Brooklyn Museum by the Brooklyn Masses

The Brooklyn Museum is doing its part to spread democracy by creating "Click!" a photography exhibit on display until August 10th. The exhibit began as an open call for photographs that capture the "Changing Faces of Brooklyn." Visitors to the exhibition's web site then voted on photographs and the crowd consensus selected the images that would become "Click!"

There's an interesting dissent from Slate about both the photos that were chosen as well as the broad and ineffectual nature of the theme of the exhibition itself. I don't think it makes you a fascist to agree that some of the photos selected were amateur in composition as well as trite and sentimental. But as far as an experiment in crowd mentality intersecting with art, well alright.

Luckily there is an image in the exhibit of one of my sentimentally favorite Brooklyn buildings, the Pippen building at 3rd Avenue and 3rd St. on the Gowanus Canal. Though it's not the image below, courtesy of another blog, you get the idea.

Cable Five Is Down!

Under sea cable number five is down according to Khaleej Times Online. "These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria." Ok, can we call this a conspiracy yet? [Giz via Slashdot]

Italy Accidentally Legalizes P2P MP3s

So a new Italian copyright law allows 'degraded' audio files to be shared via p2p for informational purposes. Well, mp3 files are considered 'degraded' since they are "compressed with an algorithm that implies quality loss". What does this mean for us Americans? We have no idea. But it sounds exciting. One step closer to freedom of file sharing. More details over at Slashdot.

Under-Sea Cables Are Anchor Magnets

So a fourth under-sea cable, this time connecting Qatar to the interwebs, has been taken offline. Now, one cable I can understand being an accident. Two cables is an unfortunate coincidence. Three cables arouses suspicion. Four cables? The first were attributed to ship anchor dragging. The latest, it is unclear what caused them. The severed cable has resulted in reduced access to the webbernets for Qatar- down to 40%. I smell a conspiracy. What do you think?

File Sharing Site Pirate Bay in Swedish Legal Trouble

The four men that operate the site file-sharing site thepiratebay.org have been charged, in Sweden, with conspiracy to break copyright laws. Luckily, I have never, ever, nerver used this so called piratebay nor do I know anyone else who has. But, according to the BBC the site has between 10 and 15 million users. The plaintiffs in the case are, of course, a handful of salivating, stinking, monsters named Warner, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI. If convicted the four face up to two years in prison.

New Police State?

AT&T is considering becoming police of the internet. The company has been in discussions with technology companies as well as the the M.P.A.A. and R.I.A.A. about carrying out digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level. The point would be to sniff out any violations of U.S. Intellectual Property Laws and clamp down on piracy.

Anyone think that if this goes through, we should just shut down the internet? Say, "it's been great, but see ya" to the good ol' information superhighway?

Not to mention, this is a terrible idea for AT&T, as pointed out here:

On the technical side, if I were an AT&T engineer asked to implement this plan, I would resign immediately and look for work at Verizon. AT&T's engineers are already trying to manage the feat of getting trillions of packets around the world at light speed. To begin examining those packets for illegal pictures of Britney Spears would be a nuisance, at best, and a threat to the whole Internet, at worst.

Well, I suppose it is a noble goal to rid the world of illegal Britney pictures.

More about AT&T's nutty idea from the NYTimes here.

Who Will Pay For Your WiFi?

An article from Slate passed on to me by America from americainbrokeland talks about the failure of a number of large cities to establish municipal WiFi networks. The article points out that these networks will have to be paid for by someone. So far, private companies like Earthlink have not been able to get the job done.

As more and more services come online such as job application, registration for a variety of services, registration for organizations and schools, control of bank accounts, bill payment, access to important information ranging from driving directions to the requirements to transfer your driver's license from Florida to New York, the need for public access to the Internet becomes essential.

To me, this is something should be paid for by those who use it, in part. But, everyone should have access to it therefore some of the funding should come from taxation and the rest from private funds. It would be very easy to have a simple advertisement pop up when the Internet is accessed from each individual IP address. Such ads would presumably be coveted by businesses and therefore could bring in a fair amount of funds. How much would Apple be willing to pay to have an ad pop up every time some one logs on to the Internet?

Let's get crackin!

Bringing the Internet to Harlem

While browsing through my reader I came across a story about the Wireless Harlem Initiative on Scientific American. The Wireless Harlem Initiative's (WHI) stated mission is to, "Close the 'digital divide' by making access to information ubiquitous for all its residents." This is pretty important idea and, I think, exposes an under appreciated problem, the so called, "digital divide". In New York City it costs anywhere (this is approximate) between $30 a $70 per month for a "household" to establish high speed internet service in their homes. This is a very high price to pay for families at low income levels, so much so that is probably, largely, dismissed out of hand.

One major reason for the high price is a strangle hold held by a few internet service providers over the city. For example, where I live in Brooklyn, the only service available to me is through Time Warner, thus insuring no competition for my business. Also, the prices for internet service are higher unless you "bundle" it with cable and digital phone (does anyone use digital phone?). But, I digress.

Access to the internet has become an afterthought for many. Can you imagine your life without it? While many people simply use the internet for simple email access or occasional shopping, more "advanced" users have been using it for years to shape public opinion and voice their opinions. A great example of the power of the internet is the online political site DailyKos. That blog has become so powerful that it attracted all Democratic nominees for President to its yearly convention to take questions from its largely way left members. On a more basic level, many jobs, especially higher paying jobs, only allow for application for employment by electronic means.

The digital divide is leaving people behind and it should come as no surprise that those being left behind are, again, low income minorities. The internet is becoming the most important meeting point for people with ideas and desires for change. The future of organization on local and national (global?) scales is the internet. Luckily, many of those who are most "tech savy" tend to be liberal and thus accepting (or at least not antipathetic to) making sure that the internet become accessible to all. At this point the internet should be considered to be on par with broadcast television or AM radio. The internet really is just cable access on a ton of steroids. As such it should be 100% free. Of course specifics of bandwidth could be dealt with, i.e., high speed internet access is free up to a reasonable point so that all can have access.

Of course, something so large scale would never be government run so organizations like WHI are important. In addition to working to establish a network of WiFi hot spots in Harlem they say they will be working with other groups to get computers and presumably other necessary hardware out to members of the community.

Hopefully soon, blogs will be created by pissed off citizens of Harlem calling attention to the injustices that affect them. Hopefully, they will be able to comment on news stories about issues that matter to them or issues they want to affect. Hopefully, they will be able to use the internet to have their voice heard.

Blackle!

So, the white screen you see on Google wastes energy. I mean, every white screen you see should be replaced by a black one, or at least a darker shade, environmentally speaking. Aesthetically speaking, well, I, for one am not a huge fan of the black screen. I think this blog is probably dark enough to not draw any serious attention from the wack-o left and their desire to conserve energy or generally do good things. But, I do know some people (and their blogs) who should seriously think of how much sooner the Earth will die because they think white is right.

Anyway, check out blackle. This is a black version of Google. It is NOT created by Google. I wonder how long it will take Google to do something about Blackle.

The "New" Media, Technology, and Politics

It's no secret that parts of the internet, like blogs and social networks, have become a way for politicians, more specifically candidates for President, to reach out to and turn on a group of people who in the past may have been more difficult to reach and influence. All together, this fact is very good. The more people involved in the system the better, clearly. User generated content like blogs (like this one) are their own media outlets with views unbiased by mega forces like corporations and political parties.

There have been weird and embarrassing stops along the way that show how these politicians and their advisers don't have a real good grasp on how this whole technomalogicamal-internets thing really works, or at least how it is perceived by the people they are trying to reach. And it goes beyond the internet. In what must have been some sort of triumph for an enterprising Obama adviser, a set of wildly ill-conceived ring tones were recently released by Obama's campaign. The Daily Show mentioned it a while back and Huffingtonpost mocks it this week as well. For those who may not know the set of ring tones are generally snippets of Obama talking about Iraq and Healthcare as well as a few "remixes" of his 2004 convention speech. Oh and they are set to music, you know, the rock and the hip-hop. They really are more hideous than you can imagine. One has Obama repeating the phrase, "What I do oppose is a dumb war..." presumably until you silence the dumb ring tone.

The ring tones and the silly You Tube videos are a reminder that while the "New" media and new technologies may be playing powerful roles in politics and elections, the people pulling the strings behind the scenes can get things horribly wrong and shroud the newness of it all in camp and irrelevance.