Spontaneous Musings

Not sure what I think of this odd Chronicle of Higher Education article that my pal Wales sent me - she's into reading the Chronicle website for some reason.

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=vbvgqrpksftjtxspqshj02gblh6szmxt

Here's a sample:

Recently I've been teaching, in a couple of undergraduate seminars, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Letter to d'Alembert on the Theatre (1758), the most provocative essay on the arts ever written. It is about the unintended effects of theater — which, for Rousseau, stands in for all of the arts — on an audience. The essay is an impassioned rebuttal to the 1757 entry on Geneva, written by Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, in the huge Enlightenment project, Encyclopédie, in which d'Alembert says that Geneva would be an even finer city if only it didn't have laws banning theater. Rousseau says that, au contraire, theater would actually be harmful to the citizens of Calvinist Geneva and tries to prove that the prohibition is a good thing.

To my students, Rousseau's astonishing position collides head-on with the TV-drenched, movie-dependent, iPodified, grind-dancing world in which many of them spend a good part of their lives. The idea that their world of stories and entertainment — even in its more respectable precincts such as Masterpiece Theatre and U2 benefit concerts — could possibly be harmful to them is the furthest thing from their minds. In studying Rousseau's essay, my students directly confront their stormy love affair with mass culture. They learn the extent to which their youthful values are already in deep conflict with one another. They experience — albeit in fitful spasms — a sense of urgency about their lives, realizing with a kind of awe that their college years mark one of the most significant life passages they will ever face.

[And]

...the pleasure that theater provides, Rousseau argues, is based on the display of unruly passions, and it's addictive: Almost everyone who encounters theater wants more and more of it. Worse, Rousseau says, theater "tends everywhere to promote and increase the inequality of fortunes" because it triggers a host of artificial desires. And even when theater is great, and its audience consists of decent people, Rousseau argues, whether or not we're made better by it depends on who we are to begin with. Many of us are made worse by theater precisely because we're introduced to bad ideas we'd never thought of before. The modern media echoes Rousseau's claim regularly, especially after tragedies like that at Virginia Tech: Villains "accustom the eyes of the people to horrors that they ought not even to know and to crimes they ought not to suppose possible."

According to the article - Rousseau argues that art and virtue cannot exist together in harmony. It's one or the other. That small towns are more better than big cities and people are happier in them. (This is not true by the way. I've lived in surburbia and was lonlier and more lost there than ever in NYC. And the people were nastier, more close-minded, and there was a higher crime rate. Same with small towns. I've felt safer in NYC than I did in the suburbs of Kansas City. But whatever.) The article is interesting, but it is chock-full of generalizations and assumptions based on those generalizations. It's also further proof that people have a tendency to be extremists. I found the article more annoying than informative. At least that's my initial response. But I'm not clear enough on it - to send it to Wales in the email. So, in short, may change my mind. Also I'm no philosopher and have not studied Rousseau, so am uncertain about his consclusions as well as the professor's.

A post on my flist today, reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend a while back regarding the WGA strike and well the internet.

Friend: Why don't people just write stories for the internet or do shows on the net? That's what they should do.
Me (trying not to burst out laughing): Where have you been? They already are. Been doing it for more than five years now. They just can't figure out how to make lots of money off of it.

We know how to tell stories on the internet. We know how to share them. What we have not quite figured out yet is how we can get paid for doing it and how much. That, dear reader, is what the WGA Strike is all about. (Well mostly about, there are other issues, but that is the main sticking point).

This is not a simple issue. Oh no. Nor is it a new one. They've been fighting over this issue since the 1990s. Not necessarily publicly. I know, I had to deal with it back then. Trust me, am very happy not to be dealing or worrying about it now. Much rather worry about getting people to properly remove chemicals from soil so the water doesn't end up getting more mercury in it. Seems more constructive somehow and a lot less headache inducing. The entertainment/media/internet/publishing business, god love it, gives me a moral headache. Very happy to be out of it - at least from a business perspective.

Anyhow - this fight is not just about money. It's about access, yours and mine and everyone in the world who can get on the internet, free and otherwise. And to what extent we should have it for free. Should everyone? Should any one person or group of persons control what is distributed over the internet? Should people get paid for what is distributed on the net? Should we have to pay more than we already do to access content on the internet? Should some types of content be forbidden? The internet is right now the wild wild west. We are at the start of the information revolution. And like the industrial revolution and the real wild west - some of us are eager to explore and play with this new frontier while others, want to control, manipulate, sabotauge, stop, destroy, and/or harnass this new plaything. We know how to tell stories on it, we know how to use it, what we don't know how to do is to control it or to the degree that we should - we haven't tamed it yet. Although some are getting pretty darn close to figuring out how - China and India have allegedly found ways to block certain sites from their native users.

Some people are content to just play, to share, to create on the net - others want more, they want to make money off of it, harnass it, control it, maybe even be the boss of it. My question to everyone reading this - is should we let them? Is ensuring some writer or artist gets paid worth it? How much are we willing to give up? Because that's the problem with life -there's always a trade-off. We start letting people put major controls on the internet, we could lose the ability to post fanfic, icons, scan in articles or worse post political essays or opinions. The best thing about the net - is that it allows unfettered free speech. It is the one place that is not controlled by advertisers, big corporations, or money. It's still the little guy's soap box. You can be poor and post on the internet, all you need is someone somewhere to provide access. Heck - homeless people can post from libraries.

It's not like we haven't already been making money off of it or using it in this fashion. And it's not like people haven't already put controls in place or tried to. As I stated above, India and China have figured out how to block certain bits of content. Companies can block certain sites. The US government can track who visits what site at what time. Live journal, blogger, and other journal sites including MySpace have found ways to censor content or remove unwanted content. Not only that - they've found ways to put in parental controls, to prohibit access, and to prohibit people from using their sites. So these things are possible, they are being done already. The net is less free, less unfettered than it was a year ago. We no longer have the ability to do whatever we want, say whatever we want or go whereever we want that we did just three or four years back - that's how fast this is happening.

As for money? My father has been selling books that he's written on the internet for the last ten years. CreateSpace is telling me that they'll do the first proof of my novel for free and for a fee they'll have someone edit it, create a cover for it, and advise me on a marketing plan. iTunes charges folks to download Torchwood. Hula also charges to download films and tv shows. Bit Torrent - I think you pay a fee for.

As for telling stories? Vids have existed since 2001, possibly earlier. People editing footage from various tv shows and films to tell their own story, with a song attached - I call them personal music videos. You can see them now for free on youtube. You used to have to risk polluting your computer with spyware and viruses to download them. One person on my flist wrote and posted an original novel on her lj complete with beautful illustrations in full color. After she was done, she put it together and posted it to a site and even had a version self-published off line, I believe. I've seen people create interactive stories. Some have created RPG stories - where they each grab a character and tell a tale through letters to one another. Then there are websodes - five to ten minute clips. The producers of thirtysomething and My So Called Life, created their own internet web series - 13 episodes, each twenty minutes in length. It was so well received that Fox or the CW grabbed it and turned it into a tv series. It's called Quarterlife, I think. The WGA has been using the net to tell the tale of the WGA and explain the strike and let off steam. Joss Whedon created a comic strip on the internet called SugarShock.

Back in the late 90's, the writers of Blair Witch Project - used the internet to promote their film - they created a site that told the urban legend of the Blair Witch, a legend they sort of made up, and it provided links to real legends that the story was based on. After that, marketing people embraced the net to promote films. Lost has a site that includes backstories on characters. So does BattleStar Galatica - in fact BSg even had websodes broadcast on their site, as did Lost.

In 2001, I started reading fanfic on the internet, some of it with graphics. Now people imbed vids in their fanfic. The internet has made it possible for everyone to share their stories, not just the ones who get paid for it. I've posted two fanfics on my lj. As well as a chapter of my novel. On my website, I posted 40 essays, or the equivalent of a 400 page book of essays. I also posted chapters from another novel I'd written. In 2002, I co-wrote a fanfic by email with five or six other writers then had it posted to a fan website.

Because of the internet, if you just happen to love to tell or read stories - you can find a way of exchanging them with an unlimited number of people for free, without the middle man, without it having to be a saleable commodity, without worrying too much about who owns the rights to it, and without it costing you more than an internet connection. I can share my entire book with 100's of people without getting paid and without having to pay for it. That must scare the shit out of people who make money out of this and do worry about copyright - where art is how they pay the rent and buy groceries. I know it does, because of how several of them have reacted to the net over the years. Professional book and movie critics really hate it. Many denounce it. They denounce fanfic. They shouldn't be scared though - people will still buy books and still pay to see movies. All the internet is - is another medium, another source of information. It is not a replacement. It's just new. And different.

What we are grappling with right now is how do you sell stories and art on the internet? How do you get people to pay to read something online? How can you make a living of it? Possibly even get rich? Not just order a book or an object from Amazon. But pay money to read a journal entry, an article, or watch a video? And more to the point, do we want to do that? We already are to some extent - itunes charges 99 cents to a dollar to download videos and many sites have ads - that pay for the site. This journal has ads. And other's journals are paid accounts - they pay to post photos and icons. And people do pay to download tv shows to their computers - they've been doing that since 2002 via bit torrent. Some don't pay. And I know there are people who have posted novels online that you have to pay to access - Stephen King tried it in 99, I believe. Stopped when he discovered readers were either hacking into the site or taking the stories and distributing them online to friends, each pitching in part of the cost. In short, he wasn't making any money. Other's have done it more successfully - Amber Benson and Christopher Golden did it with Ghosts in Albion in 2003 - a sort of online animated series that you had to pay to access. Then there's the Buffy audio project - where people are doing an online version of a radio play. Most recently? The Anynomous Meme - a guerilla project that is condemning Scientology. It's amusing to me, because it is using the same sci-fi wording that Scientology is based on. Scientology is a religion based on a bunch of satirical novels by a science fiction author name L.Ron Hubbard. I'm still unclear on whether Hubbard intended for anyone to take Dianetics seriously. A friend of mine told me that from her reading of it - she figured he was making fun of self-help books. I know enough about Scientology to find it frightening and steer clear of it. I researched it in high school, ran into versions of it in college, and my brother had to deal with the Scientologists going after his wife's cousin while they were working on the film Love Crimes. Before that - we had WGA's speechless meme. Now that nearly everyone has a videocamera either in their camera, on their computer, or on the cell phone - making personal films is easy.


But none of these people have made much money off of distributing what they've done. At least not yet. They know the potential - what with the new iphone, wireless, mobile, and tivo providing new and better ways to download content. Plus the new Kindle via Amazon. But they aren't quite sure how to split the revenues. Or for that matter what to charge. Or even how to collect it. Collecting from internet companies such as Verizon or Sprint, often involves a fee. Paypal - same deal. And ads, not always lucrative. They have not figured out the business model yet. When they do, watch out. What you've been getting for free, will start to have a price tag. And the net may no longer be the place we've all come to know and love.