Le petit Soldat de Jean Luc Godard
Filmed in a Cinema Verité style. They mention Geneva.
A nice conclusion.
Content creation and distribution has become far cheaper than it was in the past. Whereas in the past you’d have tons of equipment to create television programs today the barriers to entry are lower as a result of which the cult of the amateur is allowed to flourish. As the technology is adopted by more people those who have never studied the theorie point and shoot. What this means is that there is a huge amount of mediocrity on the web. Some like to say that it’s ninety nine percent crap and they’d be right. Why else use a search engine?
The cult of the amateur is a great thing because it encourages those who have no training to produce content for others to enjoy. The problem is that they’ve had no training. As a result they’re sloppy. They don’t shoot b-roll. They don’t edit anything and then they put it on the web. What’s worse is that it’s long.
Andrew Keen concentrated on audio and really wanted it to promote the sharing of great works and high culture. Instead there has been a steady rise in low culture. This is a debate that goes back to the days of Adorno when public literacy for all became a hot topic. Over time the general level of knowledge increased and so the natural balance returned.
Professional journalists are investigative, going out and doing their own research before digesting this information out and writing their pieces. They have an in-depth knowledge of their topic and rather than go off on tangents they are going to backup everything they say with facts.
I listened to a woman present her theories about one topic a few days ago and she always said “I did this” and “I did that”, a few days letter I listened to journalists, ambassadors and other professionals speak about how “we did these things” and “we did those things”. They often looked at creating a sense of a community or group of people working on an idea.
The point is that whilst everyone has opinions which they want to share not all of them have the credentials to provide the content. Whilst as individuals our knowledge is not detailed enough to be of value if all of us work together towards a common goal then that work is of a greater value, hence the reason behind wikipedia’s success as a resource.
During the Andrew Keen conversation talent was discussed and whether it is natural or whether it takes years to aquire. The discussion focused on the gatekeepers and how they were there to find talent, polish it and then commercialise it. He saw the value of transparency for trust. Both evidence and backing up the information help make resources more reliable. As a student you learn that there is no point in writing something down until you have found someone to backup your sentiment with research.
Andrew Keen, to get a definite rise out of the crowd referred to bloggers as a mob and who can blame him. Whilst Journalists go out and interview people and do a lot of background research before writing about their topic of interest bloggers tend to go on what others have written. Whilst listening to this it brought up thoughts about how blogging would be better for content analysis since it is easier to read a collection of articles and write about them than to go out and get access to all those of interest. Andrew Keen made the remark that many blogs do not have original content, recycling what they found on a variety of resources.
At one point Keen did accept that his book was written tongue in cheek and that whilst the book had a lot of success in Canada and England the Americans did not understand his point of view. He went on to say that he knew who he was writing it against rather than who he was writing it for. He said that it was a response to digital eutopians. At this point he made clear that he was not a technological determinist but a social one. In other words he believes that people, rather than technology determine the type of life and interaction we have with our environment.
Towards the end of his conversation he spoke about web 3.0 as the rediscovery of expertise and professionalism, point which agrees with one of my earlier posts. He wanted the information economy to be about distributed trusted content. He also wanted it to be given a solid backbone.
During the Q&A one person asked him whether he was a troll searching to annoy people through the writing of his book. He answered humourously that bloggers don’t read books. It was a clear and deliberate provocation but it was clear that he meant this as a joke rather than a direct attack.
I don’t agree with all of the points made by Andrew Keen but he does make some interesting and valid points about the future of the media. it’s something that we must all think about. Culture production is an important aspect of our lives and it would be a shame, after centuries of hard work, to promote works of mediocrity.
Finally if you would like to listen to the speech in person it can be found at this address
Twitter is obviously never going to sort out it’s issues so from midnight today I will no longer be using the service during a month. I’ll be using all the other sites, just don’t feel like having my time wasted by twitter anymore.
For all friends just continue interacting via all the services that have a 99.9% uptime rather than 3% downtime.
See you then.
When people write about self-driving cars they write from the perspective of people living in cities. I live in the Swiss countryside at the foot of the Jura which results in me seeing the potential of self-driving cars differently. For a start at the moment buses operate from 5 in the morning to 9 in the afternoon. There is a tow hour gap at lunchtime when there is no service and at other times the frequency is once an hour, except at rush hour. When self-driving cars are available I see the bus and taxi services being discontinued. I also see the space dedicated to parking in cities vanishing.
I see cars being used to connect villages to town. You get into the self-driven car and it takes you to the train station. From the train station in Nyon you get to Geneva or Lausanne. From Geneva or Lausanne you have trains and buses to take you to your final destination if you are either recovering from an injury or carrying too much weight. Scuba diving and winter sports require a lot of gear so a self-driven car would be helpful.
I also see self-driving cars as being great for teenagers living in the countryside. Self-driving cars will provide a 24 hour per day transportation. This means that teenagers will be able to take the last train home and catching a self-driven car from the train station to home.
I see this as being just as useful for grown ups who like to have more than one drink when out socialising with friends. For now society believe in designated drivers. With self-driving cars the designated driver will be a thing of the past. The train will transport you from the train station to your home. It will also provide country bumpkins with the opportunity to stay out even after the last train. It will equalise city slickers and country bumpkins.
On weekends when groups meet up to do activities self-driving cars will be of great use. At the moment when you hike or do Via Ferrata there is a need for wide open spaces where cars can be parked and sit for hours. Self-driving cars would bring people to the hiking or via Ferrata base and drop people off. These cars will be able to return to active use in the region until activity participants return to the starting point ready to return home.
Car ownership would be replaced by car allocation. For now when cars are not used they are parked and space is used for them to get in and out of that parking space. Space is also needed for the car driver and passengers to get in. When cars drive themselves that space will no longer be needed. Car will be parked as they are on ferries. Only a few centimeters are left between cars and unloading is one row or row at a time. Parking could be designed to maximise space and efficiency.
Mobile phones and smart watches can also be used to increase efficiency at rush hour. When two or more people are heading from the same train station to the same village their smart devices will see this and allocate a parking bay or vehicle with a display to show the name of the destination village. For now the limitation with buses is that they have a set route. If you are at the end of the route you have to wait for everyone to be dropped off and this can add minutes to your journey time. Self-driven cars you would be routed straight to your village square and walk from there.
The point of self-driving cars would be to minimise waiting times. Rather than wait from half an hour to an hour for a bus you would be taken home within 10 minutes of arriving at the train station.
Cities and traffic lights today are designed for human drivers, whether for trams, buses, cars, cyclists, pedestrians or motorbikes. In the self-driven future we could do away with traffic lights. Traffic flow in cities will be reduced because trains and public transport will make it easy and convenient to get from point A to point B. In a city like Geneva where the system is nodal from the centre out we would have private transport to go between distances where a 15-minute walk is needed. The point is to reduce the need for people to go from the periphery to the centre and then back out to the periphery.
The point of self-driving cars would be to maximise network efficiency and provide people with a smooth and efficient way to commute and participate in social activities. It should equalise life for city slickers and country bumpkins. The purpose of self-driven cars should be to maximise use of the existing infrastructure whilst making the last mile more convenient and flexible.