I listened to them struggle against the tide, against the ocean in which they swam. They ranted and raved that they had no control. They raged against the injustice of it all and yet they still swam. They fed off what the ocean provided and they felt themselves lucky to be able to eat so well. For its sake, the company did not know them. It did not care about them. It simply moved as it thought was best. It would have gladly left their slaughtered carcasses in the shallows if it deemed it to be the best thing to do. They knew this, it scared them, but they remained.
I wanted to tell them that they were sharks. They had swam their way up through the chaos of the depths and dodged the empty tide pools that trap so many. They had learned to swim and to manage great things and that was the only reason the ocean provided them the sustenance it did. These sharks swam, toothless, when all they needed to do was to crawl out of water, out of the ocean’s grasp. They needed to gasp and wheeze in the air, to feel their teeth, and let their feet take hold. Leaving the ocean for those others too afraid to climb.
But, what could I say? I flicked my tail and swam away from the beach. There was food to be had and the ocean demanded its due.
Okay, no more tech for awhile. I think I have spent enough time venting in that general direction.
I spent this afternoon at a workshop on game module creation. Overall, I liked a lot to the concepts and found the work to be quite inspired. I think that a lot of what was presented could become polished enough to be published. It was nice to see fresh ideas in an industry that has been relatively stalled. It could use some of the people who were there tonight.
It takes more than ideas to get published, though. There is a specific type of discipline that is involved. It’s a discipline that I am only beginning to understand. I write a lot. I write poems, essays, papers, fiction, blog posts, commentaries and other assorted pieces of odd textual bric-a-brac. The writing is only the first step, though. Publishing requires submission, coordination, tracking, revising, and management. It requires a whole set of tools that are not always found in the toolbox of a person who just wants to write.
If you have those tools anything is possible. The beauty of living in a today’s world is that you can create your own work, market it and even sell it without a middle man. It’s not easy, but it was never supposed to be. I would love to shift my empty Libertine Media into a publishing and marketing company and odds are that I will. That is the beauty of today. That said, I am interested in seeing what other options exist and what I can do there. I expect to be sending out submissions this month. It’s my first time doing so in a very, very long time. I’m curious to see what happens. I expect rejection but who knows. Some of what I write, when not spittle-flecked invective aimed at CEOs of massive corporations, is actually pretty good.
I will of course keep everyone updated. After all, this is all about my text and unimaginable hubris.
This was in response to a question about allowing unsigned applications in the next iPhone OS.
There is so much wrong with this I don’t even know at what point to start. First off, Steve Job is an idiot for making this comment. Flat out, this has to be the most idiotic justification for limiting unsigned apps I have ever heard. You know what I am doing while typing this, I’m streaming porn to my wife’s iPhone (no worries, both hands are on the keyboard). Isn’t it Stevie boy who’s been preaching about the wonders of HTML 5? Guess what that Hi-Def video that is so touted is going to be playing you turtlenecked prude, PORN! The iPhone has been a tremendous porn device and you know that is probably the one thing that closed off POS has going for it.
Any company that feels it should limit what I can and cannot view on hardware that I purchase is not a company I trust. I like to be in control of what I view and don’t view. I like to control which applications I install and I do not want or need some moralizing hipster telling me what is or is not appropriate. Maybe I don’t like Apple’s software. Maybe, just maybe, somebody did it better. It doesn’t matter. In Apple’s closed system you are stuck with exactly what Apple believes you should have. This is not a system I would consider worthwhile. Now, the main poobah himself is telling us that one of the those things we shouldn’t have is porn.
Well Steve, get fucked. Make it into a video. It might do you some good.
I wrote an introduction to a paper last night. As introductions go, it absolutely sucked. It was one of the worst introductions I have ever written and I have written my share of terrible introductions. In it, I prattle on for two pages before I even start to make a semblance of a claim. Normally, I would be terribly embarrassed and I would be if this was even close to the final draft. At this point in my writing I find that these introductions act more as a way of sharpening my claims and focusing my references. They do this by showing me what does and doesn’t work. This introduction then is more of a way of introducing me to the paper and less an introduction for others.
I find this to be an interesting way to think about a lot of things in life. It is this form of trial and sample experience that teaches us. We seek out new concepts and act in ways that we believe would suit us and examine the results. Often, we shake our heads and wonder what the hell we were thinking. So we stop and rewrite. We change characters, shift roles, and alter our actions to fit our new understanding. In this way we grow and change and, perhaps, learn a little along the way.
I have often said that I wish my life to be a story and I am proud that, thus far, that is exactly what I have found my life to be. It is that element of change, of endless learning, that I find to be so exciting. I hope that in my time I get to write a thousand introductions and that as I go along I will be smart enough to see which ones work and which ones fail. By taking those introductions that work and adding them to my own story, I hope to create something far greater than what I started with. It’s a noble hope, in the very least.
Laura Miller has an excellent article up on Salon about the remixed text, “Axolotl Roadkill,” by Helene Hegemann. When this first broke, I was rather critical of Miss Hegemann’s rationalizations. Her attempts to claim that her text was always meant to be offered as a collage comprised of other works seemed a hasty excuse once she was caught. I’ll give Hegemann credit, though. She did a great job of selling her excuse shaping it as nothing more than another in a long line of issues born from the generational divide. She claims, stealing a line from Wil Smith, that “parents just don’t understand” and her book continues to sell.
There is no doubt that remixing is important and that it ultimately provides for creative collaboration on some fantastic levels. This collaboration only works when artists are acknowledged for their work and allowed to maintain their desired level of creative control. Admittedly, there is a point at which this control should wane and I am open to arguments on how long that should be but the creator of a work should have creative control for some time. The creative commons works because that is precisely what it does. New art is created from a mixing of older pieces and any credit that is due is given. Hegemann conveniently left out that final step and that is where I take issue.
The idea that this type of copying is acceptable because “originality is dead” has never held much sway with me. That argument is really just as an excuse to write shit and claim it wasn’t your fault. I have no issue with the adoption of styles and prose that mirror another artist as this has been going on for as long as we have had something we could term art. I even agree with Hegemann’s argument, as Miller references, that you can weave another author’s text in with your own to create a sort of dialogue. I have done something very similar to that in several papers. I always make sure to offer an attribution, though. That’s where the line between remixing and plagiarism stands and where it should remain.
