Rant time!

(Nick's joke of the day: Difference between a rant and an essay? You edit essays! Haha!)

This story has been all over the place the past few days.. Infact, I blogged one of the articles in this story a few days ago. There was also a Slashdot story earlier this week talking about a boycott of media outlets that back the RIAA/MPAA and their attacks on the information enabled public. Numerous articles detailing the RIAA's bullshit number analysis have popped up all over the place.

This all falls in line with what I've been saying for at least three years now.. Comsumers have found their channel for feedback to the media outlets.. Piracy. Boycott.. Whatever you want to call it, its taking form as we talk, type, and sleep. Slowly..

The messages the consumer is trying to convey are simple in many ways, yet they rarely come across clearly or directly. There are several things this can be blamed on, not the least of which is the complex nature of the situation. We can't expect the media to educate the public about it, its not in their intrest. So its all grass roots. It takes large numbers of people a fair amount of time to come to the same conclusions, given the same stimuli. Thats what we are seeing now. Only its faster then in the past, because the people pissed off are the information warriors. Us. We communicate wider and more frequently (and less formally, like this), hence our grass roots resistance to the tyranny of the big media is coming together in a mere several years, not several decades.

Normally, when we discover a problem, the media talks about it, educates the public, the public thinks about it, and eventually the public acts. Look at the way we tackle problems like environmental pollution, drunk driving, civil rights, drug use, etc.. The media has played a large role in driving the public to the conclusions they came to and acting the way they acted. Its not a mirror to mirror relationship, as we might believe. There is a degree to which those who program, determine the direction of the public's opinion and angst. You are what you eat. The media probably has more effect on the public then the school system. In American culture, the media is important. In a way, its a central part of our governmental structure. Often, its what drives our government's actions. Whats going to cause Lott to give up his seat? Congress or Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC? (Ok, the people will.. But who lead them?) There is alot to go into here, but its digression..

Right now the messages are a jumble.. We want the media to operate on our terms, not theirs. We are unwilling to ignore technology advances because they screw up someone's business model. We value our tools more then your profits and we will create, evolve, and maintain them regardless of persecution. Decentralization, decentralization, decentralization. Open tool chains and the power of shared knowledge.. Openness of communication channels should be in direct preportion to available bandwidth of said channels and its currently 90% dark _and_ closed. Etc, etc, etc.. A jumble of 1/10 refined ideas.

There was a day when mirrors and optics were considered tools of witchcraft, and artists (also the engineers of the day) were forced to take risque technology underground in order to use it. Ingres, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Velázquez, and Van Eyck all did this. For decades and decades, the great masters of the renaissance era were forced to keep secret the means they used to paint their masterful photo realistic works. It was a fair deal, in exchange for keeping a seceret, you got to be reguarded as a genius. (Its only somewhat recently that the art history books have even been rewritten to account for this scientifically proven fact. Its still not widely accepted either.) That is the way the world used to react to technological advance (thanks to misguided religion, but thats another story too). Unless the "my father's father used this" justification existed, it had to go underground. (Don't dare bitch at me for over simplifying..) We don't work that way anymore. The frequency of communication in reference to experimentation is likely the cheif reason, but whatever it is, we don't do it that way anymore. Now we have this thing the MBAs and sociologists call "paradigm shift". The funny thing is, now many corporate backed organizations reign in the same way the church did in the past. Now its not God you offend with your new fangled toys and techniques, its the almighty bottom line of whoever currently controls the space you are romping in. Fear the bottom line. For thee hold any other bottom line above it, scores of thine mighty lawyers will decend upon you with all the wrath thee line command (a figure based on a precentage of total revenue, the line hath many counters of beans whom determine the will of the line).

Sigh.. So, I guess I should come around to my point.

Its going to get nasty. The fruits of information technology are starting to appear. Up till now, its just been a new toolset. Now people are starting to build things with these tools. Things that challenge the way everything has worked up till now. Its not as simple as the past, its not going to allow itself to be pushed underground in order to exist without persecution. Its becoming self aware of its own power. It cannot be stoped.

The advancement of technology is much like nature, you can't control it. You can harness, you can direct, but you cannot control. Whoever harnesses it will win the wars, write the new laws, and determine the view history takes of it all. But it will be nasty. I offer all of human history as proof.

The propaganda powers of the current media are nothing compared to the communication powers of the new media. We can learn, teach, and grow more efficiently out in the open and we know it.

Its going to get nasty. I just wonder how fast its going to move. When will the anti-big_media vibe go mainstream? For years the big media have made their cheif dime off selling rebellion in a can to the youth of America. They have spent market cycle after market cycle selling rebellion to the degree where its a part of our culture, and part of being young in America is picking what you are going to rebel against. If I had to guess, that will turn against them paradigm shift style. I think that is when it will really start. I think it could start happening any time. Like a machine, its already started winding up and cannot be stopped. I don't they they will see it coming either.

I can't wait! I just hope the backlash we (the ones leading the development of these technologies) will eventually receive from the current media powers isn't too harsh. I would hate to get killed because I took a hard line. Sounds nutty, but I'm in the business of being paranoid. In the long run, there is alot of money, power, and influence at stake. Reflect on what I said earlier about media and government. Someone has a vested intrest in things staying they way they are. The 'one' in the 'one-to-many' media system we currently have _is_ going to get pissed unless they can be made to feel the changes are in their best interest and within their control, even if its bullshit. Make no mistake, if there is any truth what so ever to my bullshit, there _will_ be a power struggle at some point if any serious changes wind up happening with the distribution of media influence. Years off most likely, and occuring over a long period of time.

Get ready folks. In our lifetime, it is likely everything we know and call "the media" is going to be unrecognizable by the time we die old. It will _not_ be the same voices and you will _not_ be hearing them the same way.

End rant.

Rattle rants up a storm on media revolution (Link: Slashdot | Still more RIAA news)