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Martin Heidegger’s 1954 piece, The Question Concerning Technology transformed the way I look at technology (it’s really dense, and the translation is heavy-handed). I read it in 1995, a decade before I got implicated in the web, and 40 years after it was published. When I first started writing on the web in 2004, I had a draft post, consisting of one sentence, called “The Question Concerning Digital Technology,” which was to be an attempt at an update of the Heidegger piece for a networked world. That draft has long since disappeared, but I’ve been thinking about it again of late.

A rough summary of Heidegger’s argument is:

• the purpose of technology is to order nature for human use
• humans are part of nature
• in ordering nature through technology, humans become part of that which is ordered
• in becoming part of the ordered universe, humans lose humanity
• this is a bad thing
• we might be able to save ourselves, by appealing to the greek root techne, which means, in part: “art”

It’s a compelling description of technology in general, and the web in particular: that the prime driving force is ordering “nature” (in a broad sense), with the result being, more or less, efficiency. If you look at what we’ve all been doing over the last few years on the web, much of the most exciting things had to do with ordering - specifically information, for more efficient access:

• google as a high-level orderer of information on the web
• RSS as an orderer of information sources I want to stay aware of
• del.icio.us as an orderer of information I want to keep track of & share with others
• flickr as an orderer of photos
• wikipedia as an orderer of encyclopaedic information

The list can go on and on, and of course “technology” does many different things, beyond “just” ordering, but in general the force propelling technology often seems to be mastery of the world around us for our use, one way or another. Which, as Heidegger points out, has worrisome implications for all of us.

I’ve always come at technology from something like this angle: I’m not particularly interested in technology per se, I am interested in the ways we might use it to make our lives richer and more meaningful. And in general, I think that creating things is the activity that gives humans the greatest sense of meaning and richness in their lives. Certainly that’s the case for me, and from my beginnings on the web, it was the confluence of free software (that is, the building and dissemination of free tools), collaboration, and unlimited distribution that excited me. “Everyone” could create things now, and share those things with the world. The projects I am most proud of (LibriVox, Atwater Digital Literacy) are platforms for people to create things that, I hope, bring richness into their own lives. I’ve always considered LibriVox as most important for what it does for our volunteers: it gives them a way to deepen their connection to a text they love, to read it and record it, and give it away; to make connections with literature that they might not have made otherwise. That we’re also making a free library of audio literature for the world is in some ways a fringe benefit. [Interestingly, and as a side note, coding itself is, to coders, a deeply creative and satisfying enterprise].

Of late, I’ve been feeling cold about the web. So much of what is going on is the ordering of nature, which, if you believe Heidegger, is the inevitable drive of technology. And “dangerous” for our humanity. I know many people involved in working on tranches of this ordering, and I have a few projects along this line as well (datalibre, earideas, collectik). Just off the top of my head: Evan’s Wikitravel tries to better order travel info; Vinismo order’s wine information; Dopplr tries to better manage your travel, and intersections with others who are moving around too; pal mat is working on google maps, ordering geography; the praized guys are building a better system to organize places and preferences. More will come. All of it is “good,” in the sense that it makes it easier to do the things we want to do, but I often hear Heidegger’s warning echoing through my mind: in ordering nature, we are becoming that which is ordered, and so we risk losing our humanity.

Here are some of the things that are coming, I think, from the inevitable drive of technology to order nature, and our human desire to have efficient sorting systems:

• We’ll continue to cataloging everything (from books to people to places) online, and find better ways to sort all that information, using objective authority (eg authoritative incoming links, aka google juice), personal network authority (links/preferences from your chosen network) as relevance indicators.
• We will map this network on the web, and increasingly apply it to physical space (starting with google maps, and becoming more customized and personalized)
• Mobile technology will mean both that our access to cataloged information becomes ubiquitous, and our efforts to catalog things will be unconstrained
• RFID, or something like it, will mean that this sorting of physical objects will move from its current general state (eg. tracking & finding something like “any copy of a certain book”), to specific (eg. tracking & finding something like “a particular copy of a certain book”), and will touch people too
• We’ll get all the media we want, when we want it
• We’ll get most of the data we want, when we want it
• Our mobile devices will increasingly interact with our physical surroundings (point at an object, get info on it; buy it; sell it), and will become our bank, and keys, our thermostat, and more, as well as everything else it already is (telephone, email, library, map etc).
• All data on the web will become structured, and mostly available
• More data sets (eg government-owned) will arrive on the web, and more people will participate in using that data to understand the world, and make decisions, to order nature
• Data about people will become structured, and mostly available [For a well-networked human in my circle, this has already happened: I can track their interests, on a daily basis (del.icio.us, google reader shared items, digg etc.), their movements (dopplr), their public thoughts (blogs, twitter), books they like (librarything, gutenberg bookshelf), things they buy, etc etc.]

Lots of money will be made (if all goes well, some of it by friends of mine) finding new and different ways to do all this, and more and more. In essence, we’ll continue to use the web (and increasingly, mobile devices) to better order nature. And we’ll become better ordered at the same time.

Looking at this very brief list of what’s going to happen, I can’t help but think: “so what?” Is any of this going to make people’s lives richer or more meaningful?

My suspicion is “no.” I say this as a digital native, if a relatively recent, adoptive native (starting in 2004). For myself, I have found that the price of the benefits of the web has been heavy: while the web has allowed me to do all sorts of things, to build things and relationships, and projects, I find the quality of my time on the web so often unsatisfying. In a comparison of value to me between a random “leisure” hour on the web and a random hour doing something else in the real world, the real world trumps the web almost every time. Yet the web still usually wins the battle for my time (this says as much about me as it does about the web, of course).

I had a dinner a while back with Mike Lenczner, of Ile Sans Fil, and Jon Udell and some others, and this was the question MIke was asking, more or less: “so what?” Is free wifi access for all really such a great thing for people? Free encyclopedia? Free audio books? That’s not to say there is no value in those things, but we in the tech world imbue this stuff with a magical capacity to improve people’s lives, and I don’t think it’s clear that it has. Much less RSS feeds and online bookmarking. Free Software we see as a moral victory; OLPC as a revolutionary project that will save Africa; global voices online, as a dialogue builder that will transform our understanding of each other. All these things are good, great even, and there are countless other examples of wonderful online projects. But part of me agrees with Michael: it’s not clear that on balance they are truly improving people’s lives in any real sense.

But the point of all this is not really to criticize the web, nor to gnash teeth about the things people, including me, are building with it. Rather it’s a call to look at technology from a different angle, a call to designers and technologists and webbies and to consider a different approach, inspired by Heidegger’s solution of technology as art.

The web provides us enormous and efficient access, but a problem seems to me that it strips away the intimacy of our connection. Consider reading a book, versus reading on line; conversing in IM versus having a coffee; viewing a photo versus touching an object. This is not to criticize any of these experiences, or to say we are stuck with the modes and interfaces and tools we have now. I’m not saying that the web means less intimacy, exactly.

But what if we, those of us trying to make the world better with what we do on the web, rethink our projects in these terms. Leave the ordering for a moment, and consider intimacy instead.

What can we, as a community interested in making lives richer and more meaningful, do with technology to help humans experience more intimacy with the things that are important to them?

I don’t really have any answers, but it seems to me that it’s a challenge worth considering.

The web, and technology, will continue to order the world, there is no doubt about that. Your participation in this process is fine - and probably lucrative. But there is more, and more exciting things to think about.

A truly radical and creative use of technology, will find ways to help humans become more intimate with the things that matter to them. Those things might be art, books or songs; and people; probably food, and family. I don’t really know what else, and I don’t really know what I expect this to mean, but I think it’s worth thinking about.

OTTAWA–The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable.

The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act.

Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years…

Alasdair Roberts, a political scientist at Syracuse University in New York, built a version of the database by requesting the CAIRS electronic records through an Access to Information Act request, and updated the site monthly.

CBC journalist David McKie took over the work in 2006 using another publicly accessible website (http://www.onlinedemocracy.ca)…

[more…]

Busy night tonight.

First, pal Nora Young, of CBC’s Spark, will be at the Blue Met, hosting a panel, 7pm at DELTA CENTRE-VILLE - RÉGENCE A:

OUT OF THE BOX: ADVENTURES IN ELECTRONIC LITERATURESince the computer was invented, writers have been using it to forge new literary forms. From the early days of hypertext fiction to the latest in narrative gaming, these authors write beyond the book and way outside the box. - Hosted by Nora Young.

J. R. Carpenter
Jason E. Lewis
Jeff Parker
Alice Van Der Klei

Next, impresario Boris, will be presiding over the 5th installment of Pecha-Kucha Montreal, 8pm at SAT:

What is Pecha Kucha Night?

Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

From GRAIN:

Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world’s cereal output has tripled, while the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it’s true,[4] but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn’t get to all of those who need it. Less than half of the world’s grain production is directly eaten by people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels – massive inflexible industrial chains. In fact, once you look behind the cold curtain of statistics, you realise that something is fundamentally wrong with our food system. We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of investors before the food needs of people.

[more…]

I for one welcome our robot overlords.

Kraftwerk: The Robots (1978)

Daft Punk: Robot Rock (2005)

Styx: Mr. Roboto (1983)
Ouch. This is pretty terrible.

Happy May Day. Sylvain has organized a meeting tonight to discuss putting together a podcamp montreal:

Jeudi 1er mai / Thursday May 1st
19h (?)
Sergent-Recruteur
4801 Saint-Laurent

I can’t make it, but here are my thoughts:

For a podcasting conference in Montreal, I would like to see this question be the central theme:
-what new and exciting things can we do with podcasting content?

and:
-how can we make it happen?
-who can help?

that is, why are there no podcasts about, oh, i don’t know:
-interviews with old farmers in the gaspe about what life used to be like
-discussions with 6 year olds about the world’s problems
-weekly interviews with montreal university profs (mcgill, u de m, concordia, uqam) who are doing interesting research, whatever the field
-in-depth exploration of the health care system, with interviews with doctors, nurses, orderlies, administrators, patients, academics … ideally with interviews with the same in other countries so we can really find out how to have a better healthcare system
-weekly podcast with interviews of montreal fiction writers
-quebec history
-the immigrant experience in quebec
-a podcast dedicated to bringing quebec’s french cultural heritage to anglos; a podcast dedicated to bringing quebec anglo culture to francophones
-more audio documentaries
-podcast from the musee des beaux arts
-podcasts of various lecture series, with visiting speakers from around the world (eg who speak at mcgill etc)
-podcasts from le devoir, la presse, the quebec musician’s association
-lives of aboriginals in northern quebec

generally: how can podcasting change the world? how can it make things better? how can it build a stronger quebec? how can it create more understanding in the provice? how can it be a tool for innovation? how can we use podcasting as an instrument to become the most innovative, socially and economically vbrant population in the world?

also, generally (this is a different conference, maybe):
how is quebec going to deal with the changes that the web is bringing? if freely available information (in a broad sense) is the foundation of innovation, what does quebec need to do to remain innovative with information freely flowing on the web? what impacts will this have on language? on language policy? on culture? can we close it off? do we need to open it more? what does this mean for education, for business, for culture? how do we come to terms, as a society, with an overwhelming amount of the innovation happening on the web in english? that is, how do we come to terms with the fact that, in order to be at the leading edge of web development, and web innovation, we need to be participating in a global network/community (eg twitter) where english is (right now) the primary language? what are we doing to prepare for the change, in 20 years, when the language of innovation might be chinese? what tools should educators be building, what tools should podcasters and quebec web entrepreneurs be building?

where does podcasting fit in?

etc.

Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life….
Art as the redemption of the man of knowledge–-of those who see the terrifying and questionable character of existence, who want to see it, the men of tragic knowledge.
Art as the redemption of the man of action–-of those who not only see the terrifying and questionable character of existence but live it, want to live it, the tragic war-like men, the hero.
Art as the redemption of the sufferer–as the way to states in which suffering is willed, transfigured, diefied, where suffering is a form of great delight.

Friedrich Nietzsche in Will to Power, fragment 853

Nothing says heartbreak like good country music. Here’s a few about the other woman:

Patsy Cline: She’s got You

Loretta Lynn: Other Woman
The coal miner’s daughter.

Dolly Parton: Jolene
What a fantastic song. What a voice. [Also, check the White Stripes cover version]

An Open Letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos, By Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Daily News:

Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,

It’s hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you signed off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of Philadelphia, a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, “a shameful night for the U.S. media.” It’s hard because - like many other Americans - I am still angry at what I just witnesses, so angry that it’s hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking. Look, I know that “media criticism” - especially when it’s one journalist speaking to another - tends to be a genteel, colleagial thing, but there’s no genteel way to say this.

With your performance tonight - your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters - you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I’m a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues - trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn’t enough space - and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited - to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans’ benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues….

[more…]

They’re called turntablists, and Montreal’s has had some good ‘uns over the years.

Kid Koala: Drunk Trumpet

Dj A-Track: at the ITF

Scratch Bastid: Scribble Jam 07

Dante’s Inferno: Cori reads; Gustave Doré illustrates; and lucid videoifies.

Dan Hill has a wonderful posting of Monocle design notes. There’s much good and thought-provoking stuff in there, particularly if you are interested in text as a medium, and the thinking behind the next generation of media, which sees web and print as different, and complementary, and builds both accordingly. This struck me particularly for some reason:

In terms of user generated content, or user discussion of Monocle pieces, my view was that we didn’t need comments on the site as people increasingly have their own spaces to talk, discuss, comment - whether that’s blogs and discussion fora, or the social software of Facebook et al. So a more progressive approach would be to ensure that everything is linkable and kept online - with clean, permanent URL structures - thus encouraging people to point to articles from the comfort of their own sites. At some point, we could begin to aggregate responses to Monocle editorial, Technorati-style, perhaps (it’s a development of a strategy I’d outlined at the BBC, which there was also predicated on ‘tear-off strips’ of content as well, enabling people to grab BBC media and build a blog entry around it).

Adam Greenfield wasn’t so taken by Monocle, which echoes my reaction years ago to Tyler Brulé’s previous magazine venture, Wallpaper: basically, a fancy mag for rich people who like to covet well-designed, and really expensive, things, and travel to exotic places to have experiences other people aren’t smart/rich/good-looking/adventurous/enlightened enough to contemplate. (Which is fine, but usually doesn’t interest me for all that long).

I’ve never read Monocle, and though I admire the web site, it’s never pulled me in for whatever reason. It might just be because the bespoke tailoring is for a kind of suit I don’t like to wear.

Glenn Gould: J.S.Bach’s Partita #2

Thelonious Monk: Round Midnight

Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On (1957)

This is great: internetisshit.org.

Of course in lots of ways it isn’t shit, but in many ways it is. So, what do you and I do about it? We can either: a) cut back our time on/commitment to the web, or b) find ways to make it less shit; find good, important things to do on the web, and do them.

One of the things I’ve been lamenting about twitter is that it’s replaced del.icio.us as the “place where I put interesting links” … ie. links my friends might be interested in. This means that I don’t really have a good, structured repository of links like I used to have with delicious. The problem is that twitter and delicious do a similar thing - let you share information - from a totally different philosophical starting point.

Delicious is a database designed to collect and organize URLs, which you can also share.

Twitter is a conversational tool, that also allows you to share URLs.

So delicious is built as an organizable archive; while twitter is built as an ephemeral transmission device.

But what I’ve found is that I want to do both: transmit interesting links, but *also* archive them for future reference. So I want to link the two services. I asked on Twitter if anyone knew how; Jordan (blog - twitter) pointed me to twitticious (review), by Alex Girard which, I think, does exactly what I want, unfortunately with some problems, but the meat of what I want twitticious does:

1. I post a URL to twitter, with a bit of text
2. twitticious then sends that post to delicious, with the twit text as the title, and the URL as the URL

I now am able to transmit my twits, and archive the URLs in a nicely structured/able database.

It’s so simple. And all you have to do to get it to work is:
-give twitticious your twitter name
-give twitticious your delicious name/password (hopefully notprobably too much of a security threat).

Problem 1: the delicious entries aren’t tagged, so you have to do that in a separate step.
Potential Solution: have twitticious automatically tag: “from:twitter” … so I can easily find & tag those entries

Problem 2: twitticious uses the twitter’s tinyurl as the URL it posts to delicious
Potential solution: could the true URL be extracted and posted instead?

Problem 3: Apparently it can’t be turned off
Potential Solution: you could just change your delicious pw, and that should do the trick, I think.

UPDATE: Problem 4: The password thing. Probably too much of a security threat.
Potential solution: I don’t know.

(PS what do you think gives the CIA more information: my Facebook account or my del.icio.us account?)

Since we were kids, most of us got emotionally attached to things that aren’t real: cartoons, teddy bears, and talking cars, for instance. Usually these attachments are built on the stories that surround, for instance, our teddy bears - stories we create. In the case of cartoons, it’s other people’s stories.

But there’s something different, exciting, and scary happening here. Watch this, and tell me what you feel when a) the guy kicks the machine, and b) the machine slips on the ice.

I found it heartbreaking watching the machine try to keep its balance on the ice. “Go little guy, go!” I thought. And I thought the guy was a real jerk for kicking it… yet I’ve kicked many a machine that hasn’t done what I wanted it to do.

UPDATE: zeke points out that this is a military robot…I know! That’s what’s crazy, but when those feeble feet were skidding on the ice I reacted - involuntarily - with pity.

Here’s another one that really got me emotionally:

The movements of these giant contraptions are so organic that it’s hard *not* to think of them as sentient somehow, and to react accordingly.

Finally, here’s an amazing CGI woman, not quite lifelike, but damn close.

So what’s striking about all this is how important movement is in our emotional reactions to things. Part of that suggests that we’re getting closer to loveable robots. But another thing is to consider the information that gets lost in text-based communication.

When I was at university, I worked as a waiter at the student pub, Alfie’s. We had DJs, but I used to come in a little early for my shifts, and they let me “spin” a bit before things started up. I usually got around to playing jazzy funky stuff, but I’d often start out with a little bit of the rock, as well as some roll; not big anthems, but those kinds of songs that sort of started you off slow and then got you going. Here’s a trio of wax I remember slappin’ on the turntables.

Led Zeppelin: Over The Hills And Far Away Music (1973)
I love when the big guitars kick in at 1:27 … the rest of the song’s a bit of a let down, but worth it for the big three-chord chop that kicks you in the butt.

Bob Seeger: Night Moves (1976)
Hmm. I’ve never seen this video before, which seems to have been made in the 1990s. Can’t say I like it much. And I’m not sure what I think of this song now, but it’s got a nice gravelly sumpin that works in a stinky bar when you’re setting up before the crowds get there (ps: is that Joey from Friends at 2:05? … I think so … )

The Clash: Jimmy Jazz (1979)
I usually played the studio version from London Calling, but this live version’s got a whole other bit of charm going on (from their 16-night Times Square residency in 1980, I think). A song like Jimmy Jazz is great because you can go in so many different directions from it: punk rock, R&B, jazz, reggae, soul. Man, the Clash was good.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, and the question comes up often enough: why not license the recordings as creative commons/non-commercial instead? The question came up recently and here was my answer:

So, why should LibriVox recordings be in the public domain, rather than a creative commons license?

LibriVox comes out of a number of ideas: the idealism & pragmatic successes of the free software movement, the collaborative methodology (+ “it needn’t be perfect to be useful”) of wikipedia, lessig’s defense of the commons, and the alternative licensing of creative commons works, the podcasting platform which democratized distribution of media, the astoundingly useful work of project gutenberg, that has been toiling away since 1971 making public domain texts available to anyone for free, and finally brewster kahle’s internet archive and the vision of universal access to all human knowledge.

one of the important ideas behind LibriVox was this: a vibrant public domain is essential for a healthy society, and is essential for innovation - which can also be expressed as: “finding solutions to problems.” having a wide and vibrant public domain - of ideas, texts, learning, science, open source code, audio recordings, art etc. - means that as we face problems of one kind or another, we have at our disposal a whole host of tools and information and building blocks that will help us find solutions. we’ve seen in the past few decades, however, a move against this idea of public intellectual space - broadly the the movement towards protection of “intellectual property.” we’ve seen this across all sectors of society, from how universities treat their scientific research, to patenting of life, patents on processes, the abusive and self-destructive suing of fans by music companies and hollywood. I oppose much of this stuff on a number of grounds: one is a moral objection to the greed of companies who wish to extend their ownership beyond where it had ever been imagined previously. The other objection is more pragmatic: that allowing companies to do this will stifle innovation, and in the long run will be very damaging to our societies.

so LibriVox - besides being a project about making audiobooks - was originally conceived of as a small bulwark in a larger moral, intellectual and political battle around the value of the “public domain” broadly defined. And part of that defense is this idea that people can and will and should build on the public domain to make new things and provide new more innovative solutions to problems. LibriVox would make the audio recordings, make them available, and the hope has always been that others would find great things to do with them. The ebay cottage industry, which annoys some people, is a good example: we have not figured out how to provide CDs of recordings to people, yet people want them. it would take more work and organization, and it would be nice if we could do that for free. but we can’t. so these other people download our files, burn CDs and sell them to people who want them. The end result is that more people get to listen to (inexpensive) public domain literature they wish to listen to (and wish to pay for), some ebayers have some added revenue generated from spreading great literature throughout the world, maybe more people hear about LibriVox (but maybe not). some people see that as a problem, but I certainly don’t.

But I hope people will come up with even more useful things to do with LibriVox recordings, and if they are commercial, I just can’t see any problem with that. the “thing” that they will be doing may be using LV recordings, but it certainly won’t be replicating what LV does already. they will be doing something new and hopefully interesting, probably educationally useful, and even if it IS nike selling sneakers with gord’s recording of Walden, well, at least more people might get turned on to Walden (though I assure you Nike can afford to hire someone to record a chunk of Walden).

so the question around licensing became this: do we want to limit how people use librivox recordings? what is *wrong* with commercial uses? as long as the audio remains accessible, and free for all to use forever, then I saw no reason why we should limit anything - limiting would just mean that in the scheme of things, fewer people would listen to the recordings we have made. and in my calculus of the universe, that’s a bad thing: I think the universe will be a better place the more people listen to LibriVox recordings.

But beyond that sort of pragmatic thinking, there is a wider philosophical question about ownership, control, and the act of truly giving something away. I think creative commons is a wonderful tool, and it changed the way I thought about art. but it maintains this idea: I own this work and you may do with it just what I say you may do. now that’s fine: I license, for instance, my personal blog writing like this. but LibriVox is more radical than this. LibriVox says: we make these recordings, and we give them away, no strings attached. use them as you like: you don’t have to ask permission or tell us about it, or do anything, just use them as you like. they are yours as much as they are ours now. we have gifted them to the universe.

That’s a pretty radical idea, far more radical than CC which says: here are the terms under which I allow you to use my work.

It’s radical and it’s liberating as well, because in some sense one’s ownership of things is a two way street, and the things you own in some sense own you too - ownership means you have certain responsibilities to that thing, including monitoring how other people use it. breaking that ownership bond is a powerful sort of experiment.

There are of course some very important pragmatic reasons for a public domain license rather than creative commons: public domain means we just don’t have to worry about it. we don’t have to chase anyone, or ask for checks or tell them they can’t use such and such to do so and so, we don’t have to hirer lawyers and sue our fans or anyone else. The files are there for all to use, and all we have to do is concern ourselves with our objective which is:

To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.

Along those lines, we didn’t want anyone to ever have to question which LibriVox license a certain audio falls under. it’s all the same, all public domain, and anyone can use it for whatever they like. period. answering questions is easy. having multiple licenses would have made that a headache for people, including us.

There is one final very important point, which I had not really thought about until Michael Hart of Gutenberg told me about it recently. US copyright law has extended and extended again the term of copyright, currently 95 years after publication date. this means that nothing has gone into the public in a very long time. and if copyright law-making continues on like this, there will be another extension when the next batch of public domain stuff is currently scheduled to click over. so, possibly, nothing new will ever go into the public domain again.

In the old days, there was about a 50-50 split: 50% of texts were in the public domain, 50% under copyright. every year more and more texts came into being, but a whole swath of things went into the public domain, and the ratio kept more or less the same. that was a healthy for society because people had much easier access to those texts that went into the public domain.

That’s not happening anymore. so the public domain is shrinking as a ratio of available knowledge.

Which brings another point: creative commons does not, in fact, make any contribution to the public domain, because the term of creative commons licenses is the same as for copyright (i think, that is: 95 years after publication). So creative commons in fact does NOTHING to protect or enhance the public domain - it only creates a new class of copyright protection that is much more liberal than previous incarnations.

So LibriVox is a small beacon of light in this policy question, slowly adding to the public domain while all around the public domain is shrinking. this is important in some broad sense beyond anything particular we do at librivox. at least I think it is.

Having said all that, I understand why some people don’t want their recordings in the public domain. but that’s fine, there are many other places to put audio up on the web. people don’t need LirbiVox to add recordings to the web. we represent just one little corner of the audio world. our corner is this: we make free public domain audio versions of public domain texts. if people want to help (many have) that’s great. if they don’t, then that’s OK too, there’s no reason people ought to be forced to make public domain recordings …

But that’s what LibriVox is for, making public domain audio recordings, and giving them away to the world.

The Astronauts: Firewater (1963)
Looks like a good party. Do you think the guy on the couch is gonna score with that girl? From the movie, Surf Party.

Dick Dale & The Del Tones: Surfing/Miserlou (1962)
Intro is the vocal “Surfing,” followed by the instrumental “Miserlou,” which is a traditional Greek folk song, with versions of it common throughout the Middle East. Here it’s reinterpreted by the legendary Dick Dale, who was born in Lebanon to a Lebanese father and Polish mother. You can hear all those influences in this tune (made re-famous in Pulp Fiction).

The Atlantics: Bombora (1963)
Australia’s best-known surf band. Bombora is the Aboriginal term for waves breaking over rock shelves.

Some real audio treats this week at earideas/wednesday picks: SciFi loses a great one, with the death of Arthur C. Clarke; a beautiful and tragic story of death in the Mossdale caves; and the mystery of Bobby Dunbar.

[thanks to Matt for the tip on dunbar]