The internet changes everything: News

Tell me if you've read Digg.

Now how about Google news? How about StumbleUpon, or any of these aggregator-type services. They bring together articles either popularly voted upon by the users (Digg), selected to match the user's interests (StumbleUpon), or some combination of the two. Sites like this get a lot of traffic because they deliver what their consumers want.

And for this reason they are tainted. Very tainted.

I realized this, interestingly enough, watching a roundtable discussion on ABC. I believe it's George Stephanopoulos who leads these, and they are actually quite intriguing. It was a comment by George Will that got me thinking. The discussion was on the election, and on the ad campaigns used by the candidates. Will is a fairly conservative political commentator, and this is why I found it so interesting. I found it interesting because I agreed with what he said.

George Will is a very intelligent person, no doubt, but it is important to note that he tolds generally opposing views to mine. Now, this should not be a surprise to a reasonable person. A man like George Will gets into politics because he is smart, not because of his partisan views. And yet, I spent a summer with the internet and no TV, getting my political commentary from the internet.

That was a mistake.

Now, articles on Huffington Post and Think Progress, while inflammatory, do contain interesting and pertinent information. This past presidency has been an ordeal for the American economy, as well as the Constitution, and liberal analysts and pundits have plenty to get pissed about. I mean, there is a fair bipartisan consensus that this administration has been unkind to the economy.

My mistake was not in reading articles in sites like Think Progress. My mistake was reading the commenters.

Now, first I will say that the average troll on that site makes Republicans sound like Nazi Earth-Rapists who wear the American flag as a bathrobe, and can't complete a sentence without the phrase '9/11'. Jeez. But the regulars are able to boil down liberalism to catchy phrases like 'McSame' and 'Rethuglicans' that make me think no one knows how to write any more. The fist-pumping empty rhetoric makes me swear that I'm on a propaganda movie shoot in communist Russia. It is THAT bad.

I learned very quickly in my first policy classes that the reason multi-party systems exist is because there aren't single right answers. And usually, as we've seen here, one can only determine if a solution is wrong after it's been tried. Now, that logic alone secures my choice for president, because anyone who publicly announces that they will continue to try failed ideas is crazy.

That being said, everyone on both sides needs to listen to both candidates. They need to find out everything they can, because regardless of who gets in office, we as citizens have our own responsibility that we previously failed at, and that is keeping our elected officials accountable. They represent you, so make sure they know it. And don't let some catchphrase-spewing uneducated moron, left or right, tell you otherwise.

The internet changes everything: Music

The music industry has always been at the forefront of culture, at least from the perspective of a college student. Even in our lifetimes, we have seen bands start as local acts, and slowly build until they garner national, and sometimes even international exposure. Now, bands like Radiohead have gained a lot of press through their gimmicks, namely releasing an album online for a negotiable price. Now, people may point to examples like this as to how the internet is 'changing everything', but I'd argue that, at the most, these marketing gimmicks are reactionary, only examples of how the mainstream is adapting, rather than examples of change itself. Even a band like Radiohead, which has released several mainstream albums, is too old to be fully affected by the changes that have been created in the past couple years.

The main difference in the music industry now is time. The time it takes for band to hit it big has gone down dramatically. It is no longer surprising to see a band gain press coverage from mp3s posted on their Myspace page, whereas it used to be nearly impossible to gain media attention without some sort of record contract. This has a very interesting consequence, at least from my perspective: the 'indie' music industry is dying. From my observation, most indie labels support artists that are either second-tier in terms of their touring and record sales, or beginners who will eventually make it big. This is soon to be no more, and it has little to do with media consolidation. The big item here is cost. Recording equipment costs money, and it used to be that you needed a label, even a small label, to defray some of the costs of recoridng and distributing your music. Now, this is no longer the case, Recording equipment is much cheaper (software like ACID or Reason or Garage Band costs hundred of dollars, compared to thousands for a decent multitrack recorder), and distribution is, at least at the first level, essentially free. Many people see Myspace as a black mark on the internet, but the one good thing it has done is democratize the process of distributing music. Relatively unknown bands post their mp3s next to big acts, who also have Myspace pages. It's a great place for finding music, my doing so prevented only by the fact that joining would require me to have a Myspace page.

Now that the costs of making and distributing music have gone down, the need for small labels diminishes as well. Either you can make the music in your garage, and send it out on the internet, or you're popular enough to be paid by a major label for distributing your music through their conventional channels.

The interesting thing through all this is the backdrop set on the music industry by mp3 downloading, and the subsequent reaction by the RIAA. As more and more artists sign on to the unconventional modes of distribution, and the profit channel of conventional album sales is eroded by piracy, how long will it take before someone catches on, and the industry format is changed completely?

It's at least something to think about.

The New Republic, via Digg

Rich People Flock to Inner City, Poor Move to Suburbs

This article, which I found on Digg, details many of the changes happening in the demographic structure of cities. There are some oblique mentions of New Urbanism, but mostly the article centers around the phenomenon of gentrification.

It will be very interesting to see how developers react to the changes brought about by higher fuel prices. It is possible that the demand to spread out, which creates so much of the sprawl we see in the suburbs, will be replaced by a more intelligent form of development. One can only hope.

Virtual Reality: As If One Wardrobe Wasn't Enough

These days, virtual reality is viewed differently than when the idea was conceived in the 70s and 80s. Instead of gloves and goggles, a more simple approach to virtual interaction is accepted, and the resulting 'virtual chatrooms' have a decent number of users. The most well-known of these virtual chat programs is Linden Labs' Second Life, which has used framework similar to that of an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game, the best example of which is probably World of Warcraft) to give users environments to interact with, as well as a lot of freedom to make their own zones within the program. Recently, Google has released their own virtual chat program, Lively. Like in Second Life and others, users create an avatar with which they project themselves in the program and interact with others. However, unlike Second Life, Lively has a series of independent rooms, instead of one continuous area. Users can make their own rooms, and link directly to them from their personal websites. Though this format is slightly different, the overall purpose is the same: provide an environment for virtual interaction.

Programs like this are direct descendants of virtual reality as it was initially imagined, though one may not think of it at first. Science Fiction authors of the 80s spoke of 'The Net', a separate plane of existence where one would interact with computer networks, artificial intelligences, and other 'console cowboys'. William Gibson spoke at length about this type of interaction in his novel Neuromancer, as well as several others. What Gibson envisioned, as well as others, was that a direct connection to the human brain would be the most efficient way to interface with a computer. This direct brain interface idea persisted through science fiction, and into popular culture through such movies as The Matrix.

In short, direct brain interfaces don't exist. This is at least part of the reason that virtual reality in its literal form never caught on; the gloves and goggles interfaces were clumsy, expensive, and didn't add anything to the experience. This does leave the question: why do we feel the need to project ourselves into a network? What is wrong with standard forms of communication?

I believe that the move toward virtual chat, when it started, made some assumptions about online anonymity that did not turn out to be true, or at least were not true across larger demographics. Though there are people that want to protect their identity online, I don't believe there are as many who will actively try to make an alternate online identity. Social Networking sites like Myspace and Facebook seem to show that, to the contrary, most people online are willing to share who they are, even to a much larger degree than a neutral observer would think is prudent.

The sort of anonymity provided by an online chat program is easy to get for free, and therefore hard to justify paying for, whether that's in money for Linden dollars, or time it would take to customize a Lively room, or even just run a program like Second Life. The type of people who use these programs are those who take advantage of having a 3d environment. Unfortunately for developers of virtual chat programs, these people are mostly those who like to roleplay online: either gamers, who are well taken care of by actual games like World of Warcraft, or people who use the environment for sex roleplaying, which does not cast the best light on the userbase as a whole.

Virtual reality in its current form has been developed quite heavily, often alongside the computer gaming industry. However, with the ubiquity of text chat, and the seeming lack of value proposition in virtual chatting, I don't think it's going to be a killer app anytime soon. Companies like Google and Linden Labs are going to have to figure out a way to create a demand for the product before they can make any real money off of it. My personal opinion is that it'll be hard to create demand for something no one needs.

What this is all about

Before I expect anyone to care about what I write, I suppose a bit of background information is in order.

I am a college student, entering my senior year at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. I'm majoring in Mechanical Engineering, with a double major in Engineering and Public Policy.
Engineering and Public Policy is about technology interacting with society, specifically on legal and economic terms. The implications of this are widespread, and yet the current attitudes both in politics and among people in general seems to indicate that no one is really paying attention. This worries me, and at least begins to explain why I'm writing.

My goal with this little project is to talk about things that are changing around us, and why they matter. I doubt anyone will argue with me that technology matters in our lives, but I do think that some don't fully appreciate the extent to which this goes.

For instance, what if I told you that I believe that the internet is changing the world of fashion? How about that the internet is responsible for the current shape of the music world, and of music subcultures? What if I said that the nature of architecture and urban planning is changing its direction, because of the current gas prices? We weave a tangled web, and it fascinates me.

My plan is to try and write one or two full length articles a week. Beyond that, I will post things that interest me, often links from Digg or other blogs I read. Hopefully some discussion will occur, but I don't know how many readers it takes to get a decent thread going. That may be for the future.