Comment on my theory... (involves djing)

[Ryan]

With digital audio still exploding and becoming faster and cheaper as well as it integrating with toys and video games is amazing. Music, and the way its performed and composed in 10 or 20 years could be insane.

It could, but what will really happen? Will the next generation freely express themselves digitally with music and video and images? Or will digital free expression be criminalized so that corporations can continue to maintain a monopoly over creativity? The next generation will have to live with the choices that we make today.

Here's a 20 minute video about the two possible alternate futures that are in store for our children, it's Larry Lessig's TED presentation from March 2007 about criminalizing youth. His presentation is about the legal restrictions that prevent kids from making the transition from Guitar Hero to Ableton Live. For Guitar Hero and Rock Band to really open doors for young people, we can't tell kids that they're committing a crime by taking it to the next level.

With digital audio still exploding and becoming faster and cheaper as well as it integrating with toys and video games is amazing. Music, and the way its performed and composed in 10 or 20 years could be insane.

It could, but what will really happen? Will the next generation freely express themselves digitally with music and video and images? Or will digital free expression be criminalized so that corporations can continue to maintain a monopoly over creativity? The next generation will have to live with the choices that we make today.

Here's a 20 minute video about the two possible alternate futures that are in store for our children, it's Larry Lessig's TED presentation from March 2007 about criminalizing youth. His presentation is about the legal restrictions that prevent kids from making the transition from Guitar Hero to Ableton Live. For Guitar Hero and Rock Band to really open doors for young people, we can't tell kids that they're committing a crime by taking it to the next level.

i'll have to check out the vid at home, no computer speakers at work. But your post has confused me. How will digital free expression be criminalized? A monopoly over creativity? I'm sure the vid goes into more detail, but for the sake of the discussion now could you elaborate please?

I was reffering to kids being more technolgical savvy. Alot of digital audio programs are almost like video games and are combining actual composition techniques with a user friendly layout and format.

[Ryan]

I was reffering to kids being more technolgical savvy. Alot of digital audio programs are almost like video games and are combining actual composition techniques with a user friendly layout and format.

Right. I am too. When a kid goes from Garage Band to Ableton Live, sticks his favorite song into Ableton and starts playing back loops, he just broke the law. Is that what we want? Don't we want Guitar Hero to be a stepping stone for these kids toward greater digital literacy and broader freedom of expression?

[Ryan]

i'll have to check out the vid at home, no computer speakers at work. But your post has confused me.

This article of Larry's touches on some of the same points as his excellent TED presentation:

Blogs, photo journals and sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace signal an extraordinary hunger in our culture for something beyond consumption. According to a recent Pew study, almost 60 per cent of US teenagers have created and shared content on the internet. That number will only grow next year. As it does, these creators will increasingly demand freedom to create, or more precisely, re-create, using as inputs the culture that they buy. In a sense, this re-creativity of the Read-Write internet is nothing new. Since the beginning of human society, individuals have remixed the culture around them, sharing with their friends the product of these remixes. You read a book and recount its plot over dinner. You see a movie and ridicule its naivete to friends at a bar. This is the way culture has always been used. The only difference now is that technology permits these remixes to be shared. And that capacity in turn will inspire an extraordinary range of new creativity.

Yet the law of intellectual property will not easily accommodate this remix creativity. As the rules are written today, even for purely noncommercial purposes, there is no clear right on the side of the remixers. ... There is no freedom for this sort of creativity. There is no way to even license the right. And most importantly, as the technology for the Read-Only internet gets more perfectly deployed, even the technical capacity to remix will be increasingly threatened. Already, [remix] creators must circumvent technological protections to get access to the underlying [content] that they remix. Those protections will only get better and the war against circumvention technologies will just increase. As one type of digital technology increasingly begs for this remix creativity, a different kind will work to disable it.

I was reffering to kids being more technolgical savvy. Alot of digital audio programs are almost like video games and are combining actual composition techniques with a user friendly layout and format.

Right. I am too. When a kid goes from Garage Band to Ableton Live, sticks his favorite song into Ableton and starts playing back loops, he just broke the law. Is that what we want? Don't we want Guitar Hero to be a stepping stone for these kids toward greater digital literacy and broader freedom of expression?

Oh i see what you are saying. But i guess with anything new, it does come with rules and regulations. I understand your comment about monopoly over creativity now. Laws and rules will have to be rewritten and reviewed. But if company A has more potential to make money with a new format or a new way of doing things i will guarentee that they will be the first pushing to change these current laws and regulations.

Intellectual property and the digital revolution are geeting ready for a head on collision.

Thanks for the link=)

Check it pablo,
That game is going to produce some killer bands in the next few years.. These kids are getting inspired by rock.. I see kids with ACDC shirts on now!

It's only a theory, but I truly think that game is going to get rock back to where it once was in a few years when they kids grow up..

One of life's little ironies i guess.....the early sounds of looping digitalism and bleeping squeaking arcade games is probably the blood memory that holds the musical attention of a lot of the (aging) Tekno generation....how does that T-shirt read again:

"Computer games haven't influenced adolescent behavior - otherwise all the kids would be bouncing around dark rooms, gobbling pills, and listening to repetitive music!"

....so now a Computer Game is digitally mimicking the blood sweat and tears of good'old rock n roll.....and steering the kids back???

....hmmmmm....i dunno....if its one thing a play station is renowned for doing, and doing well, its progressively shortening the attention span of its user to commit to very little more than completing the next freakin level!

Sure, the kids will wear the t-shirt....hell, it probably makes Dad proud to see the fruit of their rock'n'rolling loins in a pair of tight black jeans and an Akka Dakka T, but will that appetite for "nuveau" rock-fashion convert into a very unhealthy dedication to a life of practicing, demos, pub gigs, knockback after knockback, most of the time for very little reward????? I kiiinda doubt it!

So....Keeeeeeep staring at that screen and slapping those plastic frets people, i really think you're starting to get better!