Friendship or wisdom?

After reading Neil Seeman’s article about Facebook, I think that is unnecessary to create that conflict about friendship in Facebook. At least, I don’t care if Facebook is misunderstanding the real meaning of friendship. I mean, is obvious that everyone has got friends (and ones are closer than others), but I don’t mind adding new people as friends in Facebook. It’s just a webpage. In fact, from my point view,  might be useful to have a lot of contacts.

Seeman talks about an especific example, the one about the doctor and the patient, and is true that in this especific situation might be uncomfortable being a friend of Facebook, but, as you can allow to see your contents just the ones you want to, I don’t think that it’s a drama at all.

Actually, the article about the “wisdom of the crowds” made me think that Facebook could be a more useful tool to reach that wisdom, cause is quite clear that Facebook has a lot of possible uses in that way (fan pages, publishing notes, organizing events…).

This article also reminded me of the book Convergence culture. If the writer found interesting some Internet fans forums, he will become mad about Facebook possible uses.

When I was studying the first year of the bachelor of Journalism in Barcelona, one of the first things I was told was that some communication theorists say that one individual is intelligent, but the mass is silly. Cause, while one single human being thinks with the brain, a group of people is more passionate and more prone to follow a crazy leader. Well, it seems that this convergence culture (and I include Facebook among others technological stuff) allow people to work together in a way in which they no longer are a passionate senseless group of people, but are a community with an amount of knowledge incredibly big. That wouldn’t be possible without technology, but also without working together and putting the knowledge in common.

So, in my opinion we shouldn’t look at the negative side of Facebook and other Internet applications (because obviously they’ve got a negative side, just like everybody and everything), we should focus on what they can give us, that I think it’s much more and much more important.

The times they are a-changin’

The title of the legendary Bob Dylan’s song fits really well to the idea I want to expose.

Dylan says in his song that “you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone”. After watching a couple of times the documentary Good copy bad copy (2007, directed by three Danish guys: Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen and Henrik Moltke), the main idea I can extract is that Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), among a lot of similar associations, is wrong.

According with what Dan Glickman, MPAA’s chief lobbyist, says in the documentary, they won’t change their mind, they will fight piracy in the same old way that brought them to be, nowadays, losing the battle. They don’t think they have to change. From my point of view, they’re not swimming, and they’re sinking like a stone.

I think that MPAA is wrong because, as we can see in the movie, there’s a lot of ways to face piracy, or even to make some profit of it. I’m not saying that the Brazilian Tecno Brega or the Nigerian cinema business structures would be applicable to Hollywood or to the big musical markets. I don’t think so. But are good examples that, if they were creative and open-minded, they could find a better way to fight against piracy. That idea is also suggested by Olivier Chastan, of the reggae label VP Records, in the film.

Bob Dylan also sings “come senators, congressmen, please heed the call, don’t stand at the doorway, don’t block up the hall”. That also fits well to this case, cause would be really useful a change in the copyright policies of a lot of countries around the world (in Spain, for example, we need it, cause we’ve got an association that is really similar to the MPAA, la Sociedad General de Autores [SGAE] that is also quite useless by now), but, at least, is necessary a redefinition of the copyright limits, that must be updated according to nowadays technological circumstances.

All these associations can’t expect to control the world of piracy, because this is not possible nowadays. They, with the police and the old laws, can help to catch some important pirates. But if you just catch an enemy every once in a while you’re about to lose the war. In my opinion, they have to change the strategy.

Finally, the nerds triumphed

I gonna talk about the documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) by Robert X. Cringely (a pseudonym of the technology journalist Mark Stephens). 

First of all, I want a say that I found the documentary interesting, I think is narrated in an instructive but non boring way, and also with an entertaining tone and has an appropriated narrative rhythm.

The documentary gives us the idea that nerds are only those weak and thin boys, who eat pizza and drink coke, and also wear big glasses and need to impress their classmates because they’re always laughing at them. I think that it’s a wrong stereotype. But, anyway, we can see them (some boys, but also some girls) running important companies and earning amazing amounts of money, so maybe they don’t care about those stereotypes.

The documentary is useful to know how the biggest companies of the informatics sector, Apple and Windows, began, surprisingly for me, in the 70’s, and grew up till what they’re today. I found surprising thing was that Bill Gates was next to Apple. It’s curious, if you think that today are archrivals in the informatics market. The film also helps us to understand the huge number of hours that they devoted to developing the computers we have nowadays.

I found especially fun the part in which we can see the oldest personal computer in the world, the one without any keyboard, mouse, screen, or printer entry. How many times in human History an initially useless gadget has become so important?  

In the film also appears an interesting idea, the rise of personal computers was drove by young people. That’s usual. That young people, with their new and fresh ideas, stimulate some big revolutions, and also some small changes, that affect our life.