Internet Killed The Publishing Industry
The best article I've read in a while on the topic of the Internet's value and transformative effect, and it's relationship to the death of the newspaper. (via kottke and Daring Fireball)
With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
. . .
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.
Penny Arcade Featured On NPR
Penny Arcade, one of the best comic strips in production today, was highlighted on NPR's Weekend Edition last weekend. I always love it when NPR finds great work being produced on the fringes of any field and brings the story of that work to the wider, more staid and traditional NPR audience.
The simple summary would state that PA is a comic by gamers, for gamers. But it's so, so much more.
A new comic is published online each M/W/F by an artist and writer team. Friends for most of their lives the duo has perservered for the last decade. The comic is paired with blog posts that I enjoy as much as the art in the comics. Topics covered are video game-centric, but that's not the whole story.
Instead, PA is a strip discussing the world as seen through the lens of those of us raised in a world where video games are commonplace. From the terrible state of forum-disccusion grammar to raising our kids to fighting against fear mongers, no topic is out of bounds for the strip.
Our world is completely different from that experienced by people even a couple years older than us. Mike and Jerry, better known by their in-strip monikers Gabe and Tycho, give us voice. Our words are profanity-laced and sarcastic. Yet because their wit, empathy and pathos are unmatched, Mike and Jerry have become leaders in our community.
Instead of sitting on their laurels and playing around, as those of earlier generations would expect, Mike and Jerry have made the most out of their role in our generation. Their ingenuity, innovation and entreprenurial spirit are astounding. They started with a self-published comic strip, and then opened an online store.
Most people would have stopped there and been happy, but not Mike and Jerry. Instead, they organized the Penny Arcade Expo, now an annual pilgrimage to Seattle and the new Mecca for gamers. Realizing that they're living The Dream and doing what they love as a career and also understanding that gamers are not, despite consistent media portrayal, selfish, lazy, couch potatoes, Mike and Jerry also organized a charity, Child's Play, to support children's hospitals around the world. This year, Child's Play raised over one million dollars for sick kids everywhere.
And now the dynamic duo has even produced their own series of video games. They've been their since the Internet was in daipers. Prolific and benevolent leaders -- our generation is lucky to have them.
Quarters Unnecessary In SF
My friend Matt was the first person to point out that all of the parking meters in San Francisco now have a slot for payment cards. These are "Pre-paid parking meter cards that can be used in lieu of coins at all city parking meters except port meters. Available in $20 and $50 denominations"
To buy the cards, order online or use your zip code to find a nearby vendor. As always, meter rates vary by region and are still the same as if you'd paid with quarters.
Don't want to carry around anything new? San Francisco also tested a pay-by-cell phone system in 2007. I liked the idea, but poorly designed phone-tree registration systems and extra fees for using these services kept me away. (If you try it out and have problems with DPT, contacting the service provider seems more effective than contacting DPT.)
Still, parking in San Francisco is rarely easy. Says NPR,
Finding a parking space in San Francisco can be about as easy as winning the lottery. Drivers are known to circle for 30 minutes or more searching for a spot, clogging up traffic and sometimes causing road rage incidents. But they soon may be able to use their Blackberries or cell phones to snag a spot.
Unfortunately, congestion is a problem that's going to remain. SF is dominant, and people want to be here. Services like GottaPark might eventually help with finding a spot, but at least now we won't need to keep scrounging for change while we settle for meters.
Innovation Is A Must
Tom Freidman's world is flat theory (c)(TM) merged with his latest call for a green revolution in a recent article titled "While Detroit Slept." Mr. Freidman states his number one rule of business in the modern world thusly:
Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don’t think it won’t be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.
To prove his point, Freidman cites to a case study about an innovative business model for green personal transportation.
The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy — such as wind and solar — as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets — the first pilots were opened in Israel this week — plus battery-exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.
Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car from the French automaker Renault or Japanese companies like Nissan (General Motors snubbed Agassi) and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cellphone and the minutes from AT&T. That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive. G.M. sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.
I don't know if it will work, but I love the innovation. Meanwhile, US automakers are waiting for politicians to stop posturing, and getting beaten to the punch in the race to produce a viable electric car.
On a positive note, President-elect Obama today officially named Nobelist Steven Chu as the next secretary of energy. Those pushing for support of the green economy are thrilled, but I can't help but think that Frosty the Coal Man's Christmas is ruined.
[Via Wait Wait Don't Tell Me]
On The Presidential Campaigns
I'm guessing you all caught the Charlie "let's grill Obama about nonsense instead of anything that matters" Gibson's "exclusive interview" with Palin - the first questions she's fielded since her nomination (just amazing... how much cramming does she need to do?!). I know the average citizen doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine refers to, but shouldn't a candidate for Vice President have some idea?
Copied below, in chronological order starting with the most recent, are links to some of the finest gems I've been able to unearth from the vast wastes of the Internets. If you're like me, they'll be a cool drink of refreshing reason, with a chaser of sickening ohmygodOrwell'sfutureisheretoday.
Any thoughts? Love to hear em.
Heard On The Radio Today
Atmosphere
Driving home from a cafe, listening to Live 105...
CALLER: Sorry man. I just have a question. I know you already said it, but my goddamn kids keep yelling and my wife keeps running the goddamn vacuum cleaner while I'm trying to listen. Who were those last guys?
DJ: Atmosphere
CALLER: A-T-M-O... thanks man.
DJ: We aim to please.
Same 15 minute drive, now circling for parking. Switched to NPR, and listening to their Science Friday team discuss Al Gore's speech calling for all U.S. energy to be renewable in ten years:
It's important that we move quickly. Most people understand that China is on pace to start consuming much more than the U.S. But fossil fuels are a limited resource. So, in effect, They'll. Drink. Our. Milkshake!
Wale: NPR's Song Of The Day
Wale
I love when quality rap and NPR collide. First was the most tremendous Fresh Air interview ever, a full hour with Terry Gross and The Rza. And now Wale's Nike Boots is featured as the Song of the Day.
Wale is one of the best around. I still can't thank sansserif enough for introducing me to the kid. Wale's 100 Miles and Runnin' is one of the best hip hop cds of the last couple of years, and I'd never have heard it if not for her suggestion. Via Elitaste:
After releasing a popular mix tape (100 Miles & Running) last year, D.C. rapper Wale signed a deal with Interscope; his major-label debut is due early next year. Known for rapping over beats from unlikely sources — including French electronic duo Justice and English singer Lily Allen — Wale is a blogger favorite, and the song responsible for much of the buzz is "Nike Boots."
Featuring a dramatic, Southern-tinged beat from producer Osinachi, the song pays tribute to the downtrodden people of the DMV — as in the District, Maryland, and Virginia.
Wale's latest mixtape, a tribute to Seinfeld, is called The Mixtape About Nothing. The Washington Post loves it (free download here).
Audio Hilarity For The Weekend
David Sedaris Reading On Letterman
Nothing like listening to David Sedaris read his own stuff...
June 9, 2008 ·Whether he's lancing boils, getting crabs from thrift store pants or sitting in a hospital waiting room dressed only in his underwear, one thing is clear: David Sedaris is not shy about sharing those embarrassing, cringe-worthy incidents that members of the general population tend to save for diaries or therapists.
In his sixth collection of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris continues to bare his body and soul, detailing the aforementioned boils and crabs as well as an uncomfortable incident in which he accidentally spits a lozenge into the lap of his seatmate on an airplane.
Though some critics have questioned the strict veracity of his essays, defenders maintain that even if Sedaris stretches the truth, a certain degree of exaggeration is expected in humor. In a 2007 Washington Post article defending the humorist, Peter Carlson wrote, "Did Mark Twain fudge facts about how far the frog jumped?"
While his magazine pieces do get fact-checked, Sedaris points out, he agrees with Carlson. For a humorist, he says, "it comes with the territory. I exaggerate about how much I exaggerate. If someone nags [in real life], in my writing they nag nag nag."
Sedaris lives in France and England with his partner, Hugh Hamrick, and is a frequent contributor to This American Life, Esquire and The New Yorker. His previous books include Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.
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Hilarious interview with his sister, Amy Sedaris.
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An interview with Jack Handey.
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My all time favorite Fresh Air interview: Terry Gross interviews The RZA of the Wu Tang Clan.
Colbert's NY Times Op-ed
I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.
There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.
And it goes on. Genius. And also, before ending this post, Colbert's fantastic Fresh Air interview from last week:
Colbert Builds 'Report' with Viewers, Readers
MF Doom: Don't look behind The Mask?
MF Doom is one of my favorite rappers. His beats are sick. His rhymes are clear, clever, intelligent. He raps with style and technique. He speaks on real life with wit, charm and a smirk. He always references comic books, cartoons and events from our (apparently) similar childhoods. I can relate.
Being such a big fan, I was disappointed when I couldn't make it to his mid-August shows in SF. And then I heard that he didn't show. Instead, an impostor donned the mask, lip-synced over two tracks, and took off. Worse, a friend in LA said he'd done it there the week before. Then reports started to stream in from more Doom-less dates.
Disappointed, I started searching the Intertron for news. The best report was from the Village Voice, which summarized everything I'd been able to learn via The Oracle.
"The first thing out of my mouth to my buddy was, 'Wow, that doesn't even look like him,' " says concertgoer Dan Schwab, a buyer for Adidas who flew down from Portland, Oregon, with his girlfriend to see the show. "He looked way skinnier—at least 30 or 40 pounds lighter than the guy I've seen before. The guy who was up onstage was just walking back and forth, doing a little bit of the 'rapper hands' action and giving high-fives."
Though unverified accounts of "fake" Doom shows have been swirling for a couple years, the critically beloved rapper usually does justice to his brilliant studio catalog in concert. Schwab, for one, says Doom's performance on the same stage two years earlier was one of the best he'd seen.
But this guy was a joke.
"I went up to the sound guy about two songs deep and said, 'No one can hear Doom's mic.' He looked at me and said straight-up, 'I know. His mic's not on, and that's not MF Doom.'"
No fun at all, and seemingly a slap in the face to fans and concert goers. But should fans have seen this coming? I mean, this is the same guy who "once said he planned to release an album called Impostor". Is Doom providing commentary on the state of the music industry, or on fandom, or on rapper as act as opposed to rapper as person?
In 2005, he even employed a double for a pair of photo shoots.
"He'd been calling our editor saying he wasn't feeling good and wasn't going to make it, but for the shoot he sent his hype man [Big Benn Kling-on] in the Doom mask," reports Scratch art director R. Scott Wells, referring to his magazine's story on The Mouse and the Mask, a full-length collaboration between Doom and the producer Danger Mouse. "The photographer didn't know any better, so he just went ahead and shot him. When we got the film back, we knew it wasn't Doom. Benn's a much bigger guy."
"I spoke to Doom, and he tried to tell me something to the effect of: It was a new persona he was experimenting with," says Jerry L. Barrow, who was Scratch's editor at the time. "He had some sort of justification for it, but to me it was really unprofessional." (The pictures were scrapped, and the magazine made light of the situation by running Photoshopped pictures of figures like Jessica Simpson and Saddam Hussein wearing the infamous mask.)
. . .
Doom appears to have performed the same stunt at Elemental Magazine, which he confirmed in a letter to the publication in late 2005. . . . [Doom] noted that several different actors, from Adam West to George Clooney, have played Batman. His note concludes, "In the world of hip-hop music on-the-other hand things might be considered even stranger although not at all unusual. When you have artists 'playing' themselves, pun intended while having someone else more qualified to write the story (beats and or rhymes). To each is owns, after all its just entertainment right?"
Even a 2003 NPR piece seems to foreshadow Doom's Wizard of Oz act:
Remember, even MF Doom, metal mask and all, is a created character. . . . According to the story that Doom tells, Viktor Vaughn is a scientist and a rapper who's traveling the cosmos looking for the best places to practice his art.
I'm left hoping that The Villain is pulling an Andy Kaufman. Based on the depth and genius of his body of work, I'd bet he's laughing at us, with us, and giving someone the metal finger right now. Hopefully he'll start performing again in the near future... in person this time. For now, I'll stick with Madvillainy and MM...Food?, and stay far away from his shows.
[Update 8/12/08] Doom sent out an imposter to Rock the Bells. Video here. One person left a great comment re that video: "I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an impostor… remember Fantastic 4 -
everytime they beat Dr. Doom, he was a robot at the end of the battle."