letting things come to me

Since I've become more aware of the Web2.0 revolution, I've noticed more and more web technologies that I'd been thinking about years ago rising to the surface. A key example was an idea I had about online libraries where you list your books, and then other people can browse your library and if appropriate make requests to exchange or borrow books. It would be like an enormous communal, virtual bookshelf, except you'd get to read real books instead of reading off a computer screen (which despite what anyone says is still less comfortable than reading a book! at least to a majority of users...).
Well, now we have Listal, LibraryThing and AllConsuming. I'm not sure who owns them and whether I really want to commit my data to them, but the services are definitely there and doing what I thought such services should do years ago.
Which brings me to my main point. With services like these, I shouldn't have to think about committing my data. My data should reside where I want it to, and I should allow these services access to my data on my terms and conditions.
We need some sort of a platform for maintaining information, and then transforming it and submitting it. Preferably in a relatively extensible and/or standardized way. XML and XSLT style technologies seem to be screaming out to be used in this sort of position.
In addition, we need some sort of voluntary code of conduct whereby we can be reasonably assured that we can reliably dictate the terms under which such services can use our data. Maybe some open source datakeeper software modelled on recent digital rights management advances, so that as well as records companies being able to control our rights on the music we license from them, we can also revoke other organisation's rights on the data they license from us.
Digital rights management isn't necessarily a bad thing, but biased towards the goals of the powerful it is clearly not a good thing.
So the data landscape of the future? Data residing in multiple incarnations on various storage devices across the world, controlled by open source datakeeper software allowing only authorised people to access it, and transform it, using flexible tools. The owners of the data - you and me in addition to the organisations and corporations - empowered by our data's newfound mobility and flexibility.

the manchurian candidate

I just finished watching The Manchurian Candidate. It's quite an interesting film. And it was quite interesting to watch it. I was watching it on a video-on-demand service, I could pause, rewind and fastforward the movie. Everything was streaming into my living room through co-ax. My TV is now connected to Media Player running on a dedicated box, attached to the internet. Basically.

It doesn't seem so long ago that these sorts of technologies were pipedreams.

Now they're everyday, the preserve of the geographically particular, and they come complete with laggy update and slow loading. What happened to timed IP? It's coming I guess.

The film, that was interesting too. A fairly simple recombination of old themes and current media foci, proficiently brought together in a very easy to digest whole. The visuals were nice, the mood was just right, and the visual cues were perfect, there was no clubbing you over the head with the key plot points, but everything was present and correct. As far as I could tell.

It got me thinking. [minor spoiler ahead] The part where Shaw kills the senator and his daughter seems so out of place at the time, but then the revelation that his ambitious mother put him up to it [end of spoiler] serves as a timely reminder that human nature hasn't progressed in the same way that technology has. Visions of cavemen in shirts and ties, turning up to work with swish laptops and fancy watches spring to mind. Yay for caricatures. Then we watch those cavemen running the United States of America, and telling us what it means to be moral. EDIT: Not forgetting that in this instance 'caveman' refers to the common consciousness of caveman, not the less politically incorrect view of 'cavemen' that I prefer. Why oh why did I succumb to such prejudiced concept choice? Ho hum...

The film also seemed to be a veritable montage of idealistic political opinion and suggestion. It seemed to me that virtually all the background material had been carefully selected, including the news tickers on the various TV broadcasts and the contents of background TV broadcasts. Having one of the key characters walking through a school play fitted in well with the context, and the parallelism was very apt. The brainwashing in the film was clearly exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but the parallel with school kids provided a neat stepping stone onto some more down-to-earth problems.

The film clearly seemed to be a platform for peddling left-wing viewpoints, wrapped up in current issues and parlance. It makes me wonder to what extent 'meme-placement' in films is becoming commonplace. And to what extent it is moral or not.

An absolutely neutral film would be verging on impossible to produce, and would probably taste like the plastic food we're all getting accustomed to, so why not introduce all sorts of background elements that fit in with your message? I think the key point is that subtly choosing background elements smacks a lot of attempting to subliminally influence the audience. But even if you don't subtly choose anything choices are made, by people, and choices are never neutral, maybe especially when they aren't consciously considered. So which is better, being prey to the memes that propogate themselves under the radar or being aware of what you're transmitting and accepting it?

Nowadays I'm inclined to go down the road of awareness and acceptance, rather than ignorance and denial. (Although I admit the discussion is a lot more complicated than that, and that I've loaded the description badly... ho hum. Just my honest-memes going and making my writing clumsy and 'transparent') And I'm also inclined to say that the argument that proposes that this is unfair on people with insufficient capacity or attention to vet their senses is a dodgy argument. People adapt to their environments, and as long as we have unscrupulous people propogating dodgy self-serving content it's up to those with a conscience to outrace them as hard as possible. And we have a big advantage: we can work together much more, and much more transparently.