Featured – Page 7

Facebook vs. MySpace: Deepening Class Divisions

I often voice my dislike for MySpace. I use Facebook, and feel uncomfortable enough releasing my personal information on that.

But today I read a very eye-opening essay by Danah Boyd, a Berkeley PhD student and USC Fellow specializing in youth involvement on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube. “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace”, while not an academic essay, highlights differences in preference for Facebook and MySpace between “hegemonic” teens – college-bound high schoolers who are “in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities” – and “subaltern” teens: “Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, ‘burnouts,’ ‘alternative kids,’ ‘art fags,’ punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm… kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school.”

Boyd goes far beyond the simple observation that hegemonic teens prefer Facebook and subaltern teens still gravitate towards MySpace. She talks about public misconceptions regarding both social networking sites, and the deeper impact that the division has made on American young peoples’ lives today. For example, in the military, most of the enlisted, low-income, pro-war demographic uses MySpace, while higher-up officers with college degrees and more drive for upward mobility tend to prefer Facebook. OK, big deal right?
Wrong! A month ago, the military blocked all access to MySpace, but not Facebook. This is just one example that Boyd uses to illustrate the accentuated divergence between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic classes of young adults.

In reaction to her own observations, Boyd expresses a genuine concern for all of today’s teens; while there is a stark difference on the outside for these kids, they exhibit much of the same behavior on the inside, regardless of whether they write about it on their MySpace blog or their Facebook profile. She worries for the heightened tension in the Facebook crowd, which is college-oriented and focused on living up to goals for self-success imposed by themselves, and often similarly upward-motivated parents, as well.

Anyways, I’ve yakked about it in almost essay length myself. It’s a long-ish read – a few pages printed – but definitely very interesting if you like reading about diversity, race, class or youth issues. Read it!

A Day in Software

I recognize that it’s kind of sad, but I am a hardcore computer junkie and a significant percentage of my work and play are done on the computer. So here’s a peek into the software I use daily:
Waking up:

Southwest DING! – Check for low airfares to/from Phoenix. Find that there aren’t any.
Mozilla Firefox – Check e-mail, Facebook, Digg, Engadget, Dilbert.com, XKCD.com, and New York Times. All banner ads huffed by AdBlock Plus plugin. But it’s bloated and RAM-hogging, so I won’t use it for the rest of the day.

At work:

Internet Explorer 7 – Work stuff in an all-Microsoft environment. Lots of ASPX web apps that don’t work with standards-compliant browsers.
Microsoft Office 2007 – More work stuff… Greatly eased by Microsoft SharePoint Portal, one of the best CMS and project management suites out there.
Instant Messaging – Office Communicator for work contacts, Pidgin or Meebo for personal contacts
Windows Remote Desktop Connection – log in to lots of systems remotely. Login to my home machine to stream MP3s.

The coffeeshop:

Safari 3 Beta – Surf sites, correspond with web design clients. Using Safari because it’s the fastest browser on Windows, standards-compliant, and makes me feel like all of the Mac hotshots in the coffeeshop.
Adobe Design Premium CS3 – Web design with Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop.
Gmail – check with clients, share documents and web copy, load PDFs and Word documents without having to download them.
Microsoft OneNote 2007 – Track progress on design projects.
Pidgin – IM with friends. Share links to pictures of pitbulls attacked by porcupines.
WordPress – write this blog post to refresh brain between romps in code.

Home:

iTunes 7 – Crank up the tunes. Sync iPod with new DRM-free music from eMusic or iTunes Store.
Picasa 2 – Load shots from yesterday’s bike ride off of my Canon PowerShot S3. Maybe upload them to Picasa Web Albums and blog about them.
e-SWORD – Get confused about something in the Bible that says men with long hair bring shame upon themselves. Consider a haircut. Cory then tells me that it was written in a cultural context to age-of-Christ Jews, so I’m overreacting.
Safari 3 Beta – check deals on Woot.com, newegg.com. Pay bills.
Windows Media Player 11 – Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation or Futurama.
FL Studio 7 – Write jazz fusion licks. Bang head on desk because of the steep learning curve. Go back to newegg.com and check prices on a desktop computer with hardcore audio interfaces and a MIDI keyboard.

Yep, I am lame and spend too much time on the computer. But it makes me money and keeps me connected to a lot of friends that live outside of Fort Collins, so I make no apologies.

Studio Fun

A few weeks ago, I went to a Dave Weckl drumming clinic. He had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but one thing I noticed was how he does almost all of his session work by playing along to pre-made tracks. Usually the recording workflow works the other way around, laying down drums first or second, but since this guy is one of the most in-demand studio drummers in the country, they record the rest of the track and e-mail the files to his home studio, where he records his part.

Personally, I learned to play drums by listening to and playing along with CDs. It’s definitely a good way to get up and going, since a pre-recorded band isn’t going to be mad that you’re a bad drummer, but as you get better, it does less for you; there is little room for creative expression, no interaction with other musicians, and no potential for disaster if you don’t keep good tempo.

So I decided to start messing around with some backing tracks of my own, sans-drums. That would open the possibility to work my creative muscles, which are honestly several steps behind my technical abilities.

So I bought FL Studio 7 Producer Edition, a professional digital audio workstation. It has everything I should need to record, notate, synthesize, or generate any kind of music. It’s very powerful and expandable, so if I later decide to build a more complete home studio with mics and stuff, I will have that ability.

I chose FL Studio (previously known as Fruity Loops) over some much more expensive competitors, like Cakewalk SONAR and Sony ACID Pro. The truth is, FL Studio is just as robust, but at a fraction of the price, and the developer actually seems human. For example, my purchase entitles me to free updates for life. It’s a per-user license as well, so if I want to install it on another computer of mine (gasp!) it’s fine. There’s an active forum community, flash video tutorials, and over 2GB of audio samples available for download.

There is a steep learning curve with any of this software – I have a lot of work cut out for me before I can even complete my first real song. It’s slow, but interesting, so I enjoy it. Once I figure it out, I might share some of it here.

Time for the Yearly Identity Crisis

Something interesting happened in my business calculus class today. The prof gave a quiz that had questions that we’d never seen before, but with some understanding of the concepts we did know, could be solved with a couple of smart realizations.

To the tell the truth, the quiz knocked my on my butt- I had been slacking for a day or so, and in an accelerated 4-week course, that is all you need to be in deep water. But pretty much everyone didn’t get the problems, even though they weren’t all that hard. In fact, after the quiz, the students pretty much revolted against the prof. They seemed to think that she couldn’t test on anything that wasn’t on the homework. But she wasn’t testing uncovered material, she was just giving us problems that were slightly different from the ones we already saw on the homework.

I was flabbergasted by the reaction. Here were at least fifteen students who sincerely believed that they were only responsible for rote memorization, and not the critical reasoning and analysis skills that they should actually be learning.

Then I remembered: These are business students. They are not engineers or scientists, whose whole professions revolve around innovation and challenging our preconceptions. Business, in free market capitalism, often thrives on imitation and adopting others’ ideas. Simply put, there is little incentive to bother with analysis and creativity in business.

For the first time, I realized why they have a separate calculus class for the business majors! Simply put, they would die in Calc for Scientists. But that puts me in a strange position: I am very happy with my business major, since it gives me the technical software engineering skills as well as the business communication and management skills that will differentiate me from the next guy applying for a tech job.

But every once in a while, I get the feeling that my job isn’t enough on the tech end. It’s too biased towards proprietary Microsoft technologies, and doesn’t expose students nearly enough to UNIX/Linux environments or industry-standard languages like C, Python, Java, or PHP. And like my business calc class demonstrates, there isn’t a true push to understand or innovate.

I’ve considered adding a Computer Science major, or switching to Applied Computing Technology (Really CS with a business minor, as opposed to my current Business Major with the CIS concentration.) But to do so, I would have to retrace my steps in the introductory classes; they’d be different programming languages, but essentially the same basic concepts.

Also, I don’t think it means that much of a difference in the job field. They will be more interested in what I can actually do, not which degree I have. Since I already have the motive to learn the extra UNIX skills and non-Microsoft languages, I could easily teach myself the stuff. It would avoid annoying course prerequisites and save me some money.

Really I’m most concerned with the innovation, with differentiating myself from my competition. I guess that it may prove to give me an edge in the future, but whatever I choose to do, it’s gonna be a rough road ahead while I learn all of this stuff. (And I’m gonna have to put up with – sigh – being a Business major.)

Leave the debugging to the user!

Today I was writing a final paper in Microsoft Word on my laptop. It was really light-duty… Just a word processor open, nothing crazy working in the background. All of a sudden, I get a message that Windows Sidebar had crashed and was “gathering more information.” About five minutes later, I got this dialog:
Sidebar

Really? You want me to try and guess which gadget caused the crash, and that’s your best way of resolving the issue? I wasn’t even doing anything with Windows Sidebar, it just crashed in the background as I tapped away some commentary on 17th century Spanish poetry.

Recently I’ve become really anal about user interfaces. It has to Just Make Sense to any old user. I believe that about 70% of the confusion that people face with technology are due to user interfaces that are more complicated than necessary.

In terms of computer desktop environments, the Mac has always had the upper hand in this arena. It’s easier to understand if you have one button on the mouse, one button to close the window and program, and minimal menus and dialogs that hide settings. Windows and the major Linux GUIs have come up short of this for a long time, and it makes sense – the system is written by technical people, and technical people think very differently from the average Joe. The trouble is, Joe has to be able to use the $400 operating system that you want him or his boss to buy.

Things have gotten a little better. The GNOME Desktop is making serious headway on making a truly easy and user-friendly user interface for Linux / UNIX systems. Windows Vista minimizes a lot of the nonsense that has confused 93% of the market since 1995, and Microsoft is planning a complete rebuild of their operating system in 2009 – say goodbye to the taskbar and Start menu, kiddies.

I definitely would like to learn more about the psychology of the average computer user. I hope that as I get more in depth with the technical layers of software, that I don’t lose touch with what makes sense to normal people.

College vs. What Matters

Five years ago, I was rooting against Colorado State in the “Rocky Mountain Showdown”, the annual CU vs. CSU game that draws a crowd so large that they often hold the game at Mile High Stadium in Denver so that it can hold all 76,000 fans. I was in Fort Collins against my will, viewing it as a stupid hick town to which I would never return after my upcoming move to Arizona.

Three years ago, I started taking classes at the Peggy Paye Academy, a program designed to cater to “gifted” students. Almost from the start, pretty much everyone has college in their sights- PPA “nerdlings” (I think credit for that quite fitting phrase goes to Vicki, though I’m not positive) take classes or AP exams for college credit as early as their freshman year, start looking at colleges and majors soon after, and many graduate at age 16. For some, the worry is not over whether or not one gets into an Ivy League school, but over which Ivy they get into. Though it isn’t a problem for everyone, all of this collegiate preparation comes at the cost of actually enjoying and experiencing the high school years.

During my time at PPA, I spent countless hours engrossed in the college selection process. I enjoyed it. (And it gave me a semi-acceptable excuse to procrastinate my daily assignments.) I pictured myself becoming a master programmer at Carnegie Mellon, a drumming guru in New York City, a hippie intellectual at UC Santa Cruz, and a man of my own terms at Brown. I liked thinking about all of the places I could live, the things I could study, the different people I could become. In retrospect, I think I liked the idea of finally being in control of my destiny. It was an exciting feeling, but also a great burden: I had to be sure that I was making the right decisions for myself.

Eleven months ago, I graduated from McClintock High with PPA’s white cords on my robe. I had taken so many dual credit, AP, and community college classes that I had sophomore standing and most of my core classes waived. I was done with science, history, and English forever.

Eight months ago, I ignored all of those dreams and came back to the stupid hick town, to the university with the crappy football team.

And I couldn’t be happier.

You see, while I was making all of these grandiose preparations for my own future success, other stuff was going on. I started to observe situations that contradicted PPA’s self-driven world. I realized that the people I admired most were in fact doing things very differently. My best friend had pulled down a great apprenticeship as a machinist, and his college plans were secondary to those of becoming a firefighter. Another friend wanted nothing more than to touch others’ lives as a long-term missionary in Turkey. And my father, probably the most creative person I know, didn’t seem to lose his touch by dropping out of college. But probably deepest impact on my perspective came from these wise words:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:26-34 ESV)

I think that somehow, despite my self-absorbed ego and thirst for wordly success, it was revealed to me (probably more like “drilled into my stubborn cranium”) that there isn’t as much to the one life I have to live as the world would like me to believe. Such a realization kills a lot of anxiety and self-doubt.

So now I’m going to the cheapest school I could find. I’m studying something of moderate interest to me, in hopes that it will prepare me for a career that can hopefully support a family and keep me from getting too bored. My other serious pursuits are music, which I enjoy most, and practicing self-sacrifice as a way of worshiping.

A lot of my good friends are graduating from high school this year. They’re all going in many different routes, and I wish them all the best. Like me, some went through a crazy college selection process. This Sunday’s New York Times had a great article titled, “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard”, which reminds me of many people I know who will do quite well, even if they aren’t going to the Ivy of their dreams.

So to my friends who are graduating this year and going off into the fray, I have these less-than-authoritative words:
Whatever you do, make sure you do what you love. Don’t get distracted, and don’t settle for less. Practice and perfect that which you love, and in the process, you will learn the discipline and responsibility that, in turn, will give you true success.

A Pleasant Surprise

So a little while back, EMI and Apple announced the rollout of DRM-free songs on the iTunes Store. This means complete customer freedom to actually use their music in the way that they want- choose their music playback software, MP3 player, back it up, play it on another device, without any restrictions treating the customer like a criminal.

EMI is one of the “big four” music labels – it owns a large percentage of the record labels out there. This means that a major percentage of songs on the iTunes Store (and, presumably, others) will be DRM Free. Some of the major artists signed to the EMI label include The Beatles, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, and Garth Brooks.

But the really exciting thing I just remembered is the labels owned by EMI Christian Music Group:

Forefront Records (dc Talk, tobyMac, Audio Adrenalinie)
Gotee Records (4th Avenue Jones, John Reuben, Relient K)
Sparrow Records (David Crowder Band, Newsboys, Switchfoot pre-Columbia)
Tooth & Nail Records (Emery, MxPx, Showbread) includes sub-labels:
- BEC Recordings (O.C. Supertones, KJ-52)
- Solid State Records (Haste the Day, He Is Legend, Norma Jean)

So basically almost all of the good, progressive and actually creative Christian artists will now be sold DRM-free. EMI Christian CDs for a while came with a really paranoid message:

This recording and artwork are protected by copyright law. Using Internet services to distribute copyrighted music, giving away illegal copies of discs or lending discs to others for them to copy is illegal and does not support those involved in making this piece of music – especially the artist. By carrying out any of these actions it has the same effect as stealing music.

This message really turned me off. I had just gone to a store, plopped down upwards of $20 for an album that I wanted – instead of getting it on any number of illegal filesharing networks where it is easily available – taken off the shrink wrap, put the CD in, and felt good about supporting creative music. Then I get confronted with a message that guilts me for something I didn’t do.

So I decided not to support those labels as long as they treated their customers like criminals. But now that their parent company is going DRM-free, I can now support them again.

My wallet is in trouble.

On an Island

A friend of mine recently asked for some suggestions of good music to add to his library. I gave him some of my current favorites, which are far from classics. But I got to thinking about my own music… My iTunes library has over 8,500 songs containing music from about 1934 to March 2007. If I were to hit “play” right now, it would keep playing for 31 days without stopping or playing the same song twice. I’m impulsive, so that’s why I carry an 80GB iPod on me so that I can listen to any of it on demand. Before such technology was available to me, I was just as impulsive, so I would take a huge 250-CD wallet with me on roadtrips.

But there’s no way that I’m listening to that much on a regular basis. I will bet that I listen to less than 5% of my music library in any given week. So I started thinking about how I could simplify my collection. I have a lot of stuff that’s just “so-so”, and I wouldn’t buy today were I given the choice. So what is the good stuff? What do I listen to all the time?

What would I do if the tables were turned and I didn’t have an 80GB iPod, 500GB external hard drive, or a 250-CD wallet?

What would I do if I were stranded on an island with only 12 CDs in a tiny case, and that music had to be so good that it wouldn’t make me go crazy or get bored of it? What is the most significant music created in the last 85 years that we’ve had recording technology?

Easy.

Kind of Blue– Miles Davis (1959)

A Love Supreme – John Coltrane (1964)

Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)

Tommy
Tommy – The Who (1969)

Abbey Road – The Beatles (1969)

Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd (1974)

One From the Vault – Grateful Dead (Live show 8/13/1975)

Aja – Steely Dan (1977)

Metallica (aka the Black Album) – Metallica (1991)

Crash – Dave Matthews Band (1996)

Californication – Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999)

Frances the Mute – The Mars Volta (2005)

Yes, I skipped the ’80s. Yes, I am biased towards classic and prog rock. And music between between 1964 and 1977. But it’s just my opinion, it’s not definitive, and had I stuck with it, I would have saved hundreds by not buying crappier music.

Keeping us scared

I’m tired of how everytime a large-scale disaster takes place, the only tangible change is a temporary state of paranoia, and nothing really is done to prevent the situation from happening again.

Example: Columbine High School shootings. For a few months, there was a big deal about school violence. I remember suddenly doing lockdown drills and a lot of workshops on not alienating kids.
Point of failure: Things went back to normal. I haven’t done a lockdown drill since fifth grade. And the Virginia Tech murderer directly referred to the actions of Harris and Klebold.

Example: 9/11. Remember the terrible initial fear we all felt? All of a sudden, nobody wanted to travel or go to a public place. A bunch of supposed fixes went into effect: a color-coded terrorist threat ~~paranoia~~ advisory system, the Transportation Security Administration, et cetera.
Point of failure: We used 9/11 for other stuff, and didn’t bother with actual protections. Somehow, in five years, we went from an attack from Muslim radicals in Afghanistan to a failed war on a country that had no connection to the attacks. It took Congress until 2007 to act on all of the 9/11 Commission’s reccommendations. I was at the airport last week, and heard over the intercom, “THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAS RAISED THE THREAT ADVISORY LEVEL TO ORANGE. PLEASE REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY.” But nonetheless, I had hastily packed and didn’t remember that there was an aerosol in my backpack. Security at DIA didn’t care, they let me through. I didn’t even know it was in my backpack until Phoenix security found it on my return flight. When they searched my bag and found the aerosol, they didn’t even bother to check the rest of the compartments of my bag. I could have walked on with materials to blow up a plane on either flight. But the important thing was that the advisory level was “Orange,” whatever the heck that means. Unfortunately, our current leadership is more worried about keeping us as scared as possible to push their unrelated agendas, instead of actually keeping us safe. If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. Don’t believe me? Believe Merriam-Webster:

ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

Example: Virginia Tech Massacre. The murderer turned out to be a deranged loner, just like the Columbine shooters. Campuses nationwide are reacting to the situation, and most are being caught with their pants down in terms of handling such a problem. At CSU, there is supposedly a system in place, which is kept secret for security purposes. But what we do know is that RA’s and building proctors have received no training or instructions of how to act in such an event. And even after the Virginia Tech incident, campus officials are saying that instead of revising their current procedures, the best thing for people to do is call 911 and let them handle it.
Point of failure: This, too, will be forgotten. Everyone is paranoid and articles are being published in the school paper this week, but we’ll all forget about this once the NBA playoffs heat up. At 4:30 AM yesterday, some lunatic got on the roof of Edwards Hall and tried to commit suicide. CSU Police evacuated about 100 students from the dorm, and dealt with the situation, but no e-mail was sent about the situation until 9:30 AM, well after it was over. Had it not been for VT, no e-mail at all would have been sent.

Example: The holocaust. Some consider it to be the most horrific event in modern history, and much time is spent trying to make sure that it happens “never again.”
Point of failure: It’s happening again. As many as 450,000 have died in the Darfur conflict, but what gets news attention? The fight over a dead porn star’s child. What gets military attention? A troop surge for a war whose death toll has exceeded the deaths under the dictator it saught to dethrone.

All of these events are terrible, and since man is fallible, they will happen again. No form of government, economy, or religion will ever solve this problem. Only when Christ reigns over this world again will we be free from such tragedies. (If you’re confused as to how I can say religion will never solve the problem, but Christ will, here is what I mean: religion is man’s acts of spirituality. Manly manifestations of this will always be imperfect- every church has its faults. We can only trust someone who is not subject to our own shortcomings will be able to effectively rid us of our own imperfections.)

So these problems are gonna be around ’till Jesus returns. Does that mean that we shouldn’t try to fix these problems? No – that would accept and endorse evildoing. But just getting scared about it doesn’t fix the problem. Doing something about it does.

Biting the hand that feeds you, part II: Mixtapes

There’s a great article in today’s New York Times Magazine:

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version)

The big music labels hired DJ Drama to make mixtapes. Then they helped the police arrest him. His crime? Making mixtapes.

Hip-hop has always thrived on mixtapes. They exist in a legal grey area, as mixtape DJs rarely acquire permission or pay royalties on the beats they sample. But at the same time, labels virtually outsource their A&R operations to mixtape shops, which generate street hype for an up-and-coming artist’s album release. According to one major label promoter, “the best D.J.’s have a better brand than the average label does.”

Indeed, despite the less-than-legal method of mixtape distribution, labels take advantage of this method of marketing and cost reduction:

Labels began aiding and abetting mixtape D.J.’s, sending them separate digital tracks of vocals and beats from songs so they could be easily remixed. They also started sending copies of an artist’s mixtape out to journalists and reviewers along with the official label release.

Basically, the mixtape economy is a little model of something vastly different than today’s music industry: content is produced at a very low price, due to the lack of licensing and royalties. CDs and electronic downloads are low-cost, and usually generate high profits. These profits don’t go to a large parent label- they go to independent music stores, and to the people who produced the album. Since there isn’t a huge distribution infrastructure to support, it generates support and exposure for local and emerging artists. And probably best of all, the low overhead allows content to be sold at a low price to the customer. Right now, even the big labels are profiting from this model, since mixtapes generate a lot of publicity for new releases.

Basically, everyone benefits in such an economy: the artists, producers, vendors, and customers. Most of all, this nurtures the music itself, and allows artists to focus on creating quality, original music without worrying about contracts, royalties, and the gigantic companies breathing down their necks.

Overall, this is yet another example of a fear-based reaction from the major labels: their antiquated method of generating profit by allowing artists to take advantage of their distribution network is dying in the face of technology, which has the capacity to completely eliminate the middleman. I’m not talking about illegal piracy; I’m talking about artists being able to sell and distribute their material at much lower cost, while gaining much more freedom than is granted under a major label contract.

In short, big music labels are slowly going the way of the dinosaur. It can be compared to how common people no longer needed to rely on their Latin-speaking priest after the Bible was translated into the vulgate, or to the availablility of free, open source alternatives to expensive proprietary software.