While I think that Britannica is slow to the game, it’s probably a good idea that they’re doing this.  If you can’t beat them, join them.  And, I think it’s good that these user edits may end up appearing in the printed version of the encyclopedia.  As I think I’ve probably said before, giving people a sense of ownership is a good thing.  That’s what Nicholas Carr described in his review of a book about Wikipedia and how he got sucked in to the idea of ownership of an article.  Heck, maybe people will go back to buying more copies of the print version if they feel their edits are going to be part of the encyclopedia.

Some people might criticize Britannica for “dumbing down” their encyclopedia and going the way of Wikipedia.  It might be nice, for example, to know that there is an authoritative source of information out there that hasn’t been “polluted” by the general public with their own personal research or information but rather to have one with experts who write the article.  Others might suggest that it’s a smart business move.  I don’t know which it really is.  The thing that I can’t help but think about is that unless people and/or businesses change with the times, they’re going to eventually be overtaken by some upstart company and Britannica has felt that pressure.  After all, what happened to the search engines Webcrawler, Lycos, Altavista, etc.  Does anyone use them anymore?  I’d guess that most people use Google.  Now, I know that this comparison isn’t necessarily a comparison of the same things (apples to apples, you know), but I would say that it is reflective of the idea that change is a natural part of life and that everyone needs to accept it or slowly fade away into obscurity.

What do  you think?  Is this a sign of the times?  Is it a smart business move?  What does it mean for libraries and librarians who use this encyclopedia over Wikipedia?

I also realize and others have said it before me that it is very difficult, I can imagine, to write a song and not have some part of it be done before by someone before you.  I know that when I hear songs, and I listen to a lot of music, there are certian things in different pieces that remind me of someone else’s music.  In some respects, it’s kind of like what happens when writing a paper.  Unless you’re doing original research, someone before you has already probably said it.  And whether or not you remembered to write down that you found out X piece of information on page whatever of Y book, you can get yourself in trouble.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning what looks to me like plagiarism on Coldplay’s part nor am I condoning it if a student plagiarizes.  I think the thing that I’m getting at is that nobody is perfect.  We all make mistakes, intentionally or not.  I know that one of the things that I tell students is that to make sure that they cite information as they found it.  In my opinion it’s better to over cite than under cite.  But, just because you forgot to cite something properly or you unintentionally borrowed a few lines from someone’s song and incorporated it into your own, it’s still a problem.  That’s why plagiarism is such a tricky thing to teach, let alone understand – for students, musicians, or people in general.  I certainly don’t!

So, the question I’d ask you is whether you think Coldplay ripped off Satch.  Watch these videos from a guitar expert in Canada or listen to a call in radio station recording (sorry, I don’t know what radio station so I can’t verify the authenticity).  And, for those of you out there that are librarians, what do you do to teach plagiarism?  I’d be interested to find out how you deal with this issue.

There’s a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture.

Culture’s old. It’s older than copyright.

The existence of culture is why copyright is valuable. The fact that we have a bottomless appetite for songs to sing together, for stories to share, for art to see and add to our visual vocabulary is the reason that people will pay money for these things.

Finally, he says “If culture loses the copyright wars, the reason for copyright dies with it.”  I think Doctorow has an interesting perspective on this topic since he’s a content creator and thus has a vested interest in keeping copyright to his own works.  But he walks the walk and actually releases his own content online for free as well as allows people to buy hard copies of his books and other works.

A lot of what he has to say reminds me of Lawrence Lessig and his idea that copyright is strangling creativity.  Creativity breeds culture and that’s why I’m with these two guys in how they want to deal with copyright.

The digital copyright act gives the alleged infringer an opportunity to demand that the content be restored. But in the height of a political campaign, even a few hours of downtime can be the difference between effective and ineffective. The law thus creates a perfect mechanism to censor political speech during the only time it could matter. Recognizing this, campaigns and their allies are beginning to exploit this weapon.

The answer to this problem is not to abolish or ignore copyright. Instead, the law should be revised, [my emphasis] bringing focus to the contexts in which its important economic incentives are needed, and removing it from contexts where it isn’t.

I couldn’t agree more. Read the whole thing and decide for yourself if you think the two examples Lessig uses about utilizing clips to create YouTube videos for a campaign should be considered fair use or if they violated copyright.

So Google just came out with a new program called Mail Goggles that is supposed to keep its Gmail users from typing out embarrasing emails between 10 pm and 4 pm on the weekends.  How does it work?  Well, you first have to be a Gmail user, and then you have to enable Mail Goggles.  Mail Goggles requires “any user who enables the function to perform five simple math problems in 60 seconds.”  I don’t know what they mean by simple math problems, but it seems like a good idea.  With the ubiquity of cell phones these days, I think drunk dialing (calling someone while drunk) has become more prevalent.  Add to that the text messaging and now that more and more people have the internet on their cell phones or at least that much easier access to email, it seems like a good idea.

Not surprising, but Mail Goggles was thought up by Jon Perlow, a Google engineer “after sending his share of regrettable late-night missives, including a plea to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend, he wrote on the company’s Gmail blog.”

As Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet & American Life said in the New York Times,

““Research suggests that for some people, the use of computers or other gadgets creates some emotional distancing from the person they are addressing,” Mr. Rainie said in an e-mail message. The distance, in other words, makes them feel safe — flirting becomes more flirtatious; insults become more insulting.”

I couldn’t agree more.  It doesn’t even have to deal with flirting or insulting someone, just emailing a question to someone because of the asynchronicity of the communication makes it easier to say something to someone.  You don’t have to see them face to face or hear their reaction over the phone.

There are some funny stories in the article.  Here’s my favorite:

[A] 23-year-old record producer in Manhattan who recalled a drunken text-message mishap on a recent trip to his alma mater, Syracuse University. The producer, who declined to be identified, said he had picked up an undergraduate woman while intoxicated and had accompanied her back to her apartment. But sitting in her kitchen at 4 a.m., he said, he started to have second thoughts. So while she was in the room, he tapped out a message to a friend’s iPhone: “Eww Saratoga, what am I thinking? I can def. do better then this … can you drive my car and get me out of here?”

Seconds later, her telephone buzzed. He had accidentally sent the message to her, not his friend, the producer said.

Months later, after a few more romantic misadventures with her, “We had a long talk and I apologized,” he said. “I now write songs about getting my life together.”

I can honestly say that I’ve never done anything that stupid.  It’s kind of like emailing or calling someone while you’re upset with them.  It’s never a good idea.  It’s better to sleep on it and let yourself cool down, or in the case of drunken emailing, wait until you sober up.  Easier said than done, I know, but it’s something to keep in mind after a few drinks.

When Hewlett-Packard invented the HP-35, the first hand-held scientific calculator, in 1972, the device was banned from some engineering classrooms. Professors feared that engineers would use it as a crutch, that they would no longer understand the relationships that either penciled calculations or a slide rule somehow provided for proficient scientific thought.

But the HP-35 hardly stultified engineering skills. Instead, in the last 36 years those engineers have brought us iPods, cellphones, high-definition TV and, yes, Google and Twitter.

As I said before, I think that it’s a red herring to blame Google or technologies for making us stupid.  We have the opportunity to do more things and think bigger than we did before with these technologies (not just google).  If we really want to learn how to do longhand mathematics, then we can learn it.  But, if we don’t, we don’t have to.  Yes, on some level I think there is a sadness in not having people today learn the basics (of mathematics for example and relying on technologies like calculators) and maybe the idea of “google making us stupid” is more of a commentary on our educational system that is pushing these ideas/technologies instead of having us learn the way our grandparents did.  The flip side to that is that if we are going to compete in today’s society, we have to learn these technologies in order to be relevant in the workplace.  For better or worse, we’re going to have to deal with these technologies and learn to live with them.

In the same light, I am happy to hear that the Oxford Project book was released today.  I remember hearing about it in my Iowa alum email a few months ago and I got another update about it in my email again.  What is the Oxford Project you ask?  Well, it’s a study of the small town of Oxford, Iowa by Stephen Bloom (author of Postville) and Peter Feldstein.  Feldstein started out wanting to take a picture of every single resident of tiny Oxford (pop. 676) back in the 80s and he went back 20+years later to take photographs of the residents again.  Bloom was the person who interviewed the residents, telling their stories.  Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words and some of these photographs really are worth each word.  (Click on the link provided above to view more info about the book and see some sample photos.)

Ken Burns, the famed documentary filmmaker said, “Powerful and confessional, ‘The Oxford Project’ draws its strength from the truth that so-called ordinary people are actually the heroes of our American drama.”  Besides his words of praise, it has been getting a lot of attention from some major outlets like CNN, CBS Sunday Morning, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, etc.  I suggest you go and check this book out from your local library (or suggest they purchase it), or buy it yourself from your local bookstore or online.  I am eagerly anticipating it after having read Denison.

In the meantime, here are a couple of videos worth viewing if you’re interested.  One of which is from Prairie Lights an independent bookstore in Iowa City.