challenge has been to improve, update and upgrade it for my Ph.D. students at Rutgers. I think it's pretty good, but please weigh in and let me know how I can make it better (especially you, former students of mine!) (UPDATED 8/29)

9/1: Introduction

 

9/8: No Class Today

 

9/15: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
• Borges, J. L. (1941). The library of Babel.
• Rifkin, J. (1995). A view of the future. Utne Reader.
• Slouka, M. (1996). Reality is death. (from War of the Worlds)

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/22: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Chesher, C. (1994). Colonizing Virtual Reality.
• Dibbell, J. (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Pendragon, H. (2008) Griefers: Why Dibbell’s Wired Article Was 1-Sided.

 

OR

 

• Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

 

9/29: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Wu, Tim (2006). Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, and Nondiscriminatory Access
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Hinze, G. (2010). Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Code v2 (Basic Books, 2006)

 

10/6: Free Love, Free Speech, Free Software

 

• Stallman, R. (1985). GNU manifesto
• Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
• Markoff, J. (1995). A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• Turner, F. (2005). Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy.
• Christopher Kelty (2005). Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics

 

OR

 

• Doug Thomas, Hacker Culture (U. Minn Press, 2002)
  
  

OPTIONAL

 

• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)

 

10/13: dot-com Fantasies

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• CNET, Top 10 dot-com flops
• Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired.
• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0?
• Schiff, S. (2006). Know it all. The New Yorker.
• boyd, d. (2007). Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

 

OR

 

• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Vintage Books, 1996)

 

10/20: Our Second Selves: Video Games and Identity

GUEST: Joost van Dreunen

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Bogost, I. (2006). Playing politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism and Advocacy. First Monday. Special Issue number 7. (10 pages)
• Ito, et al (2008). Living and Learning with New Media (pp. 18-39)
• Brathwaite, B. (2007). Sex in video games. Charles River Media. Chapter 4, pp. 89-122.
• Parisi, D. (2007). Playing the Interface: Video Games as Bodily Techniques [Unpublished paper]. (19 pages)
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. (Chapter 3)
• Costikyan, G. (2007) Super Columbine Massacre: Artwork or Menace?

 

OR

 

• Dibbell, J. Play Money. (Basic Books, 2006)

 

 

10/27: Configurable Culture

 

·      Sinnreich, A. Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

11/3: The Cloud

 

·      Downes, S. The Cloud and Collaboration

·      Zittrain, J. Lost in the Cloud

·      Golden, B. Clueless on the Charles: How Zittrain’s Cloud Missive Got it Wrong

·      Doctorow, C. Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

OPTIONAL:

 

·      Google Blog, Introducing the Chrome OS

·      Chappell, Windows Azure Whitepaper

 

11/10: Surveillance, Sensors and Semantics

 

• Brin, D. (1998). The transparent society.
• Berners-Lee, et al. (2001). The Semantic Web.
• Dodson, S. (2008). The Net Shapes Up to Get Physical.
• Bossewitch & Sinnreich (2009). Beyond the Panopticon: Strategic Agency in an Age of Limitless Information
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/17: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Laura Forlano

 

·      Doctorow, C. (2004) Anda’s Game

·      NY Times (2004). Quick, After Him, Pacman Went Thataway

·      Laura Forlano (2010). WiFi Geographies: When Code Meets Place

·      Area/Code, Big Games Manifesto (1 page)

·      Patti Maes, The Sixth Sense (Video)

 

11/22 (Monday of Thanksgiving Week): Field Trip

 

·      Readings and destination TBD

·      Exact date/time TBD

 

12/1: Singularity and Fracture

 

• Vinge, V. (1993). What is the Singularity?
• Kurzweil, R. (2010). Q&A on The Singularity (pdf)
• Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget. [Chapters 2-3]
• Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age [Conclusion: “The Myth of Cyberspace”]

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Vance, A. (2010). Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

I spent a very interesting 45 minutes on the radio today with MPR Midmorning host Kerri Miller and Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray, talking about Facebook, privacy, society, and our changing ethics and expectations about what it means to "participate" in an always-on culture. I love being on Kerri's show, because she gives her guests lots of opportunities to ramble, argue, and otherwise break away from the standard talking points.

Here's an archived stream:

As a 1980s graffiti culture kid [my very lamely-rendered tags were "cosa" and "spirit"] and a 21st-century media tech geek, I've enjoyed all of the digital/graffiti mashups of the last few years, from Graffiti Research Lab to Sweatshoppe.

But there's something even cooler about this latest labor of love. It's not a new way to get digital information up on a wall, but rather the opposite: a method for capturing the exact motions of a tagger, in time, with an open-source light pen attached to a marker.

Back in the day, graffiti artists used to carry around "blackbooks," documenting their best work and containing sketches and studies for larger "pieces" they planned to put up on walls, subways, etc. The digital blackbook project will not only make this work available for the world to see, but offer a unique insight into the calligraphic techniques employed by writers as well.

If I could beam this back to my 1985 self, I would probably think this was something right out of Max Headroom.

Graffiti Analysis 2.0: Digital Blackbook from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that the SFPD has begun routinely seizing DJs laptops at house parties. Like the ACTA treaty our federal government is currently pursuing, it's representative of a disturbing new trend in law enforcement -- one in which our digital civil liberties, or "e-speech," are not accorded the same protections that they would be in our physical lives or traditional communications media.

However, there's also something very familiar about this story. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Mashed Up, musical practices and technologies have always been subjected to government regulation, often at gunpoint, from ancient times to the present. This is because music acts as a kind of social and psychological blueprint, and new musical ideas nearly always carry with them new social ideas, which threaten established institutions.

In the case of DJ- and laptop-based music, the new musical ideas are sufficiently threatening to destabilize all of today's modern institutions -- in the government, the marketplace, and even houses of worship. No small wonder, then, that the police would begin to confiscate and criminalize these devices. 

Of course, the flip side of regulation is resistance. Even history's most dispossessed peoples (e.g. slaves in the antebellum South) have responded to musical subjugation with innovative and canny countermeasures. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how the SF DJ scene starts to hide its contraband...

New Syllabus: Musical Cultures & Industries

Five years ago, I taught a class I loved at USC called "Music as Communication." I've substantially revamped the syllabus, and am now teaching "Musical Cultures and Industries" to my Rutgers undergrads this Spring.

Below is a draft of the syllabus. I welcome your comments.

1/18: Introduction

1/25: I Am What I Play: Music and Identity

• Turnbull, C. M. (1968). The Forest People. Chapter 4, pp 73-93.
• Lipsitz, G. (1990). Cruising around the historical bloc: postmodern and popular music in East Los Angeles. In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 29, pp. 371-388

OPTIONAL:

• Mingus, C. (1971). Beneath the Underdog. New York: Vintage. Chapter 31, pp. 283-304.

 2/1: Blinding You With Science: What Makes Music Work?

• Levitin, D. This is Your Brain on Music. Chapters 1 & 3
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 4

2/8: The Song Remains the Same: Where Music Comes From

• D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret Lore of Music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Chapter 4.
• Dylan, B. (2004). Chronicles, Volume One. Chapter 5.
• Carter, S. (2010). Jay-Z: Decoded, pp. 22-31; 54-59
• Demers, J. (2006). Steal This Music. Chapter 2

2/15: A Love Supreme: Music and Spirituality

• Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London: Comedia, Chapters 5-6, pp. 29-44)
• Berendt, J.-E. (1983). The World is Sound: Nada Brahma (Insla Verla, trans.). Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Chapter 11, pp. 173-182
• Shaw, G. B. (1990). “A Messiah for Heathens” in J. Sullivan (ed.), Words on Music. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. pp. 76-79
  
  OPTIONAL:
• d'Olivet, Chapter 6-7, pp. 94-109

2/22: Babylon Burning: Music and Politics

Guest: Vivien Goldman, Veteran Punk Journalist

• Goldman, V. (2006). The Book of Exodus. Chapter 9.
• Scherzinger, M., & Smith, S. (2007). From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna's ‘American Life’. Popular Music, 26(2), 211-29.
• Crist, S. A. (2009). Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics. The Journal of Musicology, 26(2), pp. 133-174.

3/1: Music Industry, Side A: 20^th Century Lockdown

• Caves, R. E. (2002) Creative Industries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapters 3 & 9 &18 (music sections thereof), pp. 61-67, 146-160, 286-296
• Dannen, F. (1990). Hit men: power brokers and fast money inside the music business. New York: Times Books. Chapter 1, pp. 3-17.
• Albini, S. (1997). The Problem of Music. In Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds.) Commodify your dissent: salvos from the Baffler. New York: Norton. pp. 164-176.

3/8: Music Industry, Side B: 21^st Century Freakout

Guest: [name redacted], VP, VH1

• Sinnreich, A. (2011). Written testimony in Arista Records v. Lime Group.
• Charnas, D. (2010). The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. Chapter 8.

SPRING BREAK

3/22: FIELD TRIP: TBA

 Take-home Midterm Due

3/29: Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Music and Race

• Kun, J. Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Chapter 2.
• Cateforis, T. Performing the Avant-Garde Groove: Devo and the Whiteness of the New Wave. American Music, 22(4), 564-588.
• Kelley, R. D. G. (1994). Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. Chapter 8.

OPTIONAL

• Saul, S. (2003). Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. By Scott Saul. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 2, pp. 61-96

4/5: I Wanna Be a Macho Man: Music, Gender and Sexuality

• Frank, G. (2007). Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), pp. 276-306
• Ehrenreich, et al. (1992). Beatlemania: A Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture? In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Peter Watrous (1994). Why Women Remain At the Back of the Bus. New York Times
• Von Bingen, H. (1994). The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (J. L. Baird & R. K. Ehrman, trans.). New York: Oxford. Letter # 23, pp. 76-80.

4/12: Do You Believe in Bed Intruders? Music, Authenticity and Technology

• Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text (Stephen Heath, Ed. and trans.). New York: Hill. Chapter: “The Grain of the Voice,” pp. 179-189
• Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. Chapter 5.
• Auner, J. (2003). Sing it for me: Posthuman ventriloquism in recent popular music. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128, 98-122.

4/19: Two Turntables and a Microphone: Mixing and Mashing

• Sinnreich, A. (2010). Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. University of Massachusetts Press.
• New York Times, 2011. The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up.

4/26: Conclusion: Listening Party

[Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (NYU Video)

Recently, I gave my "Music in the Network Age" talk for Evan Korth's "Computers and Society" class at NYU's Comp Sci department. I was honored to be one of Evan's speakers -- his list is deep and impressive.

Below is the video, courtesy of Joly MacFie:

Previously: [Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

New draft syllabus for "Visions & Revisions of Cyberspace"

I taught this course as a Masters-level class at NYU a year ago, and the syllabus worked very nicely. Now, my challenge has been to improve, update and upgrade it for my Ph.D. students at Rutgers. I think it's pretty good, but please weigh in and let me know how I can make it better (especially you, former students of mine!) (UPDATED 8/29)

9/1: Introduction

 

9/8: No Class Today

 

9/15: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
• Borges, J. L. (1941). The library of Babel.
• Rifkin, J. (1995). A view of the future. Utne Reader.
• Slouka, M. (1996). Reality is death. (from War of the Worlds)

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/22: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Chesher, C. (1994). Colonizing Virtual Reality.
• Dibbell, J. (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Pendragon, H. (2008) Griefers: Why Dibbell’s Wired Article Was 1-Sided.

 

OR

 

• Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

 

9/29: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Wu, Tim (2006). Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, and Nondiscriminatory Access
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Hinze, G. (2010). Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Code v2 (Basic Books, 2006)

 

10/6: Free Love, Free Speech, Free Software

 

• Stallman, R. (1985). GNU manifesto
• Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
• Markoff, J. (1995). A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• Turner, F. (2005). Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy.
• Christopher Kelty (2005). Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics

 

OR

 

• Doug Thomas, Hacker Culture (U. Minn Press, 2002)
  
  

OPTIONAL

 

• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)

 

10/13: dot-com Fantasies

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• CNET, Top 10 dot-com flops
• Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired.
• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0?
• Schiff, S. (2006). Know it all. The New Yorker.
• boyd, d. (2007). Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

 

OR

 

• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Vintage Books, 1996)

 

10/20: Our Second Selves: Video Games and Identity

GUEST: Joost van Dreunen

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Bogost, I. (2006). Playing politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism and Advocacy. First Monday. Special Issue number 7. (10 pages)
• Ito, et al (2008). Living and Learning with New Media (pp. 18-39)
• Brathwaite, B. (2007). Sex in video games. Charles River Media. Chapter 4, pp. 89-122.
• Parisi, D. (2007). Playing the Interface: Video Games as Bodily Techniques [Unpublished paper]. (19 pages)
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. (Chapter 3)
• Costikyan, G. (2007) Super Columbine Massacre: Artwork or Menace?

 

OR

 

• Dibbell, J. Play Money. (Basic Books, 2006)

 

 

10/27: Configurable Culture

 

·      Sinnreich, A. Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

11/3: The Cloud

 

·      Downes, S. The Cloud and Collaboration

·      Zittrain, J. Lost in the Cloud

·      Golden, B. Clueless on the Charles: How Zittrain’s Cloud Missive Got it Wrong

·      Doctorow, C. Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

OPTIONAL:

 

·      Google Blog, Introducing the Chrome OS

·      Chappell, Windows Azure Whitepaper

 

11/10: Surveillance, Sensors and Semantics

 

• Brin, D. (1998). The transparent society.
• Berners-Lee, et al. (2001). The Semantic Web.
• Dodson, S. (2008). The Net Shapes Up to Get Physical.
• Bossewitch & Sinnreich (2009). Beyond the Panopticon: Strategic Agency in an Age of Limitless Information
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/17: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Laura Forlano

 

·      Doctorow, C. (2004) Anda’s Game

·      NY Times (2004). Quick, After Him, Pacman Went Thataway

·      Laura Forlano (2010). WiFi Geographies: When Code Meets Place

·      Area/Code, Big Games Manifesto (1 page)

·      Patti Maes, The Sixth Sense (Video)

 

11/22 (Monday of Thanksgiving Week): Field Trip

 

·      Readings and destination TBD

·      Exact date/time TBD

 

12/1: Singularity and Fracture

 

• Vinge, V. (1993). What is the Singularity?
• Kurzweil, R. (2010). Q&A on The Singularity (pdf)
• Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget. [Chapters 2-3]
• Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age [Conclusion: “The Myth of Cyberspace”]

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Vance, A. (2010). Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

Whither Facebook? Whither Society?

I spent a very interesting 45 minutes on the radio today with MPR Midmorning host Kerri Miller and Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray, talking about Facebook, privacy, society, and our changing ethics and expectations about what it means to "participate" in an always-on culture. I love being on Kerri's show, because she gives her guests lots of opportunities to ramble, argue, and otherwise break away from the standard talking points.

Here's an archived stream:

Digital Blackbook: Open Source Graffiti Analysis

As a 1980s graffiti culture kid [my very lamely-rendered tags were "cosa" and "spirit"] and a 21st-century media tech geek, I've enjoyed all of the digital/graffiti mashups of the last few years, from Graffiti Research Lab to Sweatshoppe.

But there's something even cooler about this latest labor of love. It's not a new way to get digital information up on a wall, but rather the opposite: a method for capturing the exact motions of a tagger, in time, with an open-source light pen attached to a marker.

Back in the day, graffiti artists used to carry around "blackbooks," documenting their best work and containing sketches and studies for larger "pieces" they planned to put up on walls, subways, etc. The digital blackbook project will not only make this work available for the world to see, but offer a unique insight into the calligraphic techniques employed by writers as well.

If I could beam this back to my 1985 self, I would probably think this was something right out of Max Headroom.

Graffiti Analysis 2.0: Digital Blackbook from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

SF Police Seizing DJs' Laptops -- Why Am I Not Surprised?

The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that the SFPD has begun routinely seizing DJs laptops at house parties. Like the ACTA treaty our federal government is currently pursuing, it's representative of a disturbing new trend in law enforcement -- one in which our digital civil liberties, or "e-speech," are not accorded the same protections that they would be in our physical lives or traditional communications media.

However, there's also something very familiar about this story. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Mashed Up, musical practices and technologies have always been subjected to government regulation, often at gunpoint, from ancient times to the present. This is because music acts as a kind of social and psychological blueprint, and new musical ideas nearly always carry with them new social ideas, which threaten established institutions.

In the case of DJ- and laptop-based music, the new musical ideas are sufficiently threatening to destabilize all of today's modern institutions -- in the government, the marketplace, and even houses of worship. No small wonder, then, that the police would begin to confiscate and criminalize these devices. 

Of course, the flip side of regulation is resistance. Even history's most dispossessed peoples (e.g. slaves in the antebellum South) have responded to musical subjugation with innovative and canny countermeasures. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how the SF DJ scene starts to hide its contraband...