#com530

For this week's open- ended blog assignment on Lawrence Lessig's Remix, I want to talk about my experience with remixing.

When I was doing my undergrad at Penn State, I fell in love with a Doctor Who fan band. (It's a genre called "trock" or "timelord rock.")  The band was called Chameleon Circuit, and when they produced their second album Still Got Legs, I bought it (and the t-shirt!). In fact, I was so excited about the album, that I made a few music videos to songs on their album.

The video posted above was for the song "Teenage Rebel." Of course, I don't own the rights to the song. I also do not own the rights to any of the clips of Doctor Who. Furthermore, I do not own the videos of the live performance by the whole band, or the video of two band members singing the song in their flat. In short, I did not own or have the rights to any of the media that I used to make this video.

As Lessig points out, people like me could get sued by any number of entities (even though I intentionally did not monetize this video). I could make an argument for fair use in the courts, claiming that this work is transformative, but the court would still more than likely decide that I am a criminal for making this video and posting it online.

Even so, I am glad I made this video. (It helps that such a copyright infringement is so small that no one involved with Doctor Who is likely to notice and no one involved with Chameleon Circuit will care, so the actual chance of my getting sued is slim.) Am I proud of it because it is a great work of art? Obviously not. The timing of the clips is iffy and the borders are wonky. Not to mention, if you are familiar with the band you know that Alex and Ed* switched parts before the final recording, so the wrong voices are coming out of their mouths.

I am proud of it because it was one of the first steps I took to becoming a media creator. I had no lessons, and I had crap tools (have you ever tried to do video editing with Windows Movie Maker? It is the worst). Even if the final product isn't particularly stunning, I remember all the time and effort I put into it. I was taking the first steps away from doing IT for the rest of my life and towards this Interactive Media Master's program. I made something not only for me, but that a few other people even enjoyed.

If mashing up these clips and setting them to this song makes me criminal, then the system is broken.

I'm not very far in You Are Not A Gaget yet. In fact, at about 50 pages in, I haven't even finished part I. Even so, I thought I would take a moment to react to one of the points Lanier made mostly so I don't completely forget about it.

He has a strong negative reaction to what he calls "Clay Shirky's idea that there is a vast cognitive surplus waiting to be harnessed" (49). He quotes a speech Shirky gave back in 2008. Shirky suggested that if the entire population donated 1% of the time they would normally spend watching TV to working collaboratively on something, they would collectively put in enough time to make 98 Wikipedias in a year. (If you want to watch the speech, I found it for you - the quote is at about 12:34).

(Sidenote: I don't necessary love the speech. I think people who watch television are a popular punching bag, and Shirky's contempt for TV bores me.)

From where I am sitting, Shirky is simply pointing out that because the internet has created a gigantic worldwide network, there is the potential for mass groups of people to work together on something. There is even the theoretical potential for everyone to work together on something.

Respectfully, I think Lanier is missing the point.

He asks:

"how many seconds of salvaged erstwhile television time would need to be harnessed to replicate the achievements of, say, Albert Einstein? It seems to me that even if we could network all the potential aliens in the galaxy - quadrillions of them, perhaps - and get each of them to contribute some seconds to a physics wiki, we would not replicate the achievements of even one mediocre physicist, much less a great one." (49-50)

For a quote from a book called You Are Not A Gadget, this sounds an awful lot like people are gadgets.I think that Lanier is looking at this concept as if such collaboration would function like a factory or an assembly line. A large group of people spend their time performing dull, mindless, exhausting tasks, and a huge amount of stuff gets made. The tragedy of this model is that there is no creativity. There is no individual. 

This is where I think Lanier makes his crucial logical error. He asks if a bunch of people working together could achieve what Einstein did. Instead, I think he should ask: what if one of the people collaborating was Einstein? That is the key point. As Lanier so astutely put it, people are not gadgets. Every single person collaborating on a project is an individual who brings his/her/their own unique knowledge, talents, and skills to the table. Each and every one of them will have their own perspective and insights that could be valuable. That's why we collaborate in the first place.

If Clay Shirky decided to publish a 2014 edition of Here Comes Everybody, he would undoubtedly change many of the examples he used to make them more timely. He would probably discuss some new platforms, or maybe even just elaborate on some that were in their infancy when the book was originally published. I could write a long post about many possible updates, but because somebody decided that 25% of my final grade would be due the day after tomorrow, I really don't have the time. Instead, I will just focus on one example of collective action that Shirky might include.

I think he might write about today: Internet Slowdown Day.

Today hundreds of websites rallied together to show their support for Net Neutrality. 

Pictured above are screenshots taken today from Etsy (who added a banner to the top of their page), Netflix (a small notification prompting users to take action), and tumblr (all content has been replaced all icons, posts, etc with loading wheels). Many more sites participated, but I chose these three because they are sites that I personally visit regularly.

Clicking on the "Contact Congress Now" button on Etsy sends users to a page with some information about Net Neutrality as well as a form that automatically adds you to a petition. Netflix redirects you to a page titled "Join the Battle for Net Neutrality." This page has a lot of material explaining Net Neutrality, information about how to get involved with the cause, and a form to add your name to a petition.

I think tumblr's response is my favorite. Tumblr explained their position quite succinctly:

Long story short: The FCC is about to make a critical decision as to whether or not internet service providers have to treat all traffic equally. If they choose wrong, then the internet where anyone can start a website for any reason at all, the internet that’s been so momentous, funny, weird, and surprising—that internet could cease to exist. Here’s your chance to preserve a beautiful thing.

This text is the caption to a short video about Net Neutrality narrated by the wonderful Mark Ruffalo. On their page about Net Neutrality, tumblr does not just ask you to fill out a form, so you can add your name to a petition. Tumblr asks if you would like to call your senator to explain why Net Neutrality is valuable. If you provide your phone number and zip code, you are presented with an example of what you could say to your senator:

Hi. This is [your name] from [state]. I’m one of your constituents. I strongly support net neutrality and I just signed a letter asking the FCC to protect it the right way, with Title II reclassification. I’m calling to ask you to do the same by signing on to the Internet Freedom Letter being circulated by Senator Angus King. Reclassification is the only way to actually establish the neutral and non-discriminatory internet that the FCC itself claims to be committed to. Thank you!

In a few seconds you recieve a call from tumblr. A recording of David Karp (CEO of tumblr) gives you a pep talk. Then based on the zipcode your provided, tumblr then calls your senator for you. Talk about lowering the barriers to collective action!

In his book, Shirky points out that because writing an email or signing a petition is so effortless, the value of these actions in the eyes of our government has decreased. My guess would be tumblr had a similar viewpoint. They decided that petitions and emails were not enough, so they enabled people to quickly and easily make phone calls instead.

Now, this might seem almost counterproductive. Doesn't making calling a senator as easy as sending an email making calling a senator just as meaningless as sending an email? I don't think so. For one thing, this is the first time I have ever seen this done (that isn't to say it hasn't been - I've just never seen it). The novelty of senators getting bombarded with phone calls will count for something. There is also something personal about calling, even if you just read a form letter.

In their book Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman explain how the Triple Revolution (Social Network, Internet, and Mobile) have brought us into a networked world, and we are all networked individuals. One area that represents this (thought never mentioned in the text) is crowdfunding. I imagine this will be a popular blog post topic in our class. It is also a subject I take a personal interest in, so I am going to write about it anyway.

Rainie and Wellman explain in their book that individuals do not necessary belong to permanent stable groups (think a village 200 years ago) in which everyone is connected to everyone. Instead, each individual in a group belongs to many other groups and has many other connections. These groups are not permanent. Some may last years while others last only a day or two.

When crowdfunding a project, those seeking the funding sometimes reach out first to their personal network of friends, family, and acquaintances. The power of the triple revolution becomes evident in the next step: reaching out to strangers. Creators can post their ideas on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or PledgeMusic, depending on the nature of their project. (There are many more, I am sure. These are just the platforms through which I have supported projects myself). Their network of support suddenly becomes anyone with an internet connection, disposable income, and an interest in their project.

One of the projects that will always be near and dear to my heart was the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign.  Roughly a decade ago, Veronica Mars (a brilliant show about a young private eye) was cancelled. The fanbase was passionate, but tragically it was not strong enough to persuade CW that Veronica Mars was a better and more valuable show than Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll.

The writer, Rob Thomas (no – not that Rob Thomas) hoped that he could persuade Warner Brothers to make a Veronica Mars movie to continue the story. For nearly a decade, he had no luck. Despite that, he maintained his network of writers, producers, directors, actors, etc who had worked on the original show, so when nearly a decade later he pitched the idea of crowdfunding the movie and Warner Brothers finally said yes, he had nearly the full team from the original show on board.

A Kickstarter campaign was launched on March 13, 2013 with the promise that the lead actress Kristen Bell was on board and many other former cast members hoped to participate as well – they just hoped there was still an audience for the story. As it turns out, there definitely was. They hit their goal of $2,000,000 in less than a day, and by the end of the month, fans had pledged over $5,000,000.

For their support fans not only got to have their movie made, they also got exclusive rewards depending on the amount of their pledge. I personally was delighted to receive a poster signed by many of the cast members. In fact, if Professor Moner asks us again, I will have to revise my answer - if my house were burning down and I only had time to grab one item, it would probably be that poster

My group developed a very simple graphic to represent McGonigal's theory. Essentially her overarching claim is that game designers create games which when played by as many players as possible leads to a better world.

It seems like a far reaching claim. An example of how this framework might play out in the real world is the ALS ice bucket challenge. At the simplest level, the ice bucket challenge is a game. It's a cyberversion of tag.

McGonigal presents four criteria for games which the challenge meets:

1. A Goal - once tagged, your goal is to complete the challenge and then tag three people

2. Rules - They vary slightly, but the general gist is that once tagged you have 24 hours to complete the challenge. Aka donate money to an ALS charity or dump a bucket of ice water on your head. Sometimes the rules require you to do both, but the amount of money varies based on whether or not you participated in the ice water portion. Once you complete the challenge, you tag others to also participate.

3. A feedback system - It's very simple. You are done when you upload a video or image as proof of your participation.

4. Voluntary participation - People who tagged are "challenged" to participate, not ordered. Of course, this gets sticky from a social pressure or PR perspective, but ideally no one is forced to participate.

Now according to McGonigal's framework, the fact that millions of players played this game means that the world we are now living in is superior to the world we lived in three months ago.

Whether or not this is true is hard to definitively ascertain. One could make an argument that charitable giving has at least temporarily increased, and this is a good thing. Furthermore, those suffering from ALS can now take some comfort in the fact that (at least for a month or two) their ailment was part of the national conversation.

That said, there is also an argument to be made that the ALS challenge is primarily an example of slacktivism - people behaving in a way that seems altruistic, but is just a narcissistic attempt to gain attention and feel like they are making a difference without actually doing anything to make an actual positive change in the world. Some argue that awareness of ALS has only increased in an insignificant way. More people can recognize the name of the disease, but the general public doesn’t actually know any more about it.