Being transparent
15 years ago
I do think that the internet content is ephemeral, even if paradoxically it remains on the web during years. When you created a website or post a commentary on a blog it remains there, month after month, year after year. Even when it’s deleted, there will always remain traces of it that we can’t see.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
To go on with the story of the website I made in high school, it’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the notion of impermanence on the internet. I worked so hard on this website, I spend so many hours thinking about it and developing it, and one day, it was gone, it had disappeared from the web. Why is that ? Because of my hosting services provider. When a webmaster didn’t log in during six months, the website was automatically deleted. Growing up, my passion dramatically fading away, I just let my website die. I did not want it to happen, not at all, and believe me it’s a strange feeling to lose something that represents so much but is only virtual. Few months of inattention and the death sentence was decided. I wish I could go back and at least copy few pages. That’s what’s so different with the internet. I have this bad habit to keep everything. I try to treat myself thank you but I still have many boxes filled with old stuff, the oldest must be my first drawings, that is to say... I couldn’t live without a attic. But no attic on the internet. I wasn’t able to save my cute little website from its digital death. I’ve been told every website leaves traces, that some people can have access to it, so I wonder where this cemetery is, how it looks like. All those obsolete websites… I just hope mine doesn’t rest next to some star sex tape withdrawn immediately from the web.
Anyway, my point is that people tend to think that the internet is more reliable than paper, that it can overcome time. But the internet is not another dimension. It’s just servers, wires, computers and systems. Material things that can fail.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations." - Charles R. Swindoll
An opportunity is a favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances. But the problem with this definition is that we can’t see the importance of acting on it. See, an opportunity isn’t something that happens to you and brings you fortune. An opportunity is nothing without somebody deciding to grab it at a particular moment. For an opportunity to become actually one, someone has to see it, to detect its potential. Then, he has to act, to make it real. Nothing is in itself an opportunity. Back to the sixties, when few American students started creating a network, nobody could have predicted that the system would become such a powerful mass media. But some people, one after the other, saw the opportunity and acted on it.
I’m not going to say that it’s a great opportunity for companies to go to the internet and make a website. I will spare you the scoop of the century. The highest opportunity the internet offers, is that it’s not fixed. This media is self developing. To me, the precious opportunity is for one to see how he will use and herewith shape the media. This week is the 11th anniversary of Google and it’s creeping me out when I see what they became – and the money they made - in a decade ! Google never stopped exploiting the media, changing it, making it more useful, making it do everything and even more. They developed advertisement services, an electronic mail service, desktop applications, a cartography application, the OS mobile Android… Well you all know the story. All this was possible because the company never stopped reconsidering their role and dared to take new directions. Of course, Google is far to be the only one making the internet become what it is today, and thinking about what it will be tomorrow.
In the end, an opportunity is only one after having been proved right. Before being grabbed, it’s just a possibility. We never know what can happen. So the advice I would give is not being afraid of creating, testing or trying new things, they can fail, but they can also become a precious opportunity.
Before the apparition of the internet, when someone had information about somebody or something, it was not always easy to be heard. Especially when the information referred to people who had political and/or financial influence. I’m not saying liberty of opinion and speech appeared with the internet but the web seems to give it no limit. Stars and politicians have to be way more cautious than they were before. Gutter press already generated scandals but couldn’t reveal everything because of pressures and lack of space in their pages. They couldn’t either know everything because they had few investigators. Today, if anyone sees anything, he can report it on the web. And everyone can see it and talk about it. In a way, this is a good thing because people have to behave and try to look nice and clean.However, the information we get on the web is way less reliable. On the web, a rumor can spread in an blink of an eye on without having been checked. As internet users we have to be careful with what we read or see.
Moreover, is transparency that good ? I mean, do we have to know everything about everyone ? It’s a tricky path. On the one hand, we deserve to know the man we are giving our vote to, or the people we trust – especially when he is building his campaign on certain values. But on the other hand, that is not really our business ! We are not voting for a good husband and a good father, we are voting for a president, a person who has to have politics experience and who knows the job. Same for a future employee, some pictures of him on Facebook having fun at a party should not be discriminatory. In my opinion, when it come to politics or work, people should not be judged according to their lifestyles but according to their skills.
Politics and companies tend to use this wave of “transparency” as a communication tool.
Using networks like Obama does with Twitter make them look real, nice and trustworthy. But when they tell little details about their lives it does not mean we get to know everything about them EVEN the more personal details. It only means we know what they wanted to show us. Let’s not be fooled by this illusion of proximity.I use the term “illusion” because even if these personal details are real, it does not mean we get to know the person. Transparency does not mean reality. The image we get of someone on the internet is just a part of what they really are. It’s been created by others, by pieces of information.
To conclude, let’s not forget that the internet is a media, a bias, a filter. Transparency is another recurrent myth of the internet.
The internet didn't only changed our lives, it completely influenced a new generation.
My father being a computer scientist, I've always had a computer. But I really felt a change in my life the day I started to get the internet. I remember, I was in Junior high school. My brother had driven my mother crazy to have the internet so one day she came back with a modem and a 10 hours/month connection with Club Internet. I swear these 3 hours a month they gave me totally changed my life !
The sound of the connection was totally surreal and access to a website page took forever but it was working. I associate this time to the transition from childhood to teenage hood. I started to open myself to the world. So many websites, so many information were there, I suddenly couldn’t remember how I had done before. I had a passion for the Olsen twins, but they were quite unknown in
So here is how internet broke my habits. I began to share more, to know more people, to speak and write in English, to focus on a project. My website actually worked very well, I had many visitors - still girls - and was even referenced in magazines. This made me realize how much I loved the media. Without the internet I wouldn’t be here, at the CELSA today. The internet did not only broke my little girl’s habits, it also lead my life right were I am.
Since then, I've always tried include the internet in my habits. I don't do the queue anymore, I buy train tickets on the internet. I don't let myself fooled by a shop, I compare prices on several websites. I don't buy news things all the time, I buy secondhand stuff on eBay or Priceminister. I don't go over the limit on my cell phone plan, I chat on Facebook. I don't copy-paste what I find on Encarta for work anymore, I look all over the web and compare the results. I could go on forever like that but I'm gonna stop. It seems that the only thing the internet didn't change is me being a chatterbox !
When the internet shuffles music industry - The impact of the internet on the world of music, musicians, and so on
Many myths are linked to the internet. Freedom, border crossing, connection between people, sharing…. Isn’t there characteristics the Internet has in common with music ? Indeed, these two should get along quite well. But today, music also means “intellectual property” and “market” . Here comes trouble. Since 2000, we’ve been talking about the crisis of music industry. Peer to peer practices seems to be the ones to blame. But what is the real impact of the internet on the music world ?
You rock my world
At first, the internet was only considered as an opportunity for musicians seeking fame. Free, simple visibility is given by websites such as Myspace. Thanks to those, musicians, beginners as experienced, can show what they do and who they are. Myspace being also a social network, these musicians began to enlarge their audience. Many artists were discovered on the internet, such as Lily Allen. It became a parallel way to know fame. By using the internet some acquired a reputation, a public, and stood out. Musicians communicate about their new songs and their concerts without passing by other expensive mass media.
What’s also great with the web is that you can find all types of music, coming from all over the world. In the past, I would only buy a CD knowing that I would like it, not testing it before. The Internet is free, there are no risks taken. Streaming really opens your mind to songs you wouldn’t hear on the radio or buy in stores. I discovered Sigur Rós, an Icelandic post-rock band on the internet, I don’t think I could have done it otherwise.
Moreover, according to the majors, paying online downloading has more and more success. Put forward as a legal alternative to peer to peer, million songs has already been sold all over the world this way. Isn’t it great not to have to go out, look for a CD, do the queue and go back home to finally listen to new songs ?! I sit there, behind my computer, and I get everything I want almost instantly.
Rock & Roll Suicide
Internet, as great as it can be, is also a very tricky media. Visibility can paradoxically lead to invisibility. The web is open so everyone can post anything, anytime. Everyone can call himself a musician and the most talented and creative artist can be easily lost in this sea. For instance, Myspace isn’t anymore for musicians only, teenagers also rushed at it.
Peer to peer is also a problem, regarding the fact that musician is a real job. Music, this way, is stolen from the person who worked for it. I’m bad, I’m bad, you know it… This lead to a record industry crisis. Records departments tend to disappear from the malls, even specialized stores such as Virgin or Fnac foretell the end of it. Some artists even consider twice the idea of starting a career, knowing it will be harder than it already was. According to the Syndicat national de l’édition phonographique in the first trimester of 2009, music CD and DVD sales went down 18,5% in a year. the music market in general went down 16,4%.
Songs also loose value : as soon as a song is being recorded, it is to be found instantly on the web . Radios and TV don’t even have time to broadcast them. They are overwhelmed.
Here comes the sun
Nobel price Paul Krugman said recently in a New York Times article : “Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.” This strategy seeks to take back music downloads and transform them into paying downloads. But hacking is hard to fight, especially when techniques such as DRM are not that reliable.
The Hadopi law is a French law that punish peer to peer as an offence to copyright. This law has been reinforced and adopted but the French senate today. I personally don’t know if repression is the solution. Some say it worked quite well in the USA but I am skeptic. Can’t we find another solution ? I don’t feel I have a particular legitimity to say what we should do however I think there should be discussions between music industry, musicians and economists. Something isn’t working with today’s system. Would awareness campaign be efficient ? I have to admit I may be naïve. Should music be free ? How ? By allocating a budget to musicians ? By paying them with advertisement ?
I do think other ways to download should be offered, but I also think it is a matter of time. Aren’t we just facing a simple change of format like another ? I mean, I look at my Spice Girls CD the way my father looks at his David Bowie vinyl disc : both are relics of the past ! It reminds us of another time and we feel nostalgic about it. To me, we are living a transition. What makes this change more difficult is that not only the “format” has changed, but also the “materiality” of music. Music went from material to immaterial. As for every change, society has to adapt. Here is a theme I will talk about a lot in this blog : how does media influence society, and how do we go from one media to another. Record sales are in crisis, but it won’t lead to the death of music industry.
To conclude, we have to stop blaming the internet for everything that changes today. Some announced the end of press, however we observe that newspapers can’t survive without an electronic edition but web newspapers need their printed edition to live, too. In my opinion, we should not talk about cannibalism but about convergence. Music industry will live forever, but not without the internet.
