March 4th, 2010
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Creative Commons Salon NYC
The first ever Creative Commons Salon with a focus on “opening education” took place last night in a spacious penthouse suite atop an office building in Soho. Three presentations, each running about one-hour, demonstrated a few ways that teachers are leveraging the power of CC licenses to make education more accessible to both students and the public at large.
Eric Frank began the night with a detailed explanation about his mission to make online text books for university students free and affordable. Frank co-founded the company Flat World Knowledge which claims to offer “online books by leading experts, peer-reviewed and free.” He pointedly addressed the problem as one that reaches beyond the frugal student:
The textbook industry is supporting a disruptive business model in which the burden is not only put on students, but is just as equally felt by teachers. In order to turn a profit the publishers push out new editions of text books – almost annually. This forces teachers to restructure their lesson plans.
Flat World Knowledge offers their books under a freemium model: the online copy is free for everyone, a printed copy runs about $40 (and all the content is distributed under a CC license). The concept was loudly applauded by the audience, but during the Q&A there were many questions regarding the credibility of the authors and the quality of the peer-review.
One key element missing from the Flat World Knowledge library is that they will never be able to share books that are already under copyright (which is about 99% of all texts). And it’s here that Google Book Search – which brazenly vows “to organize all the [books in the worlds'] information and make it universally accessible and useful” – could potentially cut deep into the future of online textbooks. With only 20 text books available at the moment, Flat World Knowledge has an ambitious road ahead of them. But perhaps by focusing on one field (whether it’s economics, foreign languages or history) they would be able to focus and lead that particular segment.
Later in the evening Neeru Paharia presented her work in developing the free online university: Peer 2 Peer University. More info about P2PU is available at the site: http://p2pu.org/
Paharia was followed by a panel of K-12 technologists/educators: David Bill and Arvind Grover – who also happen to be organizers for this weekend’s TEDxNYED event – and Kerri Richardson Redding, Director of Academic Technology at the Brooklyn Friends School. One of the most fascinating parts of this conversation was the stories from the classroom. Grover explained,
Our kids were REALLY confused about citations. They don’t really know the difference between Google and the places that Google takes you. This girl had done a wonderful job on this poetry project, and at the end of this long paper she had one citation: ‘Google.com’.
Grover teaches lessons about Creative Commons and copyright in the classroom precisely because in a multi-modal, remix society, knowing how to propery attribute a creative work to it’s original author is essential with how we communicate and share ideas. Grover continued with a anecdote about when his students were asked to be the creators,
When my students began the project they’d say things like, “I want to be paid for my work”, and “We’re going to make a million dollars!” So in this situation, as the creator, they’re quick to opt for traditional copyright.
He introduced one example of a girl who took a picture of a lock (see photo) and continued, “but then we debated whether someone will really pay money… for THIS! (referring to the picture of the lock). In his classroom he didn’t force his students to adopt a Creative Commons license, but eventually he found that his students would rather share their work and be part of something. “The biggest thing for students is being part of something”, concluded Grover, “And they – more so than their parents – came to understand that there is value in sharing content under a Creative Commons license.”
December 12th, 2009
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The Urban Screens Conference
On December 4, the Institute of Network Culture organized the Urban Screens conference at Trouw in Amsterdam. The conference celebrated the launch of The Urban Screens Reader: the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. In assembling contributions from a range of leading theorists, in conjunction with a series of case studies dealing with artists’ projects and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, the reader offers a rich resource for those interested in the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.
Thanks to all the speakers and participants for their great contributions to this event! The videos will be online soon, and many of our reports are already online:
November 29th, 2009
TEDx Amsterdam
Some photos from TEDx Amsterdam (and TEDx Brussels). Truly an amazing weekend. My 4-minute video TEDx video can be seen here on the TEDx Amsterdam site.
November 15th, 2009
Society of the Query
Search is the way we now live. With the Society of the Query conference – Stop Searching, Start Questioning -, the Institute of Network Cultures aimed to critically reflect on the information society and the dominant role of the search engine in our culture. Although the focus was “the query in general”, the debate on Googliation and whether “Google is evil” was common throughout the conference. In the opening session Geert Lovink even mused, “We were going to call this the anti-Google conference.”
Below are five articles I contributed to the Society of the Query’s blog:
1) Siva Vaidhyanathan on Google Street View & Googlization
For Vaidhyanathan the biggest problem with Google is that as it expands into more parts of the world that are less proficient, and less digitally inclined, there will be more examples of friction and harm because more people are going to lack the awareness to cleanse their record. He asserted,”We in this room are not likely to be harmed by Google because all of us in this room are part of a techno-cosmopolitan elite. Only the elite and proficient get to opt out.” [read more]
2) Lev Manovich: Studying Culture With Search Algorithms
New media theorist Lev Manovich summarized his latest contribution to the field of software studies: cultural analytics. Whereas traditional cultural analysis relies on real-world resources (human interpretation and physical storage), cultural analytics relies on the computer and search algorithms in order to discern and interpret culture. [read more]
3) Yann Moulier Boutang asks, “Are we all just Google’s worker bees?”
What Google is selling is not an ordinary service, but a meta-service, one that depends on human contribution. He likens this human activity to that of the worker bee, and the economy of Google is dependent on the pollination of these bees. [read more]
4) Does privacy still exist in an environment of search?
What most people don’t know is that EU law grants users the right to access any personal data stored about them. Joris van Hoboken’s research investigates the impact of legal norms on the users’ freedom. [read more]
5) Matthew Fuller: Search Engine Alternatives
Matthew Fuller welcomed a cast of “alternative search engines” that offer some variety to the classic retrieval model of search. [read more]
All photos courtesy Anne Helmond and her wonderful Flickr photostream.
November 1st, 2009
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eComm Europe
Some photos and my slides from eComm Europe. I’ll post the video shortly.
View more documents from University of Amsterdam.
October 25th, 2009
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Using Google Maps & Google Earth In The Classroom
Longitude and latitude coordinates are like the words we use to tell a story and only gain substance when we use them in context. With a list of resources to help teachers, Google Maps and Google Earth are helping us tell stories better and bringing geographic data to life in ways that make traditional maps look more like decorations on the wall. This blog post shows how teachers around the world are using Google Maps/Earth in ways that support new competencies like visualization, simulation and play.
Original Paper (PDF): Google Maps & Google Earth In The Classroom
1. Literature
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips is a site developed by English teacher Jerome Burg that experiments with teaching literature through maps. The site offers tips and tutorials for how teachers can integrate Google Earth into the curriculum of an English literature class. In addition there is a small library of existing KML files that other teachers have uploaded to share with the community. One example is a KML of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that overlays placemarkers on the map of the United States, each representing a moment in time on the epic journey that the Joad family takes from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Additionally, the labels “Day 1, Day 2, etc.” provide a time based narrative of the trip and can be used to elicit discussion in the classroom. For example, “What events occurred between Day 2 and Day 3 and why did the family travel such a short distance?”
October 20th, 2009
Tim Berners-Lee in Amsterdam: On the WWW and Social Development
The World Wide Web and Social Development Symposium at the VU University Amsterdam welcomed a variety of prominent speakers to discuss the problem: How can the Web contribute to the social and economic development in the world? The event culminated with the VU granting Sir Tim Berners-Lee an honorary doctorate for his contribution to the development of the World Wide Web.
Much like a parent in awe of how quickly children tend to grow, Berners-Lee celebrated the 20th birthday of the WWW this year with a bit of pride, but mostly astonishment as to how much it has matured on its own. He reflected on the early years when he thought the Web would always be WYSIWYG and was surprised that so many people these days, even children, have learned to use HTML.
Berners-Lee likened the consistency of the Web to “something you pull out of the kitchen sink”, noting that “the Web has everything all tangled up together: lots of small things that fit tightly and connect to the big things.” Then in order to illustrate the size of the Web he continued, “There are more Web pages than neurons in my brain. The only difference is that while the neurons in my brain are going down, the amount of Web pages continue to go up.” He asserted that we have an extra responsibility to the Web because, unlike the brain, it was created by humans.
The questions that Berners-Lee received during the Q&A were certainly the same questions that he was being asked during the mid-90s when “cyberspace” went mainstream. Perhaps while in the midst of the creator they hoped to find more definitive answers to such worn-out questions…
- As an Internet user, how do I know what is the truth on the Internet?
- Is the Internet safe for kids, and what can I do to teach my kids?
- Do you feel the Internet is invading our private lives?
In line with Berners-Lee’s call for “extra responsibility”, Steve Bratt and Stephane Boyera followed-up with a brief introduction to the newly created World Wide Web Foundation – set to launch later this year – which is “the next phase of fulfilling Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision: the Web as humanity connected by technology.” The Foundation’s mission is to advance the Web and to fill the gap that impedes 1 billion+ people around the world from authoring and accessing content.
Within this context the audience viewed a trailer for the upcoming documentary about Yacouba Sawadogo entitled The Man Who Stopped the Desert (Sawadogo was present on-stage, but due to a language barrier choose to “let the trailer speak for him”). The Man Who Stopped the Desert highlights Sawadogo’s triumph in restoring food and life to many areas around the Sahara desert that were once abandoned due to draught.
At the time Sawadogo began using traditional communication to spread his innovate agricultural techniques. But the important idea that emerged here at the symposium is: as more Africans can connect, author, communicate and share these types of innovation and technology – then others can learn, and all together they can help lift Africa out of poverty.
October 10th, 2009
(me) Speaking at eComm Europe 2009
I’ve been looking forward to attending eComm at the end of this month – Lars Rasmussen will talk about his new work with Google Wave, and others like Gerd Leonhard, and the people from Skype and Frog Design will be there.
Just got word that I’ll be giving a talk on ‘Free’ as a business strategy. I’ll post more info about the time/location shortly. But here is some info on my presentation…
Title: Sell What Can’t Be Copied
Talk Description: The concepts of ‘free’ and ‘freemium’ are excellent business strategies for getting people to use your stuff. Yet too often these ideas are misunderstood or poorly executed without a plan to monetize. How do we recognize the difference between what should be free and what should be sold?
Most business owners in this situation suffer from a marked inability to comprehend the underlying logic of the Internet when analyzing digital distribution. Digital products (digital music, videos, images and other content) live within the framework of the Internet, therefore they are subject to the logics of that context. By analyzing this context and looking closely at the influence that the Internet and blogging culture are having on online distribution, Chris Castiglione provides a definition for what should and shouldn’t be given away for free.
October 8th, 2009
Cool, I won the 1st Round of the Amsterdam Antwerp Challenge!
Just received word that I made it through the first round of the Amsterdam Antwerp Challenge (€100 for 100 words) for my proposed business plan:
All cars manufactured today contain at least one computer. My idea is two fold: to develop sensors that connect the automobile’s meta-data to the Internet; and to allow developers to create online applications using this data. Conceptually, it is like Google Analytics, but for cars. Added feature may include networking this data to the local mechanic, friends, or other drivers. My theory is that this information will get degenerate parts changed more quickly, make the road safer, save the owner some cash and ultimately help the environment. In the future, car designers should think more like computer designers.
I will post more info when I find out. Looks like in the meantime I’ll have to get started on the second round proposal.
More info: http://www.aachallenge.nl/
September 26th, 2009
#picnic09 – Picnic Recap
Here are some pics and articles from my coverage while working at PICNIC ‘09. I had a chance to sit in on an Ignite session and talk with Ignite founder Brady Forrest: Ignite: A series of Five-Minute Talks, STEIM’s Electronic Instrument Workshop and the Creative Commons Special.
September 24th, 2009
#Picnic09 : Electronic Instruments. Feel The Future.
A few members of STEIM, the electro-instrumental music foundation located in Amsterdam, came together at PICNIC to show the importance of music in our increasingly complex and out of control culture.
“Say goodbye to control. Say hello to improvisation,” these were a few of the opening remarks made by STEIM director Dick Rijken. He stressed that in a world of less control we need to concentrate on training our intuition. For Rijken (and STEIM) musical instruments play a significant role in developing the skills of intuition and improvisation.
STEIM’s Kristina Anderson took the stage next to highlight a variety of “instrumental objects” that challenge traditional notions of music creation. One example was Dick Raaymaker’s Intona (1992), a video in which he records a live microphone as it melts under the heat of a blowtorch – or as Anderson explained, “the sound of a musical instrument burning alive.” Other examples included works by Sonia Cillari and Tarek Atoui that experimented with digital sounds being generated from physical body movements.
Frank Balde then demonstrated how the Nintendo Wii can be repurposed into an impressive musical instrument. In conjunction with STEIM’s junXion software Balde was able to manipulate the pitch, amplitude, and frequency of a variety of sounds such as a grand piano, bass guitar and techno drums. All of this culminated in a stunning musical performance by Balde which received an enormous applause from the crowd.
Finally, Robert Van Heumen and Ariel Qassis concluded the session with their beautiful, yet haunting live performance: an improvisation piece using real time sampling.
All the projects showcased seemed to show how creativity through musical experimentation bridges the gap between the human body and digital objects. Or in other words, music is where electronic sensors and the human senses come together to create art.
August 19th, 2009
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New Media MA Thesis! (final version)
The final version of my MA Thesis is ready!
Copy What Can’t Be Sold (and Sell What Can’t Be Copied):
What Musicians Have Learned From Blogging
Abstract:
The “crisis in the music industry” (declining profits blamed on piracy) has been presented in the media as a crisis for musicians. This thesis challenges such assumptions by differentiating between various components of the industry and by illustrating how some musicians are benefiting from, and sometimes even promoting, piracy and other types of free online content.
Studies of the music industry suffer from a marked inability to comprehend the underlying logic of the Internet when analyzing digital music distribution. Digital music lives within the framework of the Internet, therefore it is subject to the logics of that context. By analyzing this context and looking closely at the influence that the Internet and blogging culture are having on music distribution, this thesis updates outdated concepts and presents recommendations for musicians living in a ‘post-Napster’ era.
Through a wide range of academic texts, empirical reports, interviews and case studies, I equate the current role of the musician to that of the blogger, ultimately arriving at the conclusion: successful musicians must copy what can’t easily be sold, and sell what can’t easily be copied.
Breakdown:
Intro – Explains it all
Section 1 - P2P & Music industry background/history
Section 2 – Free music, and the benefits of piracy
Section 3 – Musicians that blog, and selling what can’t be copied
Conclusion – Sums it up (duh)
August 4th, 2009
New Media & Music: an interview with the Silversun Pickups
As I was preparing for my interview with the Silversun Pickups I received a Tweet acknowledging that they had just rolled into town. Later that day I chatted with the Brian, Nikki, Chris and Joe of the Silversun Pickups before their show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam to discuss what it takes to be a successful musician in the new media climate.
You guys use Twitter quite frequently, can you tell me about your experience as a band using Twitter:
Chris: It is nice to have the photo option, it’s the best, the fact that you can just take a picture and put it out there. It’s so immediate.
Brian: It’s also, at one point we had a journal on our website and it became daunting, we were all daunted by it cause we thought we had to write these masterful paragraphs. But the Twitter thing, it’s like cliff notes. It makes it really easy.
Chris: Cos the twitter thing we can just put one line.
Brian: “hey we’re in Amsterdam.”
What was your motivation for using Twitter?
Chris: I checked it out to see what it was about and if anyone I knew was on it. And then I noticed our booker was on it, so then I kind of followed him and I was like “oh your on this?”. I didn’t touch it for 3 months, then one of our label guys found me on Twitter and was like, “lets have a meeting about this, you should do this more often for the band”, and I was like OK I’ll give it a try. And so we eventually got onto it.
Do you also maintain a Facebook accounts?
Nikki: Chris and I do
Chris: It’s definitely not a personal thing anymore. It’s like we understand people are going to come in and they know who you are through your band and so they add you as a friend. And then all of a sudden they accept you as a friend.
What was really nice about it was, on my birthday about a month ago all these people were saying happy birthday to me. I made sure to say “Thank You” to everyone and people were surprised like, “OMG my friends don’t even write on my wall.”
That was going to be my next question, it seems like it must be difficult to stay in touch with fans this way?
Brian: It does get a little overwhelming. Also, privacy is important too.
Joe: The band is an entity to itself. You have to work hard to keep it separate from your personal life.
Read the rest of this entry »
July 7th, 2009
I’m in the Wintercamp ‘09 Publication
My posts on freeDimensional and Blender* are included in the Wintercamp ‘09 publication From Weak Ties to Organized Networks. A free copy can be ordered on the site, and a PDF is available here.
About Wintercamp: In March 2009 the Institute of Network Cultures brought 12 networks to Amsterdam for a week of getting things done. The aim of Winter Camp was to connect the virtual with the real in order to find out how distributed social networks can collaborate more effectively.
*my Blender article is mistakenly attributed to Marijn
More posts from me and the other Wintercamp bloggers are on the site.
June 9th, 2009
Interview: Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were at the Paradiso on Monday night. I met up with lead singer and guitar player Kip Berman before the show to chat about the tour and renting his apartment in New York City out to crazy POBPAH fans. The interview was published on the Amsterdam Event Guide site.
What have been some of the better shows on the European tour?
We had the most insane show up in Manchester at the Chorlton Irish, it was Morrissey’s birthday and everyone was rowdy. It was this tiny little room with no ventilation and people were just crowd surfing and cracking into the stage.
Pains of Being Pure at Heart has a busy tour schedule this summer, are there any bands that you are looking forward to seeing?
I’m really looking forward to our west coast tour with a band called Girls that I really, really like. The album isn’t out quite yet, but it will be soon, and they are amazing.
What have you got planned while you’re in Amsterdam?
We’re definitely excited to check out the city, but we have to leave at 6:30am tomorrow to take a ferry back to Dover. We’re disappointing – I know.
I had read an article where you said you were cool with people downloading your music: what has stopped you guys from releasing your music for free on the site?
It’s downloadable anywhere else, you can’t physically put it on the site because we have record labels that still actually need to sell stuff. Recently I was looking at something and noticed a torrent for Pains of Being Pure at Heart with 5 million hits.
Honestly, people can find it if they want to find it, so I’m not going to try to stop anyone. But I think that people are conscious of the fact that you have to do something for the band in return. We find that people come to our shows and we’d rather play for people than not play for people. And people are usually honest, they’re like, “Hey, I downloaded your shit. That was cool, I’ll buy the vinyl now or a t-shirt”. So you kind of have to roll with it, and we’re just psyched that people are listening to it.
When you guys are working on new songs how do you come together and share ideas?
I think that democracy is overrated in terms of songwriting. If everyone writes 25% of a song then it sounds like a bit, well you know.
There are certain types of music where complete and total collaborative ideas might be worth while, but for us I kind of write the structure and lyrics and the ideas for the song. It’s up to the band to play out those ideas and bring them to life, and offer themselves once the blueprint has kind of been drawn. The songs wouldn’t be good if they stopped with me because everyone contributes there ideas to them.
Kurt is a fantastic drummer and I can’t even program more than one drum beat. So, just from him the song has such a better feel, because I can only do so much. Like on my keyboard drum set! Our first EP sounds like that, it doesn’t have real drums they are all electronic drums.
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May 15th, 2009
Our ShotSpot Presentation
Ron Kok and I presented Shotspot yesterday at “Visualizing our World of Data” in Amsterdam. Here is a pic, I’m the white shirt to the left:
How ShotSpot Works to Improve Upon Flickr:
If you find a photo on Flickr the geographic data (from the camera or set manually) will sometimes tell where the photo was taken. But where is the photographer from? You can’t tell. Looking at the Flickr API we realized that we could find the location of the user based on the location of their user account. We could then assume that if a user is taking pictures in a country other than his own that he is traveling.
What we’ve done with Shotspot is allow users of the application to look for trends in travel and make comparisons of photographs throughout the year or at different times of day.
Shotspot is for anyone interested in filtered large amounts of Flickr photos. But more specifically we hope that it will be a useful tool for photographers that want to compare photos and travel trends. Based on the data we hope they can then make a more auspicious decision on when to capturing a particular shot.
The Shotspot project was developed with the help of Ron Kok and Remon van den Bergh (Information Science @ University of Amsterdam) and Bohe Xie (MA Editorial Design @ MaHKU in Utrecht).
More Info
*Anne Helmond covered Shotspot and the event on the University of Amsterdam New Media blog.
*Also from yesterday’s event: check out the brilliant WorldMinder project that improves upon Gapminder – from my friends Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff, Arthur Stobbelaar and Lisa Ing.
May 12th, 2009
Visualizing Our World of Data
We will be presenting our project ShotSpot at CREA Theatre on May 14, 2009. It’s free entrance (and there is rumor of some free drinks as well).
May 3rd, 2009
3rd Prize in the BlueSky Innovation Competition!
Looks like I won 3rd Prize and $500 in the UC Santa Barbara BlueSky Innovation Competition for my submission Anatomical Analytics. Here is the full announcement and some highlights from my entry.
May 1st, 2009
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Amateur Spies and Facebook Schizophrenia
The following is an abstract I submitted to Wiley-Blackwell Publishing for possible inclusion in their upcoming book Facebook & Philosophy:
Amateur Spies and Facebook Schizophrenia:
The News Feed Makes it More Difficult to Lie
The Facebook News Feed ensures that we will never be alone again—for better or for worse. By piecing together fractions of our friends’ lives, it sets the tone for a dystopian-style ‘ambient awareness’ in which we are constantly watching each other out of the corners of our eyes. The News Feed epitomizes media theorist Neil Postman’s outcry that we have become a culture controlled by our obsession with entertainment. Postman illustrates how our culture is less like that of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Big Brother controlled society by depriving the public of information, and more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where the public is “reduced to passivity and egoism” as they “drown in a sea of irrelevance.”
One thing that Facebook does have in common with Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the other hand, is the concept of amateur surveillance. Importantly, it is the “amateur spies” of the Thought Police who pose just as great a risk as Big Brother, and who ultimately lead to the protagonists’ tragic fate. With Facebook we all have the potential to be amateur spies. The ability to monitor the lives of hundreds of people at a glance is reminiscent of Michael Foucault’s Panopticon, where the central guard can keep an eye on all the prisoners at once. On Facebook, the corresponding metaphor might be that each of us occupies the position of the central guard while at the same time being permanently visible as the prisoner.
Interestingly, due to our knowledge of this surveillance and the fear that any one of our friends has the power to broadcast into our News Feed, we are disciplined to be honest. Furthermore, struggles between our need to be the object of another’s desire (Jacques Lacan’s ‘paranoid knowledge’) and our fear of Foucault’s “inspecting gaze”, lead to a type of schizophrenia where we simultaneously divulge our most private details in the form of status updates, while being paranoid of being tagged in compromising photos. With every new friend we add we willingly sacrifice privacy for pleasure, and in doing so we become more accountable though paranoid.
April 30th, 2009
Lessig’s Remix & FREE PDFs
Lawrence Lessig’s most recent book Remix: Making Art & Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy was finally put under a CC license today and is not available for free on Lessig’s site.
Currently I’m working on my thesis researching issues of anti-capitalism, digital piracy and Creative Commons and how these forces are reshaping ‘the music industries’. As a result of the subject matter, a vast amount of my resources happens to be licensed under CC. Often I’ll buy the book if I’m going to read it in entirety, but for research purposes accumulating a free library of PDFs has saved me so much time and lead me in directions I may not have stumbled upon.
Anyway, here are a few recommended (and free!) books I’ve been reading:
Remix, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas and Code 2.0 – Lawrence Lessig
Capitalism 3.0 – Peter Barnes
The Wealth of Networks – Yochai Benkler
The Pirates Dilema – Matt Mason
In addition, PDF Search Engine is really helpful for finding books:
http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/
And I’ve found that Mac Spotlight (the free search thingy on everyone’s Mac) is great research tool. I can comb through hundreds of PDFs instantly. It’s kind of like having a local version of Google Books search.