Aram Sinnreich

Happy American Censorship Day

Today, in honor of American Censorship Day, I've replaced my standard banner with a cheerful black bar.

I do this as a form of protest against the spirit of censorship pervading the regulation of the Internet and other communications platforms -- specifically, the pending legislation known as ProtectIP and SOPA being discussed in a Congressional hearing today. This legislation would criminalize huge swaths of the Internet as we know it today, and put a politically unacceptable degree of censorship power in the hands of government and large corporations. I stand with organizations like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as publishers like TechDirt and BoingBoing, in opposition to these measures, and I hope you will as well.

To find out more, and to take action, please visit AmericanCensorship.org.

 

Broken industries, fractured lives

I recently saw an old friend of mine, Norm Savage, after about 10 years without contact. He's a writer -- of the post-beat, neo-romantic, soul-searching, confessional variety (although he'd hate being classified this way, I'm sure). He wanted to talk with me about using the Internet to self-publish.

Norm had been a hair's breadth away from landing a big publishing contract with FSG for his powerful memoir of diabetes and heroin addiction, Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic, which had been about 25 years in the works. Just before the paperwork went through, the economic downturn shook up the market, and his editor got canned. She recommended he wait until she landed somewhere else, and publish with her there, but Norm just couldn't wait any longer. After a quarter of a century of masochistic labor, he wanted his words out in the world.

Despite my frequent championing of participatory culture, I have to admit I was a little skeptical about self-publishing on a site like SmashWords. I've been more successfully brainwashed by the traditional cultural gatekeepers than I like to admit, and for me (an aspiring book author myself), the concept was tainted with the odor of "vanity publishing" -- narcissistic, self-deluded, amateurish, delusional, desperate, etc. After all, FSG is the top of the heap publishingwise, and SmashWords just seemed to be such a tragic fall from grace.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a ridiculous point of view that is. I've read drafts of Norm's book, as well as other work of his, and I know that his story is one that needs to be told, and that his style is one that needs to be read. His book is deep, powerful, painful -- in a word, human. If the traditional publishing industry is so dysfunctional they can't serve as a conduit for writers of Norm's caliber to reach potential readers, then maybe we readers and authors should let them die -- and switch our focus to publishers like SmashWords. Don't get me wrong -- I love the stuff that FSG puts out, from their cover designs to their content. It's just that, knowing the specifics of this case, I can imagine all the other innovative and valuable books they and the other publishing houses are failing to put out.

I'd never purchased a book on SmashWords before, but I just bought Junk Sick. It only costs $2.99, and for that price, I can read it in every imaginable digital format, from HTML to PDF to EPUB. And it's DRM-free, so I won't have the amazingly frustrating experience of being locked out of my own library by a stupid robot, which ended my brief sojourn into ebook-purchasing a few years back.

If you're at all interested in the psychological and social dimensions of diabetes, addiction, writing, sex, music, loneliness, pain, friendship, art, introspection, exhibitionism, love and fear, you should seriously consider buying this book. SmashWords will even let you read the first 35% of it for free. Or you could read an interview with Norm at the SmashWords blog, which will give you a pretty good sense of his character, his story, and his relationship to language.

Norm also publishes his own blog, which is basically fragments of his new book-in-progress, posted as he writes them. It's called The Savage Diabetic.

Sad blog hasn't been updated since it was started in 2002

While trying to reach Ted Castronova's excellent video games blog, Terra Nova (terranova.blogs.com), I came upon this sad little blog instead (terranova.blogspot.com).

Apparently, Suzanne, the "lil' girl wif the screwed up life" has been too screwed up to update or even delete her blog since she started it over 8 years ago. Other than the mysterious, inaugural, one-word post "sians" (spookily dated Friday the 13th), the blog contains zero information.

I wonder how many of these ghost blogs are out there...

The teen social networks gospel (according to danah)

My friend danah boyd, who recently received her doctorate from Berkeley's Information School, just made her dissertation available online. I haven't read it yet, but I've spent a lot of time reading her past work, and sharing panels with her at conferences, so I'm confident it's a doozy. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this will very likely emerge as the definitive academic work on social networks from the Web 2.0 era. I can't think of anyone else (except maybe her mentor, Mimi Ito) who's done so much solid ethnographic work on teens and online community.

I have a feeling I'll be assigning sections of this in many classes to come...

Here's the details:

"Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics"

http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf

Abstract: As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices - gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices - self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.

My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties - persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability - and three dynamics - invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private - are examined and woven throughout the discussion.

While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens' engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.

Conversation with TV Exec about Convergence and DIY

A friend of mine who is a strategy exec at a major TV network sometimes IMs me to talk shop. With his permission, I'm posting an interesting conversation we had today, about how Hollywood should deal with the "DIY" video movement. I've changed his handle for privacy purposes.

I will also be cross-posting in my new role as a guest blogger over at Starpolish.com.

TV_exec
question
do you envision a world where

Aram Sinnreich
shoot

TV_exec
DIY
acutally is competitive with
studio material?
talking long-form
(30 min greater ent content)
ugc
whatever u wanan all that cagtegory

Aram Sinnreich
depends on what you mean by DIY/UGC
peer production yes

TV_exec
long form
commanding cpms

Aram Sinnreich
peer production, yes

TV_exec
similar to current hollywood long form
pper production?

Aram Sinnreich
meaning, open source

TV_exec
oh ok i c

Aram Sinnreich
movie equivalent of linux
but not single-handed

TV_exec
right so
that gets distributed on line

Aram Sinnreich
it's hard enough for a single person to make a compelling 5-min clip

TV_exec
or do they strike deals with other media distrbution?

Aram Sinnreich
not very many auteurs can swing 1+ hours without collaboration

TV_exec
sure, or have hte money
to make it competitive with hollywood
talking ent only

Aram Sinnreich
right, though that's becoming less of an issue, esp w/ animation and documentary

TV_exec
i think that's unclear

Aram Sinnreich
so is your question about distro

TV_exec
but yeah i mean it's heading that way

Aram Sinnreich
or about content

TV_exec
it's about both
meaning

Aram Sinnreich
or about revenues?

TV_exec
it's kind of a broad question about
the "disurptive force"
of non studio / hollywood content
and its place in the future

Aram Sinnreich
1) will long-term content be made by non-hollywood entities? yes

TV_exec
i agree with that

Aram Sinnreich
2) will it have competitive distribution? yes, to an extent, but studio money will still go a long way

TV_exec
we internally always refer to it as "long form" for distnigushing sake
ok
yeah it's like

Aram Sinnreich
3) will it have revenues?
yes, but probably through secondary uses and services, e.g. linux

TV_exec
right
i mean it's baiscally asking the question

Aram Sinnreich
i think the entertainment world needs to understand what's happening in the software world

TV_exec
how so specifically?

Aram Sinnreich
because code has been manipulable, configurable, peer-produced much longer than, say, video

TV_exec
ok

Aram Sinnreich
those creative communities and industries have already figured out a lot of the possibilities
e.g GPL
which was recently adapted to creative commons for entertainment/media
or collaborative production, which is what's starting to happen on youtuve
for instance, all the beyonce versions
even the concept of "versioning" got its start in software, unless you count the jamaican kind

TV_exec
i mean it makes sense with regard to

Aram Sinnreich
and as far as biz models

TV_exec
creating mroe value overall
i think
but it's about who moentizes it
i was wondering this (came up in a meeting)

Aram Sinnreich
software has shown that corporations can make money from peer production and distribtion

TV_exec
yeh but that is not apples to apples

Aram Sinnreich
google's whole business is built on more-or-less open source software
not exactly, no
but culture is becoming more and more like software

TV_exec
i agree
but i think u know for example
the average person

Aram Sinnreich
in that it's produced by taking snippets, and rearranging them to suit different tasks at different times

TV_exec
watches 6 television stations
right?

Aram Sinnreich
yes

TV_exec
if hlllywood serves as a tastemaker
and offers up X product
and controls all that product
and the peopel are ok with that

Aram Sinnreich
well it depends what you mean by "controls"

TV_exec
the need for robust gpl type licensing structure
is not really there
or am i off?

Aram Sinnreich
there are powers that average people have now that they didn't ahve a decade ago

TV_exec
why does content need to change if in genreal the people will have the services they neeed?

Aram Sinnreich
and they are increasingly clashing with media legal depts over those powers

TV_exec
yes but what is that % oppulation

Aram Sinnreich
such as universal suing that family for youtubing its toddler with "lets go crazy" by prince in the background

TV_exec
mos tpeople are passive consumers

Aram Sinnreich
actually, you're wrong
most people are now active consumers
i fielded a national survey in 2006 that showed this

TV_exec
don't u think u have to acgtually wait for the old generation to die off
before saying that?

Aram Sinnreich
been looking for funding to re-field recently
creative commons is also about to publish a similar survey

TV_exec
hm

Aram Sinnreich
true, this stuff does correlate linearly with age
but
even old folks are doing this stuff to an extent

TV_exec
well yeah we are talking abotu the future also so poitn taken haha
u know that like some crazy high %

Aram Sinnreich
my grandma has a flickr and my dad's on fb

TV_exec
of ppl claim texting as the most valuable
feature on their phone?
i think that's an itneresting paradigm shift refelective
of kidn of what ur talking about

Aram Sinnreich
yeah, that's why the telcos can charge ridiculous prices for it

TV_exec
haha word
it really comes down to licensing strucutre, right?
i mean the distribution is what it is in large part

Aram Sinnreich
yes, if you mean revenues

TV_exec
but who owns the content and what u can do on it and how you capture
ancillary revenues

Aram Sinnreich
licensing is going to be bigger and bigger
not so ancillary any more

TV_exec
is all incumbent on who owns the license

Aram Sinnreich
because copyright is increasingly reverting to its original form

TV_exec
well it's itneresting -- i'm not seeing anything to suggest a radical departure from current copyright

Aram Sinnreich
e.g. regulating inter-business relations

Hell hath no fury like a newsman scorned

Quick: how many TV news anchors can you name that care more about their reputations than their bank accounts? Not many, I'll warrant. But this wasn't always the case. The NY Times is reporting that 77-year-old Dan Rather, a full election cycle after he was unceremoniously sacked by the network he helped to build for relying upon documents of dubious provenance in a segment that questioned Dubya's attendance at national guard daycare, is pursuing the case with both investigative barrels blazing, and over $2 million of his own cash.

Specifically, Rather wants to know how deeply CBS and the GOP were in bed together during the investigation that led to his ouster. Apparently, he's already found some lipstick traces.

Here's the injurious part: CBS vetted its "independent" investigative panelists with Republican operatives, who eventually gave the thumbs-up to former Attorney General and Republican appointee Dick Thornburgh to lead the investigation.

Here's the insulting part: Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes were all considered as potential panelists. The thought of any one of those five hacks being commissioned to investigate the ethics of Dan Rather is sickening. It's like asking a back-alley abortionist to sit in judgment on a brain surgeon for a botched procedure.

I'm not suggesting that Rather is beyond reproach, or that his story wasn't flawed; in fact, I commend and celebrate the blogosphere for spotting the phony documents more or less immediately after the segment aired. Hopefully, this kind of citizen journalism will be able to keep the mainstream media honest for years to come. The question is, in an age of concentrated oligopolies and failing business strategies, when the federal government's power to greenlight a merger or block an acquisition means everything to the industry's bottom line, does honesty still matter to them?