Atoms work together to make cells. Cells work together to form organisms. Organisms work together to form societies, and societies work together to make cultures.
Getting cultures to work together seems to be the tricky one.
Ok, I’ve calmed down over the Digital Economy Bill a bit now. If you don’t follow my Twitter (and you should, you really should) you may have escaped my incessantly expressed outrage at Lord Mandelson’s old man’s folly which, I am sorry to say, has lost this labour vote in the next election. Labour’s actions over Iraq were unforgivable, yet still to this voter they remained the lesser of two evils. But the day they start messing with my future livelihood, one has to question one’s own priorities.
There is a lot of good in the bill, don’t get me wrong, in fact it is only the parts on copyright and file-sharing where it falls down. But the proposals in this area are so unbelievably, insanely, dangerously wrong that they over-shadow everything else.
The problem is twofold:
1. Firstly, the powers the government are awarding themselves, to shut off internet access to anyone even suspected of file-sharing, are just plain draconian. And placing pressures on ISPs to enforce them will mean many, many innocents will be punished by threatened service providers forced to err on the side of caution.
Removal of one’s internet connection, in an age where most people bank, shop and connect with their friends online is a severity of punishment seemingly understated. It is certainly far beyond the crime, no matter how serious the copyright infringement.
2. Secondly, the gun is pointing in the wrong direction. The aim of the bill is to safeguard Digital Britain’s future. Not it’s past. The weighting towards the needs of copyright holders, at the expense of the new generation of digital media practitioners (the one’s most likely to be cut off, as their net usage might be greater, and less typical, than their neighbours), serves only to protect a fading status quo, not stimulate the new digital economy.
To most young digital practitioners the problem is obscurity, not a failure to maximise their income. Some digital content owners, myself included, are actually in favour of their work being distributed for free via file sharing. They are willing to adapt to the new “abundancy” economics, because they know scarcity economics no longer have the same relevance they once did.
The software industry and the music/film industry face the same issues regarding their ownership of digital content, yet it is only the latter who seem to be struggling. The (younger) software industry is coming up with ever new ways of thinking about digital economies, none of which is reflected in the Bill. Open Source, for example, may suffer. One consequence on insisting everything online comes with a price tag, is that it gets increasingly difficult to give stuff away for free.
At the time of writing the “Don’t Disconnect Us” petition stands at 27,000 signatures. Which isn’t bad (the successful Alan Turing petition had 32,108), but when you compare it to Lily Allen’s (fast becoming the poster girl for copyright confusion) million+ followers on Twitter, it seems but a drop in an ocean of popular ignorance.
Mine is only one opinion, and one vote, in this mess. But, if you are a UK resident, I can only urge you to consider yourself where you would imagine your digital life to be in ten years time, and if this bill serves your needs. And if you disagree with Mandelson’s vision, express your concerns now while it can still make a difference.
Here’s my proposal. On New Years Eve 2009 we close Facebook. Hermetically seal it and drop it in a data mine somewhere, as a noughties time capsule not to be dug up for a minimum of twenty years, when it can be gently mocked on a Channel 4 nostalgia show. We’ll look back on it and laugh at the primitive, puerile crap we used to do back then.
Ok, I still log in perhaps once a week, but I feel a bit dirty every time I do. Even only three years old, it feels hideously clunky and archaic now. And ever since the redesign it has felt to me like visiting my childhood bedroom after suffering a stroke. A place once familiar, now slightly twisted. Even so, I’d now find it difficult to sever all these tenuous connections I have re-established with people I’d once lost touch with (probably for a reason).
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is doing the rounds at the moment, promoting his new book “Delete”, on the value of digital forgetting, how our data trails don’t go away and the dangers thereof. I have talked about this before, and have myself been a victim of private data being used against me, but I still think, having not read the book (uninformed opinion alert) that it isn’t of too much concern.
Although, one thing that does worry me is the effect services such as Facebook have on adolescence and personal development. You can always tell when a Facebook user is of school or college age, because they have a minimum of two or three hundred friends. We wise, cynical old farts might (jealously) insist the majority of the people we knew at this age were probably, at best, acquaintances, but it doesn’t work like that when you’re a kid. It is only when you move on, leave home, go to university, that you grow beyond this stage and start to discover who you really are, and move in more exclusive circles.
Room For Re-invention
An essential part of that personal growth is re-invention. The first thing most young people did when they went to Uni in my day is go through their goth stage, punk stage, emo stage, dope-fiend stage, or whatever was on the fringes that year. This is because for the first time they had the freedom to reinvent themselves, and experiment (and make mistakes) with finding their personal style and identity. This is an important process; it is what separates the individuals from the sheep. It is those without the fear to find themselves who develop both the idiosyncrasy and, more importantly, confidence in that idiosyncrasy, to go out there and change the world.
But surely this is so much more difficult to do while you retain all these virtual connections to the people you went to school with, the people who used to make fun of you of every time you had a haircut, or a new coat. School is all about conformity; that is how the social structure of the playground works. And so is the real world too, if we allow it to be that way. If we enter the world with a status-quo reinforcing web of social connections already in place, it must be so much harder to branch out or grow beyond it.
I may be worrying about nothing. I recently re-read a 10 year old tech-sociology book (for the book, everything is for the book these days) which made a very big deal about how content on demand is going to mean the importance of the 8pm prime time TV slot is going to be lost. The answer that time has given to this problem is: so what? It is simply the way we operate today, from within the entrappings of social media. Hopefully, the iconoclasts of the 21st Century will find their own ways of dealing with it.
“It’s true: Since the 1980s, it has been possible – in principle – to resolve resource allocation problems algorithmically, by computer, instead of needing a market. Markets are wasteful: They allow competition, much of which is thrown on the scrap heap. So why do they persist?”
Manfred shrugs. “You tell me. Conservativism?”
Gianni closes the book and puts it back on the shelf. “Markets afford their participants the illusion of free will, my friend. You will find that human beings do not like being forced into doing something, even if it is in their best interests. Of necessity, a command economy must be coercive – it does, after all, command.”
- Charles Stross Accelerando 2005
We cling to our concept of free will like blood. Declaring one is without free will is akin to admitting you don’t have a sense of humour, it is effectively saying you aren’t human. For what are we without free will – robots; actors; performing monkeys?
Philosophy has wrestled with free will vs determinism for as long as there has been philosophy. In more recent times science has pitched in on the debate too. Physiologist Ben Libet, who died in 2007, conducted a number of experiments in the 1970s on the timing of neural events. His measurements demonstrated that when the decision to perform an action is made, the beginnings of the action occur before the corresponding activity in the consciousness centre of the brain. These findings seem to suggest that the conscious mind, the area we regard as our decision making centre, is actually nothing of the the sort. It is subconscious processes that make all our decisions; the only role of the consciousness is to retrospectively justify these decisions to ourselves.
Our sense of free will, if Libet’s experiments are to be believed, is nothing more than an illusion. It is just another bi-product of our massively over-sized brains. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in quantum mechanics seems to back up this conclusion, I burbled excitedly about this realisation in a post two years ago. But even if we had something more accessible than conceptual psychology or quantum mechanics to prove this point, would we ever be able to accept it?
My answer: who gives a toss? We are certainly the only animal who believes in, or cares about such a concept. The dog I questioned on the matter was very clearly disinterested in the subject, and I suspect his may be the right attitude. Does it really matter whether we have free will, or only the illusion of it? Our actions will still be the same either way. Whether we have a strong grip upon the rudder of destiny, or we are just socks thrown around in the washing machine of chance, our lives will still be the same – messy, chaotic and surprising.
Believing in free will is akin to believing in God. We are welcome to do so, but it’s probably ever-so-slightly nutty of us. If the concept makes us feel better about ourselves, and we can pretend we are more important than all the other bundles of matter in the cosmos, it doesn’t cost us anything, and it doesn’t do us any harm, does it?
Um, yes, I think it probably does do a lot of harm. But that’s another post.
Both of my boys are too young to be interested in any life tips I may have to share right now, and (according to the Nick Cave Conjecture) by the time they are old enough to listen to me I’ll doubtless be so uncool and embarrassing they won’t take me seriously anyway. So, for the ages, I’ll impart everything I know about getting on in life here and now, in a single blog post, and they can then choose to ignore me at their leisure, without having to disturb me when I’m trying to watch the bloody telly.
Success is easy. There’s no “secret” to success. In the absence of luck, privilege or sleeping with the right person, you just need focus, dedication, passion, hard work, persistence and maybe a few good ideas. The only hard bit is finding the right field in which to apply your focus, dedication, passion, hard work, persistence and ideas. This is the challenge.
If you find something you truly love doing, that you care about enough to to be able to dedicate your life to it, the rest comes easy. I can’t claim I’m the expert on this, but I’ve done okay; I have a job that doesn’t make me weep in a morning, or forces me into inebriation every Friday night; that allows me to listen to loud electronic music while I’m working and has earned me the respect of at least seven (at last count) of my colleagues. I’m happy with my lot.
It’s probably too late to steer me off my path of least resistance (especially with you two little darlings bleeding me dry) but I can still give you one epiphet of advice to enable you to do better, and it is this – spend your twenties farting around as much as you can.
This is my message. The thing that needs the hard work is finding the thing you love doing; the thing you could still bear to be doing when you are as old and uncool as your dear old dad, the thing that will still mean something to you long after you’ve got over the need to impress your mates, or bed beautiful ladies, or pay off your gambling debts. And the only way you stand a chance of finding this elusive vocation is by trying everything.
This is the future, and these days adolesence doesn’t end with your teenage years. I believe that at least the first thirty years of one’s life should be dedicated to experimentation, to making mistakes and trying new things, while avoiding anything that might be seen as habit-forming; – religion, hedonism, the civil service, over use of drugs, or Her Majesty’s Forces. There’s plenty of time to worry about making a living , and being a good citizen, later. And, if you find you are afraid to try new things, remember there are enough people on the planet for you to be able to get away with making a total tit of yourself in front of several thousand souls and never having to see them again.
Stick with this plan and you stand at least half a chance of a successful life. And if you haven’t sussed it by thirty, splash around for another ten years or so. Do whatever it takes to find whatever is bareable.
But if you’re not rich enough to support your mom and me by fifty, consider yourself written out the will. No-one likes a sponger.
Manfred has a suite at the Hotel Jan Luyken paid for by a grateful multinational consumer protection group, and an unlimited public transport pass paid for by a Scottish sambapunk band in return for services rendered. He has airline employee’s travel rights with six flag carriers despite never having worked for an airline. His bush jacket has sixty-four compact supercomputing clusters sewn into it, four per pocket, courtesy of an invisible college that wants to grow up to be the next Media Lab. His dumb clothing comes made to measure from an e-tailor in the Philippines he’s never met. Law firms handle his patent applications on a pro bono basis, and boy, does he patent a lot – although he always signs the rights over to the Free Intellect Foundation, as contributions to their obligation-free infrastructure project.
In IP geek circles, Manfred is legendary; he’s the guy who patented the business practice of moving your e-business somewhere with a slack intellectual property regime in order to evade licensing encumbrances. He’s the guy who patented using genetic algorithms to patent everything they can permutate from an initial description of a problem domain – not just a better mousetrap, but the set of all possible better mousetraps. Roughly a third of his inventions are legal, a third are illegal, and the remainder are legal but will become illegal as soon as the legislatosaurus wakes up, smells the coffee, and panics. There are patent attorneys in Reno who swear that Manfred Macx is a pseudo, a net alias fronting for a bunch of crazed anonymous hackers armed with the Genetic Algorithm That Ate Calcutta: a kind of Serdar Argic of intellectual property, or maybe another Bourbaki math borg. There are lawyers in San Diego and Redmond who swear blind that Macx is an economic saboteur bent on wrecking the underpinning of capitalism, and there are communists in Prague who think he’s the bastard spawn of Bill Gates by way of the Pope.
Manfred is at the peak of his profession, which is essentially coming up with whacky but workable ideas and giving them to people who will make fortunes with them. He does this for free, gratis. In return, he has virtual immunity from the tyranny of cash; money is a symptom of poverty, after all, and Manfred never has to pay for anything.
- Charles Stross Accelerando 2005
Accelerando is the new Neuromancer, in that our real world is becoming more like the fiction every time I re-read it.
The nine short stories that make up the book are published under a Creative Commons license, so there are various versions of it available for free online. You can even get it for the iPhone.
Copyright has a cultural purpose; it incentivises artists by enabling them to profit from their work, and prevents others from exploiting them for their own profit. It has a history going back almost as long as the printing press. Modern copyright law is based on the Berne Convention of 1886, and has served us well for a century. But this is also where it falls down, because copyright law is getting increasingly out of touch with the way artists communicate with their audiences today. The legislators of the 19th Century could not have anticipated the technological advances of our last two decades, nor those of the decades to come.
When we have the ability to reproduce and distribute digital work very cheaply, and to very high quality, it might seem copy protection is of even greater importance, because it is so much easier to exploit an artist’s work. But this kind of thinking underestimates the extent of the cultural changes we are living through. An inevitable consequence of the ease of digital production and reproduction is ubiquity. The internet means that all markets are now global markets, and with a playing field this large the problem for the modern artist (and by artist I mean anyone who produces digital content – musicians, filmmakers, writers, programmers, etc) is not protecting your work from improper use, but trying to ensure it is visible in such a crowded space.
There is little point protecting something when there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others with the capability and comparable talent to create work similar to that you offer. The laws of supply and demand dictate that as supply increases, price must drop. And in an economy of abundance, the price of data drops to zero. If an artist is not prepared to give their work away for free, someone else will.
So How Does An Artist Make A Living in 2009?
Established creators, those who have made their money from the economics of scarcity, are the ones who will have the greatest difficulty giving up on the concept of copyright. The perfect example of this was Metallica leading the fight against Napster in 2001. They were ultimately successful, but there was a huge cost to their credibility. The generation of artists who will succeed the money makers of today will simply adapt to a world where copyright is no longer enforcable. There are, after all, other ways of monetising your worth. A world without copyright does not mean a world without incentive for creativity, especially as for most money is not the chief incentivator anyway.
Creative Commons licenses mean that work can be given away, distributed, and reputations grown, without fear of exploitation. The kudos of a respected creator can be monetised in ways that doesn’t involve selling the commodities they produce, the worth is in the person; their mind, their presence, their flow. Monetising commodities simply doesn’t work in a culture of abundant digital content.
It won’t be easy evolving past the current phase, but it is inevitable. People will still buy CDs and DVDs, but they won’t buy a TV box set without having first downloaded the few episodes for free. Those who have made the most money from copyright will be the ones who will cling to it the tightest. But even they must accept that if they were starting out today, they would have struggled against copyright for their success, rather than benefitted from it.
If a new band won’t allow their songs to be webstreamed for fear of them being ripped, they simply won’t have their songs heard. An author who will only write for money will have a much harder time building the following than the writer who blogs. The programmer who obfuscates their code for fear of copying will be less likely to be employed than the one who has the superstar reputation for their Open Source work. The short film-maker who refuses to work for nothing, will soon find themselves begging for a job from yesterday’s YouTube sensation.
“Data Protection”
There is a telling misnomer used by the defenders of copyright – “data protection“. They claim that by enforcing copyright they are “protecting” data. But isn’t it obvious that the only way to ensure the survival of a piece of data is to reproduce it as freely and abundantly as possible. To limit its reproduction is to cut off its wings.
Data wants to be free. For our culture to continue to evolve we need to let it, not fight it.
If you don’t read my work blog (and if you aren’t of the geek persuasion there’s no reason why you should – it would doubtless bore you senseless) you won’t know about my stupidly over-ambitious Open Source Generative Art project that is nibbling away at my precious free time. I have set myself the task of producing 100 generative artworks, to be published one a week for as long as I can keep it up, mainly to see if I can do it, but also to see where it takes me. You are very welcome to drop in and sneer at my awkward efforts, or subscribe and get a new one every Friday.
When putting the site together I felt it needed the obligatory “What Is Generative Art?” FAQ page, to make it more accessible to the bewildered surfer, and so whipped up a bit of copy that I felt did the job. But, obviously unsatisfied with what I wrote, my brain has been bugging me on this question ever since. I’m not sure I can satisfy it.
I don’t require an answer to “What Is Art?“, it’s been a while since I’ve been that drunk, I just want to narrow down what we can call “Generative Art“, and attempt a concise, pithy description. But this is not as simple as it might first appear.
My boy, as with all three year olds, is learning to express himself in a number of ways, including artistically, with varying degrees of success. Naturally, as parents we take stupid amounts of pride in every random daub or scribble he manages to get on a piece of paper, especially if he comes up with something vaguely recognisable. But, my evil brain is wondering, when I compare his works to the algorithmically generated abstracts on abandonedart.org, might my son’s formless doodles also come under the heading ‘generative art’?
The generative element here is a biological process rather than a mechanical one, and the four years taken to complete the algorithm (from conception to splats of paint on paper) is much longer than the process you can observe with each of the abandonedart works. But isn’t the principle essentially the same? Does the “artist” claiming credit for the work (me) have any greater claim on the output of an algorithm he has fashioned than the artistic expressions of a child he has sired?
This is a cruel example obviously, because if anyone can claim to be the artist in this example, it is my son. To attempt to steal the credit for his achievements is an extreme abstraction of influence over individualism, it is only computations we can treat so inhumanely (this century anyway).
It might also be stepping dangerously close to what the crazies call “Intelligent Design“, the idea that a creator might take credit for an evolutionary process if they are the one who defined the initial conditions and started the ball rolling. I’m sure this isn’t the only instance where the concepts of “Artist” and “God” might be so easily interchangeable.
Thirdly, I should also be slapped for once again evoking the spectre of Universal Automatism, seeing the whole universe as one big algorithm; which is what I am doing in proposing a causal chain from a certain ‘creative act’ in the bedroom to an abstract piece bought home from nursery four years later. UA, where every deterministic action or inaction is just part of the great computation, absolves us from responsibility for just about anything we do, our artworks included.
But still I’m no nearer to answering my question. Lets shortcut the discussion with a few bullet points on what I am settling toward, and I challenge you to dispute any of these. For an artwork to be “generative” …
Beyond these imperfect axioms I can’t come up with anything more definitive.
There is a page on generative.net which collects definitions. Philip Galanter’s is the most often cited,
“Any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other mechanism, which is then set to motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a complete work of art.”
Unfortunately, it’s one of those sentences that leaves your brain looking around the room for someone else to talk to, and it doesn’t even hint at what makes generative art so interesting (bullets 2 and 3 above). I much prefer this glorious nugget, which was teased out of a recent debate on the eu-gene mailing list:
“generative” is where you lose control of a machine which does exactly what you tell it.
If anyone can come up with anything sweeter than that, I’d like to hear it.
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