Run don't walk

Jonathan Lethem has a piece titled "The Ecstasty of Influence: A Plagiarism" in the February issue of Harper's. It's the single best essay on intellectual property I've read.

It doesn't even start out as a typical Harper's essay about a socio-culutural crisis. There's no big downer opening explaining how we're all doomed but may as well try to understand the problem that's gonna eat us from the inside out.

Lethem instead presents a survey of the way cultural influence works in the creative process citing examples like Nabokov (who apparently stole Lolita) and Muddy Waters. He goes on to talk about how we grow up in a time that is steeped in cultural reference, that we grow up knowing parodies of work well before we understand their antecedents. It's not until the fifth page that he busts out with the Jeffersonian analysis about the intent of intellectual property.

From there he busts out, hitting on the importance of a gift economy in avoiding the commoditization of art. And there's good personal anecdotes both about his experience as an artist and as an audience member. (I particularly like the story about how he couldn't see an Iranian film adaptation of Franny and Zooey because Salinger had the screening shut down ... Lethem remarks "The cold, undead hand of one of my childhood literary heroes had reached out from its New Hampshire redoubt to arrest my present-day curiosity.")

Lethem concludes with a blessing to his readers: "The name of the game is Give All. You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you. If you have the inclination to pick them up, take them with you."

And then he has a notes section in which it's revealed that his whole essay is actually a collage of other people's work.

Basically the whole thing is stolen including the personal anecdotes (altho' the bit about Salinger is his, though the setup is from Village Voice critic Amy Taubin. But the intimate "Give All" conclusion ... that's from Saul Bellow.

Despite having read some of the source material (Lessig, Wallace) I didn't realize the true meaning of the essay's subtitle until I got to the end. And it knocked me out of my seat. I actually stood up and left the restuarant where I was eating (I'd already paid) saying out loud, "That's amazing!"

The thing is that on its own it is a great piece. It's a brilliant essay showing how cultural remixing is an integral part of our lives; as creators, as audience members ... even just as humans trying to understand the world and exist in a community. But as a piece of remix art itself it is a phenomenally powerful illustration of that underlying principle. I highly recommend it.

Kruul!

We're less than a week away from the release of the World of Warcraft expansion pack and it's pretty exciting times in Azeroth. The Dark Portal has opened and Highlord Kruul has been seen rampaging about the countryside.

This afternoon he strolled into the capital city of Ironforge and promptly killed everyone. In a matter of minutes there were hundreds of bodies strewn across the normally bustling halls of the dwarven city. In the end, Blizzard had to restart our server because folks kept engaging the unbeatable badass.

It's the closest I've seen to a natural disaster in WoW and it was awesome. If I had designed this encounter I would have made it so that Kruul left some permanent mark Ironforge. A collapsed wall, scorched cielings ... something. Anyway, it's made me more stoked for the expansion. And I managed to snap a couple sweet screengrabs; one of Kruul in full majesty and the following wherein Krull is bringing down his doomsword upon the head of my wee character.

Touched

With the iPhone launch, Steve Jobs has managed to do what game console companies have done for years; launch the device without having to let anyone use it. I used to think it would be a pretty neat trick to be able to do that on the Web ... and then Gmail did it when they first went out to employees only.

By doing this you allow the device to be a mythic fulfillment of everything missing inside the heart of the fanboy ... and for the hater it's the final confirmation that those Mac v. PC ads really were mocking you.

Allow me then to out myself: I want the iPhone. More than that, I want to pay to upgrade to the iPhone Pro a year later as well. In short, I'm tremendously excited about the iPhone and have been made more excited by some of the objections lodged against it.

Before continuing I should acknowledge that there's a legitimate problem with the phone. It should have been built to support 3G instead of EDGE. The browser is going to do a kick-ass job but it's gonna take you a lifetime to load the NYT. Second, there's a legit concern from those who point out that people like feedback when typing. I'm guessing that the much-touted patented solution for dealing with text input will take a few revs to get right. And even then there will still be folks for whom it won't feel natural.

But even with these concerns, the iPhone is good news for anyone who wants to buy a phone at any point in the future. Current cellphone UI has basically done one of two things: 1) bring Windows to the phone with a bunch of hierarchical directories (e.g. PalmOS or Windows Mobile) or 2) just been the worst software ever made (e.g. whatever the hell Sprint, Samsung and Motorola are doing).

Based on my extensive experience not-using it, the iPhone represents a step foward and I feel it will be a big step. By bringing touchscreen metaphors like pinch and scroll out of the MIT Media Lab and into the hands of millions, the iPhone will be more than just an innovative cell phone UI. I believe it will be a guide to ways in which we can move beyond the menu-driven point and click paradigm that's governed basically every device in the past 20 years.

If you consider this as the potential of the device, objections like "where's the extra memory card slot" or "it'll get scratched" don't really stack up. Even things like "what about the battery life" are relatively unimportant. The original iPod had a battery life of about 6 months and then you had to replace the entire fricking thing! It still revolutionized the way people interact with their music.

Going to MacWorld is like going to a church revival, and I'm really disappointed my one Keynote experience was a couple years back when nothing very important was announced. I think this year they announced something worth cheering for.

Happy New Year

Obsolete

I had some 9 hours with the SkyMall catalog yesterday and the Computerless E-mail Printer from the crapmeisters at Hammacher Schlemmer was a standout.

It's for folks who are scared of computers but who still would like to receive email. So instead of getting an email account, why not get a printer that connects via a phone-line to an email service. Then the email you receive will simply be spewed out into your house throughout the day.

Basically, it's the technological equivalent of a service that would take phonecalls and transcode them into telegrams for people afraid of Alexander Graham Bell's infernal machine. I'm guessing that existed at some point.

The promo material makes it pretty clear that it's for old folks whose kids don't wanna mess with getting them online. I like the fact that this product is targeted at a dying off demographic was not a concern to the people at HS. And I guess having stupid products condescendingly foisted upon you by your adult children is just another indignity of growing old.

Of course, there are two great kickers. First, in addition to the $150 price tag, you need to pay a $10 month subscription fee. And why not! Email is free so crappy, one-way print-o-mail should cost $120 a year.

Second, consider the case where little Jimmy has gone away to college, has a new email address and once a semester may take a break from his quest to build the perfect gravity bong to drop a kindly note to his loving Nana. Assuming he didn't accidently forward a Nigerian email scam to his grandma, Nana would first need to add Jimmy's new address to her account. And how do you do that? Through the website of course. Time to break out the needlepoint-to-HTTP converter, granny!

For future reference

To clean a bathtub full of rotting shit you will need:

1. a mop you will never use again
2. enough bleach to dissolve the enamel off porcelain
3. the ability to suppress the feeling that you're being moistened with human waste the next time you shower

I'm working on the last part.

Gone Plaid

Pete announces on Buzz that the new version of Blogger is out of beta! I'm psyched that everyone (me included) will shortly be getting access to all the new stuff.

I'm not able to move over just yet and I'm guessing that's partly because my account is in some hyper-edge case of super cornerdom. But that's cool - with all this rush to get the new hotness, folks forget that there's a special honor in being one of the last to move off the old version.

And it's kinda sad to see the old version ride off into the sunset. As Pete notes, it's not dead but "it would like to retire for a little while... maybe go to Hawaii or play World of Warcraft all day?" Sounds kinda nice.

Lost signal

iChat captured the precise moment when the Flacks' cats disconnected the ethernet while fighting under the desk. The last thing I heard Mary say was "Stop! You fucking ca -"

Fortunately, the connection was restored and Eugene and I worked out our outfits for next year's comic convention. We're going as the Wonder Twins and if Mary wants to come she's gonna have to be the bucket that holds my 'form of water.'

Degenerate

The last couple weeks, Twitter's been getting the lion's share of my web-based observations of life and status updates of same. So, what have I been doing in the month of December?

Let's just say I'm wondering whether Blizzard Entertainment may be liable for the twinge of RSI I've developed in my right thumb. Hey Blue! I will accept settlement in the form of a complete tier 3 set for my druid.

Good thing I'm headed out of town for the remainder of the year starting on Monday: Palm Springs, Aruba then Vegas for New Year's. Time for a change.

The Kangaroo Who Wasn't There

The Coen brothers next full-length movie is No Country for Old Men, an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel. The only McCarthy book I've read is his most recent novel, The Road, and I highly recommend it. It's an amazingly sparse tale of post-apocalyptic survival; the phrase "gray twilight" pops up so much that my memory of reading the book is like floating through some cloud of whirling ash. But in a very enjoyable way.

That being said, I strongly believe that the Coens next-next movie should be an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's book, Gun, with Occassional Music. First off, it's a Raymond Chandler detective story and the Coens have done great stuff with the noir genre. Even better, it's set in a dystopic future where self-medicating with addictive memory-removal drugs is not just legal, it's considered civic minded. It's the Long Goodbye by Philip Dick - how can this not be a Coen brothers movie?

But the better reason is that under the structural and stylistic parts of the book there's some really great stuff going on with the power of language and the control it affords. In Gun's reality, only licensed "inquisitors" are able to ask questions, to the point where all but the most dissident members of society have lost the ability to have the kind of rapid-fire, question-answer dialogue that is the hallmark of hard-boiled noir. This post-modern slant seems very much in line with some of the stuff that makes The Big Lebowski more interesting beyond just being hilarious ... and I guess that's a reason why they maybe wouldn't wanna revisit the same territory. But there's nothing wrong with going back to the well sometimes. Especially when, you know, your most recent stuff wasn't so good.

As a vision of the future it's also timely in its comment on our reality (see above re: the role of authority in asking questions). But it does so within the context of a fully-realized and completely compelling world of its own; one filled with rapidly-evolved, intelligent animals and a centralized system of karmic accounting. In other words, it's science fiction at its best. And I'd like very much to see it in theaters in late 2007. If at all possible. Thanks.