Category: Digital Culture

More really interesting discussion from Jeff Pomerantz, this time re: IP and scholarly work. It is better have control of your own IP, or give it up in order to get publicity?

But if (1) a db that I care about being indexed in does not automatically hoover up this journal’s contents, & (2) it is not possible to submit my own article to be indexed, then Houston, we have a problem. Given a choice between retaining copyight & having my work disseminated, well, that’s almost a no-brainer. Databases are the source that scholars traditionally go to when doing lit reviews, so obviously I’d want to have my work in them.

When I read the line about “given a choice…” being a no-brainer, I agree, but in the opposite direction. I would gladly trade publicity for my own IP rights. Lets transfer this argument over to a much more potentially lucrative IP realm: music.

This is the traditional trade off for musicians in the US: rights vs publicity. Historically bands have offered up their IP in order to allow the music labels publicize them, make them famous, get them booked at arenas instead of bars, print t-shirts, etc. In a sense, they trade their IP for the ability of the public to “find” them, much as Jeff has argued is necessary in academia.

Now…would any sane person (not affiliated with the RIAA/MPAA) in this day and age argue that it’s better for content creators to trade their IP for publicity? Nearly every artist would be better off with their own IP rights.

Here we are, telling our students to not use Google only, use other information sources, use the databases that the library subscribes to… are we also really saying, to hell with commercial databases, if it’s on my website that’s sufficient? Have we gotten to a place where dbs are actually irrelevant in academia?

Honestly? We’re fast approaching, and as more and more universities start their own archives, or academics start archiving their own work (which I have always done, and highly recommend to anyone out there)….yes, we’re quickly moving away from the traditional databases. As more interesting and collaborative “cataloging” starts moving in to academia (tagging and folksonomies for one) I can see traditional database searches moving to the second line of search. Hell…if people (even librarians) were honest, I bet they are already a second line for a known items.

Still holed up at Falls Creek Falls, at the IT Symposium. Last night = Bingo and an open bar. Today = presentations, vendor swag, and a trail walk around the lake.

All in all, not a bad way to get paid. Learning a bit, which is nice…really good presentation this morning regarding smart classrooms, which had tips I really hadn’t thought of. So there is learning going on.

Currently sitting the lobby of the Inn at Falls Creek Falls State Park, mooching a very small, and nearly useless, wireless signal.

Get this: I’m at the 2005 IT Symposium for the state of TN. The State puts in a small wireless network for conference goers….and then blocks all traffic except port 80.

Which means no Thunderbird or other POP email, no IMAP, no IM, nothin’. Webmail works, but JEEZ…we’re at an IT Conference, right? You’re throttling our ports? For what possible reason?

I plan to get to the bottom of this ASAP. I can’t imagine why this is being done, and the organizers here blame it on people upstream of them…so I’ll check with them. More news as I get it.

One of the strangest flash animations I’ve ever seen, and as a bonus it includes the phrase “Super Para Magnetic Effect.”

Get Perpendicular

Via BoingBoing, Indy Custom Radio from Ian Clarke (the designer of Freenet). A music client which downloads freely-available MP3’s, plays them, and allows you to rank them. It takes these ranks, and (much like Amazon and Netflix progressive suggestions systems) the more you rank, the better the match for what you like.

I’m trying it out, and we’ll see how it goes. It will be interesting how quickly it can learn my preferences, as well as what sorts of music will actually pop up. Right now it doesn’t require any login or anything, so I’m guessing that the “preferences” are stored locally to the computer. Would be nice to be able to carry those prefs from one computer to the other, either via a login or some other authentication setup. Would also be interesting to increase the “folksonomic” quotient by making the preferences more transparent, and being able to actually view others “tags” or rankings. Also be interesting to see which songs are getting 5 stars, etc….could very easily to a top 50 from the data, using #’s of people who are ranking each song, combined with the actual 1-5 ranking.

Doesn’t this look like it eats souls? Or like Yoda’s evil cousin?

Very cool news report from the future, chronicling the rise of our ‘net overlords, and the subsequent social issues. Choose a mirror:

EPIC 2014

WARNING: Flash needed.

From BoingBoing, I so want one of these. I don’t even wear a watch, but I’d make an exception for any one of these:

From TokyoFlash, home of incredibly cool watches from Japan. Who knew such watches even existed? For reference, $1US = roughly 100 Yen….so you’re looking at from just over $100 to nearly $200 depending. That’s nuts, but they are beautiful.

Had a really interesting weekend, with more play than work. Friday was poetry night with the Spanish Club at Sewanee, where Betsy read some wonderful stuff by latino/chicano/puertoriqueno/ poets, while I read a couple of pieces from Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is a person that doesn’t get enough credit in the library world (other than the ubiquitous quote in all libraries “I have always imagined that heaven is a type of library”). He invented the an idealized, infinite library (The Library of Babel) that has been a very influential metaphor in literary circles. In addition, of course, he was a librarian at the National Library of Argentina.

The title of the entry is from one of his poems, where he opines “I’ll eat more ice cream, and less beans” in thinking on how he would change his life. This weekend was, as I said, all about ice cream.

Saturday we had drinks with friends Andrea and Will, and then more snacks and discussion with Ruth, Jason, and Nicky. Sunday we spent the afternoon on Tim’s Ford lake at Angela and Paul’s house, with an international crowd of Spaniards, Canadians, Columbians, and Americans. With cava flowing, amazing food, and perfect weather…well, it was the first of what I’m hoping is many wonderful spring days.