NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Brave New World

GEEK: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Brave New World

There is a communications revolution happening right now. It crosses generations, and it scares the absolute shit out of a lot of people who benefit from ignorance and the control of information.

Though my son and his friends communicate in this barely-comprehensible patois of acronyms and phonetics, they’re more connected to each other than my generation ever was when we were their age, when three-way calling was a very big deal, almost as exciting as a digital watch. When I checked our family’s cell phone bill earlier this month, he’d only used a few of his minutes, but had sent nearly 2500 text messages to his friends, his mom, and me. My usage wasn’t as light on the voice, but it was just as heavy on the text. Thanks to Twitter, Google SMS, and a new Helio Ocean, I’m more connected than I’ve ever been, and though I’ve dipped my toes into this revolution, it wasn’t until recently that I became a participant.

Thanks to this new Ocean gizmo, I have the whole damn Internet in my pocket everywhere I go. In addition to text messages, I have maps, instant messages, and e-mail to stay in touch with my friends or keep myself entertained if I end up stuck in a line somewhere without a book.

You know why movies fail before they ever open? Because of this communications revolution. Studios can’t keep a shitty movie hidden and hope for one big opening weekend before it goes off to DVD land. At the same time, awesome indie films with little or no advertising budget can break out simply by being good and letting people who’ve seen it tell their friends. (Example: have you heard of King of Kong? If you have, the odds are you heard about it from a friend, or maybe read about it on a blog.) You know why movies may do okay on Friday, but play to empty theaters by Sunday? Because kids text each other, and their parents read instant reviews from their friends and even from strangers on blogs and sites like Rotten Tomatoes.

You know why the GOP seems to fool the Democratic leadership and beltway pundits more than they fool the voters? Because we read blogs and online news sources that do the sort of journalism that hardly exists in the Mass Media. Before the revolution (and as recently as the last two presidential elections) all they had to do was repeat the lie so often it became the truth, and the main media outlets where people turned for analysis and insights were inexplicably happy to play along. Over the last six painful years, though, we’ve seen their grip on power slowly unravel, because citizen journalists and professional journalists have turned away from the old Mass Media machine and joined our revolution. If Woodward and Bernstein were doing Watergate today, I believe they’d be writing for Talking Points Memo.

These are just two examples that I believe are driving the frantic efforts by the old media companies and their allies in government to rip apart the Internet, take away our ability to communicate with each other, spy on every single packet we send, and somehow return to the good old days when ignorance was strength and war was peace. Why do you think the justice department decided to get involved in the network neutrality argument? It certainly couldn’t be because the free flow of information from investigative reporters or eyewitnesses that could contradict the carefully structured narrative threatens the powerful, could it?

Communication empowers people, and an empowered people are very, very scary to the powerful upper class who hope that we’ll just go away, right after we buy a lot of crap from them that we don’t need. And holy shit are they scared right now. The revolution may not be televised, but it’s being blogged, YouTubed, MySpaced, Facebooked, Dugg and Netscaped. Instead of embracing this new technology and the generation that’s growing up with it and taking it for granted, the big media conglomerates and their *AA organizations are spending time, money and energy they could be spending on creating awesome content on trying to destroy the technology that scares them. Is it any wonder the big media cabal want to destroy network neutrality? Is it any surprise that they’re clinging to stupid DRM schemes that punish honest customers and infect computers with rootkits?

The audience isn’t going to stop consuming content online, and creators aren’t going to go back to the old way of groveling at the feet of some network boss or studio head or label president, because they don’t have to anymore. Instead, they’ll just use inexpensive technology to put it all together, and use the Internet to distribute it directly to the audience. The studios have a choice now: continue their full-on war against consumers and technology, or join and benefit from the revolution.

The first thing they can do is support network neutrality. The next generation of artists isn’t going to be discovered in the slush pile or in a box of demo CDs; the next generation of artists is already online, building loyal audiences for themselves by communicating directly through the ‘tubes. Rather than creating fake YouTube sensations, all the industry heads have to do is sit back and wait for a genuine YouTube sensation to emerge. The fanbase will be authentic and passionate, and everyone will profit.

The RIAA and its gang of thugs SoundExchange can stop the assault on Internet radio. I’ve written extensively about this before, but I’ll flog this one again because it’s so important to me, personally: traditional radio is absolute garbage, and the majority of radio stations being owned by a handful of companies is a huge reason why. Potential customers are turning the radio off and listening to podcasts, online stations, and satellite. Instead of making it impossible for independent Internet broadcasters to stay in business, the RIAA should embrace these passionate people and understand that they could be selling tons of music to their audiences. The broadcasters at Radioparadise and Soma.fm are passionate about what they do, and they’re communicating directly with like-minded listeners. They have a tremendous amount of credibility with their audience, and could easily turn listeners into a walking sales team for musicians.

The same thing goes for podcasters. I’ve never understood why a podcaster, who isn’t making any money off the effort, but is just an enthusiastic hobbyist, should have to pay a record label for the privilege of making potential customers out of listeners. There’s this band I just love called The Legends. You’ll never hear them on the radio, because they’re a tiny indie band from Sweden, but I just adore them, and thought that people who listen to my Radio Free Burrito podcast would dig them, too. I contacted their label, Lakeshore Records, for permission to include one of their songs in one of my podcasts, and the permission was enthusiastically granted. Someone at Lakeshore Records understands the communication revolution, and the idiots at Universal and Sony could learn a lot from him.

The last one is simple: DRM sucks. It punishes honest consumers, does little to combat actual piracy, and gives broadcasters and the evil *AA cartels way too much control over how we, their fucking customers, can enjoy the content we are paying them for. We all know that DRM isn’t really about stopping piracy. It’s about eventually controlling what your television or your mp3 player or even your computer will allow you to watch, listen to, or play. Practically, though, right now in 2007, it’s about limiting what we can do with things we pay for with our own money. Until the industry abandons their fundamental belief that all of their customers are thieves, we’re going to have an adversarial relationship with them and their artists. I predict a future where the whuffie of an artist is just as important as the art they create, as consumers grow increasingly fed up with being treated like criminals. Respect is important, and it’s earned, like and such as.

My final, tangible example of the revolution is right here at Suicide Girls. How many of these beautiful women, who have awesome tattoos and piercings, and look that is genuinely outside the mainstream, would have the opportunity to model like they do here? Can you imagine a world without Posh, Sash, Manko, Alexis and Emi? I’m glad I don’t have to.

See? Revolution.

Wil Wheaton is building a time machine.

YES! This is something that seems so obvious. They're moving with the times in a really saddening direction.

Having dealt with the music business for a while... why bother with "traditional" formats when it's a hundred times easier to do things yourself, and becoming more so every day?
+10
And thanks.

Will Wheaton has spoken - and it is good..

I love you Wil Wheaton.

It's so aggravating that all of us can see the sense of what people like Wil are saying, but the corporate entities can not. Adaptation, innovation, evolution!

Wil...

Dude, you ever need a kidney, I'm so there...

Thanks again for awesomeness...

So very, very true. We have the same problem here in The Netherlands with Burma Stemra (though these guys may be even worse than the RIAA actually...). However, despite the seemingly bleak situation at the moment, I can't help but feel that this revolution we're in is more of an unstoppable force than any of us can truly comprehend right now. It will continue to change our lives in yet unforeseen ways, and will eventually come round to seriously damage the institutions that now try to curtail its growth. In the end, They will loose.




P.S. You forgot Flux

I am now going to listen to The Legends, and I'm damn sure going to find a copy of The King of Kong!

Nobody can possibly see yet the extent to which the internet will change our society: this is just one of the first effects. The monolithic entertainment industry will certainly go... but out of it's ashes may very well rise a new system, one without the parasitic middlemen and the big money puppeteers. As both a recording musician and a fan, I wait and hope.

p.s. love the column Wil. Also, kickass clown sweater.

Does the DOD really think that giving companies the right to control the flow of information is really going to HELP national security? They have as much of a right to protect their profits as the next company and they aren't about to turn over records to the government...they are going to charge for the service just like the rest of us, and the government will pay dearly.

I was reading wired magazine recently and they had an article about a "Cyber War" in Estonia not too long ago, using a series of worms and other crap some angry Russians pissed off about the removal of a statue of Stalin (Or was it Lenin?) shut down the country's internet by overloading their bandwidth. Estonia is one of the most wired countries in the world, but that's a percentage that is by far less numerous. The issue wasn't free access though, it was because Estonia's ISPs had limited bandwidth to work with.

The US could surpass their bandwidth by a lot I'm willing to wager, and yet we don't on the grounds of Defense? Imagine if an attack like that shut down OUR internet...Corporate Operation would shut down, not to mention thousands of emergency services running on the same bandwidth, it would be a catastrophe, and all for the sake of telling companies to cordon off the internet.

I endorse this message.

Sadly my access to the revolution is governed by the cable company and phone service which charge me high rates and lock me into contracts.

i'm still waiting for live-shades

I dig what you're saying...

wasn't there a time in america where industrious individuals who found ways to do great things that people loved were praised for their inventiveness and drive? what happened to that america?

Not much of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's early years are truly known, though it is known that he was born to peasant-warriors (ashigaru) of quite low standing. He managed to become the sandal bearer of one Oda Nobunaga just before the Battle of Okehazama in 1560. There he managed to gain the task of repairing Kiyoshi Castle. Through this task and by proving himself both a skilled leader, general, and negotiator, he managed to place himself among Nobunaga's most trusted retainers. Following Nobunaga's assassination at Honno-ji, he was able to gain control of the majority of Nobunaga's followers and take most of Japan for himself to rule.

In 1588 Hideyoshi forbade peasants from owning weapons, leading to what has been called the "sword hunt." Hideyoshi had climbed the rungs of power to place himself on top, and did not want anybody to follow his path and replace him.

A very insightful piece that the so called "people with power" could learn much from. Change is the only constant and if you don't keep up with it you will fall behind. Why can't record labels, mainstream media, and Republicans understand that?

A truly inspiring piece. Hats off to you.

Fight the power yo. Great article.

I dig the blog and most of what you said, but you need to ditch the Ocean and the Helio service. It's going to fail soon enough and it's parent companies (Earthlink and SK Telecom) are evil. Earthlink just eliminated or outsourced another 900 jobs bringing it's outsource toll to close to 4000. 4000 hard working Americans laid off to give non-english speaking people in foreign countries jobs fielding our tech support and billing calls.

Sorry, outsourcing is evil.

Great blog though. The revolution is here.

Wil, this is another "your best one yet" article! The tone is darker in this one, it makes me wonder what happened for it all to pour out into this column. You didn't just buy your first iPod did you?

This "They are not getting it" topic is familiar theme, just like the Harvard Boys in the Movie Industry at Comic Con...

Unless we end up disgusted with and end up busting the Movie and Music Industries, this power struggle will continue for not just our entertainment dollars, but also our rights and freedoms.

Things seem different here in Canada, maybe only half as Draconian as the USA, but our rights and freedoms are still eroding. POSH could tell you about the differences between living as a Canadian and as an American. She gave up much to live down there...