"Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive" (W. Scott)

Let's be a little pessimistic for once. I talked earlier about transparency on the internet, here's a counter-exemple. The recent upward trend on the web is the multiplication of websites proposing an alibi service for adulterous people who wants to cover up their discreet affairs, but also for those trying to escape from a family dinner or searching excuses for absences at work.

These websites, such as alibi network, are making real buzz. According to the amount of money you want to spend for your lie, you will receive emails, phone calls or even a fake colleague who you will need to act with infront of your family or your friends. Since then, the concept has spawned imitation. This is my favorite one: the office kid. For a bit less than 20$, you will receive a complete kit to have your very own fake kid. It includes framed kid's picture, original kid's artwork and so on and you can also buy extra items. A "tangible excuse", as the website says, to avoid staying late at work when you have no children. You can't stop progress...

Impermanence, online externalization of the human condition

Memento Mori.
As every human action or creation, everything we are publishing on the web is an impermanent, short-lived vanity. The Internet is probably an epitome of symbols of the brevity and the futility of life, of the emptiness and the meaninglessness of our existences. Online, both devices and contents have an expiry-date. You can notice the recrudescence of softwares allowing to convert files, because the formats we are using are always improved, faster and faster. I still have a video-recorder, but I had to buy a DVDplayer when videotapes became out of date, and now, my friends lend me movies thanks to usb keys, external hard drives, and I can even watch a movie thanks to streaming and video on demand. I realised the importance of that change when I became aware that all the video location stores I knew in Paris didn't exist anymore. Obviously, the Internet emphasizes the impermanence and the quickness of changes.

Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas.
It also works for celebrity. The Internet, just like television, tends to create ephemeral glories. We are now in the future prophesied by Andy Warhol, where "everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". This is just the essence of the "buzz". Anyone can make buzz, but not for long. To make buzz, you have to be original, shocking or fun, and to choose the most visited websites of the web 2.0, such as facebook, twitter, youtube or myspace. Here is a good exemple: funny wedding entrance video. This video has been watched more than 25'500'000 times on YouTube, circulating from the site to blogs, facebook accounts, and emails.
But who will remember Jill, Kevin and their guests next year? Unless they make a buzzy video for their divorce... who knows.

MM

Breaking the habits : a theory of evolution

With new technologies, there seems to be a constant and fast improvement of the tools : would you imagine, 10 years ago, that you will surf on the Internet, watch TV, listen to your favorite songs, take picture and record videos with a single device: your cellphone? I remember of an italian article I read a few years ago, entitled : "Napoleon and the cellphone". The journalist imagined how History would have been like if Napoleon, or Romeo and Juliet had had a cellphone. According to him, Napoleon would have won Waterloo, and Juliet could have warned Romeo that she was'nt actually dead and they would have lived happily ever after. It underlines the fact that this kind of tools became indispensable for us. It has created new habits which are now deeply rooted in our everyday life. New technologies invite us to learn new habits and to adapt ourselves to new models, to break the routine and the old habits.


The Internet is probably the media that force us the most to be involved and to keep ourselves up-to-date. It encourages us to break our old habits and to evolve, from our traditional TV to streaming videos and catch-up TV, from CDs to immaterial music, from shops to online shopping and online auctions, from mails and phone to instant messaging and so on. The problem is, the more we get used to these tools, the more we become addicted to them. We, net surfers, are all a little addicted but for some, it is a real disease, called "internet addiction disorder".
Clinics are opening all over the world to cure this particular pathology: in Beijing or in New York for instance. The website of the center for internet addiction recovery even propose an Internet Addiction Test so you can see if you really need rehab.
The pernicious effect of the Internet is that addicts must go online to find the test: a bit ironic, don't you think?

I let you test your addiction, and then ask yourself what is your habit to break.

MM

Obscure transparency

Transparency seems to be a fashionable concept, especially in media. We can notice that wills and uses of transparency are proportionnal to the access to tools allowing to collect, record and broadcast informations. But is this transparency real?

People tend to stage themself and media also stage people. Real TV is a good exemple of staging people : Tv channels are presenting these shows as a a vision of reality but people don't behave naturally in front of videocameras and most of the time, there are scripts written for each candidate. This is the most obvious and well-known exemple, but it's true for almost everything you can see on your TV screen. The recent buzz created by the RTBF around the fact that workers were casted according to size so they won't be taller than the French President brought this common practice to the public's notice. Here's the video.
But you have to watch out the other side of the coin. Transparency also mean there is no "off" anymore. Thanks to new tools such as cellphone taking pictures and recording video, good and bad acts show up faster and more than ever in the web. There are innumerable cases of politicians' slip-ups, from the french minister Devedjian's "bitch" to the famous Sarkozy's "get out of my way, asshole!"

Transparency also concerns the crowd of unknowns. In the Internet, you have to remember constantly that Big Brother is watching you. Dominique B, a 49 year-old woman, beared the brunt of web transparency. Because she posted the comment : "liar!" on a video of a french secretary of state on dailymotion, she had been summoned to appear in court after the secretary lodged a complaint. Here's a french article about the "liar affair".

So before posting a comment, think twice!

MM

The influence of the Internet on the world of music

Deep impact or Armageddon?
If you are old enough, you would probably remember the time when the distribution of music was the exclusive domain of the major record companies, such as Universal, EMI or Sony. This time is now over. A new model has emerged and has disrupted the world of music. This new model appeared thanks to one particular media: the Internet. Obviously, the web had a deep impact in media in general, but everybody seems to focus on the controversy surrounding music file-sharing. So, the web : the apocalypse of the world of music? Big majors keep wondering how they can stop illegal downloading so they can earn as much as they use to in the golden age of CDs. Journalists and politicians shout out that we must find solutions to contain that crime wave. And parents desperatly ask themselves: "Is my little boy an outlaw? Some kind of cultural terrorist?" It is impossible you didn't notice this mass hysteria surrounding peer-to-peer, which, thanks to globalization, contaminate the world from New York City to le plateau du Larzac. As far as I am concerned, I think this is much ado about nothing. This is a punctual question, even if the way of consuming and listening to music change irreversibly. I mean, consumption and habits are evolving all the time (some people call it improvement, others, decadence), and the emergence of a new power -such as the web- requires a few years or a few decades to make the necessary adjustments. What interests me is how people react to that kind of change, and I am going to talk about one of the main actors of this evolution: the artists.


In change we believe
The new model emerging thanks to the Internet created both threats and opportunities to those in the music industry. The first reaction of most of the singers was quite violent : they were panic-stricken. Now, it seems that new generations of artists are more peaceful about music file-sharing and streaming. Maybe it is precisely a matter of generation. Yet, when money is at stake, eveything can easily go wrong. Let's take the exemple of Maxime Le Forestier. He is a talented french singer, some kind of a former hippy back in the 70's, singing "San Francisco" (very peace and love) or "Comme un arbre" (Like a tree, protoecologist). "Him, a capitalist? Nonsense!" would you shout. And maybe you'd be right. Though, this nice person compared illegal downoaders to nazis. A bit exagerated, don't you think? Unfortunately, I am afraid artists are biased. On the other hand, there is a brand new generation of young artists discovered thanks to their streaming videos on YouTube or their myspace. They were successful without the help of major companies and they deliberately used the Internet, sharing there music for free. we must admit it is an easier and faster way to promote your music: there is no go-between, no need for castings, demos or lousy performances in noisy bars. But it can be tricky. Then, you can't complain about the net surfers who don't want to pay for your first album. So what will the future be? Will artists only earn their living thanks to live shows? We can't say. But here is one final point of reflexion..


Two different worlds
I have noticed that classical music seems to suffer less from illegal downloading. Why? Probably because the audience is composed by wealthy people who can afford an expensive CD, and by elderly people who are not familiar with the web. But not only. I've talk to people who listen to classical music, and most of them are musicians themselves. As musicians, they told me they felt more concerned about the loyalty of the consumer towards the artist. To understand better this particular point of view, I interviewed a young conductor. Here is the video:

Now, I let you think about all that. Don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Good night.

MM

Let me introduce myself (in medias res)

Oh my god! Am I actually writing on a blog?! If somebody told me that a few days ago, I would have laugh. Really. A blog, isn’t it this thing where geeks pour out their (absence of) life? Ok, that’s not really what I was thinking, and I have a lot of respect for professional bloggers, such as journalists for instance. Yet, I must admit I am biased against teen-agers writing a blog paying tribute to their favorite pets. For some reasons, I had to write my own blog. Don’t ask me for those reasons, they are confidential. Bob would kill me if I told you. He is the one who forced me. And if you don’t know who the f*** is Bob, too bad for you. So, now I am in the blogosphere, there are these two visions fighting in my brain. The first one: blogs are great. They are interlinked, interactive and they allow us to communicate easily. The second one: blogs are lame. They’re individualistic, egocentric forms of self-expression. But, as mysterious Bob says, we have to break our habits. So, I will cease this precious opportunity to discover new things, no matter how many readers will follow me, and express myself, mostly about media. Oh, I am a student in communication by the way. That’s all for the presentation. See you soon.

CMM (Celsa’s Marie-Morgane)