Where Music Will Be Coming From

In this article, Kelly explains how technology has changed music. When music was first starting to be recorded, artists were using much more detail on what they were playing than before. They wanted their recordings to be perfect, with absolutely no mistake and putting emphasis on every detail so the recorder could pick it up. "Musicians played the way technology listened." Then the article begins talking about how internet sites like Napster changed us into a digital age, where things are free, and away from the analog age where things were just simply cheap.

He then explains the 3 stages of copydom.
1. Perfection, which is that the copy is perfect and exactly like the original.
2. Freeness, which just means that it's free.
3. Liquidity, which is saying that the must is fluid. It can be changed in anyway you want and this is what is so important. Since a copy can be changed in anyway that you want it to, it becomes more of a part of you because it shows who you are.

The article then goes into specific technolgy that has changed music. But with all these advancements, what will happen to the musicians? Musicians are now going to greater links to make the recording you pay for much more special to give people the incentive to want to buy it instead of having a free copied version. This is what he says is the future of must: more choices.

Future of Literacy

While reading this article there were many interesting facts that caught my interest. When I read the first quote by Plato it really made me think. It is very true that people often need to write things down in order to remember them. People write a lot of things in planners, in their cell phones, and even on their hands so that they can remember it. Another part of the article that made me think was that 3/4 of the worlds population can not afford to buy their own books and reading material. This means that the other 1/4 of the world will control what they read. It is very sad that these people can not afford to buy their own books. These individuals will never be able to walk into a book store and search for books that interest them. Ray's post is horrible.

The Future of Literacy

Eco brings up a very interesting point towards the end of this essay about distributing books among Third World countries. The question is who decides what type of content these people will be reading. He also points out that three quarters of the world can not afford books. This means that there are a select few that have the power to distribute information and they are the ones who ultimately decide what these people are reading. This seems to be the reoccuring theme in a number of readings this quarter. Who has the right to decide the extent of the damage? Who decides whether stealing music from online is a serious crime? I can't even imagine the different scenarios of Third World individuals being fed political information, thinking they are receiving gifts in the form of reading material. This leaves three quarters of the world population to potentially take up communist beliefs, or three quarters of the world population to believe that there were nuclear war heads in Iraq. My point is that their should be some type of regulations on the material these countries receive. They are individuals just like us, and should ultimately decide what they'd like to read.

The Tyranny of Copyright?

I definitely agree with the 'Copy Left' that copyrights have gotten out of hand. The idea that record companies have settled out of court for thousands of dollars with 12 year-old kids is absurd in my mind. So there are large corporations suing young kids for downloading music, and at the same time, the man who wrote the “Happy Birthday” song is asking for royalties for his work, because he copyrighted it. Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? I download music through limewire, and I see nothing wrong with it when used in my private collection. I am taking a few songs to play on my mp3 player, that I can just as easily download from their website, a cd, or their myspace page. The only time I have an issue with downloading music or any other material, is when someone then tries to sell the music or material they have taken. When I publish my photographs online, they are immediately copyrighted to me, and that stays embedded in my photos. If someone were to copy that image to put as the desktop of their computer, or use it in a paper, I wouldn't care. If they were to try to make copies and sell them, I would have a problem because they are making money on something I did. When a musical group covers another person's song, they only need the permission if they plan on selling a cd or dvd with that song on it. If they are just to perform it once at a concert, they don't need to pay the royalties because they aren't making funds off someone else's material. Another idea mentioned in the article for 'pro-copyright laws' was called micro payments. This is where people would pay a fee to download music, and then pay another fee to upload it to an mp3 player. I don't think that would work, because for every new copyright law, there is another person or another company finding a way around it. With the way they are pushing copyright laws, what will come next? Will we need to pay a fee to authors for citing their books in a paper? Will we need to pay royalties to our professors when we cite their lectures in our papers? It seems to me that people are just becoming money hungry, and are finding every possibility to make a dollar.

Literacy Technology and Money Capital

In Ohmann's Literacy Technology and Money Capital he talks about the use of the word literacy and how technologies, and more specific, computers are bringing change to this concept. He argues that the computer has done little to change our social class structure, and if anything has given the capitalists more tools to increase their monopolistic power. While his view is on the far left of political theory, I do believe that to some point computers have changed our societal class structure and definition of literacy. For one, what is computer literacy? I strongly believe that you cannot use the word "literacy" to define being a person skilled with a computer. Literacy denotes that if you do not obtain it, you are of a lower class than others who are literate. Yet, if someone doesn't use a computer are they really of a lower social stratum, are they less of a person, are they less intelligent? I read once that former President Clinton only sent a few emails during his entire term in office, and he had a secretary write them for him. Yet, he is obviously of an older generation, I believe you would be hard pressed to find a CEO of a large company who doesn't use email today, but as Ohmann points out, his computer literacy may be far lower than someone working in the engineering department as a technician.
Also, he does have a valid point in stating that computers and technology are the products of corporations and monopolies. So, as true with anything else we must question their statements such as "Computers will change your life" for these corporations are profit driven. Although I would argue that the benefits have outweighed the risks with the usage of computers. For one, the ease of communication has improved, and the media world, once a monopoly is currently undergoing a huge transformation with the onset of blogging and youtube. It has changed so much that the very definitions of traditional worlds like media, literacy etc are being called into question. I myself believe that while it is true corporate and government organizations have been allowed to probe deeper into our social lives, we ourselves have been able to see deeper into these organizations as technology has highly increased transparency in almost all stratus' of society.

Crime and Puzzlement

While reading the essay by Barlow, I was sympathetic to the individuals who were put through so much trouble by the government. The crackers were probably wrong on some level, but they were definitely taken advantage of by our government. Today in class I was surprised that John was the only one standing up for the "criminals" talked about in the essay. I know he is the prof and has to be the devils advocate in most situations, but where was everyone else? I think that the rights of those involved were highly violated. Our constitution guarantees that we are not held without being charged. We did not really focus on this point, but I think that it is very important. In my opinion the issues of rights violation is the biggest issue. Whether or not a crime was committed, the crackers were not treated up to the standards of US Law. The fortune 500's of the country were scared and had the power to influence the rest of the country into fear along with them. The essay talked about FBI agents being very poorly informed. Because of this crackers, in most cases, knew far more about the subject then those who were doing the questioning. I think that fear consumed the government and this caused the accused to be taken advantage of. Civil rights thrown out the window because of fear, is that where we want to take this country? Not that this was written recently, but there are cases were you can see similar action. Today in our country there are people who are held without charges brought against them. Is that truly what our country stands for, is that fair? What do you think, is it fair to flip flop on the Constitution like we have seen from time to time?

A Rape in Cyberspace

When I first started reading this article I thought it was going to be similar to "The Cross-Dressing Psychiatrist". Although there is some sort of decpetion there is a twist on it. Dibbell discussed a program called Lambdamoo. This program is where internet users log on and can create their own persona. Which is similiar to what Lewin did, becuase you are creating another form of yourself. Perhaps a fantasy of what you really want yourself to be like. The users can also create their own rooms and then roam around and talk to other users, essentially a virtutal reality. Although Lambdamoo was mainly innocent where people would meet and form a knit community, a rape crime disturbed everyone. Mr. Bungle which was the name of one of the personas somehow was able to control other people in the room and raped them. He had one of the characters violate themselves and had the other commit sexual acts. Reading what exactly he had them due was pretty disgusing. Overall, the article has us question what is real? Although there was no violation of any actual "body" there was rape with the characters which is a form of ourselves. When the whole community decided that they wanted to punish him, the actual administrators didn't know how to deal with the subject because nothing like this had happened before. Eventually he was punished, but the community was shaked again when another name appeared that had the same mannerisms as Mr. Bungle, now named Mr. Jest. Even though Mr. Bungle/Mr. Jest was punished, the victims still feel violated as much as they would a real rape. In the end, this article tests the line between reality and virtual reality and has us questioning what exactly qualifies as rape or a criminal crime? And if it should be treated the same if it was in real life rather than online?

Race In/For Cyberspace

This article was pretty interesting. The main concept behind the article was the idea of creating an online character to chat with other chracters on the chat room server. The site that was talked about was Lambdamoo. I had never heard of this site before but it was very intereting to read especially just after the artyicle we read about deception. The thing that I believe makes this deception ok is the idea that everyone on the server knows that people are making up their own identities. People that are a part of Lambdamoo fantasize about about what kind of person hey would like to be in this alternate utopian world. You can pick your gender from four different categoreis. You can also pick your race but it is not required. It was stated in the article that it really does not matter if someone does not pick a race because in their character description it usually shows what race you are by eye color and hair. Many people decide to participate in this activity because it gives the a chance to take a "vacation" from their real life chracter and develop a character that they have always wanted to be. There are some people that use Lambdamoo who make their race asian. This is interesting because most people who describe their chracter as asian are really not. Lambdamoo allows people to cross international borders by creating their different race in cyberspace. This has led to many people haveing their race be asian and gender female so that they can exploit asian women. The people that do this want to get netsex. I feel that these websites are not the best. I know that I would not want to spend my free time developing characters and having online sex with other characters. People in our society need to stop playing around in role playing chat rooms and work on their own characters in the real world.

Malcom X

Having read Malcom X for a class last year, I can appreciate this article. I think the whole concept of education is very interesting, especially since most of us never really consider our literacy. I can’t even imagine what my life would be like without reading and writing; our worlds revolve around these things. Amazingly enough, when Malcom was locked away in prison, he felt the most free. Having the ability to teach himself, and then utilize the knowledge, set him free of frustration, embarrassment and struggles relating to his illiterate function in society.

The other topic that interested me was his discussion of our history. His claims are powerful, but I disagree with what he believes. History is socially constructed, meaning that the leaders in society, at the time, record the facts. Therefore, there will always be some bias, opinion or falsehoods. However, I do not think history is recorded manipulatively or with an agenda to prevent black people from knowing their backgrounds.

Finally, I especially enjoyed what Malcom said about colleges. “I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities and boola-boola and all of that,” he said. In some ways, he is right; the distractions that surround us prevent us from becoming immersed in education. But, do we really want to be immersed in education?