Caught this on Eye blog and had to link it for any who may have missed it. This is a fantastic retro cover that is far more honest than Fortune 500 wanted it to be. The rest of us just wish it wasn’t true. This is a great example of the power of art, design and commentary. Take some time on the large version on the Flickr page. It is well worth examining closely.

Saw this on Pharyngula and had to repost it!

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.

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.

I understand the arguments. I’ve read them ad naseum and frankly I don’t really care whether anyone buys one or not. I know that I won’t. I won’t for the same reason I won’t buy an iPhone and the same reason why I gave my iPod touch to my son. I find Apple’s idea of application and hardware distribution odious in the extreme. I believe that any company that acts as if it should be the arbiter of which applications I can install or design is wrong. I find any company that is so obsessed with control and which invokes that control in the name of protecting us to be suspect and disingenuous. This is especially true when this company has already made application acceptance decisions based solely on the content of an application.

It is true that the iPads will most likely be successful for Apple. While the hardware input specs are lacking and the lack of an external memory slot is pathetic, I doubt that will have much of an effect on purchasing behaviors. This is especially true considering the level of hype that Apple has been able to build. As for content, I will do my utmost to make sure that the internet content that I produce is compatible with the device. I have no issue is developing content as long I never have to submit anything to Apple and I sincerely hope that they open the platform up. Jobs has proven himself in this regard, though, so I won’t be holding my breath.

I do believe that tablets will prove to be an interesting new medium and I am pleased to see so many on the horizon which will not be subject to the same restrictions. That said, I am concerned that others will try to adopt Apple’s model. Microsoft has already started down this road with its application store for the next generation of its Windows Mobile OS. There is a lot of opportunity ahead but there is also a lot of risk. I hope that in the rush ahead we do not give up more than we gain.

What to do, what to do? I sit here and stare at my future. I have three papers to write and all I can do is ponder how to merge them all into a new media narrative. I feel so far behind and yet, in some ways, I am still ahead. My goals are coalescing. New Media narratives can and do exist but only by accepting that we cannot hold on to the paradigms of the past. That includes the paradigms of the the Internet.

New Media is not youtube, it is not the Gutenberg Project, or Google’s mad dash to digitize all text. Text exists within and without. Narratives are human creations and we now live inside and outside of the machine. Inside the machine the world is only slivers of grey. This is the Greyrealm that has hosted me for so long. Beyond the realms of that are only illusions and vast tracts of advertising. Narratives exist in between. They exist in the colleague who tells me of a dwarf who stands against the horde. They exist in a boy who delights in telling me how so silly tripe changed his mind and in the many shared laughs caused by that cursed narwhal song. They are teh reason that a crappy boy band from – what was it, Moldova – will be forever remembered for one really annoying song. New Media is the narrative of life and in that it is no different from the narratives of the past. The only real difference is that more people are talking and more tales are being told and the giants of old media are doing whatever they can to make money while the giant corporations of new media prepare to devour their forefathers.

Into all of this we are born, the storytellers of the digital age. Finally, I think I start to understand. The technology I have spent my life wandering through, the digital wastelands that encompass most of my life exist because I can tell a story with it. All this work…and now I sit and look and realize the tools before me. I have them. I am ready.

Wow…I hope I don’t fuck this up….

In total, eighteen people signed up. I was actually impressed. A lot of the people in this class seemed to be taking it to fill a requirement, but this showed me that more people than I expected were actually interested in expanding beyond the required subject matter. It turns out that I was wrong. Of the eighteen, only five of us showed up. This would have been fine if the professor hadn’t been kind enough to order the pizza. Since she believed 18 people were coming, she ordered several pizzas. In fact, she set everything up for eighteen people and what she was left with was nothing but pizza and disappointment.

I don’t get it. I really don’t. I work all day and sometimes part of the night. I do everything I can to stay caught up and to pursue my education and that is a full time challenge. I hate that I don’t have the time to take better advantage of the opportunities out there. Most of the students have no such excuse. They are there, ostensibly, solely to learn. Many have only a few classes and all the time in the world. I can’t imagine wasting that when so many different options are offered. These speakers, symposiums, lectures, studies and readings all help us to expand and grow beyond the confines of a classroom.

The bad news is that college is going to end for these kids and the world outside makes finding things like a viewing of a Pasolini film far more difficult. The sad news is that most will probably never care. In some ways I think I preferred being studying on my own. While I have found my return to college to be a positive experience in regard to my goals and my learning, my faith in the future of mankind is even more shaken. I always expected apathy but I am truly amazed at its depth.

My chains still rattle, though, reminding me that I once shared their fate. I can see them now wrapped around me. I am Marley reborn and I have systematically torn the chains away. Someday, I will be free. Even today, I am freer than most and the towers know it. They tease with invitations, they beg and wheedle, the seek to make me theirs with a constant influx of garish advertisement that disgust more than interest. I won’t go back.

This is not “how the world works,” it is how the world dies. A thousand souls offered up with cheer and joy to our gods of chrome, steel, silver, and gold. We stumble over ourselves, rushing to curry the favor of the tower, never realizing that the tower will never care. Look, another soul devoured, another dime for the pile, another debtors’ prison created. The dreams of millions shriveled down to a number, modern alchemy of the most evil kind.

“This is how the world works,” they tell me and I want to scream. I want to shake them free of the blind acceptance of such idiocy. They cannot hear me, though. The tower took their ears, eyes, mind, and soul long ago. There is nothing left to save.

I am becoming more and more convinced that in order for our present society to operate successfully, the majority of its members must be infantilized. It is the only way for the corporate state to maintain control. By artificially lengthening adolescence, the corporate state creates a society that is dependent upon it. Those products which are deemed “good” and “acceptable” are determined not by an individual who is considered too young to adequately comprehend value but instead by the very same corporation whose function it is to sell the product.

This is the world in which we now live. We do not cook, we do not produce, we consume. We are told by our corporate parents that this consumption is good. From an early age we are taught that we must consume to live and so we do. Since consumption is survival we happily attach ourselves to the state and the corporation in order that our consumption can continue unabated. We enslave ourselves to the very apparatus that perpetuates this condition.

The truly terrifying prospect in all of this is the totalizing power of the corporation. Your description of college as a netherworld is incorrect only in that it does not go far enough. Colleges have become little more than agents of the corporate state. They are no longer places for the education of the populace and academic rigor. They are, instead, places that produce able functionaries for the corporation. This is precisely the problem with our current situation. Those things which act as antidote to the corporate state are inevitably assimilated and become a part of the state. As this occurs, the people become disillusioned and eventually accept that everything is subservient to the corporation. They are, therefore, not only aware of their position but convinced of its inevitability and its correctness.

I should clarify that this position is not a Marxist one. It is, in fact, in accordance with the very essence of Capitalism. As we have repeatedly seen, corporations must undermine Capitalism in order to survive. They rely and grow by centralizing resources under a singular control. They only recognize the individual by his or her role within the context of the corporation. While certain class structures remain at the highest levels there is often little difference between the worker and the supervisor and they can be moved within the corporation at will like cogs in a machine. By appropriating the identity of a human being, corporations have become the dominant structure of the state and of society. Their homogenizing and infantilizing effects are not specific to a single corporation but are a condition of the system. While you are, most certainly, right to mourn the costs to Humanity and to the Arts (the value of which I shall address in a later commentary), so too should your brother mourn the centralization of capital and the diminished competition that remains at the heart of capitalism. While neither Disney nor Marvel is blameless, the purchase of Marvel continues the trend that, sadly, illustrates the system.

^{1. An initial response is heavily influenced by the conditions of the time in which it was produced. Depending on future developments, it may undergo significant change.}