I do like the US' National Public Radio 'On the Media' programme. There's invariably something interesting and last week's (3 June 2005) episode was no exception. First we got to hear about the bad guys (although it's sometimes difficult to work out who they are) and then we got to hear about the good guys, i.e. the BBC of course. The whole show is available as a podcast http://wnyc.vo.llnwd.net/o1/otm/otm060305pod.mp3 but you can also listen to individual items as a media stream. Assimilators may prefer the transcripts but you'll miss out on the examples that can only really be conveyed in audio, e.g. the George Bush and Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil mash-up.
For the uninitiated a mash-up is a Frankenstein blending of usually two different musical recordings or a musical and speech recordings, e.g. The best of George Bush's speeches to the disco beat of The Final Countdown:) In the best mash-ups it's hard to hear the joins.
Anyway dear reader, I digress, two items of from the 3 June programme were of some relevance to our technology assisted learning focus.
First was the bad guys (your choose which are which:) Darknet item which explored the growing tension between corporate media interests who view any modifications to their products as derived works (and therefore the work of criminals) and members of the Darknet community who view themselves as creatives not criminals and for whom commercial media products are just another source for the development of new creative artefacts. Whilst criminals do inhabit the Darknet the inability or unwillingness of the corporate media interests to discriminate between creative works and criminal activity, e.g. piracy is simply driving the problem further into the Darknet and so increasing criminality and ultimately damaging new forms of creative culture.
Now to the good guys. The second One the Media item was called Press Potlatch (Ed: what's a Potlatch?) in which the BBC's Backstage initiative was the focus. The sequencing of this item after the Darknet item was really clever since it highlighted the contrast between the knee jerk “let's crush these thieves” approach of the commercial media interests and the BBC's “let's tap into and channel this public desire to exploit and extend what we produce”.
The irony here is that there are already very successful commercial companies like Google and Amazon learned the benefits of opening up their database a long time ago. Yet the large media interests seem deaf, dumb and blind as they embark on their mission to criminalize the world:)
Take the music industry. They still seem hell bent on selling relatively expensive CDs or poor quality downloads and inhibiting those abominations called mash-ups (some of which are very creative). Meanwhile, anyone who has popped over to GarageBand will find some music which is the equal, or better, of any of the signed acts. Can't say I've seen my teenage daughter particularly interested in 'Top of the Pops' recently, she's much more into those unsigned bands. Ah … well, after the lawyers have had their feast and destroyed a significant part of the consumer base I dare say we'll eventually get a more balanced approach.
In the interim, 2 cheers for the BBC … give us more … more … more:)
