I was going to go see this movie but couldn't get tickets for Friday or today. Rick's thoughtful review leaves me desperate to go see this movie. Ebert & Roper give it two thumbs way up. Check the Grid is blown away. Only the Wall St. Journal didn't like it (and since when did they become adept at reviewing movies?) Damn, Damn, Damn! I've got to go see the movie. Oh well, tonight my wife and I are going to go see Jerry Seinfeld, which ain't bad.
5:09:57 PM
Jon Stanley deserves his own post entry
I talked about him below (he's an attorney in Maine), but I've been reading and re-reading his article (very brief) on "Emerging Legal Paradigms." Wow!!! Does he nail it. Just go read it. Trust me.
This guy needs a blog! Jon, navigate to Radio Userland right now (Blogger is okay, but it lacks the News Aggregator feature). RU is free to try for 30 days (includes hosting), and then it's $40 for the first year (I'll kick in $10). Just get yourself a blog and start broadcasting. And you'll need to try ActiveWords too, but we can talk about that later...
9:56:06 AM
Doc Searles is on a roll
Quoting Joni Mitchell (one of my all time favorites) and talking about the "star making machinery behind the popular songs." Read his essay. Ah, the music business! (with emphasis on the word "business"). Oh well, as another Joni Mitchell fan reminded me recently, "don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til it's gone...."
9:37:47 AM
"The Internet's potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium's long-standing culture of openness..."
"We're at a turning point in the evolution of the Internet," said William Drake, a fellow at the University of Maryland, adding that a wrong turn means "robbing it of its real democratic potential."
So true. I think Dave Weinberger is right that the Internet can't be hyped enough. It has tremendous power to democratize, inform, and to let real human discussion take place. But there are forces out there that only like free speech as long as it doesn't impinge in any way on their little fiefdom. Of course, you would think that in a great country like ours, where free speech has been so highly valued for over 200 years, that we would have learned that the rules of the game mean that we all have to learn to listen. And we have to have thick skin. Free speech means people get to say what they think. And, guess what happens then? Well, people get riled up because not everyone thinks the same thing. But as long as no physical damage is inflicted it's okay. Isn't that what 200 years of high quality free speech has taught us? Sadly, that's not the case. Look, let's don't forget that there have been times in our nation's history where people went to jail for what they said, and for what they believed; uh, remember the McCarthy hearings?
So now we have inadvertently created a nuclear-powered free speech bomb (i.e. the Internet), but so what? Like anything, it can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing. If government (fueled by the people who have become obsessed with control over their ideas and products) decides to allocate control over the Internet we are doomed. The whole point of the Internet is that no one controls it (especially the government). That means we all have responsibility to turn away from the things that we don't want to hear. But to ask government to filter, or to assist in filtering through legislation, is a very, very bad thing. Not healthy for the Internet. Bad, bad, bad!!!
Later: Oh, and check out Jon Stanley's site. He's a lawyer in Maine and appears to have some really interesting ideas about the Internet and Law. Read this discussion if you are at all interested. Jon "gets it," especially as to the potentially deleterious effect of the law on the our new world. Man, it's great to find people like Jon lurking out there!
8:21:45 AM
