December 2004
Are Corporations Bad For Culture?
My blogger friend Boris posted on Joi Ito's site:
Copyright is a product of egotism and greed. It is of the utmost arrogance to think that we own anything, let alone something so abstract and fleeting as "an idea". Copyright was created because the socioeconomic model that forced it into existence made no other provisions for the sustenance of the artist and thinker. The legal entities known as "corporations" piggybacked on it and now control it outright. Corporations control culture, the product of art and ideas, to influence the markets they reap financial benefit from.The moment you externalize any thought, in whatever shape you do so, you are sharing. You relinquish any and all "ownership". No, that is not a legal precept. It is a philosophical one. The philosophers always win. Always. ;)
While there is a nugget of truth to what Boris is saying, which I address in more detail inside the post, I'm hearing the same litany of countercultural arguments in this statement -- that we all have to smash the system and overthrow the Man, man, cos copyright is theft!
Except we are the Man.
Most creative types I know just barely get by, even so-called 'bestselling' authors and 'platinum selling' musicians, who out of their first-time deals got very little upfront cash. Copyright -- and the things that go along with it, like performance and mechanical royalties -- are often all that keep them in peanut butter and ravioli. Copyright protects the little guy. Which is why we are the Man. Do we have to overthrow ourselves?
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December 16, 2004 in | ✍ 2
The People's Republic of StarbucKEA
I've got a book review and interview with Andrew Potter, one of the co-authors of The Rebel Sell coming to this space shortly, but apropos of the subject, I'd like to point out this great piece Adam Greenfield wrote on the disproportionate amount of energy spent by our young Adbusting types on "uncooling" consumer brands such as IKEA and Starbucks, vs corporate giants that aren't in the consumer space:
The dynamic at work in both cases is one many of us might recognize from bad relationships: when a deeply wounded person suffering from low self-esteem finally fights back against the various agents of their distress, very often it's the closest, most sympathetic soft target they lash out at first, in defiance of all logic (or justice).
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Why Are Architecture and Design Sites So Bad?
"An architect who would never dream of placing the front door floating three feet off the ground shouldn't be making a Flash site using 4-pixel-tall unlabeled squares as the navigation elements." - incubus_of_habit, a contributor to Dwell magazine's online forums.
As in architecture, web design has its own commonsense best practices. If ninety percent of web sites put the logo in the top left corner, and it's always a link to the homepage, that's a de facto standard, just like putting light switches just inside the door to a room. No-one says you have to do it that way, but if you don't, people will end up stumbling around in the dark.
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December 8, 2004 in Design | ✍ 1
