The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part III: The iPhone

(Con­tin­ued from Part II)

iphoneThe most recent major for­ay into the world of cul­ture­box­es comes in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent size and mar­ket niche: the Apple iPhone. It may look dif­fer­ent, but it has all the hall­marks of a cul­ture­box. The iPhone wants to deliv­er video, audio and the best of the Web; it hopes to rev­o­lu­tion­ize its mar­ket; it requires month­ly ser­vice fees and a hefty price-tag to use ful­ly.

Just like Microsoft and Tivo, Apple has had some strug­gles in get­ting their new device to live up to its promis­es. The bat­ter­ies on many of the iPhones are not liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions and some stan­dard phone fea­tures seem to be miss­ing. The new phone pur­ports to com­bine the roles of iPod and cell phone more ele­gant­ly than any oth­er device.

Music. Video. Con­nec­tion. The Tivo, Xbox and iPhone all want to sell us cul­tur­al ser­vices through an inte­grat­ed sys­tem of dig­i­tal con­trol. Record or pur­chase con­tent from the autho­rized dig­i­tal store and watch it on the autho­rized device. All three com­pa­nies know that the suc­cess of their prod­uct depends on main­tain­ing a del­i­cate bal­ance between defend­ing the walls of their dig­i­tal king­doms and allow­ing in enough out­side con­tent to remain flex­i­ble in uncer­tain mar­kets. All three box­es can be hacked and manip­u­lat­ed, of course, but their man­u­fac­tur­ers are count­ing on the vast major­i­ty of cus­tomers to play along and pay along.

Just as the box-mak­ers strug­gle to cut deals with con­tent pro­duc­ers to make their dig­i­tal offer­ings appeal­ing to con­sumers, the “tra­di­tion­al” cul­ture indus­tries are des­per­ate­ly strug­gling to embrace new forms. The New York Times reviews videogames as well as plays, and just about every major media insti­tu­tion has launched some kind of blog, web video ser­vice or pod­cast so you can con­nect with the crit­ics on what­ev­er cul­ture­box you pre­fer.

Cul­ture served up on box­es is very dif­fer­ent from pub­lic per­for­mance or ephemer­al newsprint. We can save up hours and hours of it; we can car­ry it around or dupli­cate it. When we build up a library of music and videos, we own cul­tur­al objects in a way that was nev­er real­ly pos­si­ble before, when the best we could do was own per­ish­able phys­i­cal media. We can replay, refor­mat, share and col­late favorites, and we can use our rank­ings and rat­ings to find new works. A lot of the most excit­ing tech­ni­cal advances have had to do with con­nect­ing cul­ture­box­es, but that so far that con­nec­tiv­i­ty most­ly goes to pro­vid­ing bet­ter cul­ture for solo view­ing. The three devices dis­cussed here all hope to change that.

The reign of cul­ture­box­es is in many ways the per­son­al, dig­i­tal ver­sion of some­thing that hap­pened in the late 18th cen­tu­ry: The birth of the mod­ern muse­um. The idea was to gath­er art, knowl­edge and his­to­ry togeth­er and frame them appropriately—saving up cul­ture for you in vast mar­ble box­es. Today’s per­son­al cul­ture­box­es will nev­er replace the­ater or muse­um-going, but they extend the same promise of cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy (have you fin­ished The Sopra­nos yet?). These days the promise is affil­i­at­ed with brand name dig­i­tal empo­ria.

Like the Xbox, Tivo, and iPhone, many of the first muse­ums want­ed to be every­thing for every­body, offer­ing vis­i­tors his­tor­i­cal relics, bio­log­i­cal spec­i­mens and strange devices in a mish­mash of art, sci­ence and hokum. No won­der the Xbox­es are on the fritz: they’re try­ing to cap­ture all our total­ly con­flict­ed inter­ests in just one device. Even­tu­al­ly we’ll fig­ure out what dig­i­tal con­tent real­ly belongs in our pock­et on a two-inch screen, what needs to stay in the liv­ing room, and what to keep out of the box entire­ly. I should have some time to think about it while my Xbox gets repaired.

The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part 2: Tivo

xbox 360The online mag­a­zine Slate runs most of its arts and cul­ture sto­ries in a sec­tion called “Cul­ture­box.” Iron­i­cal­ly, it’s tak­en the con­sumer elec­tron­ics indus­try sev­er­al years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gad­get is mar­ket­ed as a cul­ture­box, from the shiny iPhone to the pio­neer­ing Tivo to the hot-run­ning Xbox 360. Man­u­fac­tur­ers, adver­tis­ers and pro­duc­ers every­where are think­ing about how to sell us sleek­er, bet­ter box­es and the media that go with them.

The trou­ble is, nobody is quite sure what the cul­ture­box should look like or what it should do. We can all agree on video, audio and some kind of stor­age func­tion. But do we want our media pock­et-sized or on a big screen? Is the goal to enter­tain us on the com­mute or to build up a library of cher­ished media objects? More impor­tant­ly, when we say “cul­ture” do we essen­tial­ly mean tele­vi­sion or the whole panoply of forms? Are cul­ture­box­es just TV by oth­er means or are there gen­uine­ly new cul­tur­al forms on the hori­zon?

Last week Microsoft announced that Xbox 360s are fail­ing in unprece­dent­ed num­bers: A dra­mat­ic exam­ple of Cul­ture­box Anx­i­ety Syn­drome. The new gen­er­a­tion of videogame con­soles allow us to do so much more than blast­ing aliens—video on demand, HD and Blu-Ray DVD play­back, online chat­ting and music library man­age­ment are just a few of the roles these par­tic­u­lar cul­ture­box­es want to serve. The com­plex­i­ty is clear­ly an over­load: the New York Times argues that the $1 bil­lion Microsoft is set­ting aside for this prob­lem implies that between a third and half of Xbox 360 con­soles could get the cul­ture­box blues. Now a high-lev­el Xbox exec­u­tive has announced his res­ig­na­tion, though few peo­ple think it’s a pun­ish­ment since the plat­form is gen­er­al­ly sell­ing well.

Per­haps I’m only writ­ing because I use all these gad­gets and my Xbox recent­ly suc­cumbed to “red ring of death” syn­drome. Iron­i­cal­ly, it only freezes up when I use it to load a videogame. But there is a broad­er issue here: the trans­for­ma­tion of cul­ture from some­thing we expe­ri­ence in con­cert halls, movie the­aters and oth­er shared pub­lic spaces into some­thing that we do on the couch or on the go.

The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part 1: The Xbox

xbox 360The online mag­a­zine Slate runs most of its arts and cul­ture sto­ries in a sec­tion called “Cul­ture­box.” Iron­i­cal­ly, it’s tak­en the con­sumer elec­tron­ics indus­try sev­er­al years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gad­get is mar­ket­ed as a cul­ture­box, from the shiny iPhone to the pio­neer­ing Tivo to the hot-run­ning Xbox 360. Man­u­fac­tur­ers, adver­tis­ers and pro­duc­ers every­where are think­ing about how to sell us sleek­er, bet­ter box­es and the media that go with them.

The trou­ble is, nobody is quite sure what the cul­ture­box should look like or what it should do. We can all agree on video, audio and some kind of stor­age func­tion. But do we want our media pock­et-sized or on a big screen? Is the goal to enter­tain us on the com­mute or to build up a library of cher­ished media objects? More impor­tant­ly, when we say “cul­ture” do we essen­tial­ly mean tele­vi­sion or the whole panoply of forms? Are cul­ture­box­es just TV by oth­er means or are there gen­uine­ly new cul­tur­al forms on the hori­zon?

Last week Microsoft announced that Xbox 360s are fail­ing in unprece­dent­ed num­bers: A dra­mat­ic exam­ple of Cul­ture­box Anx­i­ety Syn­drome. The new gen­er­a­tion of videogame con­soles allow us to do so much more than blast­ing aliens—video on demand, HD and Blu-Ray DVD play­back, online chat­ting and music library man­age­ment are just a few of the roles these par­tic­u­lar cul­ture­box­es want to serve. The com­plex­i­ty is clear­ly an over­load: the New York Times argues that the $1 bil­lion Microsoft is set­ting aside for this prob­lem implies that between a third and half of Xbox 360 con­soles could get the cul­ture­box blues. Now a high-lev­el Xbox exec­u­tive has announced his res­ig­na­tion, though few peo­ple think it’s a pun­ish­ment since the plat­form is gen­er­al­ly sell­ing well.

Per­haps I’m only writ­ing because I use all these gad­gets and my Xbox recent­ly suc­cumbed to “red ring of death” syn­drome. Iron­i­cal­ly, it only freezes up when I use it to load a videogame. But there is a broad­er issue here: the trans­for­ma­tion of cul­ture from some­thing we expe­ri­ence in con­cert halls, movie the­aters and oth­er shared pub­lic spaces into some­thing that we do on the couch or on the go.

The Cult of the Amateur: A Short Review (and a Free Book)

New rule: Books that are short on good ideas should only get short reviews. And so that’s what we’re serv­ing up today — a short review of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Ama­teur: How the Democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the Dig­i­tal World is Assault­ing Our Cul­ture.

Keen’s argu­ment can essen­tial­ly be boiled down to this: Web 2.0 has brought us blogs, Youtube-style video, Wikipedia and oth­er plat­forms that pro­mote user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, and it’s all killing our Cul­ture. Hacks are now crank­ing out “an end­less dig­i­tal for­est of medi­oc­rity;” “the pro­fes­sion­al is being replaced by the ama­teur… the Har­vard pro­fes­sor by the unschooled pop­u­lace;” “kids can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between cred­i­ble news by objec­tive pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and what they read on joeshmoe.blogspot.com;” “every post­ing is just anoth­er per­son­’s ver­sion of the truth;” with the net result being that in “today’s cul­ture of the ama­teur, the mon­keys are run­ning the show.” Using his own words, that’s the gist of Keen’s argu­ment.

You’d think that by posi­tion­ing him­self as the defend­er of high cul­ture and cul­tur­al author­i­ty, Keen would uphold his end of the bar­gain. That is, you’d expect him to offer us a nuanced, care­ful­ly-craft­ed look at the uses and abus­es of Web 2.0. But that is not what you get here. Miss­ing the mark, The Cult of the Ama­teur is long on hyper­bol­ic rhetoric (see above) and short on sub­tle think­ing and bal­ance. It stretch­es out argu­ments that ought to fill a 15 page arti­cle to 215 pages, and reit­er­ates the same points again and again. (Although tar­get­ed to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the book places no pre­mi­um on effi­cien­cy.) And then you have sprin­kled in var­i­ous dilet­tan­tish ref­er­ences to philoso­phers (Marx, Rousseau, Haber­mas, etc.), cou­pled with slop­py read­ings of oth­er con­tem­po­rary media observers.

The ulti­mate irony is that Keen’s polemic against ama­teur con­tent comes off as strange­ly ama­teur­ish. It’s most­ly oper­at­ing at the same lev­el as the very blo­gos­phere he’s attack­ing. And this impres­sion only gets con­firmed by his admis­sion in the acknowl­edg­ments: “I con­fess that, as a writer, I remain a bit of an ama­teur. This is my first book, and I’m still learn­ing the craft of this com­plex busi­ness.” Appar­ent­ly, the divide between tra­di­tion­al media and dig­i­tal media, between high cul­ture and low cul­ture, is not as real and imper­me­able as Keen would have us believe.

If any­one wants my copy of Keen’s book, just let me know. I will send it any­where in the US at book rate. But be warned that it has some illeg­i­ble mar­gin­a­lia, and my kid doo­dled on one page (page 40), unbe­knownst to me. But think of it this way: You get what you don’t pay for. Our email address is in the ban­ner above. First come, first served.

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Death by Amateurs?

Last weekend’s New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine has declared this the Amateur’s Hour, an era when unpaid hob­by­ists can edit break­ing news, design space tech­nol­o­gy for NASA, and pre­dict the end of the world. That last arti­cle is clear­ly an out­lier, but the first two raise an inter­est­ing point—are we get­ting bet­ter ser­vice from process­es like Wikipedia than we did from tra­di­tion­al, top-down hier­ar­chies?

This is a debate that’s been going on for the past cou­ple of years under the guise of Web 2.0, cul­mi­nat­ing in the “You” econ­o­my announced with much fan­fare by Time Mag­a­zine last Decem­ber. In that debate, the bat­tle lines are clear­ly drawn between the YouTube-using, Google Map-mash­ing enthu­si­asts and the skep­tics, like aJaron Lanier, who pre­dicts a form of Dig­i­tal Mao­ism. In that ver­sion of the argu­ment, blog­gers are either cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists or incom­pe­tent muck­rak­ers clog­ging the pores of the body politic.

Now the debate seems to have moved into a wider circle—the realm of the ama­teur ver­sus the pro­fes­sion­al, with or with­out the inter­net. Major out­fits from Net­flix to NASA have been try­ing to out­source some of their trick­i­est prob­lems to the gen­er­al pub­lic, which is as bizarre as it is excit­ing. Andrew Keen, arguably the most Web 2.0‑enabled crit­ic of Web 2.0, is well-placed to com­bat the Times cov­er­age with his new book, The Cult of the Ama­teur: How Today’s Inter­net is Killing our Cul­ture, which he describes as a polemic against all of the mon­keys with type­writ­ers and web­cams (that is, us) the Inter­net has now unleashed upon civ­i­liza­tion.

Per­son­al­ly, I find it hard to believe that “real cul­ture” is drown­ing in a sea of YouTube. If there’s one thing we’re try­ing to do at Open Cul­ture, it’s to har­ness Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies to bring you the best stuff there is: top-notch con­tent from uni­ver­si­ties, cul­tur­al pro­grams and online media around the world. The fact that it might be cre­at­ed by any­one, for any­one doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make it bad or good—our job as a Web 2.0 fil­ter is to sort that out for you and offer our best sug­ges­tions.

Keen’s self-pro­mo­tion­al ener­gy is an excel­lent exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can enhance the great con­ver­sa­tion. He’s argu­ing his case every­where from Google’s HQ (watch here on YouTube) to the Strand Book­store in Man­hat­tan. A mul­ti­plic­i­ty of view­points cre­ates debate, and debate is gen­er­al­ly a good thing. If there’s one les­son to be learned from “real cul­ture” it’s that life’s great ques­tions don’t have neat or sat­is­fy­ing answers. Inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion is about the best we can hope for, so why not invite more peo­ple to join in?

The Skinny on Second Life

Secondlife_1_2

Ever won­dered what Sec­ond Life is and if you should care about it? Imag­ine a 3‑D immer­sive game where you con­trol an avatar and trav­el through con­struct­ed environments–and now take away the game part. What’s left is a fair­ly wide-open cre­ative space where users can cre­ate and sell in-game stuff–houses, objects, cloth­ing, etc–or engage in group activ­i­ties rang­ing from con­certs to polit­i­cal activism to pros­ti­tu­tion. It’s free to join but to own land (and receive a larg­er stipend of in-game cash) you have to sign up for a month­ly sub­scrip­tion.

The online com­mu­ni­ty has been grow­ing fair­ly rapid­ly over the past year or two, now boast­ing over one mil­lion users who logged in dur­ing the past month. Big busi­ness has tak­en notice of the trend, and com­pa­nies from Toy­ota, Microsoft and Sony BMG have all launched vir­tu­al pres­ences in SL.

The ser­vice has been receiv­ing some of its most enthu­si­as­tic press from edu­ca­tors who hope to take advan­tage of the free-for-all 3D spaces as tools for ped­a­gogy. You can find a lot of engi­neer­ing schools, med­ical insti­tu­tions and, of course, the Star Trek Muse­um of Sci­ence on this list of sci­ence places in SL. The world’s cre­ators active­ly encour­age edu­ca­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion and teach­ers from many uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing Har­vard, Colum­bia and more) have tried run­ning cours­es or train­ing ses­sions in the sim­u­la­tion. There is at least one skep­tic out there, though: Clark Aldrich, a con­sul­tant for an e‑learning com­pa­ny, offers up ten things he sees miss­ing from SL as an edu­ca­tion­al tool.

Whether or not Sec­ond Life becomes a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the Inter­net land­scape, it’s cer­tain­ly cap­tured a lot of peo­ples’ atten­tion. To learn more about it check out the pletho­ra of pod­casts avail­able on iTunes. At the very least this world does offer some zany oppor­tu­ni­ties for mul­ti­ple lay­ers of sim­u­la­tion. Check out this video of a U2 “vir­tu­al trib­ute band” per­form­ing a con­cert with lov­ing­ly ren­dered trib­ute avatars:

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10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod

New tech­nolo­gies often have unin­tend­ed uses. Take the Ipod as a case in point. It was devel­oped with the inten­tion of play­ing music (and lat­er videos), but its appli­ca­tions now go well beyond that. Here are 10 rather unfore­seen, even sur­pris­ing, uses:

1. Train Doc­tors to Save Lives: A new study pre­sent­ed at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy indi­cates that iPods can dou­ble interns’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy heart sounds that are indica­tive of seri­ous heart prob­lems (i.e., aor­tic or mitral steno­sis). By using the iPod to repeat­ed­ly lis­ten to record­ings of nor­mal and abnor­mal heart beat pat­terns, interns can effec­tive­ly hear when some­thing is going awry.

Or how about this for anoth­er med­ical appli­ca­tion: Will Gilbert, who heads up the bioin­for­mat­ics group in the Hub­bard Cen­ter for Genome Stud­ies, stores the entire human genome on his iPod. As you can read in Wired, he has found that the iPod is a great way to store the gene sequence, all 3 bil­lion chem­i­cal let­ters of it, and, com­pared to using a net­work, he can access data more quick­ly with the lit­tle Apple gad­get. [Thanks to one of our read­ers for point­ing this one out.]

2. Bring Crim­i­nals to Jus­tice: On an exper­i­men­tal basis, a Unit­ed States fed­er­al dis­trict court has start­ed using iPods to hold copies of wire­tap trans­mis­sions in a large drug-con­spir­a­cy case. Why? Because it’s eas­i­er than stor­ing the record­ings on cas­sette tapes or CDRoms; the defen­dants and attor­neys can access and work through the record­ings with ease; and it can all be done in a secure envi­ron­ment.

3. Get Your­self Into Seri­ous Shape: Many jog­gers love how their iPods can pro­vide enter­tain­ment that will spice up a monot­o­nous rou­tine. But prob­a­bly few know that you can use the iPod to plan train­ing routes for their runs. Trail­Run­ner lets run­ners do pre­cise­ly that. This free pro­gram helps you plan your route and then loads your iPod with maps, dis­tances, and time goals.

4. Tour Around Great Cities: iSub­wayMaps lets you down­load sub­way maps from 24 major cities across the globe. They range from New York City, Paris and Berlin to Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong. (Get the full list here.) To take advan­tage of these maps, your iPod will need to sup­port pho­tos, but that should­n’t be a prob­lem for most recent iPods.

We’ve also talked recent­ly about a ven­ture called Sound­walk that pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris (plus Varanasi in India). In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict, among oth­er places. In Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each audio tour is nar­rat­ed by a celebri­ty of sorts and can be down­loaded for about $12.
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5. Cal­cu­late the Right Tip: If you’re a lit­tle math chal­lenged, you can use your iPod when you’re out to din­ner to cal­cu­late the cor­rect tip. Tip­Kalc helps you fig­ure out both the tip and the grand total on your bill, and it even lets you split your check up to five dif­fer­ent ways.

6. Record Flight data: Accord­ing to a report in Flight Glob­al, a com­pa­ny called LoPresti Speed Mer­chants has announced plans to use iPods as flight data recorders in light air­craft. The lit­tle white box will serve as the “black box” with­in the air­planes and will have the abil­i­ty to record over 500 hours of flight time data. Does this mean that iPods can sur­vive plane crash­es? Who would have thunk it.

7. Throw a Mean­er Curve­ball: Jason Jen­nings, a pitch­er for the Hous­ton Astros, start­ed using a video iPod last year to review his pitch­ing frame by frame and to improve his over­all tech­nique. He also reviews video of all oppos­ing bat­ters before each game. Since incor­po­rat­ing the iPod into his train­ing, he has since seen his ERA go down, and oth­er teams — notably the Mar­lins and Mariners — have looked into using the iPod in sim­i­lar ways.

8. Learn For­eign Lan­guages: iPods are becom­ing more com­mon­place in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms, with stu­dents using them to record lec­tures, take notes, and even cre­ate elec­tron­ic flash cards. (See in depth arti­cle here.) The gad­gets are also being used to help stu­dents for­mal­ly study music and learn for­eign lan­guages. Now, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll know that you don’t need to be a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent to learn for­eign lan­guages with the help of an iPod. With the help of our pod­casts col­lec­tion, you can pick up most any lan­guage on your own.

9. Learn to Love and Buy Wine: Here’s a nov­el way to get intro­duced to wine. For $35, you can down­load an audio file called Mark Phillips Wine Guide onto your iPod. This primer will, among oth­er things, teach you how to describe, taste, and buy wine, and you’ll come away with a cer­tain je ne sais quoi.

10. Test Cheat­ing: Yes, unfor­tu­nate­ly tech­nol­o­gy can be used for bad as well as good. It was wide­ly report­ed just this past week that stu­dents are appar­ent­ly using the iPod to cheat on exams. Dur­ing tests, they’ll appar­ent­ly sneak ear­buds into their ears and tap into valu­able for­mu­las, class notes, voic­es record­ings, etc. Oth­ers will even write out crib notes and enmesh them with­in song lyrics.

Bonus: The iPod as Flash­light: Dur­ing the major black­out in 2003, many New York­ers impro­vised after night­fall and used the light gen­er­at­ed by their iPods to get around their apart­ments. It was a makeshift way of doing things. But now there is a more for­mal way of using your iPod to light your way. For about $13, you can pur­chase Griffin’s iBeam, an attach­ment that will quick­ly turn your iPod into a com­bo flash­light and laser point­er. As they say, be pre­pared.

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A Better Way to Read News and Blogs


These days, if you spend enough time on the web, you’ll inevitably hear talk about RSS feeds, feed read­ers, and sub­scrib­ing to feeds – talk that can seem fair­ly obscure and off-putting if you’re not already famil­iar with these terms.

If this has been your expe­ri­ence, then you should real­ly watch this short video below. This instruc­tive, even amus­ing, video uses sim­ple lan­guage and images to demon­strate how to use feeds and feed read­ers. In a mat­ter of min­utes, all of this will be demys­ti­fied, and you’ll dis­cov­er a much quick­er, more effi­cient and pow­er­ful way to access news and blog con­tent, includ­ing sto­ries from Open Cul­ture. You can sub­scribe to our feed here. And if you’re look­ing for a good feed read­er, def­i­nite­ly give Google Read­er a look.

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