Technology Incantation for Muggles

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My friend danah boyd gave a talk at the Etech conference last month (link is here). I just got around to reading the speech which i thought was fantastic. She begins it….

Isn’t there something magical about how fast the Internet went from a defense project to a key part of social infrastructure? Isn’t there something magical about how grandparents are blogging and activists are remixing popular TV shows to make social commentary? It is my belief that if we stare solely at the technology, we lose track of the true magic that exists around us.

What she does in the speech is break down how startups, corporations and almost anyone thinks

if you want to think about people, you need to understand how technological and corporate decisions interface with people’s lives and practices…

danah breaks down America’s society into stages and then describes the top 5 priorities of each stage, which are:

Life Stage #1 Life Stage #2 Life Stage #3 Life Stage #4
* Friends * Sex * Labor * Family
* Attention * Friends * Family * Health
* Play/Leisure * Money * Money * Religion
* Sex * Play/Leisure * Power * Hobbies
* Consumption * Labor * Property * Friends

As someone who is moving from stage 2 to stage 3 (damn that’s scary) i see this switch happening. Friends are harder to get access to as work and relationships/marriage take a more important role in everyone’s life.

I like how she can switch from looking at behavior patterns to how corporations and startups behave and deliver products:

Startups typically are naive about people’s practices but utterly passionate about technology. If they’re lucky, their technology will reach the hands of a population for whom it will make complete sense. This population will morph their product to meet their needs. And if the startup is not stupid, it will support this morphing, learn from it, and seek to make more and more happy users. Companies typically try to model out demographics and design for the market that they think is most monetizable. They go straight for mass adoption based on need, not love. Even more so than startups, they tend to blow through their early adopters so that they can get to the cash-cow as fast as possible. Warning: once you destroy the trust of your early adopters, you’re on the greed path.

All in all, it’s a great speech and worth checking out if you’re at all interested in technology (even if you’re not technical).

Changes Coming for Timberwolves

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As many of you know, i’m a huge Minnesota sports fan.  I love the T-Wolves and it’s been frustrating for me to watch their season fall apart this year.  Also, there are a lot of rumors about what’s going to happen with Garnett after the season ends.  We have a great group of young players – Foye, McCants, Craig Smith – and we could get a lottery pick in the upcoming draft.  So, we could have a group of great youngsters or some good young player + KG coming back next year.

This ESPN interview with KG i just read echoed those thoughts (interview here). Here’s the final word from KG.  There will be some major changes coming and frankly, i’m looking forward to them.

Marc Stein. So if you or the Wolves choose not to pursue a trade this summer, do you think we’ll still see some major changes with this franchise?

Kevin Garnett: There’s got to be. F— yeah. I think [head coach] Randy Wittman would echo that, so it’s not just me.

The Fratellis – Good Music from Scotland

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There’s a new band from Scotland called The Fratellis. If you remember the movie, The Goonies, you’ll remember that the bad guys in that movie are the Fratellis. Nobody knows if this is where this band got their name, but i sure hope so.

I like them. They’re catchy and they can rock. To me they are 2007’s version of the 2006 Arctic Monkeys.

I’ve got the album here for you to download (click here). My favorite songs are “Whistle For the Choir” and “Got Ma Nuts From A Hippie”

Enjoy….

EMI Tracks on iTunes – Not mp3's

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I’ve heard a bunch of stuff today about all of EMI’s tracks being available on iTunes without DRM. At first i was really happy, but 2 things kept me from being REALLY impressed.

First, these tracks are not mp3’s. Everyone is assuming they are, but they’re not. They are in a format called “unprotected AAC. ” For those of you who don’t know, AAC is a similar format to mp3 but to-date it is only used by MPEg4 players and Apple (it was partially developed by Apple).  The format is understood by iPods and iTunes, but really nothing else. If you buy an unprotected AAC track, you can email it to whoever you want and listen to it on unlimited amount of computers. But, can you listen to it on the an iRiver player, the slick Samsung players or the nice Sandisk Sansa player? NOPE!

This is very clever strategic move by Apple. They have 2 objectives in mind by only offering AAC: 1) Get out of the legislation trouble they’re having in Europe which is asking them to open up thier DRM technology so other people can make iPod-like devices. 2) Try to keep the iPod as the go-to device for music. If they sold mp3’s they would solve problem 1 but then any player could be used with iTunes music. By making the tracks AAC, none of the competing players in the market today will work. Of course, new players can add AAC format compatibility in the future. But they have to license it. From who? – you guessed it: Apple!

The second thing that struck me as strange is that unprotected music is more expensive than protected. This is dumb. Sooner or later the labels will realize that people want convenience and value. There is a group of people who use the iTunes store. By making the unprotected tracks more expensive you’ll earn a few extra dollars from those users (and only those users) as they will prefer to have un-tethered music. But they won’t get the P2P fanatics. They won’t get anyone under the age of 25 to go to iTunes and buy a track. I’m not sure if 99 cents is low enough for an mp3, but i know that $1.30 is too expensive. It’s a shame. Sooner or later they’ll realize they aren’t going far enough, they aren’t getting new users with this model.

All this being said, it’s a step in the right direction and i can’t wait to see what the other labels do when they see that EMI unprotected tracks are MUCH more popular than the regular iTunes tracks.

Unbearable Lightness

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I just finished reading the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Man, that’s a great book. It’s philosophical and real at the same time. All four characters in the book as so disillusioned, their stories are totally captivating Some of my favorite passages are below.

The first is a great one and reminds me of my friend Suan whose biggest fear is being mediocre. It also really resonated with me. Growing up, my dad often said the hardest thing about going to a public school is remember to keep pushing yourself. It’s something that i never forgot, although sometimes i wonder “to what end?” because it’s exhausting. That thought came to mind during this passage…

Anyone whose goal is to expect something higher must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

The other passage i read made me think about my good friend Clyde. It is interesting how people who constantly sleep around can dismiss it as “looking for the ideal” and justifying their being alone as being a romantic. I think Clyde fits more into the epic category although i also think there is redemption in his case as he does feel disappointed…

Men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. Some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world.

The obsession of the former is lyrical: what they seek in women is themselves, their ideal, and since an ideal is by definition something that can never be found, they are disappointed again and again. The disappointment that propels them from woman to woman gives their inconstancy a kind of romantic excuse

The obsession of the latter is epic, the man projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappointed him. This inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it. The obsession of the epic womanizer strikes people as lacking in redemption (redemption by disappointment)

The final quote is one discussion the inner soul versus his outer appearance and an eyes open vs. eyes shut debate. It discusses why 2 different people might prefer during sex to do one or the other (i’m keeping this post PG. If you want the heat, get the book)…

Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness….

The pleasure for Franz and his body called for darkness. The darkness for him was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us…

…But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. A man with closed eyes is a wretch of a man.

All in all, it is a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it, you should pick it up. You can get it on Amazon here (link)

Freeway: A Reese Witherspoon and Keifer Sutherland Whacked-out Movie

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I was cruising through Blockbuster the other day and saw Kiefer and Reese on the cover of a movie called Freeway. I had never heard of it before and immediately thought it might be a cooler version of the steamy Charlie Sheen/Kristie Swanson (what happened to her?) movie The Chase. So, i went home and ordered it up on Netflix.

I have now just watched it and i’m utterly speechless. That movie was half brilliant, half totally insane. It could be a satire of serial killer movies or it could be one of the worst movies ever, i’m not sure. I’m hoping it’s the former.

Let me fill you in on the plot:

We begin with Reese Witherspoon in school and realize she’s both white trash and a total moron. She can’t read the sentence “The cat spills milk” from the blackboard. On her way home from school to her run-down white trash house she sees her mom (Amanda Plummer) first turning tricks and then getting arrested for prostitution. Minutes later the cops pick up her step-dad (after he does some crack and then tries to have sex with Reese).

Keep in mind, Reese is dressed in a very short skirt and a red leather coat. She’s supposed to be a modern day trashy Little Red Riding Hood.

Anyway, the foster care people come to get her, but she cuffs them to her bed and hits the road, i.e. The Freeway! She stops to get a gun from her gangster (but with a big heart) boyfriend, who immediately after Reese leaves, is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. After being on the freeway for 10 minutes, the car breaks down and she’s picked up by Kiefer (named Bob Wolverton)

While posing as a high-school counselor, Kiefer gets her to open up and bare her soul. We learn about her abuse and how she was molested by her foster parents. Kiefer nods understandingly, then in turn tries to rape her too. Why? Because, of course, he’s the I-5 serial killer (of young white girls) that’s been on the lam for months. Being somewhat crafty, Reese gets her gun and turns the tables on him. She then starts to interrogate him (Why do you kill girls? Have you accepted Jesus as your savior?), and then puts a bullet in his brain and leaves him for dead. After pumping 6 shells into him, she logically goes to the closest diner and woofs down a bunch of pancakes and eggs (i mean, who wouldn’t).

We are now 20 minutes into the movie.

After her meal, as she comes out of the diner, Reese is instantly arrested, interrogated and sent to an all-girls prison. In prison, she starts a fight with the alpha-female (to establish control) and is thrown into solitary confinement. In “the hole” she goes Macgyver-like and make a makeshift knife out of plastic and saran wrap. She is then released from “the hole” and has a lesbian session with Brittney Murphy and literally utters the phrase, “i’ll make out with you but no fuckin’. I’m straight.” She hides a knife in her (literally: it’s in a tampon) and then escapes (using the knife) to Mexico where she becomes a prostitute to raise money.

While she’s on the lam, new evidence comes to light and the cops realize Kiefer is the serial killer (as Reese was saying all along) and she was thus justified in trying to escape from him. Kiefer’s wife (Brooke Shields) is told by the cops that her husband is a serial killer, and immediately kills herself (in another great Suddenly Susan-esque performance).

Kiefer knows Reese is headed to her grandma’s, so he gets there first, kills grandma, puts on her bathrobe and gets into bed and waits for Reese to show up – completing the Little Red Riding Hood theme.

I won’t ruin the movie for you and let you know how it ends, but i’m sure you can figure it out.  One thing i can assure you – all this i just described really happens in this movie. It is completely insane and i enjoyed every minute of it.

If you’re looking to kill 90 minutes and need a completely unpredictable story, you should hit The Freeway up.

Americans in Love Actually

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I recently watched the enjoyable chick-flick Love Actually.  While i really liked the movie, I found it interesting that every American portrayed in the movie is basically a complete American stereotype.  They’re what Europeans see Americans as:

  • An american at the elementary school.  Of course the mom is a big entertainment star. America is all about media and fame.
  • We see 3 girls from U of Wisconsin who are dumb, ridiculously hot and pretty slutty.  Again, typical view of Americans by our british counterparts.  Of course, having been to Madison campus – i’m not sure how much I disagree.  I kid, i kid.
  • A dumb, morally challenged, arrogant US President played beautifully by Billy Bob Thorton.

Sure Americans put British people as the evil character in lots of movies (see Star Wars, Braveheart, and countless others), but do we have to be shameless stereotyped in their films?  .

Mutual Appreciation: Not a Bad Indie Flick

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This past weekend i checked out the uber-indie flick Mutual Appreciation. At first, i was completely bored, but then i began to notice that the film has some real brilliance.

The movie is about kids in the 20-30 year old post-college trying-to-figure-it out stage. The dialogue and self-awareness of the characters in the movie are dead-on. Most movies today over-narrate or even have voice-overs telling you exactly what’s happening every step of the way. This film instead builds scenes using awkward pauses, glances by the characters, and body language which is much more authentic and real.

The movie is about a recent college grad, Alan, who is a musician and leaves a busted-up band for New York. He tries to stay focused and fends off all types of distractions, including the attraction to his good friend’s girlfriend. There are some great scenes in the movie and some of the things i particularly liked are:

  • There is a strange series of events that occur when Alan stops by a party well after it has finished and hangs out with 3 drunk women. Normally this would result is a bizarre series of events that’s pretty funny but instead this film portrays how current gender relations have shifted and in today’s post-feminist era women end up completely dominating tentative males
  • The songs played in the film are really good. The first song, “Things are what you make of them” by Bishop Allen is a great tune. I tried to find out what the other ones were, but couldn’t. If anyone knows. please drop me a line (or comment below)
  • The movie is just raw and it is in a good way.
  • The dialogue is extremely accurate to what guys and girls age 22-30 would talk like. There are about 4 scenes in this movie that are exactly the same as my experiences in NY – the awkward and pompous dialogue of the over-educated and under employed sitting around acting sophisticated while drinking wine and staying up late.
  • In places you’d normally expect something to happen – like an event – nothing does. Instead, you see someone get verbally rejected or visually stimulated. This isn’t a movie about events but rather emotions. Depending on what type of movie watcher you are, this could be a great thing or a horrible thing.

(also, here’s a link (here) to an interview with one of the stars from the movie)

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