February 11, 2006
It seems that the cable industry has once again become everyone's favorite public policy punching-bag. The "government-knows-best" crowd is practically foaming at the mouth about the need for "Net neutrality" mandates on cable's broadband offerings, censorship of speech on various cable channels or programs, and "a la carte" mandates for cable's video lineup.
On this last item, the FCC has just today released a revised version of an earlier staff report conducted during Chairman Michael Powell’s tenure. The Powell era FCC report revealed that a la carte would raise prices and hurt program diversity. By contrast, today's report, which new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin requested, argues that the old report got it completely wrong and that a la carte would lead to lower prices and not hurt diversity. So, within the span of 18 months, we have an expert regulatory agency coming to diametrically opposed conclusions on the same issue. (Makes you wonder about those old theories of scientific bureaucracy!) What are we to make of these contradictory results?
(Continued at The Technology Liberation Front)
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The Weekly Show
Michael Parenti has created an installation piece for the exhibition "bensiz" ("without me") at address istanbul, titled "paiksiz" ("without paik"), in tribute to the death of video artist Nam June Paik. Pictures HERE.
The piece is comprised of an old macintosh g4 laptop in a plexiglass case, with an riff on paik's original installation piece, "ego machine" (1974). The desktop picture has the words "paik, paik paik....etc" as the original, with a few differences: the words are struck through, symbolizing paik's death, and static video snow has been added. The laptop is also running a 7 minute film in continuous loop, which is projected on a semi transparent curtain in the middle of the 35 meter long space. The film was created in grid pro, using original footage of paik in his coffin, which Todd Thille filmed at the memorial service on Saturday, February 4th, in New York City, This original footage is mixed with close up shots of fingers on a typewriter keyboard as if Paik's ego is still typing his name - even in death, and is seperated into the three channels of video color space - R, G, and B - symbolizing the color space which paik worked in, and is accompanied the song "Death is not the end" a cover version by the austrian band, "Der Scheitel". The surround soundsystem in the glass enclosed space was courteously provided by Bang & Olufsen
Featured Project
Berkeley Conference: Online Video and the Future of Television - Friday, September 30, 2005
This one-day conference brings together archivists, educators, technologists, entrepreneurs, producers, legal experts, and investors to explore the enormous promise offered by the availability of online video and television content. Demonstrations and interactive panel discussions will highlight new video technologies, services, legal issues, and economic models. Participants from diverse – and until now, largely disconnected – specialties will be especially encouraged to interact.
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About unmediated
unmediated is a group blog that tracks the tools, processes,
and ideas being used to decentralize media production and distribution.
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