Having spent a previous gig at this venue trying, and failing, to actually 'see' Imogen Heap, I arrived just before doors opened and took up a decent spot right in the centre of the balcony. Good spot for recording some of the tunes with my Flip (YouTube links below). First up was Crazy Arm who's twin Gibson SG attack made them sound a bit like AC/DC doing Brit country (a good thing, BTW), and they were followed by Chuck Regan. Chuck's quite a trad country rocker, his voice is ragged and he stomps his massive boots over the venue like he owns it. Great.
The main event, then, kicked off with Photosynthesise (which is last Bristol show finished with, great continuity) and then ran through a decent selection of songs from Turner's various albums. One thing that I always enjoy about these gigs is that the audience immediately become part of the performance, singing, shouting and often drowning out the band, most prosaically on Try This at Home and this shows the dedication of the fans (as did the Frank Turner + Me 4 Ever T-Shirts that many girls were wearing) and the catchiness of the songs themselves.
My favourite tune of the evening was To Take You Home (which I didn't record, damn!). In addition to being a really smart song lyrically, the drummer's use of the floor tom was joyous to see (as was the bassist who always reminds me of the robots from the cover of Yoshimi vs The Pink Robots for some reason).
I'm not usually a fan of early finishes (Frank finished at 9.30 to allow some crappy club to go on), but this time I managed to scoot across town and catch Cassette Culture doing their first gig and The Kabeedies, which was quite cool.
I work at the University of the West of England as an instructor in journalism. Most of the courses I teach on have a strong practice element, meaning a lot of computer use, and the majority of the students are girls/young women. I hear, almost on a weekly basis, the deathless phrase "I'm rubbish with computers." And in all but one notable case, this was uttered by a girl.
Where did this idea come from?
"The omission of women from the history of computer science perpetuates misconceptions of women as uninterested or incapable in the field [...] rendered invisible."
Jennifer S. Light - When Women Were Computers
Light uses the example of the largely female Ballistics Computers which were employed by the US military in the second world war to provide calculations used for artillery and projectile weapons. These jobs, though involving complex mathematics, came to be labeled as 'clerical work' and the men who had previously done the job (not as well, apparently) went off to become well-respected and better paid 'engineers'.
So we have a moment of division in science and technology (neither the first nor the last) that, despite the successes of feminism in the 20th century, seem to remain. In the past we might have put this down to biology, poverty of expectation, nurture or playing up to stereotypes. Regardless of the reasons it is a failure on the part of any 'developed' nation to ignore half the population.
From my discussions with colleagues who have children (and in my own experience) the next generation (or the one after that, at least) will be different. These are children raised by parents who have grown up with computers, and computer games, as a major part of their lives; who work, learn and play in environments where the computer is both the main conduit to the outside world and the tool with which they organise their lives. Computers are more available, but it's going to take some inspirational women (beyond the business of computers) to encourage more girls to get into programming - web design (the nexus of design and code) and digital journalism (design plus interface) might be great starting points. So that's where I'm going to kick off.
This is a long-winded way of me saying that if you come into one of my classes you can expect two things regardless of your gender, experience or knowledge.
"I'm rubbish at computers" is not acceptable and will get your name on the Sad Face.
Code will become part of what you do. You will (probably) love it.
I was going to write about Anita Borg, but thought there wouldn't be much point in rehashing stuff you'll find elsewhere on the internet. And the truth is, I don't know enough about any woman in technology to hold fourth on their influence on me (apart from perhaps Imogen Heap). Women are under-represented in technology and this has to change. You can't, after all, build a knowledge economy if half the population are not confident enough to actually sit down and play with software.
When the editor-in-chief of the city's biggest paper begins a speech with the words 'I am one of the most internet and technology aware editors in the industry...' you kind of know he's going to spend the next five or ten minutes proving comprehensively through his words and responses that he doesn't have a clue. And so it was with last night's panel discussion on how new media can improve journalism and news media in general.
There were two panel discussions - the first explicitly on Social Media, and the second on the challenges of the Internet - and they both provided examples where the mainstream either doesn't understand new media or actively misrepresents it.
I was looking forward to Stephen Chittenden's explanation of his experiment in which he used social media as an exclusive news discovery platform for a week, but you soon realise that the whole premise of the experiment was set up to fail.
Chittenden didn't like Facebook, Bebo or MySpace because it demanded engagement and effort, so he looked elsewhere. Twitter, he said, allowed you to lurk, to consume more or less passively, without the need to contribute and so he didn't get much out of his experience.
Surprise!
The point of social media is to engage, that's the social bit. Without it you just have Media... oh, wait. OK, I see the problem. It's not the same as the BBC. It's not a lecture, and if you don't engage it's like being the person sitting quietly in the kitchen as the party goes on around you. You might hear snippets of gossip, but you'll most likely miss the context.
The second session had less of a BBC focus with representatives from both ITV and the Evening Post. Liz Hannam was representing the commercial broadcaster and she had good news about cuts, especially the 40% of cuts in news jobs. Turns out budget cuts are great! Journalists get to cover a wider range of stories and the 'craft editors' don't have to deal with the donkey work (which the journalists are now doing themselves) and so are free to be more creative with the top stories. Hannam was very authoritative about the future of local news on TV. She said: "Audiences don't want change."
Next up was the previously mentioned Most Internet Savvy Editor in the Region. Mike Norton has an impressive list of job titles, including managing the large 'This Is...' city websites and is also peripherally (I think) involved in the DMGT's new 'People' hyperlocal news sites. Norton hates bloggers. And he specifically hates the Bristol Blogger and, I think also, Bristol 24/7 ('anyone thinks they can set up a site with a Wordpress account and do journalism... well it's not journalism'). Despite the bluff and bluster, what really came across was fear of change. And more importantly fear of the audience. What Norton was essentially putting forward was twin arguments of professionalism and economic bartering involved in traditional newswork. His journalists were skilled in asking questions, gathering facts and gaining access to sources (nothing about how access to those sources is maintained, though... or why particular sources are better than others). Bloggers were just illiterate, trouble-makers in love with the sound of their own fingers typing away (I'm paraphrasing here but you get the drift). He was quite angry.
The one thing that Norton did get right (and sadly it was just about the only thing) was to be scared. Whether he likes it or not, print journalism and the business model that has sustained it, is dying at a rapid rate. Something like the iPad will shore up the model for a short while, but the audience (sorry Liz) will set the pace and the audience know more than you.
As the snow chucks itself down outside my hotel window in Dortmund, I finally have a chance to reflect on my involvement in this large European Project. I also have a couple of bottles from the bier vending machine which should help lubricate my brain somewhat and the News Quiz on the iPlayer.
Dortmund is an interesting city*; we went to an old, abandoned coal mine last night which had apparently been designed as a sort of simulation (or simulacra) of a small German town with buildings designed to give the feel of a church, townhall and firestation in order to be lipstick for the company's other piggish mines and create the myth of a progressive industry in the mind of potential investors.
Anyway, onto MediaAcT, an academic project which seems to be designed to examine the current state of media regulation in the 13 represented states and (I think) suggest innovative ways in which an ethical framework might be promoted to traditional and new media journalists. This has got a proper grant from the EU and I'm doing a sort of assistant-to-Mediawise role and hopefully advising on the creation of a digital discussion platform for the future.
The whole thing kicked off with a pretty interesting discussion on the problem of media ethics in the digital age which was attended by, among others, Mercedes Bunz from The Guardian and Yavus Baydar, a member of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen. The discussion was alright, but got stuck on the issue of institutional ethics rather than the challenges and opportunities of of digital media, so I'm not sure it did as promised.
I've actually enjoyed the discussions on the state of each nation's press regulations (summaries will be posted on the project's website), but today I was slightly preoccupied on seeing how the whole project has been reported in the press. The first thing I noticed was the lack of coverage outside of the immediate area; the story was covered in a few German papers and Heise Online. Maybe it'll turn up in other places as we go on. Or maybe not.
Anyway, onto my point. I decided to add a column to Tweetdeck on my iPod which would show tweets on the hashtag MediaAcT, thinking that some of the attendees might be posting, or there might be comment from those who might be interested in the project. The thing that came up most was a link to the Heise article which has simplified what is a pretty complex idea which is all about research rather than regulation down to one problematic phrase: 'Die Wachhunde im Internet'. Or, in English 'The Internet Watchdogs'.
I watched over the day as th article was tweeted and retweeted by various prominent(ish) German online news outlets with no context. From the headline alone, and if you started reading the actual article, you're probably going to get the impression that the EU is funding a project to work out the best way of 'regulating' the blogosphere. It's a fantastic example of what I termed (polishes fingers on shirt) social amplification of a story, and it works in the same way as the old institutional spiral of amplification, except it's individuals or entities on Twitter who have become the trusted sources rather than the Daily Mail or the Express.
And there's a big problem. A really big one.
This is the kind of project that needs to engage with people involved in non-traditional forms of journalism to kick start a conversation about the ethics of blogging and how an institution that is heavily regulated (such as a newspaper or broadcaster) can work within an ethical framework - and compete with those who aren't heavily regulation - as they investigate non-traditional newswork. And so to have a meme about an online media watchdog hanging around like a bad smell is going to make it harder for the project to engage with the people who actually matter in this case.
I think it will be pretty interesting to see just how the organisers deal with this issue and also to see how far the meme spreads.
The early ideal of the web was read/write. That is, it would be as easy to contribute to a page as it would to consume. Early adopters were slightly Utopian believing the end of 'big media' was imminent and a new age of personal expression - to be inevitably followed by a new age of personal freedom - was there for the taking.
This idea turned sour, though, as big media reasserted itself and convinced most users that the internet, this symmetrical masterpiece, was just another broadcast medium and the best way to enjoy it was to simply consume. Large corporations like the BBC (with some notable exceptions), Warner Brothers, News International and newcomers such as AOL and Yahoo! were focused on pushing content into the users' living rooms with the complicity of Microsoft and its Internet Explorer.
You can't keep a good idea down, though, and as the 20th century faded, blogs started appearing and companies like Blogger, later bought by Google, LiveJournal and SixApart started giving users the opportunity to talk amongst themselves and, most revolutionary, to talk to the rest of the world.
Blogs proliferated but it was Facebook (which distilled the blog down to a short status update) and YouTube which really convinced mainstream users that they could be creative and reach an audience, no matter how small. These two sites are still a major force in personal creativity, but they're causing a problem for the rest of the media.
Who would have thought that sitting down and discussing stuff with friends across the world would be more interesting than watching The Bill, Big Brother and the ads in between? And who would have thought that watching someone doing a finger dance to Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger would be more enjoyable than Daft Punk's own (very good) video?
Now most laptops come with cameras, card readers, ports, microphones, software and everything else that makes creating content a doddle. Should the urge strike you, you can now design your own newspaper (you can even print it), write a novel, make a porn film from Lego, write and release your own song, tell the world how annoyed you are about the plastic slick in the Atlantic and, crucially, convince others to join you in some small act of direct action. It's not much, but it's the promise of Berners-Lee's read/write web. Read, Watch, Listen and Respond.
Consume no more, go forth and create!
And so to Apple's recently release iPad. I watched the introduction presentation with anticipation about how this new magic slate would enable even greater levels of personal expression, especially in education. But what turned up was quite literally closed off to the outside world. No card readers for your camera, no camera for your impromptu version of Bohemian Rhapsody, no microphone to capture your rants.
Barely anything that can't be consumed through Apple's growing collection of iStores. Music, books, films, games, software all available from a single source. Apple says what you can do, see, listen to; and Apple is a control freak. It's also a fluffy liberal* corporation that will skim off 30 per cent of every transaction that goes through its stores.
Of course, it's a lovely looking thing that might transform your consumer habits. But it is the absolute opposite of the way the internet has been travelling for the last 10 years. We risk giving away the creativity and access we've achieved in the rush to buy something elegant. John Naughton suggested in The Observer that we might sleepwalk into an Orwellian society through the techno-equivalent of Huxley's Soma.
Reading Naughton's critique actually brought up a different image for me, and that was the humans in Wall-E (a film ironically made by Pixar - CEO: Steve Jobs) who are doomed to consume while the world falls apart around them and their bodies grow ever fatter. In fact, you'll see they're carrying around iPad's around with them. Though obviously this is the iPad 10gSDX Plus.
The iPad may be the last gasp of the old media, but if there's no alternative, or users can be convinced by a seamless user experience that seamlessly pushes content and offers no option to respond, then our communications revolution will be stolen again.
* I think I meant to write rapacious capitalist there?
It was announced last week that the population of Facebook now exceeds that of America. Since mid-September the social networking service has added 50 million users, which means it now finds itself with 350 million of them.
Why no comments option on John Naughton's columns? He should embrace the tech and the community. Oh, and write something that isn't as shallow as a duck pond in the Sahara.
This unprecedented project is the result of weeks of negotiations between the papers to agree on a final text, in a process that mirrors the diplomatic wrangling likely to dominate the next 14 days in Copenhagen.'
This looks like a pretty good example of how RSS syndication works, but with added paper and translations. Already, though, I can see pencils being sharpened as newspaper editors transgress that mythical boundary of 'objectivity'. The Guardian's commentary is quite useful too in terms if discussing a newspaper's responsibility to its community and its own ethical policies.
This is a film about expectations and anticipation. The trailers have done such a good job at creating aprehension for some people in the audience that the mere movement of a door is cause for sharp intakes of breath or a quiet shreik. So this is two reviews.
Alison, my wife, came along because she'd already seen New Moon, we both refuse to watch 2012, and I was interested in seeing this. She wasn't actually predisposed to watching - in fact, she bought along a dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in case she got bored and wanted to sit in the foyer and read. I had enjoyed Blair Witch and was interested in seeing how director Orin Peli transplanted a similar idea - found footage, domestic technology, unnamed horror - into a banal suburban setting. So you might say we sat down in the cinema with varying expectations.
The basic premise is this. Micah has bought an expensive high-def video camera to capture evidence of the haunting that has plagued his girlfriend Katie since she was eight years old. And that's it. Instead of gore, torture and expensive CGI you get tension, jumps and a growing sense of dread. Instead of hyperfast cuts and a cool soundtrack, the audience is offered long, static shots, wobbly cameras and no audio beyond the bickering of the couple, bumps in the night and one particularly memorable scream.
Alison thought the frights were ineffective and the bits in between boring, whereas I jumped a few times (mostly at inane things like a change in lighting) and really enjoyed the relationship between the couple. Micah's beliefs were central to the whole production. His desire to 'capture' was the same as Mike TeeVee's assertion that something hasn't happened unless it's on the screen, and his fear of losing control over his home put Katie, rather than any particular demon, in the position of invader; a rogue element in his perfect, boy-ish environment. The camera was an instrument of control.
The fact that Micah worked alone (the default alpha male in the household) made his fear of being usurped, his stupid attempts at machismo and the belief that he would be able to 'save her' entirely logical.
Ultimately the film succeeds because the relationship between the couple is believable and the fear of a stranger in the house is something we can all understand. The interpretations of the story's subtext (domestic abuse, sexual and economic inequality, the inability of men to grow up, the prospect of children) are well worth investigating, but it's also pretty good for those who understand that to hear the blood pumping in your ears, or to feel your heart thumping in your chest is a good thing.
Tim Quirk was the singer of punk-pop outfit Too Much Joy, signed by Warner Bros. in 1990. Now he's an executive at an online music service, giving him insight on digital sales data and just how labels fudge their numbers.
My book royalty statements are faintly depressing, but at least they don't have figures like -$395,277 on them. This article makes me feel glad we never got beyond publishing negotiations with my band.
As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google News and Google Search? In fact, they can do both - the two aren't mutually exclusive. There are a few ways we work with publishers to make their subscription content discoverable. Today we're updating one of them, so we thought it would be a good time to remind publishers about some of their options.
Back to the Paywall debate, and Google* has done what might easily be called 'calling Rupert's bluff'. Essentially this move gives publishers the option of having their content labeled as 'subscription only' in Google's search results when a user visits a particular site a number of times in a day. So basically, you'll do a search for 'Tiger Woods'. There will be 2,000 results, one of which is from The Sun and will be labeled 'Subscription Required) while the other 1,999 will be freely accessible.
The next step will be a button in the Advanced Search called 'Show only free content' which will remove Murdoch's walled gardens entirely.
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