Guesswork

Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve been around here that I barely recognize the place. Sure, I miss it a little but life has come up and it appears I’m going to be away a while longer. Although you never know.

A couple of articles about music downloading caught my eye last week. The first was the news that the Songwriters Association of Canada wants somebody - the government, I guess - to tack an additional five bucks a month onto our Internet fees to help pay songwriters and artists for illegally downloaded music. I can understand why the composers are miffed at not being properly remunerated for all that humming and scribbling, but why the entire web-using community should ante up is less clear. If widespread on-line theft is the criteria for societal subsidies, then porn producers deserve a few bucks from my ISP too.

The second article that I read without paying for concerned a report by Forrester Research predicting that music downloads will overtake CD sales by 2012 and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. And it gets worse - nobody wants to pay for music, advertising-funded downloads won’t work, subscription services are a joke, and social networks like Facebook are destined to become hotbeds of file-sharing.

Paradoxically, all of this may take us back to the days before one-to-many technologies made it possible to sell the same thing millions of times and get paid for it each time. Before that, such money as there was in popular music came principally from performing in front of live audiences night after night, kind of like a real job. Musicians who don’t have recording contracts, or who have crappy ones, still do it.

What the gods of tech give, they also take away, and while getting your song out is easier than ever, control over where it goes and how you get paid for it is pretty much impossible.

So how will the elite of musical artists, songwriters and their posses and hangers-on continue to pull down preposterously big bucks in a world where songs are freely and easily shared?

James McQuivey from Forrester has the obvious solution, which is corporate sponsorship. While music and big business have been sodomizing each other from the beginning of the rock era, it was Michael Jackson who made it quasi-acceptable to be an unabashed corporate shill when he set his hair on fire for Pepsi back in the ’80s. The trail he blazed was followed swiftly by Madonna and others for whom the concept of too much money or too little artistic integrity was meaningless.

The day when selling out is the exception rather than the rule may soon be over, according to McQuivey, who predicts (perhaps a little too gleefully) that “”Artists who used to pretend that their platinum album success was really about their “art” will no longer have that luxurious pretense because labels won’t sign them unless they agree to a barrage of sponsorship opportunities.”

The alternative may be that even genuinely popular musicians will have to ratchet down their financial expectations, and about time. It’s not as though 50 years ago society suddenly realized that recording artists were so fabulously talented, so superior to the rest of us, that they deserved solid gold toilets in their private jets. No, the musical gravy train started chugging along because of the invention of recording media and of radio, accidents of technology that allowed popular culture to be commoditized and sold on an industrial scale.

Two choices, then. On the one hand, the lucky few can toe the commercial line of whatever corporation picks them out of the line-up at the pop music whorehouse, and hope that their sugar daddy is somebody palatable like Apple and not a company that sells flamethrowers to the Taliban.

Anyone who’s not quite sponsor-worthy can cling to whatever sense of counterculture purity they’ve still got, but resign themselves to the fact that even if millions of fans are listening, the filthy lucre may never follow.

For me, I’m pretty sure I’d go for the money. But one thing to which I will never agree is paying five bucks a month so that the guys from Hedley can buy matching Ferraris.

I’ve been a fan of David Suzuki for years now, and not just because we went to the same high school. He’s been responsible for raising public awareness of important environmental issues in Canada and around the globe, and he’s brought intelligence, wit and lucidity to the debate.

That said, I found his widely publicized comment last week, suggesting that we should throw our “so-called leaders” in jail for enviro-crimes, to be a little simplistic.

Unlike, say, the National Post, I’d agree that the laissez-faire attitude of many politicians to the environment warrants harsh criticism, and frankly I’m not averse to the idea of locking up a few just on general principle or pour encourager les autres. However, in his enthusiasm for easy scapegoats, Suzuki misses the point that our “leaders” ignore or misrepresent eco-issues principally because we reward them for doing so.

All else being equal, most of would probably prefer that our grandkids not have to live in an overheated toxic swamp. However, the question is what we’re willing to do as individuals to prevent that eventuality - most of us still won’t walk when we can drive, won’t buy CFL bulbs instead of more wasteful but cheaper incandescents, won’t turn the furnace down or the AC off - in other words, won’t even take minimal action to avert the nastiness that with any luck won’t hit its stride until we’re already dead.

Politicians are opportunists, not idiots, and they know full well that candidates who suggest higher gasoline taxes or meaningful greenhouse gas restrictions on industry have their asses handed to them at election time. Even Alberta premier Ralph Stelmach, who reigns proudly over the eco-catastrophe that is the Alberta oil sands, l0oks like a shoo-in for the upcoming election because he’s keeping jobs and prosperity in the province. And the cost of those jobs? Well, with any luck, the next generation will pay that off after we’ve all passed away peacefully in our hot tubs.

The fact is that most human beings are shortsighted, selfish, and stupid, and we elect leaders who reflect those qualities. We also prefer our environmentalists gelded, busy pushing whales off beaches, not asking impolite questions like why we need 4 bathrooms for a 3 person household or a 3 ton truck to take the kids for ice cream. Al Gore’s popularity comes in part because he lets us feel good about ourselves just by going to see a movie, rather than having to ratchet down our lifestyles by an SUV or two.

Suzuki, to his credit, has always spoken his mind, and has accomplished a great deal by doing so. However, he’s off track when he suggests that our politicians are behaving like earth-destroying mavericks, when they’re doing pretty much what we’re asking them to do.

Photo by Andrew Sheargold

One of my hobbies, along with falconry and barking at the mailman, is coining neologisms that don’t catch on (I was this close - holding up thumb and index finger very close together - to coming up with microcelebrity, which I think has a real shot.) My latest concept in that vein is a quicker, easier way of defining one’s place in a corporate hierarchy.

Right now, it’s easy to talk about your own immediate superior, but gets more confusing the further up the org chart you go - “S/he’s my boss’ boss/my boss’ boss’ boss/my 5th level up manager/the King of All France etc.” I propose simplifying the taxonomy by adopting the usage of family relationships. For example, my 2nd boss up would be my grand-boss, third up the chain would be my great-grand-boss, etc etc. That’s the basics but the principle could easily be extended further - my spouse’s manager is my boss-in-law, and an executive who is a peer of my own manager would be my uncle or auntie-boss. Dotted-line relationships would be described as step-bosses.

I throw this idea out for the free use of corporate cogs and HR departments everywhere. Just remember you heard it here first.

Update: I just googled “grandboss” and found that I’m not as original as I thought, which is disappointing but not surprising because on sober second thought it is kind of obvious. However, I did arrive at the idea independently and I don’t see anyone extending it out to its logical conclusion as elegantly as I have, so I’m keeping credit.

Does hair really equal sex? For me, I’m lucky enough to have a full, lustrous head of hair which if my maternal grandfather is any indication, I should expect to carry into senesence and the next life, so I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the Hair Club for Men.

However their current online ad campaign appealed to me because it’s simultaneously implausible, mean, and a little sexy. Having at least temporarily dumped President/Member Cy Sperling, they’ve launched a web “game” called Photohunt that makes some pretty serious promises to the follicly challenged. Players - presumably lonely baldies who spend Saturday night with a laptop and a bottle of hand lotion - have to pick out the differences between two photos, the most notable being that the more hirsute subject has a beautiful and compliant woman with him and the chrome-dome gets a blowup doll or worse (At least the Hair Club resisted the temptation to show the hairless guys getting busted while trolling for hookers).

While the ads are obviously tongue in cheek, it still strikes me as a mean-spirited jab at one of the most fragile spots on the eggshell male ego. Imagine if Jenny Craig launched a similarly styled campaign, with chunky women sitting at home with a dream and a pulsating shower head while the skinnier they fends off suitors at a shipboard disco. Sure, the subtext of all appearance-enhancement programs is that if you don’t pony up you’ll be condemned to a lifetime of loneliness and celibacy, but it’s tacky to be so overt about it.

Just when I thought cybercrime had become all professional, I get a “you won the lottery” email which proves that the amateurs haven’t left the game yet. No discussion of what fabulous prize I’ve won, no spurious detail to lend authenticity, just a terse “send us your info.” To cap it off , the would-be scammer has forgotten to remove the “India Times” sig line from his email. I want to reply just out of pity.

Apart from stuff that occurs to me randomly, I mostly talk about two things in this blog: technology and celebrities. Because the lives of the famous in 2008 will likely be more of the same - weddings, crotch shots, and DUI arrests - I’m only going to predict on tech.

1. Wireless Uploads - New technologies will allow us all to start uploading and downloading everything wirelessly this year, finally freeing us from the tyranny of the USB cable. Apple will come out with some spectacular application, probably an iPhone that which sends your home movies straight to cable networks desperate for content. Tinfoil hats will become a popular fashion statement.

2. More Users, More Content - Ease of uploading means that there will be more user generated content than ever, leading to an explosion of brilliant film, music, and multimedia work from previously unknown geniuses. It’ll be just like when we got all that great literature after the word processor replaced the typewriter. Oh, wait. What I meant to say was, most of it will suck because most people are kind of stupid.

3. Bandwidth Issues - Explosive growth in social networks, downloading, uploading, and hi-def will place new stress on internet infrastructure. While it won’t collapse, it will get unusably slow from time to time, leaving thousands drooling and staring out the window hoping to in vain to see a naked celebrity

4. Google Is Everywhere - Google will continue to fill up caverns beneath its California headquarters with loot, and will also use their online ubiquity to gather even more data about you and your embarrassing personal interests. Updated user agreements on Google applications will give them the right to videotape the inside of your home and use the footage on Google Earth Closeups.

5. Radical Transparency - It’s not just for papparrazzi-bedevilled celebrities anymore. The trend will expand further with CEO’s blogging, and teens continuing to put their most humiliating moments on the internet. In 20 years everyone will know what everyone else looks like naked.

6. Wikipedia Less Useful - Stung by accusations of bias and inaccuracy, Wikepedia will say wtf and give up on being accurate and settle for just being fun. “Less facts, more nudity” will become the new mantra for online researchers.

7. Trouble in Media - Journalism won’t die just yet, but it might be time to call for the crash cart. News consumers will continue to move away from print and onto the internet, and will stubbornly refuse to pay for any kind of online information. With ad rates on the web far lower than for print, maintaining an expensive news gathering infrastructure will become increasingly impractical. Real journalists will disappear, leaving the field to thousands of citizen journalists and bloggers who will prove the truth of the old adage “you get what you pay for”.

8. Social Network Slowdown - Older folks and increasingly corporations will continue to flock to social networks like Facebook, until they realize that it’s actually pretty boring and not all that useful, at which point growth will slow down rapidly. People will also recognize that they don’t want to show the same face to their boss, their 8 year old nephew, and their drinking buddies.

9. Cell Phone Video - The idea of watching TV on handhelds will finally take off, at least for the a couple years until everybody goes blind.

10. Online Crime - The biggest growth industry in tech will continue to expand in leaps and bounds, since the cost of investigating and prosecuting it make it essentially risk-free. Security researchers will stay one step ahead of the bad guys, but if you really want to be safe, on top of your anti-malware protection you’re going to want to keep one computer for surfing and one for shopping and banking. Better yet, prepare for retirement by going down and harassing the tellers in person.

11. Greening Up - Everything will go green, or at least look green, this year. Gadgets will get recycled, data centres will install solar roofing, Steve Jobs will drive a Prius. In the meantime, 75 million humans will be added to the earth’s population, and every one of them is going to want a cell phone. It’s nice that we’re trying, though.

This mysterious creature turned up in our kitchen late one night, where we found him eating Rice Krispie squares and reading Harry Potter. Shy at first, he gradually became used to us and now he lives under the basement stairs. We leave him treats of graham crackers and ginger beer, and in return he fixes our appliances while we’re sleeping.

Note: It’s the holidays and I’ve temporarily sworn off lengthy screeds on celebrities, politicians, technology, and other things that offend me, which is why you’re looking at pictures of snow and dogs. The reason for the change is sloth, but let’s just pretend it’s Christmas spirit.

This is what Toronto and apparently much of North America looks like today, as we get snowed under by a massive, festive pre-Christmas storm system. I know it’s inappropriate to relate specific weather events to the bigger picture of global warming, but seriously, we have to blame somebody.

A while back a couple who are friends of my wife moved into a house a couple of blocks away from us. They’re upstanding salt-of-the-earth type folks, with a dog and a toddler and a safe sensible car to keep the whole family package safe in inclement weather. Anyone would be happy to have them as neighbours.

The only problem is that proximity has lent itself to uninvited visits. Before now, I’d always assumed that the “drop-by” was a television myth invented to get the nagging mom or wacky neighbour into the scene. but it turns out that it can happen in real life too. This baffles me, since we live in the Communications Age. I have 6 email addresses, 4 phone numbers, and a website where everyone is invited to leave comments or suggest social engagements. You can reach me on Facebook or MySpace or LinkedIn or Plaxo (well maybe not Plaxo - I’m signed up but I’ m really not sure what it does.) You can text me on my cel phone or email me on my Blackberry. You can lean out your window and holler. Whatever you choose to do, I will graciously respond and we can meet at a mutually convenient time and location, like some other day at at your house.

What you don’t have to do is turn up at my door on a snowy Saturday with a soaking, semi-hysterical dog, a bored two-year-old and a broad grin when I’m just about to begin my late-morning nap. And it’s not you, you’re delightful people. It’s me. I just have no desire for company and conversation, not if Brad and Angelina came over to discuss green architecture and the pitfalls of fame, not if Stephen Hawking and Billy Graham showed up looking to debate the origins of the universe . If we wanted anyone here they’d have heard from us. The information age has given us tools to communicate with, people - let’s use them.

You know, I was thinking the other day that that there just isn’t enough mayhem on the highways, and that what society really needs is some kind of personal flying device so people can take their road rage to the air. That’s why I got so excited about the Vertipod. This flying deathtrap, from a company called Air Buoyant, looks something like a trash can with a turbocharged ceiling fan on the bottom, and apparently is capable of flying 15 feet or so above the ground at speeds of up to 40 miles an hour. Besides confirming your rep as the neighbourhood lunatic, the Vertipod gives you a chance to die in unique and colourful ways, for example, by having your feet sliced off in the propeller while simultaneously being tangled up in high tension wires and electrocuted.

Air Buoyant demonstrates a keen marketing sense, nicknaming the device the Segway of the sky. Since the latter is the most disappointing personal transport device since those bikes with the giant wheels, I’m not sure why you’d want to compare yourself to it. On the other hand, at least when you drive a Segway you stand a fighting chance of getting off alive.

My recycling fodder from Shoppers Drug Mart features some funky technology this week - a portable stereo that plays both cassettes and CDs. Now seeing as nobody has sold cassettes for the last decade or so, I’m assuming that someone doing inventory at Shoppers’ came across a warehouse full of these things and told the marketing department about them. “I tell ya, Sparky, the cassette is about to make a comeback. The Starland Vocal Band just doesn’t sound right in digital.” No word on when Shopper’s might be ready to reintroduce the 8 track tape.

About a year ago, I posted a lengthy, poorly researched piece suggesting that user-generated video was not the future of on-line entertainment because most of it sucked, and that professional content would be the mainstay of the YouTubes of tomorrow.

Well kudos to me for stating the obvious, because now Businessweek has jumped on my bandwagon and pointed out pretty much what I said last October. Of course, they use “facts” and “data”, rather than the unsubstantiated opinion approach that I favour, but they arrive at pretty much the same conclusions. Essentially, as online video looks to make money, skateboard accidents and teen lip-syncing are simply not enough of a draw. Professional news, comedy and music videos are more and more starting to look like the only things most people are willing to sit through pre-roll or ad crawls for.

There are exceptions of course - there are always going to be talented amateurs who manage to produce real entertainment on a hope and a handycam. The problem, in terms of trying to run a business, is consistency. Long tail of the web nothwithstanding, it’s not a business model to throw a bunch of crap at the wall and hope that enough of it sticks to attract advertisers. People these days have a short attention span, and it’s easier to go where you know there’s going to be something worth watching.

It’s not a bad thing;the web is big enough for everybody and there will always be places for the average Joe or Jane to get exposure to a wide audience. However, focusing on material that draws an audience creates a return on investment for online video sites, so the talented folks who create professional content will keep getting paid (except for writers, the lazy bastards).

Still, it’s another one of those bi-weekly culture shifts that the digital age keeps springing on us. The idea that looked so good a couple years ago - stealing content and giving it away for free - is being replaced by a more traditional “pay for stuff and sell it” model. What that means is that whoever gets the content, gets the eyeballs, and the revenue. How you feeling about YouTube now, Google?

Facebook, the bloom is off the rose. A few months back I gushed like a schoolgirl about the Internet phenom that’s turned millions into social trivia junkies, but the blinders are starting to come off.

Facebook doesn’t really do anything useful. No news, weather, not even sports updates, and certainly no learning. It’s not a gathering place for discussion, but narcissism central, a place for people to show off the person they want others to think they are. Here are my books, my music, my beliefs. Look at me, my attractive friends, my kids, my pets, my hip-hop group, my sports car, the places I’ve traveled, the movies I’ve watched. Here’s how I’m feeling right now. And now. And now. Do you like me? Want to be like me? It’s a conversation between 40 million drunks, each one shouting over the others to tell their story.

Facebook groups illustrate this self-congratulatory ethos. They rarely have a real-world function, but serve as popularity contests for ego-thespians to promote their latest low-budget film project or idiot political agenda, or joinable bumper sticker philosophies intended to demonstrate wit, wealth, non-conformity or some other personal attribute that members want to be seen as possessing. There are more than 500 groups with the word “crazy” in them, ditto for “sexy”, “drunk”, “boobs”, “bling”, and “Porsche”, not to mention “faith”, “hope”, and “charity”. Even more than individual profiles, groups are brand building gone wild – this is me, my mottos, my logos, my ideas! Love me! The addition of new advertising functionality to link people to genuine dollars and cents brands is a logical consequence of this mad rush to label ourselves online. Everyone knows Nike; by attaching myself to it I get an instant identity that millions of people can see instantly.

Still, in the meat world we all wear brands. We all project an image that we hope others will buy. What makes Facebook more harmful than the day-to-day self-promotion in which we all engage? Because for all its interactivity, it’s really a one-way conversation, where disinterest is easily mistaken for approval. On Facebook, there’s no one to tell you to shut up.

So I’m in Cuba, partly to honeymoon and partly because travel is one way of warding of f the creeping agoraphobia of middle age. It’s a different kind of place, principally because there are no Americans or American companies here which lends the place authenticity and poverty.

Lots of tourists though, who congregate around the pool and lobby bars divided by ethnicity like bathing-suited prison gangs. There’s a big Russian wedding party here, who smoke and drink furiously all day and all night. In their youth, they’re a strikingly attractive folk, both male and female, although eventually something happens and they all end up looking like Gorbachev. There are lots of Canadians, and they aren’t far behind the Russkies in their commitment to self-abuse. My fellow Canucks are friendlier though, if dedicated to upholding the hoser stereotype - no big city metrosexuals here. It’s easy to recognize Brits because all of them under 50 are tattooed like Maori warriors, and they tend towards plumpness. The Germans, who as a staff member said to us “don’t even talk to each other”, lounge rigidly by the pool and enjoy themselves with grim Teutonic determination.

Ok, the internet is slow and expensive here so more later.

Kudos to CFTO News for this innovative print ad featuring anchors Ken Shaw and Christine Bentley in a comic tableau which appears to depict a drunk commuter hitting on a ventriloquist’s dummy. The ad can be enjoyed just about everywhere on the TTC.

A cranky blogger at the Guardian has labelled Bob Dylan ” the biggest sellout the world has ever seen” for his recent shilling of the Cadillac Escalade. The ads feature Bob driving through the desert while mumbling an awkward pitch for the eco-disaster that is the Escalade (14 mpg city!) and his own satellite radio show in his trademark whiskey-soaked voice and pan-regional accent.

Bob’s a versatile man, and he’s been accused of selling-out since he pissed off the proto-hippies with his electric guitar at Newport. However, his current critics should recognize that, seminal protest songs like Blowin’ in the Wind nothwithstanding, Bob’s always been more of a muse than a participant. While the Geldofs and Bonos of the world spend their days bullying politicians and fans into reluctant acts of charity, Dylan has been largely content to while away the time touring or relaxing in Malibu with his 400 kids ( I exclude his participation in the “We Are the World” or “Farm-Aid” recordings, since I’m guessing he had no idea where he was anyway.) Nope, Bob throws out the ideas and it’s up to the rest of us to figure out what to do about them.

Anyway, the guy’s 67 years old and should be retired by now, but he keeps cranking out the albums for all the fans who still hope that he’s got another Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks in him. Bob’s worked hard for that Escalade - just let him drive it.

From Asia, where it’s impossible to tell whether they take their Christianity very seriously or are mocking it all to hell, comes the Cross MP3 player. Manufactured by Chinavasion, this gadget is perfect for rocking out while you’re waiting to be Raptured.

The Cross comes in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB sizes and along with the innovative vampire-resistant design, features built-in speaker, microphone (”Are you there, God? It’s me, Patrick”), and FM radio. It’ll run you about 50 bucks US, although they’re prepared to offer discounts on bulk orders if you want to supply the whole congregation.