Re: Rolling Your Own Network
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html
Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a
boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." -
George Orwell, 1984
This is right on please read the piece Mark presented along with a proposal we made 25 years ago.
To facilitate our electronic town meetings and switch on the global brain we need communications free from frankencorp and rogue governments. The seventh incident in the global premise declares it a birthright.
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/global.html
To see how the dialable oscillating single sideband communicator(CB radio conversion) works. WIRELESS PHONE AND INTERNET http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/wireless.html
Rolling Your Own Network
Mark Pesce Lecturer, Interactive Media, AFTRS
markp@aftrs.edu.au www.playfulworld.com
<http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html>
Preamble
The worldwide consolidation of media industries has led
to a consequent closure of the public airwaves with
respect to matters of public interest. As control of
this public resource becomes more centralized, the
messages transmitted by global media purveyors become
progressively less relevant, less diverse, and less
reflective of ground truth.
At present, individuals and organizations work to break
the stranglehold of these anti-market-media-mega-
corporations through the application of the courts and
the law. However, because of the inherent monopoly that
anti-market media maintain on the public mindset,
legislators have been understandably reluctant to make
moves toward media diversification. We are thus
confronted with a situation where many people have
interesting things to say, but there are progressively
fewer outlets where these views can be shared.
The public airwaves, because they are a limited
resource, are managed by public bodies for the public
interest. While honorable, the net effect of this
philosophy of resource management has been negative: a
public resource has become the equivalent of a
beachfront property, its sale generating enormous
license revenues, but its transfer to the private
domain denying the community access to the sea of
ideas.
If a well-informed public is the necessary prerequisite
to the democratic process, then we must frankly admit
that any private ownership of public airwaves
represents a potential threat to the free exchange of
ideas. Now that private property has mostly
collectivized the electromagnetic spectrum, and with
little hope that this will soon change, we must look
elsewhere to find a common ground for the public
discourse.
We are fortunate that such ground already exists.
Part One: Refugee Status
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a
boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." -
George Orwell, 1984
I'm not from around here. You can probably hear it in
my voice, that I'm North American. Not only North
American but from the United States, not only from the
United States but from California, not only from
California but from Los Angeles, not only from Los
Angeles, but from Hollywood, and not only from
Hollywood, but from Laurel Canyon, the cozy bush-in-
the-city neighborhood that played host to the likes of
Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell - 30 years
ago.
Those days are over. For the last twenty years, ever
since the military industrial complex fled Los Angeles
for cheaper digs in the American South, Los Angeles has
been a company town, home to an ever-dwindling number
of media megacorporations. These corporations produce
92% of what Australians see on the movie screen, at
least 50% of what you watch on the telly, and about 80%
of the music that you hear. These megacorps have an
ever- growing array of subdivisions invading every area
of the mediasphere.
But we'll come to that in a moment.
Let me talk about myself. I'm pissed off. Very pissed
off. And desperate. That's a dangerous combination,
because it means anything can happen. And, if I do my
job well here today, anything could.
I'm a guest in your country - and because I am
constantly asked, let me answer the question some of
you are thinking: I like Australia a great deal, and am
growing to love it. No, it's not the center of the
world, no it's not the most exciting place in the
world, and yes, it's a bit provincial. But here's a
little- known secret: the most provincial place on
Earth is New York City. If any of you have ever lived
there, you'll understand what I'm talking about.
Everywhere is provincial, and it's up to you to choose
your province. I've chosen Australia.
I chose Australia for two reasons: first, I've been
invited to transform AFTRS, your national film school,
into a 21st century institution, one which will move
away from the artist/auteur model which seems to have
infected all Australian filmmaking. That project is
underway but we won't see results for a few years.
The second reason is this: I've fled my homeland. I
imagine that all of you know why. I am left-wing -
liberal to libertarian (anarcho-syndicalist) in the
American sense of these words - and for the past four
years we've been living under a civil coup d'etats,
confirmed by our Supreme Court and reinforced in the
continuous state of emergency which followed September
11. Last year I was invited to Sydney to give some
lectures, and the moment I got off the plane it felt as
though a cloud had lifted. I was out from under the
cloud of fear which is slowly strangling American
liberties, and for the first time in years I felt as
though I could breath freely. When I flew back home a
few weeks later, and spied the photographic totem of
Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft at the Immigration station, I
uttered a loud, derisive laugh - and immediately began
to plan my exit. I was lucky enough to get an offer
from AFTRS just a few weeks later, and here I am.
I have just returned from a holiday in the USA, to make
sure I was registered to vote in the upcoming election,
and visit with family and friends. My friends are
starting to lose it. People I've known for years are so
- beaten down - that they're starting to fray at the
edges. There's a big question whether Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry will win the
election, whether we will be able to wrest control of
our country back by democratic means. In the pit of our
stomachs we know that if Kerry loses this election
there won't be another election, at least not one that
matters. There will be more terrorist attacks, and a
constant state of emergency which turns my nation into
an armed camp where everyone is a suspect. Think Brazil
(the film, not the nation), and you've got it
precisely: fascism with a globalist face.
Why has this happened? Part of it is the post-traumatic
stress disorder brought on by September 11 - but even
this should be wearing off after three years, and would
be, only we have something new to deal with - the
collectivized mediasphere. The fact that the Bush
administration hasn't been called to account for its
nearly constant failures - in foreign affairs, domestic
policy, you name it - is due, in large part, to the
anti-market consolidation of media.
I use the word "anti-market" in a very specific sense.
Being a very good American, I am a capitalist at heart,
but in the model described by Thomas Jefferson - which
allows for a very wide array of small businesses
competing fairly in a market which uses government as a
tool to prevent fraud and force. It's an ideal which
America was able to adhere to - at least with respect
to media - until about 20 years ago. One of the long-
term effects of the Reagan/Bush 41 era was the
deregulation of media ownership, culminating in an
accumulation of capital around entities so large that
they exert their own gravitational forces - economic,
political, and most importantly, social. These
megacorporations have become, quite simply, too big to
fuck with. When that happens, when the power of the
market is used to prevent the free and fair exercise of
market forces, a market becomes an anti-market. You can
call it a cabal, or a cartel, or a conspiracy - but if
you want to describe it by its function, you'd have to
say that an anti-market exists to prevent free exercise
of market forces.
In the United States we have seven media megacorps
which control access to the global mediasphere. They
are Disney, Viacom, Sony, General Electric, Clear
Channel, TimeWarner and News Corp. There are others,
but these are the titans which set the rules by which
all others play. The last three of these have
particular influence over the body politic through
their broadcast outlets. Clear Channel owns a near
majority of radio stations in the USA, TimeWarner owns
CNN, and News Corp. - well, let me just say thank you
from the bottom of my American heart for that little
gift from Australia.
Who would have thought that a newspaper publisher from
Adelaide would become the greatest threat to democracy
since Leni Riefenstahl? That he would build a media
empire which would extend its reach through print,
radio and television? That he would become the beacon
of far- right wing values, and, in so doing, completely
pollute the collective mind of my nation? If only we'd
known, we never would have given him US citizenship -
he'd have been stuck in Australia, vexing all of you,
but he'd have left us alone.
Here's the honest truth, as surveyed by the Pew
Charitable Trust in the United States: Americans who
get their news from FOX outlets (and, in particular,
FOX NEWS) actually know less about what's going on in
the world than those who watch PBS. That's right,
watching FOX makes you stupid. Or more stupid.
But FOX NEWS has so much power - particularly because
it is the propaganda organ of the Republican Party in
the United States - that it can not be challenged.
Robert Greenwald can produce Outfoxed, and try to get
the truth out there, but because of the enormous
economic power of News Corp, because of its
unprecedented political power, because of its popular
influence, it can't be challenged directly - at least
not successfully. FOX NEWS could choose to hide behind
America's coveted First Amendment to the Constitution,
which guarantees freedom of the press - and they'd be
right to do so. But because they are part of the anti-
market which prevents free expression, it's a false
defense.
So here's what I have to say: FUCK BIG MEDIA. You won't
be able to change them, not when they have this unholy
alliance of capital and political power - and you know
Australia with its PBL and News Corp and Clear Channel
Broadcasting is in precisely the same boat - so just
ignore them as the corrupt and corrupting influences
they are. These media megacorps are quite literally
poison - for the mind.
So now that we've established the horror of the
situation, let's entertain some ideas on what to do
about it.
Part Two: Transmission Errors
The Internet views censorship as a network failure,
and routes around it. - John Gilmore
Despite everything I've said, there is hope, because
the seeds have been sown for an amazing transformation
in media. The means of production and distribution are
being wrested away from the powers-that-be, by people
who are willing to do the hard work of creating a real
discourse of ideas.
Let me draw your attention to an example which occurred
just a few weeks ago. CBS News in the USA got some
memos which purported to show how Bush 43 was given his
safe berth in the Texas Air National Guard. Nothing new
there, actually, except the documents were fakes, and
it took a legion of self-appointed authorities working
in the blogsphere to bring this to light, and force a
retraction from CBS.
We all know that the World Wide Web has revolutionized
the distribution of the printed word. One individual,
working from anywhere on Earth, can effectively reach
everyone else on the planet. Everyone is now a
publisher. This means that there are no longer any
marginalized voices, provided one has access to Web
publishing resources - which are not substantial for
anyone in a relatively prosperous region of the world.
This has been an enormous boon for free speech; without
the Web, Outfoxed would have languished in a remainder
bin - instead it sold 150,000 copies in its first month
of release. The Web was the beginning of an opportunity
to move away from the collectivized mediasphere, but it
isn't nearly enough. We all know well enough that no
one reads anymore. I'm actually encouraged by how much
Australians read - newspapers, magazines, even books -
but Americans only occasionally use these media. They
prefer television above all else to learn about the
world around them, and television is tightly controlled
by the media megacorps.
Or rather, it was. You see, back in June we crossed
something of a watershed: for the first time the volume
of video traffic surpassed the volume of audio traffic
on the Internet. In practical terms this means more
bits were transmitted in violation of the copyrights of
movie studios and television production companies than
record companies. But it also means that a sea-change
is afoot - people are starting to understand that
broadband internet access represents an alternative for
the distribution of audiovisual materials - an
alternative to television.
One of the biggest media organizations around - the BBC
- is getting in front of this trend with something
they're calling "Flexible TV". It's a PC-based
application which gives residents of the UK access to
the BBC programming schedule, within a two week window:
a week before the present moment, and a week after.
Viewers make their selections from the program
schedule, and the programs are downloaded to the users'
hard disks. The BBC is testing Flexible TV with a
thousand users, but expect it to be rolled out across
the UK by the end of the year.
This doesn't seem that novel an idea, does it? After
all the Internet has been around in its present form
for a decade - so why hasn't anyone done anything like
this? It has to do with the difference between
broadcasting over the air and netcasting over the
internet. A broadcaster spends the same amount of money
whether 10 people or 10 million are watching a
broadcast, because the broadcast tower reaches all who
want to tune into it. The economics for netcasting are
quite different. Anyone can set up a server to send out
ten simultaneous program streams - but it requires a
million times the infrastructure and bandwidth to serve
the same program to 10 million people.
Or it used to.
The BBC doesn't have the bandwidth to netcast its
programming to all 66 million of its viewers.
Fortunately it doesn't that kind of capability, because
the BBC has cleverly designed the Flexible TV
application to act as a node in a Peer-to-Peer network.
Anyone using Flexible TV has access to the programs
which have been downloaded by any other Flexible TV
client, and can get those programs directly from them.
All BBC need do is provide a single copy of a program
into the network of P2P clients, and they handle the
work themselves. More than this, because of the P2P
technology used by the BBC (more on this in a moment) a
Flexible TV user can get a little bit of the program
from any number of other peers; rather than going
through the process of downloading an entire program
from one other peer, the Flexible TV client can ask a
hundred other clients for small sections of the
program, and download these hundred sections
simultaneously. Not only does this decrease the amount
of traffic that any clients has to handle, it also
means that it produces a virtuous cycle: the more
popular a program is, the more copies of it will exist
in the network of peers, and therefore the more easily
a peer can download it.
In other words, the BBC has cracked the big problem
which has prevented netcasting from taking off. In this
system of "peercasting" the network is actually more
efficient than a broadcast network, because more than
one program can be provided simultaneously, and failure
in any one point in the network doesn't bring the
network down. In other words, this network can't be
hacked, can't suffer from a power outage (unless it
spans the whole network, which is very unlikely) and
achieves unheard-of efficiencies in the distribution of
audiovisual programming.
How is this bit of technological magic achieved?
Through the use of a new technology known as BitTorrent
- something some of you may have already used.
BitTorrent is a P2P filesharing system specifically
designed to prohibit one of the biggest social ills
which plague P2P networks - a phenomenon known as
"leeching". A leech grabs files from a P2P network
without providing anything in return. With BitTorrent
your download speed - how fast you receive your data -
is determined by how much data you're sharing. This
means that a torrent starts slowly - because you
haven't much to share - and then increases nearly
exponentially; as you have more of the file, you have
more to share, so your bandwidth increases, until the
file is fully downloaded.
BitTorrent was also designed to avoid one of the
biggest technical issues which affect P2P networks -
the fact that peers come and go at will. BitTorrent
creates a "tracker" - a list of all peers which have
the file you're downloading - and gives you access to
all of those peers. The file itself is divided into
smaller sections, and each of these sections can be
downloaded from any peer, in any order. If a peer goes
off-line while transmitting a section of the file,
BitTorrent simply requests that section from another
peer. Whenever there's more than 2 or 3 peers, this is
sufficient to guarantee a hassle-free download. When
there are tens or hundreds of peers - which is often
the case - file transfers can happen very quickly and
efficiently.
Now we all know that P2P networks are havens for those
among us who show no regard for copyright. I myself
have used BitTorrent to watch all of the 4th season
episodes of Six Feet Under (currently airing in
Australia) just so I could keep up with my friends in
the USA. But BitTorrent has legitimate uses as well.
Open Source software projects, such as Redhat Fedora
LINUX are distributed via BitTorrent. Robert Greenwald,
bless his heart, has just released all of the
interviews from Outfoxed as a 500 MB MPEG file,
suitable for editing and remixing, and that, too, was
released via BitTorrent. (That was a popular file - it
only took me about 30 minutes to download.) Watchdog
groups in the USA have begun to release the video
recordings of Congressional hearings on BitTorrent. And
on and on and on. BitTorrent is the future, and it's
the thing that's going to wreck commercial TV as we
know it.
What makes me say that?
We all know that we're in the midst of a transition to
digital TV - I myself have a card for my home PC which
allows me to receive the five free-to-air networks via
digital transmission. The most interesting thing about
the DVB signal - the standard for transmission of
digital TV in Australia - is that it uses MPEG2 format
for audiovisual data, in a format which is very close
to the standard used on DVDs. In fact it is very easy
for me to record an off-the-air broadcast and burn it
to DVD. I've done that with season 5 of The Sopranos,
which aired on Nine Network. My digital TV card also
includes software which allows me to record the
broadcasts to my hard disk, so I can watch them later
on - just as if I had a VCR.
I have broadband coming into my home, and a fairly
sophisticated home network - as you might imagine - so
my web server can see the areas of my PCs hard disk
where I keep the recordings made by my digital TV. That
means that I can access my website anywhere in the
world and check out what programs I've got recorded. I
can even choose to download them from my website to
whatever machine I'm using. This means that wherever I
am in the world, I can watch the programs I've
recorded. And, if I give someone else the URL for this
website, so can they.
Ok, just a minute here-- Doesn't this mean that I've
become a television broadcaster? I mean really, what's
the difference between someone getting the bits for an
episode of The Sopranos from Nine Digital or from my
website? Bits are bits are bits, and because of that,
they'll be the same bits, whether they come from Nine
or from me. So why would anyone willingly watch Nine at
the time that the Nine programmer has decided to air
The Sopranos when they can watch it whenever they want
just by downloading the bits from my website?
Once the TV producers figure this out, it's all over
for the networks. After all, wouldn't TimeWarner (which
owns HBO) rather have you pay them directly to watch an
episode of The Sopranos? They'd make more money than
they would from Nine Network. Now truthfully piracy
would be rampant in that environment, but it's rampant
in the current environment - it takes about four hours
between when an episode of The Sopranos premieres on
HBO and when it premieres on BitTorrent. Which is just
about long enough to convert the broadcast from a fat
MPEG2 file to a slimmed down DivX recording.
Piracy is the price a producer pays for living in the
digital age. We've heard the record companies and the
movie studios bitch and moan about the money lost to
piracy - even as they declare ever-greater profits.
They want all the benefits of digital distribution,
without paying any of the associated prices. Well, fuck
them. They can't have it both ways.
Within a decade - and perhaps a lot sooner - the
television networks will have been deprived of nearly
all their pre-produced programming. Television will
become a live medium - as it was in its beginning, so
it will be in its old age. Sports, news and event
programming (terror attacks and awards shows) will be
the staples for broadcasting in the 21st century.
Advertisers will love live television - because it's
where the people are - but never again will a
television broadcaster be able to dictate to you what
you can watch and when you can watch it. Those days are
already past - at the price of a small crime of
copyright violation.
All this means that as the Internet rises, broadcast
television falls. That means cable as well as free-to-
air broadcasters, because cable will also be competing
against this Internet-based television. As more and
more material becomes more consistently available to
the TV viewer, the trend will be away from the
circumscribed choices offered by the TV channel (five
or five hundred channels, neither are very alluring
when compared to the near-infinity of programming
available over the Internet already) and toward the
Internet.
Which gives all of this triumph of the media megacorps
the flavor of a Greek Tragedy: when they reached their
zenith of power, at that moment the seeds of their
downfall were sewn.
Now let's take a look at some techniques to accelerate
the inevitable collapse of the media megacorps.
Part Three: New Day Rising
The Chinese Taoist laughs at civilization and goes
elsewhere. The Babylonian Chaoist sets termites to
the foundations. - Robert Shea & Robert Anton
Wilson, Illuminatus!
Over the last few weeks, as I've been working on this
presentation, friends and colleagues have been guiding
me to various websites with some relevance to the main
idea I want to advance today: that it is possible to
build an alternative news network, one which will be
pervasively available to the public - as pervasive any
of the networks of the media megacorps. There have been
a number of attempts in the US: Guerilla Network News,
BuzzFlash, Democracy Now!, TruthOut, CommonDreams, and
AirAmerica. In Australia you've got Stephen Mayne's
crikey.com.au and IndiMedia. Of these, only AirAmerica
uses broadcasting to get its programming to the public
- hence, it's the most successful of all.
Independent news organizations tend to overlook
broadcasting as a distribution channel because of its
tightly regulated nature. The airwaves are held in
trust by our governments for the common good of the
people. Or so we are told. The truth, as we all know,
is that they're held by the government for the profit
of the anti-market forces which have become entrenched
and enriched by these resources. The public airwaves
were saved from the "tragedy of the commons" by
government regulation, which only produced a worse
"catastrophe of the commons," creating a media
plutocracy in place of an anarchic free-for-all.
I think most of us would prefer anarchy to plutocracy.
And in this spirit, let's examine the ways in which we
can open some gaps in the functioning of these powers,
gaps wide enough to transmit a signal.
The AM radio band is a little bit different in
Australia than in the USA. In the US it goes from 540
Khz to 1710 Khz, while in Australia it only extends up
to 1620 Khz. This means there are at least 50 khz of
spectrum that are quasi-unregulated. They are regulated
by the ACA but not by the ABA - and hence not subject
to the normal rules of broadcast regulation. What's
interesting is that most (perhaps all) of the AM
receivers sold in Australia actually provide access to
the band as defined in the US, so at the top end of the
dial, there's nothing but empty space.
Now you can't just plop a transmitter into that range
and start broadcasting 50,000 Watts of power - the
government shut you down immediately, or perhaps just
demand hundreds of millions of dollars in license fees.
But it is possible, and at least marginally legal to
use so-called "micropower" AM radio transmitters in
this band. A micropower transmitter generally has a
transmitter power of 100 milliwatts or less - not much,
you might think, unless you consider that most of WiFi
communications use even less power than that. With that
kind of signal strength you can get up to about a 500
meter transmission radius - if you're antenna is
located on a nice, high point. That's not very much,
although in the urban areas where most Australians
live, that would still reach a fair number of homes.
But so what? You could all have your own little
micropower AM stations, each saying your own little
things, making your own little reports, but really who
cares? A network isn't a thousand stations saying a
thousand different things; a network is a thousand
stations speaking with one voice. That's what Clear
Channel is - here and in the United States. So how do
you turn these little stations into a network?
Well, there are two answers to this question. The first
is fairly obvious: you put the transmitters close
enough together that each station is a paired
receiver/transmitter, and in so doing you create a mesh
network of transmitters. The receiver picks up the
signal and passes it along to the transmitter, which
rebroadcasts it on the same frequency. This is somewhat
analogous to how mobile networks work - you move from
cell to cell and the signal follows you seamlessly -
and is very well suited to densely populated urban
districts, college campuses, public events, and so
forth.
The costs for each node in such a system are very low -
probably less than fifty dollars for both the AM
receiver and the transmitter. And because it's low
power, it can all be run off of batteries which are
automatically recharged via solar cells. It should be
possible, with only just a touch of design and
engineering, to produce a tiny all in one receiver-
transmitter-charger unit that could be dropped almost
anywhere - say on the rooftop of every tall building in
your suburb - and voila! - you've got yourself a
network.
(For technical details google "micropower radio" and
peruse some of the links.)
Now it isn't possible to blanket an sparsely populated
entire country - like Australia or the USA - with a
micropower radio signal. There are places where the
transmitters would be more than 500 m apart, and the
signal chain would be broken. In situations like this,
Internet streaming comes to the rescue. Any signal
which can be delivered via AM radio can also be
delivered via the internet at dial-up speeds. The
streaming signal output can put plugged into the AM
transmitter, and, once again, you've got your network.
In this way you can cover both the densely populated
areas and the spaces in between them with one network.
Now both of these proposals are more than just idle
ideas - they're the heart of a new network - RADIO
RHIZOME - which launched in Los Angeles a week ago
today. RADIO RHIZOME has hijacked frequency 1680 on the
AM dial to bring a continuous loop of programming to
the city which the media megacorps call home. And they
can't do anything about it. Jeff Cain, the
artist/creator of RADIO RHIZOME describes it in these
words - "I took a look at the telecommunications law,
and squirted myself in between all of its forms, like
foam, filling up all the space they'd left empty." In
the US this means micropower AM radio, with a mixture
of repeaters and Internet streaming to cover what could
potentially be the entire planet with a single
broadcast network.
If we had some sort of networking in this building we
could tune into RADIO RHIZOME right now; if we had a
few micropower transmitters, we could set up a mesh
network that ran all the way through this festival. And
that's the point: anywhere you go, you could be setting
up your own mesh-style radio networks. Radio networks
aren't meant to be permanent - even if that's what the
media megacorps want you to believe. Put them up, get
the message out, take them down again, move on.
Mobility is more important and more useful than
permanence; flexibility trumps sheer size every time.
Now one thing that RADIO RHIZOME has - one thing that
every network has - is a "head end" - the point from
which programming is distributed through the network.
This is an architecture that is quite literally built
into the design of the network. Thus, true power lies
at the head end, at the top of the hierarchy of
transmitters. This is what people are going to fight
over - the right to control the distribution of
content. It won't be a big issue when the mesh is
small, but as the mesh extends to cover the nation -
and this isn't very hard to imagine happening - people
will begin to have very serious disagreements about
what goes onto the network. In the beginning you'll be
hard pressed to find enough content to put over the
airwaves, but as you reach an inflection point, you'll
find yourselves swamped with programming choices. And
you, like every radio and TV programmer who has gone
before you, will have to decide who gets to decide who
gets to the airwaves. That's a lousy choice, because it
basically means you will recapitulate the gatekeeper
strategies which are the hallmark of the media
megacorps.
Or is there another way? This is the challenge I'm
presenting to you - here and now - a challenge that
needs to be solved. In some space between the community
access-for-all methodology and the strictly constrained
gatekeeper methodology there must be a middle path
which allows for an equality of opportunity but also
allows for a response to taste and quality. In the age
of computers and the Web, it shouldn't be all that hard
- but it's a problem of social engineering, not
technology. I look forward to learning about your own
solutions to this problem.
And now we come to another technique, which doesn't
rely on broadcasting, and which doesn't suffer from the
same sorts of questions-of-quality which plague head-
end distribution of programming. This one is near and
dear to my heart, and if I didn't have a full time job
trying to breathe some life into the Australian film
and television industries, this is what I'd be doing
full time: I'd be working to create my very own version
of BBC's "Flexible TV," using that as the core of a new
sort of television network, one which could harness the
power of P2P distribution to create a global network of
left-wing reportage.
The pieces are all there: we have BitTorrent to get the
pieces distributed, transmitted and received; we have
the Web and email to get the word out; we have encoders
like DivX and Xvid to ensure that people can get tiny
downloads over their dial-up connections. But right now
these pieces are separate and disjoint. It takes
someone with a fair bit of ability - in computing, in
communications, in video and audio production - to pull
it all together. Individuals with core competencies in
all three of these areas are few and far between.
What we need is a single tool to wrap it all up in a
nice, easy to use form. We need a tool which makes
publishing content into this media stream no more
difficult than selecting a audiovisual file. We need a
tool which makes finding the programming you're looking
for as easy and straightforward as Google. And we need
all of this to be one single tool, so that we can
forever erase the false distinction between producer
and audience, between professional and amateur which
has kept most voices silenced as a few have used their
positions as professional producers to push a pack of
lies down our throats.
When we get that, it's game over. The networks will no
longer matter, they will no longer determine our diet
of pre-digested truths. The truth will return to its
natural state: crazy, anarchic, contradictory,
subjective and as wildly mercurial as a manic
depressive who's gone off his meds. In place of a few
well- controlled voices, we'll have hundreds, then
thousands, then millions of competing points of view,
and our job will be to figure out how to find some
signal in the midst of all that noise.
That won't be as hard as you might think, because we
already do this every day as citizens situated within
an incredibly over-mediated environment. We rely on our
natural filters - our social networks - to help us
locate the quality, the signal in the noise. We already
listen to our friends for their thoughts about what
tracks to listen to, what movies to watch, which events
to attend. Every one of us is a potent filter for our
friends, and we'll be able to use our communications
technologies to reinforce and automate a lot of that
work. You'll be able to automatically share your
"moments of quality" with your friends, if that's what
you want to do, and they'll be able to do the same
thing for you. You and your mob will become something
like a media superorganism, capable of digesting an
enormous amount of information, winnowing through the
chaff to find the grain.
At least, that's what I'm hoping.
All of this is contingent upon one very crucial
relationship - you've got to make friends with your
geek peers. Those folks are already on the cutting edge
of all this tech, they've already mastered it, and
they're sitting around wondering what it's good for -
besides downloading the latest porno or techno tracks.
They already live in a liminal world where freedom of
expression has been gobsmacked by copyright law. They
understand the true function of the media megacorps -
to preserve and protect their profits. And they have
skills you need.
I have been very lucky in my own career, because I've
been able to sit in the gap between the community of
creative producers - people like you - and the
community of technological wizards. You each have a lot
to offer the other, and you can both change the world.
But you're going to have to do it together. One without
the other would be a bit like the old maxim:
"Revolution with revelation is tyranny. Revelation
without revolution is slavery." You folks hold the keys
of revelation, but you're going to have to go and seek
out the folks who have the keys to the revolution, and
seduce them - convince them that this is their
opportunity to make a difference, to do something
insanely great, and change the world.
You will encounter resistance. Already the US Senate is
attempting to make P2P technology illegal, even
technologies such as BitTorrent, which have
demonstrably non-infringing uses. They say it's because
they want to stop the huge amount of copyright theft
going on. DON'T BELIEVE THEM. They can see what's
happening. They know they're about to lose control of
the global mediasphere, that the media megacorps which
have helped them become entrenched powers won't mean a
good god-damn in a decade. And they're scared. So
they're trying to make all of this illegal, trying to
close the gaps in the functioning of their power.
Every generation gets a battle worth fighting. I'm
perhaps a bit older than most of you; my battle began
back in the 1980s, when I realized that hypertext
systems were incredible ways for human beings to get a
handle on information. Because of that work, I was
savvy to the Web from nearly the moment it was
launched. I knew what it meant and did what I could to
get it in front of other people - influential sorts
who, once they'd seen it, would spread the word. And so
the world changed.
The world is changing again. What happened to print a
decade ago is about to happen to television. And
television is far more potent than print. This time the
revolution will be televised - and it will make the Web
era look like a tempest in a teacup. They'll call you
criminals, revolutionaries, thieves and saboteurs. And
they'll be right. But fuck them. Fuck big media. You're
the asteroid, just about to break the atmosphere, and
wipe out those fucking dinosaurs.
Good luck.
Mark Pesce 11 Chuen - 12 Eb (25 - 26 September 2004)
Sydney
Rights for reuse of this work and the ideas herein
granted under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html
Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a
boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." -
George Orwell, 1984
SING THE VOTE
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=this_land&preplay=1&ratingBar=off
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE in song is the first step to a fascism free planet
"THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MADE FOR YOU AND ME"
IMAGINE: WE are children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; WE ALL have a right to be here
START SINGING THE PLANET'S ANTHEM AT ALL EVENTS TO SHOW HOW "WE" HAVE ALREADY VOTED.
This would get some air time if we did it at GOP campaign events even in congress this Summer and fall and beyond after all it is the anthem of the Age of Aquarius no. We suggested that "THIS LAND" be the Global Village Planetary anthem at Woodies celebration in San Francisco at the Geary Theater in 1967. It was seconded by three ambassadors and has become the second third fourth etc. anthems to many countries.
FOLKSAY(people say) ............ has become Our defacto Global Village Planetary anthem and in essence we voted for citizen empowerment as we sung it. Now let's get it officially on record by singing it everywhere as direct democracy.
Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
http://raenergy.igc.org/raenergy.html
Worksheet bio
http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html
Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web
http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Ra+Energy+Fdn%2E%22
Call to Action blog
http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml
posted by Raleigh myers @ 10/07/2004
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