Questions that need to be asked?

As I was considering what to post, I thought about how nice it would be to get some feedback on some of the issues that I've been thinking about recently. Additional perspective is always welcome, and almost always reveals facets of a subject that I had not thought of. So what I'm going to do is release to you all some questions and concepts that I've been considering writing a post on. Read them, think about them, and get back to me. I would really love to hear from any of you, so sound off! Here are some questions that I think need asked:

· Is teaching evolutionary theory as fact in the school system causing a detrimental effect on society?

· Is the Constitution still a viable document as is, or does it need to be amended or restructured to accommodate modern times?

· Are we Americans really as terrible as we are making ourselves out to be?

· Is MTV poisoning society?

· Why is there such a push towards “zen living” and “information diets” recently?

· What is the value of reading the classics?

These are just a few of the things that I've been thinking about lately. Feel free to comment, email me @ joeaholmes@gmail.com , or IM me via the digsby app on the right hand side of the site. I look forward to connecting with all of you!

INTERACT: Breaking down the barrier beween the reader and the author

Well, its the end of my first month of consistent blogging. I must say that I am enjoying it quite a lot thus far. The ability to voice ideas and be read is extremely cathartic to me, and I have begun to anticipate each posting. One aspect of blogging that I have grown to really love is the immediate and instant contact with the reader. I find that this instant feedback refreshes me, and inspires me to write well. What I want to do with this post is get even more personal in my interaction with my readers. To that end, I have placed a twitter widget and a IM widget on FreshSqueezed. So please, feel free to drop me a line. Complain, comment, trade ideas and opinions, or just say hi. I would love to hear from you. This to me is one of the most exciting aspects of digital publishing. not only for ones voice to be heard, but to build relationships with ones readership. how exciting!

The Imperative to Create

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery~

Last weekend, I went to a cabin retreat with some friends. It was just a time for everyone to relax and unwind (and contributed to the absence of posts this week). I considered working on a new post over the weekend, but I couldn't quit fiddling with my rekindled interest in ink sketching. Micalyn and I had bought art supplies to play with since the forecast called for rain, and I chose some ink and nibs. Initially when I sat down with my new supplies, I just doodled. As I continued to play around however, some great ideas began to flit back and forth in my mind. Then I really found my muse, and for the rest of the rainy day, that's what I worked on. In that moment I had an epiphany that has been burgeoning in my mind since I began writing for SqueezedFresh. I had forgotten the joy of creating. I had forgotten the catharsis of making something, instead of consuming something. We have become increasingly a culture of consumers instead of creators, and have forgotten the joy in producing something original and uniquely ours. In a prior post, I wrote about the potential power of the web to bring forth a remix culture, but I didn't really stress how important I feel it is to the human soul that this culture grow and spread. Throughout our past, individuals have always created. Many times this creativity was spurred by necessity. In this modern time, where our every need is met, what is the spark that will bring us back to the act of creation? I think that in this time of convenience and consumerism, we need desperately to rediscover the unique joy of being creators. We need to learn not only to enjoy works of art, music, and cinema, but to produce them. The tools are at our fingertips like never before. So let this be your wake up call. Get out there and cut, paste, draw, write, act, play, and create!

Culture Trends in America: intellectual property and the information age

"So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically."

~Lawrence Lessing~

I have a confession to make; I have trouble feeling bad about file sharing. And I am not alone. p2pnews reports that as of October 2004 over four and a half million p2p users online at any given moment. Amazingly, that’s just the statistics for American IPs. Add in the global IPs and you can tack on another two million users. Mind you, these are not monthly or even daily numbers; they are a moment by moment average of users. The obvious question that these statistics being up is this: why is it that so many people don’t find an issue with crossing intellectual property boundaries? Is this just perhaps a practical extension of the maxim that everyone would be a thief if they knew they would be caught? After all, though there is some chance of litigation against a file sharer, its likelihood is truly remote. Lifehacker puts the matter succinctly: “The RIAA has conducted about 26,000 lawsuits, and there are more than 15 million music downloaders. Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research said it best: "If you're a file sharer, you know that the likelihood of you being caught is very similar to that of being hit by an asteroid." So is that it? Are people just amoral when they don’t fear punishment? While I agree that may be part of the answer, I don’t feel that it is the whole of it. Other concurrent trends are emerging that point to a complete shift in the way we think about intellectual property. One of the most prominent of those trends is the growing community of writers, artists, musicians, and software developers who embrace the concept of remix culture. Remix culture is a term first coined by creative commons founder Lawrence Lessing to describe a culture that embraces the natural creativity of the individual. In a remix culture, changing and improving music, literature, art and software is not just tolerated but encouraged. Furthermore, the individual would be free to use the creator’s intellectual property in any non-commercial way (Mr. Lessing has written a freely available e-book on this topic). This vision of a free information society is really resonating, and has already produced some amazing but controversial works of art, music and software. One of the most notable is the grey album by dj dangermouse. This freely distributed album was a creative remix of the black album by Jay-Z and the Beatles white album. Another thriving creative commons community is sourceforge. Sourceforge is a community of software developers, and most work under creative commons license to write software for the masses. These are but a few examples of how our culture is evolving into a free information society. I think that the attempts of the RIAA , MPAA and other corporate entities to strictly control their intellectual property is not a matter of catching pirates, but of trying to stop an entire culture from undergoing a paradigm shift. That, I believe, is why these organizations will ultimately fail. The future of intellectual property demands new methods of monetization. The old models are broken, and trying to fight a culture shift is just a good way to get plowed under by the ideas of the future. While the RIAA may be having a fit, this brave new cultural frontier is actually very exciting for the individual and the creator. A remix culture will bring about a new level of intimacy between the creator and the consumer, and will empower the average individual to produce and create without the need of an expensive and restrictive middleman. It’s the future, and I say bring it on!