Re: Not TheTropolis

Is this guy crazy? This is why I love YouTube and the viral video community.

Over (song) - STEREO!

The Shakey Bard

It suddenly occurs to me that we don't need Shakespeare.

I was reviewing my piece below on computer games (Games Are For Kids), and realised that it bore more than a passing resemblance to Shakey's "seven ages of man" idea. God knows where he stole it from, or whether it was an original thought.

Of course, now that I have recognised how my thoughts echo those of the great Bard the correct form would be to eulogise about his genius, but the truth is that in his works he covered a lot of ground, but he does not still have a monopoly on the ideas he presented.

Did the Seven Ages of man creep into my subconscious and find its expression decades later? I never read the play (As You Like It), and as far as I know I have never seen it performed. Until I recognised the seven ages aspect of the piece I wrote I didn't even know the concept was a Shakespearean one. I had to look it up on google, which kindly informed me that I might be looking for "ages" and not "stages" (my original search).

In the days when Shakespeare was coming up with his stuff, and for many hundreds of years afterwards, such towering epics of imagination were rightly valued. And even today there are many who would argue that their relevance persists.

But was the quality of Shakespeare's writing without parallel? Does his magnificence rightly cast its shadow over everything else?

I don't think so.

Shakespeare's legacy is maintained directly by government grant in the UK. No modern author can look forward to such investment. What this does (aside from keeping hopeless sing-song actors in jobs for life) is promote a kind of intellectual land grab.

So what if you come up with a nice wee piece on computer games. The Shakespeare fanatic will say your debt is owed, when in fact no such debt is possible.

On the internet today, in blogs and vlogs written all over the world, there are original thoughts and astounding insights being created minute by minute, every one of which requires no reinterpretation or adaptation to reveal its relevance to the all consuming now.

In songs and movies there are lyrics and speeches every bit as powerful as anything Old Bill wrote.

Compare the oft quoted Hamlet speech

To be, or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. Etc etc

with a neater modern expression of similar concerns

Everything will be OK in the end.
If it's not OK, it's not the end.

which unravels beautifully in the mind in a way that Shakespeare's bludgeoning prose never does. If he doesn't spell it out it probably isn't there.

And then there's the genius of Frank Zappa's

Do what you wanna, do what you will
But don't mess up your neighbour's thrill,
And when you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
For the next poor sucker on this one way trip

which resonates with modern day idioms (just as Shakespeare's words would have in his day), and is all the more powerful because of it.

The persistence of Shakespeare will keep dragging at us like an anchor. We cannot move forward if Hamlet's paranoid concerns are held up as some kind of eternal mirror to the human condition.

If Shakespeare was relevant and his words had true resonance in the modern world then his works would stand alone, without the need for taxpayers' money.

Ideas are not like old buildings. They do not require conservation measures to persist. Neither should they be treasured as anything other than the passing of wisdom from one generation to the next, always there to be rediscovered anew.

Shakespeare was talking to his peers and his children, not to us, and we do him a disservice by pretending that he was.

Who Owns The Wiggling Air?

When it comes to music copyright the law is confused, and acts against the spirit (if not the letter) of laws designed to protect our inalienable rights as human beings.

I don't know of any law in any country that describes my right to listen to what I want, when I want, where I want and how I want. But there should be such a law. That there isn't one is down to a series of basic assumptions on the part of the law makers that "inalienable human rights" (however they are described) should include the right to your own ears.

A quick look at the Wikipedia entry for Human Rights gives the following broad definition -
Human rights refers to the supposed "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.
Even in their very broadest application, the rights to participate in culture, to freedom of expression and equality before the law, would seem to be the foundation for an entirely sensible approach to how we deal with our rights to listen to and reproduce sound.

But frankly, the law as applied is crazy.

A musical event is an abstract construction of wiggling air molecules. It is pressure waves, much like the breeze blowing through tall grass. Nothing moves, nothing is transmitted except the idea of the music - a tune, a beat, a word.

Of course, the expression of that idea can be captured. It can be written down using notation, or it can be recorded, but let's think first about the situation that pertains to the live performance of a musical idea, where no recording or notation is involved.

A musician makes the air wiggle. The ears of the listeners respond, sending signals to the brain that are interpreted as "music". How can such a relationship be owned by anyone other than the participants?

Well, it can. The law says it can. If the idea behind the music originated outside the performer/listener circle then the performer needs the permission of the originator before he makes the air do that particular dance.

This requires that the dance be identifiable as a distinct entity from all other dances, which is where things get really crazy.

The situation is so perverse that even where the music being created is entirely contained within the performer/listener circle, if it bears a resemblance to any previous piece of music ever created then the originator of that previous work has a claim on the new piece of work.

The inevitable consequence of this is that eventually every idea that can be musically expressed has already been copyrighted. Any "new" piece of music is subject to copyright before it is even written.

Sound crazy? Sound impossible? It gets worse.

Let's say that you create a piece of music, and ninety per cent of the musical ideas in it have never been heard before, but ten per cent of what you think is an entirely original work bears an uncanny resemblance to something that was written and recorded twenty years previously.

The originator of that earlier piece of music can argue in a court of law that you owe him any and all profits made from your piece. All. Not just the ten per cent that he says you stole. And the court will not throw him out on his ear. They will listen.

Whether or not the court rules in his favour will depend upon the exact circumstances of the case, but the point is that your right to express yourself is stifled by this ill thought out legal process.

That is part of what Kembrew MacLeod means when he talks about the denuding of the cultural commons.

When music is recorded the situation takes a sinister turn, with ordinary people like you and me being fined huge amounts of money for doing nothing more evil than sharing their favourite music with other music lovers.

If I choose to express my inalienable human rights by sharing, why do the Record Industry Association of America and the British Phonographic Institute and their pit-bull enforcers the Federation Against Copyright Theft call it stealing, putting it into the same bracket as car jacking or bag snatching?

A recording of wiggling air molecules, played back through an electronic device, recreates those wiggling air molecules for all to enjoy. What a marvellous innovation! What a boon to civilisation!

What a curse to the poor musician whose work is distributed free of charge to millions who now don't have to turn up at the concert hall to hear him play. The poor musician, whose CDs are left languishing in the warehouse because no-one wants music any more. Poor record companies, whose hard working staff will soon have no jobs. Poor studio owners who will have no musicians to work with, and no market for their recordings even if they could make any. Poor customer, who will not be able to hear great quality music any more!

That's what the unholy alliance of the RIAA/BPI/FACT would like you to think, but they are wrong on every count. Every one.

Live rock venues in the UK have never thrived as they do now. There are more bands touring than the gigging infrastructure can support. New venues are opening up all the time.

Official music sales do not account for the many millions of independent releases sold on line or in the form of home made CDRs. There is MORE music around than ever. More bands. More independent record companies. More bedroom outfits. More music.

No major record company has gone bust since the pirating scares of the 1970s. Anyone remember the "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign? In fact, the counter slogan that read "Home Taping Is Skill In Music" was much nearer the truth.

There are more professional quality studios than ever before, and everyone with a PC can have one. More guitars are sold than ever before. More microphones. More mixing desks. More music software.

It begins to look like music is alive and well, musicians are alive and well, great recordings are still being made, and music is as much part of the fabric of our daily lives as it ever was.

So, why do the RIAA/BPI/FACT complain so hard?

Because the market, their precious market, has determined that the value of music is less than the record companies current antediluvian business model can sustain.

Fifteen Great British Pounds for a CD you might not even like that much, or a free download. The market has decided.

Find a band you love, download the album for free three weeks before it hits the shops, then support the band by ordering it through their web site, and go and see them live. Why do those bands need record companies? They don't.

That's what all of this is really about. The record industry will survive, but it will have to morph itself into something that meets the demands of its customers. They had become used to having it all their own way, owning the product and the sole means of distribution.

The internet has democratised the music business, and the old dinosaurs don't like that. Their cosy monopoly of excess and exploitation is ending.

But no-one, no-one bucks the market. No matter how many grandmothers they send to jail.

Games Are For Kids

The following article was written for my company magazine. They decided not to use it, so I present it here for what it's worth.

* * *

Computer games. For nerds and kids, right?

I mean, it's not as if they are a serious art form is it? Not like cinema or even TV. There's no way that the intelligent craftsmanship behind a good film or a well written novel can find similar expression in pixels on a screen.

Is there?

Actually, computer games are almost entirely grown up. Not yet fully mature, but getting there. Kinda like a late developing teenager, struggling to find his way in the world whilst bedazzled by possibility and the promise of adventure.

Gone is the repetitive mindlessness of his babyhood. No more endless practicing of trigger skills. Those motor functions were fully developed by the time he moved onto simulations where he played sports, managed cities and created life itself. That was when his eyes were opened to the idea that maybe, just maybe playing games which modelled real life events might lead to meaningful insights about the nature of our human world.

Incredible!

By the time he was living seven kinds of virtual life with simulated creatures or (gasp) little computer people, he was ready for the next stage, where he opened the front door and took his polygons and shaders out onto the information super highway, where he found (much to his surprise) that reality itself began to twist into new shapes to accommodate him.

Cinema began to pay tribute to the best games. Magazines sprang up to support him, distributing software for free, and the internet facilitated gaming in a pan-global community setting.

The line between "playing" and "being" began to blur, just as it does for everyone who leaves childhood behind. The skills learned purely in the imagination became the tools of the artisan in adult life, and where once there were competitive games set against fantasy backgrounds created by faceless programmers there are now the pseudo-realities of virtual communities with their own cultures, economies and politics.

Yeah, the nerdy kid with the spots and bad breath is now worth mega-billions, and he is re-creating the world according to a set of goals that are barely comprehensible to his parents and their friends. To him, it's not about what you are, but about what you bring. It's not about competition, it's about engagement. It's not about following leaders, it's about following dreams.

The kid knows that the new frontier isn't "out there" on the fringe of some unexplored continent, it is in living rooms and bedrooms, and in the internet cafes and the gaming shops.

The future always belonged to the young, but maybe for the first time in history we can all be as young as we want to be.

Are games for kids?

Absolutely!

Side Panel

How games grew up.

Pong - the birth of computer games.
Donkey Kong - basic motor skill development.
Sim City - like Lego with city blocks.
Doom - perception flips into the third dimension.
Half Life 2 - starring in your own movie.
World of Warcraft - games go global.
Second Life - hang out with friends, make millions.