watching in and looking out

back from vacation!

2009-10-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

I was actually working on the subject of Free in... well, it's hard to say... because it seems to be everywhere now. Will expand on this subject later. For today I will only say that it has left me sort of laughing at the All Rights Reserved copyright signs at flickr.

I have moved to a Creative Commons license some time ago for my entire flickr account. (By the way, it is one of the few things I pay for religiously on the internet. But if they keep this ugly logo-tail 'from Yahoo' I might cancel my pro subscription.)

So anyway, I think this copyright thing is ridiculous. It is like copyrighting proverbs or quotes! It is our shared earthling culture and I can copy pieces of it as much as I want! I want to mix it, mash it, slice it, reorganize it.

I am copy left.

Makusaimakusamamakusa

2009-06-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

My first reaction was denial in a way of "this must be an April 1 joke". It immediately felt too obvious. I mean what else do you do when your empire is almost destroyed, you run enormous debts, the media is hunting you, everybody thinks you are a freak and a child-molester?

Of course you run to that secret escape island - where your icons Marlon and Elvis play monopoly every Wednesday, where Jim is tending his roses in the garden, where Kurt is teaching scuba-diving.

I mean all the pieces of the puzzle fit instantly. I still believe in it for about 15%. He just took some time off.

Then I saw the pictures and read what people say about Michael and I realized that for us he is gone. And this really means the end of an era.

I have been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks. Studying web 2.0 and all this long tail theories for work and for myself for the last several months I realized something, found the answer to the question that was bothering me for a long time.

I realized that I have to stop waiting and looking for the next big thing, for the next Nirvana. It is not coming. Period. And this came to me like a bust of a bubble accompanied with the rustling of the millions of keyboards typing in their searches in torrents and youtubes. Searching for thousands of obscure bands, searches satisfying non-consistent music tastes. No single music channel would be able to satisfy these music tastes. Like the single mom who got fined for millions of dollars this week - she was actually enjoying a quite eclectic collection of music on her hard drive.

We are not hooked up to one MTV channel anymore. We do not worship our celebrities like divine creatures anymore. We dig into their mundane lives on twitter, we download their home porn tapes, we see their underwear, or a lack thereof.

That is why we are not getting a new super-star that will blind everyone with its talent and glory any time soon. We will have to make do with a hand of small stars in non-overlapping music charts.

Yesterday this understanding became complete with the realization of the fact that now our childhood is gone forever. Our Peter Pan has left for his Neverland and is never coming back.

Yesterday I read online other people's childhood reminiscences that echoed mine precisely. I too was sitting in the room I shared with my elder brother and listening to Thriller again and again to learn the moonwalk. We would retell each other every frame of the videos of Michael Jackson, if one of us missed the show. Our father brought cassette tapes with Michael Jackson and other assorted greatest hits tapes from his business trip abroad in 1986. And for us, Soviet kids, this was the first encounter with the English-speaking pop-culture. Michael Jackson represented everything cool about the Western culture for us.

From Michael we learned how to wear leather jackets, shredded jeans... We took our dad's hat from the top of the shelf and played with it trying to copy his moves.

But leather jackets with zippers and buckles, and threaded and torn jeans were outlawed in the Siberian hometown of ours. So my brother bought a usual leather jacket (10 years later it would have been really priceless because it was very grunge), and secretly re-tailored it with a slanted zipper, belts and studs. My parents only found out about that jacket several years ago.

Looking back I am not suprised I grew up with all the bugs and divergences in my mind and soul. Just like everybody else in my generation. Well even our parents were affected - everybody saw how the black guy was growing up, growing white, growing weird. Snakes, leopards, Disneyworld-ranch, diamond gloves...

And he was not more weird than us - only a different scale. He didn't have to hide his studded leather jacket under a plain coat from his parents and from the world. He wore his true nature for everyone to see. And maybe for that everyone started to call him a weirdo. We have to forget about having snakes for pets and riding a fairy tale trains on our ranch, because we have mortgages to pay, parents-in-law to impress, assholes to cope with on a regular basis. We cannot tell the whole world: "I actually am afraid of the grown-up world, I don't want to pretend anymore, I want to build my own fantasy world, I want to change how I look, and I want to catch up on playing with children, because my parents wanted me to grow up too fast and I feel like I missed out on something back there when I was 6".

He was the king, he was given a given a lot, and in the end he had a price to pay for all of this.

He gave us the rhythm, the moves, the looks, the sounds, the visuals, the soul... and now he left and took our childhood with him.

share war

2009-06-14T02:58:00.000-07:00

when they announced that the piratebay founders were sentenced i felt really over-whelmed, frustrated, moved and angry towards the collective corporate label / copyright machine. then the CEO of the creative advertising agency where i work cooled me off a bit with a reminder. “think about all the families that will lose their source of income, because virgin megastore assistants became redundant”.

of course we cannot change the corporate music / video / conten distribution machine overnight. but trying so hard to hold the card house walls against the wind of free share distribution?… well wake up to reality! start making steps. give music lovers access to something like Oink or TBP for a flat fee and the users will be more than glad to pay. like rob sheridan advises.

at least i am glad to feel over-extatic about the baby steps the society does towards the new world, towards the lite socialism of the electrons. this is only one seat that the swedish pirate party won in the European Parliament elections 2009. but one vote matters - as they keep saying to us in the election campaigns.

maybe this me being a classic Aquarius guy who is said to be looking ahead some 50 years in future, always ahead of the time… but these small news make all the difference to me. can’t wait to see the change start raining cats and dogs right about tomorrow.

Will buy iphone 2G for 100 bucks!

2009-06-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

so they put out a new model and today i saw an ad in a guy’s blog who wants to get rid of his first generation iphone for about 200 hundred US dollars.

do we really want to push things forward?

can we afford to change iphones every time they put out a new update? when do we reach the golden mean when an average gadget will perform nice and steady. when do we settle down with one standard of wireless internet?

my girlfriend keeps pushing me for the best, the quality, the comfort, i keep refusing as much as i can. just because i know that this a rush with not limits. i am seeking balance. the balance.

about 5 years ago i was on top of the consumers craze in a way a 24 y.o. would be - gadgets, clothes, expensive alcohol, restaurants, clubs. enjoying the dividends of my recently received education after i moved to moscow and joined an oil company.

at that time one of my smartest and wisest friends was passing through moscow. he was on his way from a siberian town, my native town - where he works as a culture faculty professor - to a conference somewhere in europe. he is a self-confessed academia tourist. his budget was somewhat tighter than mine and he kept raising brows at my expenses and consumer confessions.

“i would like to mark this time to see how long it will take you to get off this consumption needle and get back to reality.” was what he said back then with an affable smile. i didn’t argue or feel any sort of remorse. i knew that that consumption euphoria will pass sooner or later.

now i am the moderation king. this is part because i changed two jobs since that time and finally found what i want to do for life. i am not single any more and i would rather spend more money on my girlfriend’s girl’s needs than buy another bottle of whiskey.

my first ipod photo is in permanent coma, but i would rather go to ifixit.com and re-animate it than buy a new one.

i haven’t found a balance yet. nor of course the balance.

here in russia we have just started catching up on consumption in the 1990s and now this global recession is leaving us perplexed. last friday all our staff received a note from our CEO urging us to take up a promise to adhere to one sustainable habit.

strangely enough most of the sample habits seemed to have been taken from the soviet union era. like using a net shopping bag to cut down the use of the plastic bags. or using a washing machine less often. in the soviet times our parents washed plastic bags and re-used them as much as they could just because they were forced to. or we used old t-shirts for floor mops.

we were the last in the race with the capitalist countries and now we could be the first one if we didn’t give these environmentally responsible habits up. 5 years ago i thought a supermarket was so up-to-date if it gave away plastic bags for free at the check out. i resented my parents habit of washing these bags to re-use them again and again.

now i have grown up. i don’t seek rebelling against my parents in every little thing. i have learned responsibility both in my personal life and my consumption.

i don’t see how can we take away the cornerstone of the capitalist by urging each other to consume more yet. but with the global death spiral we have seen the first big warning…

we have to yet learn the tao of shopping

2009-06-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

how do i delete a post made by mistake?

note to self :: confessions of a b-lister

2009-06-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

(can't wait till tomorrow to post another post)

being average and mediocre is not bad or wrong. everybody does it. forget perfect families in the advertising, forget the harvard alumni role models. you are who you are. and that was your aim. you have achieved it. you are not under-achiever. you made it. you won.

do you remember watching movies in the early 1990s. the first half of a run of the mill hollywood b-movie - something like "true lies" - was fun to watch because the options were open. before the culmination the choices were not yet made and the outcome - the ending - could turn out to be anything.
later towards the end of the 1990s there appeared a slew of such independent movies. lots of dialogue, almost no music at all. definitely nothing like a music score written by alan silvestri - fully orchestrated landscape of the characters moods and feelings.
in the indie movies it is up to you to dig into the situation and get yourself an insight as to what the characters feel and really think deep inside.
but i digress
my point is that your life is like an indie movie. you can start watching it from any point. you didn't miss any important parts, scenes or dialogues. what was before would not affect the future, the way the plot will unfurl in the chapters to come. for all we know you could watch only the last episode and get a real insight - burst out laughing or crying - only when the credits will roll.
you are free to realize what it was all about, only when the credits will roll into its second part when the second song starts playing.
maybe you will understand what was the purpose of the introduction of this or that character only in the sequel. maybe you will appreciate the beauty of the first part only when they will announce that in the third part they will replace you in the casting with elijah wood.
it is all up to you. it does not matter what the academy will decide. you will not be left to your own devices if the screen writers have gone on a strike. the film will keep on rolling and the man-hours will keep on counting in your time sheet.
keep the film rolling

2009-06-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

I have been observing this subject since early 2009… or was it winter 2008?.. well anyway, now everyone is talking about it. Art Director of Nine Inch Nails, Rob Sheridan (who saddened me by putting his brilliant and funny blog on hiatus, but welcomes you to stalk his every move and thought on Twitter) is musing if the future is here. Well yes iPhones and Google Earth would have really blown our minds 20 years ago.

But where are the robots they promised us in all the movies from 20-30 years ago?! Where are the jetpacks?

The point I want to make is that the future world as it gradually unfurls to us everyday, appears to be hidden in our hand held devices and laptops. We still drive basically the same cars as they were invented. Four wheels, doors opening side-ways. The light signals system is still highly primitive - yellow blinks for Turn, red lights up for Stop. But inside the cars we have super smart computers and GPS-systems that substitute the reality interface. GPS is omni-present without every leaving its small device

Who ever thought that satellites will be used for civil car driving instead of star wars?

I remember when I was a kid I knew my neighborhood as the back of my hand. But when a stray stranger would ask for a specific address - a street name so and so - my friends and me would be puzzled. We were surprised to find out that we never use official street address to locate buildings and places. We had special local names for each house in the neighbor hood. The tallest building was called "the 12-storey", then we had "the old" and "the new kindergarten". There were two buildings that stood next to each and we built to one design. They would be differentiated by the stores located in their ground floor - "grocery" and "hardware" stores relatively. We knew the landscape of our world perfectly - every crack in the pavement, every tree and every house.

Nowadays, even delivery boys brush off your explanations when you try to offer directions using such landmarks as "the monument to a so-and-so opposite the building". Everybody has a map in their phone, or at least can grab a print out from Google Maps... Well I forget the print out on the desk almost everytime, but that is not the point. :)

We are gradually forgetting how to work with the real, brick-and-mortar, atom-arena interface. Why bother with reading the street name plates if GPS thingy will announce "You have reached your destination" in the smooth operator voice. Why pay attention to details in the street around you?

I still believe that getting around with a jetpack would assume knowing the neighborhood. Because you rely on the gravity and laws of physics for transportation, not a voice in a magic box.

Otherwise we end up thinking that a photo is made by a bird in the camera box like the Flintstones cartoon describes it. We move forward and we reach the post-modern future, but our consciousness is still in the prehistoric past.

Mythology is our guide in the world ruled by the gadget gods (dei ex machina).

Current music: Aa - Thumper

Picture via http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/