For those of you unfamiliar with Areopagitica,¹ Milton wrote it back in 1644. In many ways, the world was different back in 1644: global warming wasn’t as much of an issue back then, the roads were slightly better, and Clint Eastwood had just starred in his first movie. Yet in many ways, the world was very much the same: young kids listened to pop music that drove their parents crazy, celebrities got into tabloid scandals, and short-sighted people wanted to censor books.

Areopagitica is a polemic against the Licensing Order of 1643, which would essentially establish government censorship over all published works. Milton argues passionately and eloquently that such an order is foolish, that censorship is ineffectual and indeed harmful to a free society. He cites the examples of the Greek and Roman societies² and goes on to extol reading and learning in general.

Now, Milton’s idea of “freedom of speech” was slightly different from what we interpret it to mean today. To Milton, freedom of speech means the freedom to pursue the study of knowledge of the sake of worshipping God. And he wasn’t against burning books after they were decided to be harmful; he just didn’t want books to be censored before being published and judged by a wide audience. Most of Milton’s argument, however, remains valid today: censorship is a bad idea. Books are good.

So why do some people insist on ruining the fun for the rest of us?

See, today I learned that yet another group of people want to burn books. So it’s serendipitous that I’m listening to what we might call an ur-tract—in the English language, at least—against censorship. Milton’s arguments remind me, a bibliophile and staunch opponent of censorship, why we shouldn’t burn our books.

To clarify, if you haven’t read the article, this Christian group wants the right to burn library books. I don’t care if people burn books they‘ve purchased or published themselves. It’s their property, and they have a right to do with it as they please. However, burning library books would be, in my perfect world, a capital crime. Burning a book is a terrible thing:

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.³

And see, Milton’s a Christian. He’s all about God in this matter. So when I say this is a “Christian group”, I mean it’s a group of people who say they’re Christian (according to the newspaper article anyway). They don’t seem to be acting in a very Christian matter. But whatever; it’s a free country, right?

Well, only as long as you don’t publish “explicit” books, apparently. This group wants to remove a book called Baby Be-Bop because it discusses homosexuality and has some fairly explicit content. I haven’t read the book, so I won’t judge.

The group argues it could be mentally and emotionally damaging to children. I’m not a parent, but maybe I will be one day. And it seems to me that if you consider your child too young to protect himself or herself from “dangerous” material, then you shouldn’t let your child wander around alone in a public space. It’s that simple. I’m not against parents deciding what their children read—I would hope that parents educate their children widely and openly, but ultimately it’s their business. There comes a time, however, when you have to let your child grow up.

For that reason, I find this quotation from the Guardian article particularly laughable and dangerous:

Their suit says that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” and that it contains derogatory language that could “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”

It’s one thing to argue that material could be harmful to children. I personally take such claims with scepticism, but I at least understand that they originate from a desire to keep children safe and healthy. All right. But now you want to censor books because they might harm adults? All my life, I grew up believing that to be an adult is to have the ability to do whatever one wants (within reason), including reading whatever I want. The idea that I need a moral “Big Brother” is … well, it’s offensive. It implies I’m not mentally fit to judge what may harm my emotional wellbeing. If that’s the sort of society we want, then it wouldn’t really be free, would it?

Interestingly enough, I came across another free-speech-related article in the book I’ve just finished, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. This from Daniel Gilbert’s “dangerous idea” entitled “The Idea That Ideas Can Be Dangerous”:

We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That’s the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it’s time to make a run for the fence.

Last week, Iran held national elections in which the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supposedly won the vote by a landslide. Amid accusations of rigging the election, Ahmadinejad’s government has continued to block access to the Internet, to mobile phones, and harshly beat and interrogate rioting protesters. That is what happens when freedom of speech becomes less important than creating a rosy world.

I may not like what you have to say—I may think that you’re an idiot for saying it—but because we live in a free society, because I want to live in a free society, I’ll let you say it. You can shout it from the rooftops. You can shout it because you’re free.

Now that freedom is under attack, not by external forces of terrorists or British pop groups or European soccer stars, but by internal forces who seek to censor, to slash, to burn. They want to suppress what doesn’t fit their picture of a rosy world, to judge you mentally incapable of conducting your life, and rip knowledge—regardless of its quality—from this Earth, driving us back into the dark age of 1644. This is an insidious threat, because it can’t be fought with guns or bombs or tactical nukes.⁴ To stop this threat, you need to do something far more dangerous: you have to stand up and say “No.”

So stand up. Read the books you want to read, and fight for the right to stock libraries full of any and every book, whether it’s Twilight or Shakespeare, and seek knowledge in all its forms. We live in an age of astounding literacy, with technologies poised to deliver books to our fingertips no matter where we are or what we’re doing. We can have our rosy world and read it in too.

• [ 1 ] I‘m guessing that’s most, but certainly not all, of you. And that’s not a bad thing.
• [ 2 ] The classical period was a big deal back in the 1600s.
• [ 3 ] Areopagitica, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
• [ 4 ] Although tactical nukes are always cool, if not always practical….

The ride is about twenty minutes one-way. I usually listen to music on my 1 GB iPod Nano. Yeah, that’s right: I haven’t upgraded to the latest model. Shocking, I know. However, this usually means I end up listening to the same music over and over all summer. I suppose I could create weekly mixes or playlists to help keep things fresh, but I‘m just too lazy.

So this year, I’m going to try something different: audiobooks. It furthers my goal of reading more, and it’s much safer than trying to read a book while biking. Rather than purchase audiobooks, I’m going to try Librivox, a crowdsourced repository of public domain audiobooks. I’ve gone ahead and created a shelf at Goodreads to track my summer listening. Now only one thing remains: to what should I listen?

I‘m open to suggestions. I’m considering some Victorian fiction, thinking that it may be less dry if I listen to it rather than read it. Or should I try some non-fiction? If you have some favourite public domain books, especially ones you think would be better in audiobook form, please let me know.

Actually, when all is said and done, the wisdom teeth extraction was Not That Bad. I went in, the assistant hooked me up to various Machines That Go Ping!, gave me some nitrous oxide to relax, then stuck me with an IV. I drifted off to neverneverland. The next thing I know, the assistant is asking me to come lie down on a bed in a little recovery room. I do so and start to read my book. In about five minutes I‘m fully lucid and feeling quite well.

I won’t rub it in, but I had no swelling, no bruising, and no pain. I took a couple of painkillers on Friday but kicked them after Saturday morning. I had pizza—in small bites—for dinner on Friday, although I stuck with yogurt, Jello, and very soft food until Tuesday. My jaw feels a bit different when I chew, but overall it was a painless procedure.² All that trepidation….

These past few weeks—I‘d like to say almost all of May as well, but I don’t want to be melodramatic here—have been draining. Or maybe it’s just that today was draining and I’m projecting. Nevertheless, the jumbled sequence of one-off events and above-average activity has left me breathless and tired. I need a vacation, but that was my vacation. Next week I start working full time. Yay.

While I could digress now and talk about how I‘m not all that enthusiastic about working full time this summer, there would be no point. It’s going to happen. And my job isn’t bad at all—I just find it difficult to spend eight hours there, especially on the slow days. So I‘m going to focus on the positives. There’s the money, of course. My fellow front desk attendants are nice people, and I’m essentially being paid to hang out with one of them for eight hours.³

Aside from the money, the other big advantage is that I’ll finally have a schedule again. Now, I’m not a creature of routine. My daily routine has constants, true, but I often vary most of my activities. I am, however, a creature of habit. Hence, May and early June’s dense schedule of stress has played havoc with my habits. Even though working full-time eats up my free time, it at least means I can stop worrying that I’ll be asked to work a bingo or take on three extra shifts at the end of the week….

I’m also feeling creatively unfocused as of late. I have plenty of projects on the go, some of which are in danger of becoming brain crack. Every time I try to sit down and work on one, however, my mind turns to the other projects, and I find it hard to accomplish anything. Even writing blog posts feels lacks lustre; I‘ve some ideas for potential posts but very little desire to actually compose them. This isn’t an “I Suck” phase (thankfully) but a “Why Bother?” phase, and my apathy is beginning to annoy me.

Additionally, I seem to be stuck in a passive-receptive mode when it comes to information. There’s an incredible amount of amazing and cool stuff happening in the world outside the Box That Is My Room. So much so that all I can do is absorb it osmotically. My feed subscriptions push hundreds of articles at me, and Twitter and Facebook push a myriad of other interesting items in my direction. It’s not information overload though. I don’t fanatically check my feeds; I read them once or twice a day. Other people just seem to be producing so much, it only strengthens my apathy toward creating my own things. And that’s just a wrong-headed idea, and I know it’s a wrong-headed idea, and I am severely disappointed in myself.⁴

About the only thing that pushes my buttons right now is reading (as always). I had to order a couple of books for birthday presents, so I took the opportunity to order everything that was in my Chapters shopping cart, even though I still have plenty of books waiting from my last trip to Chapters! And naturally, I had to buy duplicates when I didn’t own the book I was giving away…. Anyway, I placed the order on Sunday, and the first part arrived on Wednesday. I love Chapters.

Of course, there’s so many books I read and not enough time in which to read them! I’m coming across more and more interesting books that I mark as to-read; it’s staggering. Thus I feel a soul-wrenching, pent-up desire to devour literature at an awesome and terrifying rate. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

I’ve always been an avid reader, but over the past couple of years my passion has only intensified. Part of this is due to Goodreads, of course, but it’s not the sole culprit. I’m not sure why else though. Maybe as I‘ve matured, I’ve started to pursue my interests in a more organized, systematic fashion (and Goodreads facilitates this for my reading). As a result, knowing that I have a plan, knowing that there’s all these books I want to read now, makes me more eager to read as much as possible. Maybe I’ve always been this crazy and my friends were just too afraid to tell me, lest I murder them in their sleep by inflicting a thousand tiny papercuts. I’d never do that, of course!⁵

Suggestions for how to focus my creativity are welcome, but I’m not interested in GTD evangelization here. My projects are not to-do style endeavours—although I have tried keeping track of them with to-do lists. Aim more toward the area around reconciling your desire to devote time to creating stuff with your desire to drink prodigious amounts of tea while reading books by the truckload.⁶

• [ 1 ] Although chances are equally good I’m just a component of a massive set of equations which we happen to perceive as the Universe.
• [ 2 ] Aside from the part where I give them a substantial chunk of money, of course.
• [ 3 ] It’s dangerous to get into that mindset, though. I’m actually being paid to work, not socialize.
• [ 4 ] Bad Ben! Don’t make me use the newspaper!
• [ 5 ] I’d hire ninjas to inflict the thousand tiny papercuts.
• [ 6 ] If someone ever installs vending machines that serve “tea and a book”, I will be doomed.

The past few weeks have been, for the most part, uneventful (and that’s good). I worked a bit more than I would like, but there’s not much to be done. I’ve tried to use all the free time I have as wisely as possible, mostly reading. Now that the snow is gone—even though the frost warnings are not—I like to sit outside the front of the house on the nice days.

Having finished playing Mass Effect a second time, I tried playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary again. Unfortunately, the controls continued to frustrate me as I fell back into the rythym of “No, Lara, jump that way—oh, and you died.” So I tried Tomb Raider: Legend instead. While it’s the same engine, the levels are shorter and more varied, so I’m less frustrated with it.

I’m greatly anticipating Mass Effect 2, and a few days ago I saw the trailer for Assassin’s Creed 2. I enjoyed the first Assassin’s Creed, although the story was somewhat weak, and the second one looks like it will be worth picking up eventually. Video games remain a side hobby, however.

Not too much happening in June, but it is a month of firsts for me. This Friday, I’ll be getting my wisdom teeth out (for the first and, logically, only time). Then a couple of weeks after that, I’ll be attending a wedding—my second wedding ever and my first wedding as an adult. So we’ll see how that goes.

Rogers released the HTC Dream and HTC Magic on June 2, the two headsets currently using Google Android. Those of you who aren’t into technology can safely skip this next paragraph; suffice it to say, I find Google Android sexy.

The Apple iPhone indubitably revolutionized the way we see smartphones. Where the BlackBerry and Palm were function, the iPhone was all about design—after all, it’s Apple. Unfortunately, Apple is starting to use its reputation for innovative design (i.e., its coolness) to sell uncool products. Because the iPhone is sort of like the North Korea of smartphones, in that Apple has control of what’s sold through its apps store and ultimately what’s on your phone. That’s why I find Google Android so appealing. Anyone with the coding skills can write Android apps and distribute them to anyone with an Android-powered phone. Thus, you can have all the functionality of an iPhone without any of its draconian drawbacks. The major disadvantage, of course, is that you risk the scorn of all your friends who are slaves to the Big Mac—er, Apple.

So the prospect of getting a Google-powered smartphone is extremely tempting. Yet I‘m not willing to become a slave to Rogers. I don’t need a smartphone. It would be nice to be able to check my email or update my calendar from anywhere, but honestly, I don’t get that much email, and my calendar seldom changes. If the plans were less expensive and Rogers were less evil, I’d jump at this opportunity in a second. Fortunately, I just have to wait until tomorrow, and mobile phone prices will be the least of my concerns.

Yes, tomorrow I get my wisdom teeth out. I’m nervous; I’ve never had any procedure like this done before—and would like to avoid them in the future, naturally. My wisdom teeth are fully grown in, and they don’t cause me any pain, so I’m hoping that means the surgery will go as smoothly as such things can go and my convalescence will be short. We shall see.

An interesting week lies ahead of me.

The new Star Trek film, premiering this Friday, is a “prequel” in the sense that it takes place prior to the original series, but not a prequel in the sense that it actually results in an alternate timeline.¹ This allows J.J. Abrams to effectively shed the burden of forty-three years of Star Trek continuity and boldly go where Star Trek has never, never gone before.² Well, for the record, I think J.J. Abrams is wrong.

Yes, yes, I‘m well aware that for many people, J.J. Abrams is God, and oh-em-gee-how-could-you-say-such-a-thing?!

I’m not against rebooting Star Trek’s continuity per se. After all, Ronald D. Moore reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and that turned out rather well. Star Trek arguably has a more developed universe than Battlestar Galactica, however, which requires far more careful handling than simply overwriting the timeline. In that respect, Star Trek is more similar to Dune.³ It’s not the reboot that worries me—it’s the reasons for the reboot, and the ramifications of the reboot on both Star Trek as a franchise and the entertainment industry itself.

Abrams has repeatedly said that he’s not necessarily a fan of Star Trek in the way fans are (fanatically) and he tried to make a movie for people who like to see movies, not just for the fans. This strategy worries me, because it implies Paramount lacks confidence in the current Star Trek mythos‘ ability to attract more fans. We don’t want another Star Trek: Nemesis, after all.⁴

Let’s suppose that this is true. Suppose that, for whatever reason, our cultural climate is more attuned to the darker stories of Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars than the optimistic, semi-utopian future portrayed in Star Trek. If that is the case, then why are we trying to change Star Trek to fit into this new box? In doing so, we compromise the themes upon which Star Trek is based, and if that happens, then we don’t have Star Trek anymore—we‘ve got a new, mutated franchise inspired by Star Trek.

To some extent, we fans are complicit in this mutation of our beloved Trek. There’s a difference between loyal campaigning (to save the original series, for instance, or even the misguided efforts of those Enterprise loyalists) and attempting to sustain a franchise beyond its viability. Paramount wouldn’t have greenlit this movie were it not for the fans; regardless of intent, it’s the fans who are going to fill those seats—because of the title of movie and not its story. Because, let’s be honest here, fans: we’ve had the bald bad guy before (General Chang, Shinzon) and the evil uber-weapon (General Chang’s bird-of-prey, Shinzon’s Scimitar). This new film isn’t a fresh start for Star Trek; it’s a classic science fiction plot with cutting-edge special effects and the Star Trek characters.

Aside from the fact that it means starting from square zero, as far as fan base is concerned, why bother making another Star Trek movie at all? If Paramount is so concerned about the marketability of Star Trek, why not give Abrams a mandate to launch a new space opera movie franchise?

It pains me, as a Star Trek fan, to say this…. If this movie flops, it may be the final nail in the coffin of the dead horse that we’ve been beating. “Even J.J. Abrams, who is our Lord and Saviour, could not save Star Trek,” the Paramount executives will say. And maybe, just maybe, some overlooked script for a new space opera will get a second chance. On the other hand, if the movie is a success—and I suspect it will be, because it does look like a good movie—then the Star Trek franchise will have wind in its sails, but it won’t be Star Trek anymore. It’ll be the Abrams Science Fiction Franchise, Based on Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry. And all those franchises-that-could-be that wait in the wings for their turn will have to wait much, much longer.

To be clear, I‘m not saying Star Trek is definitely dead. I just don’t think that “any Trek is better than no Trek.” I‘d rather have a brand new science fiction franchise try to gather fans, and wait until such time as the Executives-on-High deem the market ready for a real Star Trek film.

I’m worried that by fervently attempting to resurrect Star Trek as a movie franchise, we‘re dooming the fledgling future science fiction franchises. We’re starting to get into territory where movie studios greenlight more and more adaptations of comic books and sequels to franchise films, putting their money on “safe” bets with pre-existing fans rather than taking a chance on new, more creative directions.

P.S. Another Firefly movie please, Universal!

• [ 1 ] Yes, time travel—prepare for headaches.
• [ 2 ] Namely, Spock and Uhura. Yeah, that’s right.
• [ 3 ] Seriously, who are you trying to fool, Brian Herbert?
• [ 4 ] I know that by saying this, I’m just begging for a comment from the one guy out there who thought that Star Trek: Nemesis was the single best movie of all time. Bring it on.

Take the time to read the above articles before reading on.

What Definitely Happened

In lieu of any definitive statement from Amazon regarding this debacle, it would be irresponsible to say, “This is what happened.” At best, we have theories. But all theories start with facts. Here are the facts, what we know did happen, even if we don’t know why it happened.

Amazon Has a Safe-Search Policy

As evidenced by Mark Probst’s post, a representative for Amazon has confirmed that there are policies in place to differentiate between “adult” and “non-adult” content and restrict the former content from appearing in some search listing. Apparently, this policy necessarily requires that adult materials have their sales ranks removed, since search listings depend, to some extent, on the sales ranking system.

Now, a search for “gay sex” quickly reveals many books, coincidentally about gay sex. So apparently that search listing isn’t affected. Visiting a listing for one of the books in that result reveals the conspicuous absence of a sales rank. Thus, while I can’t quite see how this is affecting search results, the removal of a sales rank from a book is definitely a penalty when it comes to Amazon listings.

Not All Books are Equally Adult

Craig Seymour points out that this policy isn’t new, and in fact, some adult materials have a sales rank. So at first glance, Amazon’s policy appears to be quite unfair. But having a policy isn’t the same as implementing it, and maybe Amazon’s laziness is to blame instead of its morality.

Nigerian Princes Have Taken Over Amazon

At first, the assumption across the Internet, fuelled by the likes of Probst and Seymour, was that this was all an intentional move by Amazon. Now, this is a natural reaction. Probst and Seymour’s responses from Amazon are pretty damning testimony. But it inevitably isn’t the whole story, and soon cooler heads suggested that this is the result of an exploit by spammers.

For its part, someone else at Amazon reported that this is a “glitch” they are in the process of fixing. This would seem to support those who theorize that one or more spammers have abused Amazon’s reporting system. Thus, Amazon’s adult content policy itself isn’t to blame, but rather the way they’ve implemented it: poorly.

In a previous tweet of mine, I joked that the glitch explanation implies Amazon has a “homophobe mode”, but when presented as an exploit by spammers instead of an internal problem, it makes more sense. I am more than willing to eat my words (mmm, yummy words!).

Still, the existence of this glitch raises several questions about Amazon’s responsibility to its consumers. Firstly, is the existence of an adult content policy in any way fair? If such a policy should exist, is a user-reporting mechanism really the best way to mark books as “adult”? Why doesn’t Amazon have someone manually reviewing user reports? And even if they get too many reports and have to automatically process them, shouldn’t the system be protected from common exploits?

Apparently I Need a Big Brother to Buy Books

I was very surprised to learn about Amazon’s “adult content policy,” of which I was ignorant until #amazonfail occurred. It’s not a new policy, apparently. In our haste to discuss the fallout of #amazonfail itself, it’s imperative we don’t ignore the very existence of this adult content policy and its implications for both authors and consumers.

Google has long had a “safe search” option that screens out adult content. There are two important distinctions between Google’s safe search and Amazon’s safe search. Firstly, I don’t buy stuff (directly) from Google. Secondly, I can turn off Google’s safe search.

The fact that Google’s safe search is opt-out instead of opt-in is debatable on its own, but this article is not a place for that debate. For now, since I’m using Google to find information and not to sell or buy a product, I’m of the opinion that an opt-out safe search is acceptable. If I want to expose myself to both “safe” and “unsafe” content, I can turn it off—which, for the record, I have. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t seem offer me the same flexibility. Not only do I fail to see an option in my account settings to disable this “safe search” of theirs, I see no mention of it. In other words, Amazon’s adult content policy isn’t a secret, but they aren’t practising full disclosure either.

This is unfair to authors who sell on Amazon, people like Craig Seymour who only find out after they contact Amazon looking for an explanation. If one wants to sell through a distributor, one expects the distributor to be up front about anything that may hinder sales, such as a restrictive adult content policy. Regardless of the cause of #amazonfail, Amazon’s adult content policy is just a bad business practice. It would be great if they would be more open about disclosing the policy’s existence and provided a feature to turn it off. It would be ideal if they scrapped the policy altogether.

We are the Patients; Amazon is Our Asylum

The speculation regarding Amazon’s “glitch” revolves around the fact that users can mark a book as featuring adult content. I can’t actually find that functionality on a listing page, but I may be incompetent or Amazon may have removed that feature as a reaction to #amazonfail. An alternative is that the system is transparent and only invoked when someone actually sends Amazon a complaint instead of clicking a button. Nevertheless, it appears that Amazon doesn’t actually base its content rating on an objective standard. Rather, it trusts its users.

Insert laughter here.

User reporting works well for small communities, or for large communities that double check the math. It is irresponsible of Amazon to rely solely on user-reported mechanisms for rating content. Even if Amazon does use such mechanisms, they should at least periodically verify that these reports are valid. It’s all too easy for a human to instruct other humans or robots to game the system. Remember how Colbert won the vote for NASA’s new module on the International Space Station? He gamed the system by getting his audience to write-in his name as a suggestion. But don’t forget that some of the other write-in suggestions were “XENU” (Scientology has its robot adherents as well) and “MYYEARBOOK” (obviously a spammer). Any automated system that allows user feedback is vulnerable to exploitation. Shame on Amazon for letting this happen, if this was in fact a glitch.

When the dust clears and Amazon releases a statement about #amazonfail, we need to walk away from this with one thing clearly in mind: while it’s unfortunate that #amazonfail happened, it’s a stark reminder of any company’s vulnerability to the masses who populate the Internet. I’m not just talking about Twitter—Twitter made #amazonfail a faster, and probably a larger, discussion, but that discussion would have happened nonetheless. And whether #amazonfail was caused by a glitch or a policy run wild or the alignment of Venus with Mars and Sedna, the fact remains that Amazon should rethink its sales ranking system. Censorship is a problem no matter what the source, and we can’t expect the spammers to spontaneously drop their weapons and surrender any time soon. So it remains Amazon’s responsibility to defend against external exploits and to craft internal policy that makes sense. As the heated reactions this Easter weekend demonstrate, that means being vigilant.

Update: Amazon has provided what is likely as good an explanation as we’ll get. I agree with Cheryl Morgan’s analysis of the entire episode.

The nature of content, content creation, and how much this information is worth are at the heart of every major debate regarding the economics of the Internet. These issues are responsible for our DRM woes with regards to software and digital music, and they drive the collapse of so-called “traditional media”, such as newspapers, which aren’t adapting quickly enough to the new playing field.

This is the most amusing quotation:

Google encourages promiscuity — and shamelessly so — and therefore a significant proportion of their users don’t necessarily associate that content with the creator.

Oh no! Google’s promoting competition among content providers! How dare they?! I mean, it’s not as if the so-called “free market” is based on competition. Shame on Google for corrupting those free market values!

I would go so far as to argue that the whole point of the Internet is aggregation of content. This is why the Internet revolution is so profoundly different from any previous information revolution, including that of the printing press. The Internet removes any cost associated with distributing content—there’s only the initial cost of production, then it can be distributed an infinite number of times. And this is scary for businesses that rely on the scarcity of their commodity relative to its demand. Now that content can be ubiquitous and easily accessible, these businesses are struggling to adapt their revenue model.

Thomson’s reaction, unfortunately, is indicative of the larger trend among traditional media providers: they don’t get it. They don’t get that it doesn’t matter if content should be free—content is free now. We live in a society of moochers. Pointing at Google, which has recognized the role of the Internet in content creation and is now profiting from it, and claiming that Google’s tactics “aren’t fair” is just an economist form of whining. In order for newspapers to survive, it won’t be about the content they produce but their ability to specialize, embrace new technology—rather than resist it or co-opt it—and their willingness to share content at first in order to build that brand loyalty that Thomson insists Google is ruthlessly eradicating.

Meantime Thomson said it was “amusing” to read media blogs and comment sites, all of which traded on other people’s information.

“They are basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of creation, and the cynicism they have about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting the quality of traditional media,” he said.

It’s true that many sites, especially those that aggregate content, aren’t necessarily original. However, Thomson fails to acknowledge that freely-available content allows for new “centres of creation.” That’s why we have concepts like “public domain” and Creative Commons.

To be fair, Thomson does a good job of summarizing the challenges of traditional media: “Thomson also said it was incumbent on content creators to make their own websites compelling for readers.” The article ends with a somewhat syntactically ambiguous quotation, but I think Thomson was adding a caveat emptor for those who prefer to reinvent the wheel rather than fix the broken one. He raises questions that newspapers must answer before finding their place in the new world order.

I for one welcome newspapers to the Internet, provided the stop whining and adapt (or die). The Internet isn’t killing newspapers; the market that the Internet facilitates is killing newspapers. And so far, newspapers‘ bids to kill off the market haven’t worked, so it’s time to face the music: change or die. Because unless newspapers do start doing something useful with their online presence, aren’t they just parasites preying on those who have been socialized—wrongly I believe—that knowledge must be hoarded?

Today I went to renew my iRewards membership at Chapters. I took with me my gift cards from Christmas, because I know that any time I enter Chapters, I can’t leave without buying at least one book.

I bought twelve.

As usual when leaving Chapters, I experienced this giddy sensation as if I had committed some sort of crime and gotten away with it—how could they let me leave with so much knowledge?! Sure, I paid them for it, but it still seems like a crime. Buying books leaves me exhilarated—I don’t know why people do drugs when they can just get high off reading. At least, I find reading that enjoyable; I suppose other people don‘t.

The photo above includes books I acquired prior to today as well, including some older editions of Sense and Sensibility and Middlemarch, which I got for free. Highlights from today’s trip include Remix, by Lawrence Lessig, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, and Before the Dawn, by Nicolas Wade.

I‘m looking forward to reading all of these, as well as the nine books I borrowed from the library today. This is how I intend to spend my break.

Now excuse me while I go into hiding, because I can’t believe I got away with this.

Allow me to be critical for a moment. While I applaud the ideals that Earth Hour attempts to promote, the method of promotion is lacking. I did not participate in Earth Hour.

There are some who mistakenly believe this is an attempt to save power. Were it so, I would criticize it as an example of the typical Western “binge” attitude designed to intensely compensate for overconsumption the rest of the year round. It’s obvious, however, that turning off one’s lights for an hour a year isn’t going to save any significant power. Indeed, sometimes other factors may cause power consumption to increase. Earth Hour isn’t about saving juice; it’s a symbolic gesture.

As far as symbols go, however, it’s all cymbals. Earth Hour is global chest-beating. While I’m sure there are many environmentally-conscious individuals participating, there are just as many, if not more, ordinary people involved who are not going to do more for the environment beyond these sixty minutes.

Earth Hour wants to increase awareness of climate change and the need to be environmentally responsible—I’m all for that. Yet as an educational tool, Earth Hour fails miserably, since most of the media required for education also require electricity—ironically, National Geographic is airing a television program concerning how to reduce one’s electricity usage. So, should you turn off the TV and miss the educational opportunity? Or should you watch the TV and be a hypocrite?

The organization and promotion of the Earth Hour event itself is remarkably well done, and I applaud the WWF for that accomplishment. They do offer educational materials for download, as well as links to further resources. That’s great. Unfortunately, Earth Hour won’t make a difference in the minds of most people. This may be a cynical observation, but I suspect it’s also an accurate one.

If you‘ve participate in Earth Hour (or even organized it) and are a trully environmentally conscious individual, then this rant is not directed toward you. Too many of those who participate in Earth Hour are going to turn their lights back on and then feel like they’ve “done enough” for another year. They’ve done their part for the environment, and hey, it feels good to participate in a worldwide event!

Spoilers ahead.

I‘m too young to have seen the original Battlestar Galactica when it was on television, and I never watched the reruns. I’m not into it. The “reimagined” series ignited my interest, however, and I’ve watched the show since its miniseries became the backdoor pilot for a new television series.

To this day, my favourite episode remains “Kobol’s Last Gleaming”, the first season finale. It represents the best aspects of Battlestar Galactica’s storytelling techniques: the high stakes conflict, the spiritual and ethical themes interwoven into the story, and of course, the effortless use of the episode’s score to enhance the most emotional moments of the episode. Tonight’s finale was cast in a very similar vein to the first season finale, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much.

The show has received massive amounts of criticism in the last half of this season. To be fair, the Writer’s Strike caused the last season to be split in half, placing much more tension on the mid-season premiere than the writers had originally intended. From there, it was a slippery slope into the lands of Exposition, Retconning, and Plot Device that left many fans confused and upset. And I’d have to agree—the last episodes of season four, for the most part, are among the most terrible episodes in Battlestar Galactica’s run.

To the creative team’s credit, the finale did tie up most of the loose ends. It left just enough loose ends to keep things interesting—although it’s strongly implied that a “God” exists, we don’t learn exactly who Head Six and Head Baltar are—angels from on high? More importantly, we’re left wondering about the exact nature of Kara Thrace. Allusions to Mormon mythology aside, I understand those—like my dad—who are dissatsified with the lack of closure for Kara. But I wonder if an answer is actually superior to the question? Speaking of answers, however, I enjoyed the answer to the opera house vision. They dealt with that very artfully, mixing prescience with Cylon projection.

The first hour of the finale was just, in the vernacular, “frakkin’ awesome”. It was full of head-spinning action, Cylon centurions on both sides, old-school Cylons, and Baltar had a gun! Cavil had some great last moments, including when they almost had a chance for a Cylon-Human-Cylon peace.

I will never forgive Galen, no matter what Tigh says. And I will never sympathize with Boomer or forgive her for her choices. She had a chance for redemption until she kidnapped Hera.

Baltar, on the other hand, was more interesting. Right to the end he served his own self-interest—I have no doubt that he chose to go on the rescue mission to show himself that he could be heroric, and to save himself from being the pet of that annoying cult of his. I know I would have done the same thing in his place. Yet Baltar and Caprica Six manage to reunite and understand their place in “God’s plan” (if such a God exists). I loved the moment when Head Six and Head Baltar appeared to both of them.

The second hour was much like that part in Lord of the Rings between the end of the book and the last page—useless conclusion, in other words. Yes, it’s important for closure. I didn’t enjoy the idea that they would “abandon technology”—but whatever, I suppose if Lee thinks it’s a good idea, it’s got to be a good idea—right?

Overall, however, Battlestar Galactica’s final episode redeemed the series for the problems with the episodes preceding it. We received resolution to most of the major storylines. And we got some sweet special effects and amazing action scenes.

For those of who are reading this and haven’t watched an entire episode of Battlestar Galactica, you may be wondering why I watched this show. You may not even like “that sci-fi stuff.” You might think it’s uninteresting, or you might be passionately opposed to such “juvenile” tastes. The key to understanding a fan’s passion for Battlestar Galactica is to understand that it is science fiction—it’s the type of science fiction you get in novels by masters of science fiction, as opposed to the adventure-based space opera you find on television (sorry Stargate).

Science fiction is all about exploring ourselves, as humans, and our responsibilities as a species and to the universe. Battlestar Galactica showed us that science fiction television shows can be set in space, have killer robots, yet be relevant to current events. I’m not going to launch into an extended diatribe about how it tackled “relevant issues”—you can read blog posts aplenty about that, sure. If you doubt it, however, just remember that the cast of Battlestar Galactica were at a panel at the United Nations. Over the course of its four-year run, the series took a look at difficult issues about humanity—a laundry list would not do it justice.

Sure, Battlestar Galactica couldn’t keep everyone happy. That’s to be expected. Yet it resonated with enough people that it generated great debate. Yes, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best television shows ever because it made people think—not just about plot lines and character arcs, but about what it means to be human, what it means to evolve, and to question the nature of our world and our beliefs. Many television shows strive for such a legacy—few achieve it.