It looks like Hollywood is in a twist over $1 movie rentals from popular kiosks like that run by Redbox. The cheap rentals are “costing” Hollywood a billion dollars, at least according to some analysts.

I doubt it. Fact is, most of those purchasing the rental would never go out and buy the movie in the first place. I’m pretty sure Redbox probably winds up a net positive for studios for the time being. Claims to the contrary seem a bit foolish. You know, like they’re coming from advisers who got the predictions wrong.

The deeper question here is about media markets, and the inherent value of the service Hollywood is providing. I’m not alone in thinking that the Hollywood studio system is pumping out a lot of worthless crap these days. Apparently $1 rentals are very, very popular. That could mean one of several things: first, that DVDs (even at their currently discounted rates) are still too expensive to purchase, and second that $1 is probably too low a price (but it is a convenient marketing pitch).

The value of a DVD has diminished over the last few years for a few reasons: the most notable being the final victory of high definition over standard definition. DVD video quality isn’t quite up to snuff, and so the value of those discs has diminished. The other problem is convenience. As online systems like Netflix increase in popularity (and deliver in HD even over mediocre Internet connections), the DVD value drops even more. Even at $10 per month, the Netflix system is a value for those who watch enough movies and value the convenience of instant, last minute viewing choice.

So, what are Hollywood movies valued at by consumers? Not a lot. At least not at the moment. There are no real viable online solutions at the moment. Netflix’s library is small at the moment, and there’s a lack of competition at the moment. We won’t know for several years what the final pricing solution will be.

One thing is clear, though: Hollywood placed a huge number of bets on continued DVD sales that simply aren’t materializing. Blu-ray remains underwhelming in its adoption rates (though it is doing better now that hardware prices have come down). Hollywood greenlit some movies based on potential DVD sales, but now that money has dried up. That means smaller movie budgets in the short term. Once again, Hollywood made a sucker bet. It’s been clear the last few years that physical media for movies was going to follow physical media for music, and Hollywood didn’t adequately prepare. Who exactly is working over there these days? Don’t any of them keep up with the technology?

tags: markets, media, movies, technology
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My last post on the new show FlashForward talked about the show’s use of the number 137, which I noted was prime, and I wondered if the show would follow convention and point it out. But it surprised me and didn’t do so. The 137 seconds of blackout in the show remain unreferenced again, at least directly. What I didn’t say in that last post (it didn’t occur to me until the next day) was that 137 (or, more precisely, 1/137) is a rough shorthand for the Fine Structure Constant.

I figured this was going too far, and that I was just being silly in seeing 137 as a potential reference to the Fine Structure Constant. At least until last Thursday’s episode of FlashForward where those who were left untouched (apparently) by the blackout were wearing rings with the insignia of alpha (α) which is … the symbol for the Fine Structure Constant.

So, what does this mean? Who knows. Alpha is one of the pure numbers, a dimensionless quantity that appears in a number of situations. A ratio, like Pi, which simply crops up when you do equations. It’s often used in quantum electrodynamics. I can only guess that, in the end, the show will offer some sort of quantum mechanical explanation for the blackout (they’ve already hinted at a pure science explanation). It’s interesting that the show is going that deep for an explanation. I’m used to JJ Abrams-style explanations in these shows, and was waiting for the FlashForward equivalent of “Red Matter” to show its face here. That may still happen, but for now the show seems intent on giving a more hard-science explanation. Bully for them, say I.

If you want to learn more about Alpha, go to the website for the Sixty Symbols project, and click on the video for α. Very interesting stuff.

tags: science, science fiction, television
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The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of those moments I remember vividly from my youth. I was only 13 at the time, but I remember the pictures. I remember sensing the importance of the event. It was a defining moment for me politically. Like so many of these defining moments, it’s usually the small, individual moments that are the most striking. Like the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi, or the man standing in front of the tank during the Tiananman Square protests just a few months before the Berlin Wall fell.

There’s no one picture from the fall of the Wall that stands out, but I do remember video of West Berliners standing on the wall, helping East Berliners climb up over the wall. Amazing stuff.

Anyway, here’s a link to a lot of pictures from that time. I’m struck most about how dated everything looks. Yes, I know it was twenty years ago, and so they would look dated. But photos age strangely. I remember those days, and my memories don’t look so dated to me. Funny how that works. Photo number ten, of the section of wall pulled down, is another I remember from that day. But then, it was a day full of iconic images.

In the years that followed, there was a lot of justified triumphalism, as Eastern Europe pulled itself out of its long nightmare that had begun with the rolling in of Nazi tanks, and the ensuing Holocaust, followed by two generations of political oppression under the Soviets. A lost, dark half-century of misery. There was also a lot of unjustified triumphalism, nonsense about the End of History and other bullshit. Old oppressions replaced with new variations. In a lot of ways, the conflicts of the 90s and in the Middle East today can be traced back to clashes that people thought had been resolved by the wall’s fall. Aftershocks through history. Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan are what they are today, for instance, largely because of Soviet influence in the region. The same goes with North Korea.

It’s sad to think that our current world crises are, in large part, merely echoes of the decisions of the twentieth century’s greatest liberators and tyrants, but it’s true. So, 20 years after the wall, it’s worth remembering the long reach of history.

tags: culture, democracy, foreign policy, human rights, politics, whatever
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The New Atlantis takes on a little bit of SF, with an interesting article about Neal Stephenson’s book Anathem. Anathem is one of those great books that I absolutely cannot recommend to most people. It’s not a casual book, and to really appreciate it you need to be willing to spend some time thinking about it. That’s not to say that there aren’t some out there who would enjoy it more casually, just that there aren’t many.

It’s a great book, and deserving of attention for its attempt to explore deeper questions of science, religion, society, and (most importantly) the very idea of ideas. In fact, I find myself thinking about Anathem quite often when my head goes in philosophical directions these days. The New Atlantis article is called “Plato in Space,” which in some ways is (and in other ways is not) helpful for understanding what Anathem is. But then, the book is difficult to characterize in any succinct way.

Interestingly enough, The New Atlantis also takes on Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Personally, I like the novels, even though the world they portray strikes me as profoundly cold, empty and devoid of meaning. And terrifically fascistic and devoid of individuality. If Banks truly wants to live in such a world, that’s fine: but leave me out of it.Everyone talks about the Culture as if it’s utopian, but I’ve never seen it that way.

The article is a very good look at the various aspects of the Culture and its internal contradictions. The article raises the question that always sits in the back of my mind when reading the Culture novels: if everyone is so happy and content in this world, why the heck am I reading a novel about them? Life is conflict, and novels are about conflict. But there’s no conflict in the Culture. It’s all boundary issues. These are called the Culture novels, but in reality we see very little of the Culture, and that’s because the Culture isn’t all that interesting.

In any case, the articles are quite interesting, and worth a look if you’ve read either author.

tags: Books, culture, science fiction
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So, I’m watching The Vampire Diaries, and…

Yes. I watch The Vampire Diaries. Wanna make something of it?

So, I’m watching the show, and the protagonist good-guy vamp Stefan has yet another opportunity to kill antagonist bad-guy vamp Damon, and … doesn’t. The first time, Stefan traps Damon in a room full of vamp-bane, and now stabs Damon with a stake … in the stomach.

Damon has killed … gosh, I’ve forgotten how many. Six? Including Stefan’s “uncle” and now one of Stefan’s oldest friends, not to mention turning bad-girl Vicki, getting her killed in the process. And then, despite the fact that Damon is a killer, Stefan lets him go.

This is idiotic. There is no good reason for letting this jerk live. The only reason the writers did it is because … they have to. Killing the bad guy now would mean no more stories. So they come up with lame excuses for the good guy not to do his job and whack the bad guy. Seriously, this is dumb.

I’ll go to my more beloved vampire franchise, Buffy, and note (spoilers ahead for those who have not seen all of Season Two–come on guys, its been a decade! Why haven’t you watched Buffy yet?) that Buffy did the same thing with Angel/Angelus. She could have stopped him and it resulted in the tragic death of someone close to the main gang. Of course, Buffy actually did have a bit of a reason for doing what she did.

Still, this dithering by the good guys pisses me off. I had similar irksome feelings toward The Dark Knight for doing the same thing. Batman has the opportunity to put the bad guy down, but nooooo, the good guy can’t kill the bad guy. Sorry, I don’t see all the torment. Sure, we hate to do the moral calculation, but it’s there: bad guy dead results in one dead body; leaving him alive results in many dead bodies. Of innocent people.

I’ve pointed out this modern foible before. We think the problem is the killing. But its not. Killing is a last-resort kind of thing, but in these fictional cases, there’s almost always no other option. The burden of being the good guy means doing what others won’t do. And that almost always means taking life. Now, the burden is knowing that some day one might be called to account for that killing. If the good guy is confident enough in his or her judgment about what is right or wrong, this is not an issue. If you’re gonna be the good guy, you’ve got to know this.

In which case, failing to kill the bad guy means either: 1) the good guy is not confident that he’s really the good guy, or 2) the good guy is a coward. Coward in the sense that he knows that killing the bad guy is the right thing to do, but is too afraid to bear the burden of judgment. Now, one can certainly argue that no one should be so confident in the idea that they are the good guy that they are able to justify killing. But the results of that position are obvious: more dead innocent people. To believe that, one must believe that it is inherently more moral for many innocent people to die at the hands of an evil person than it is for one evil person to die at the hands of an innocent person.

Honestly, the total body-count approach seems leagues more moral than that. I have very little patience for characters in novels, movies and television shows that arrogate all sorts of moral authority to themselves and then back away from the moments in which they might, just for a moment, actually begin to bear the burden of the power they claim. Being a hero accrues all sorts of fame and glory, but it also means that you’ve got a massive bit of baggage to carry. In the end, that’s why I gave The Dark Knight a pass on Batman’s dithering–because in the end, the movie recognized the burden heroes carry, even if they defined it slightly differently than I would have.

I understand: the modern hero is supposed to be sensitive and not want to kill. Fine. But they’re gonna pay for not killing, and that not killing means more killing, in the end. Not less. The irritating thing is that they never seem to learn this lesson. I’d be content if they’d learn. Instead we’re given conveniently stupid good guys getting people killed because they’re unwilling to make the difficult decisions. They aren’t heroes, they’re cowards.

tags: Books, culture, ethics, movies, television, whatever
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Here’s an article over at the New York Times about the growing belief in creationism among Muslims in the Islamic world. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The article seems to go out of its way to suggest that it is a) not “young-Earth” creationism like within some subsets of American Christianity, and b) that it is not very widespread. But this contradicts what I’ve heard from a number of experts in Islam over the years, and what I heard personally from Muslims in visits to mosques I made in 2002.

In those visits, I got the distinct impression that many Muslims believe in something like young-Earth creationism, though it certainly varies in form from that one finds in Christianity. The NYT article suggests that some Muslims take the “creation in six days” more figuratively, since the Koran specifically says that the days might be “ages” of a thousand years, but that’s not all that different from what many (if not most) Christian creationists believe. In short, the article seems to go out of its way to say that Islamic creationism isn’t like those kooky Evangelicals in the US, but everything I saw in the article led me to the opposite conclusion. I simply cannot imagine a NYT article giving this much benefit of the doubt to conservative Christians. No surprise there.

As I’ve said before, I have no problem with evolution as a theory, and as far as compatibility/incompatibility with scripture, I think it’s all rather silly. But it’s also important to note that the real objections Evangelicals have with evolution is philosophical and theological, not scientific. Sure, some creationists make (or try to make) scientific arguments, and by their fixation on science it’s understandable that one could see it that way. But their issue is not with the science per se, but with what they think the implications of evolution are for their theology.

And they’re not being paranoid, since many outspoken scientists (say, Richard Dawkins), are making precisely those philosophical arguments that annoy creationists so acutely. It should be noted that Dawkins’ arguments from science about God are about as legitimate as creationist’s claims about science. Dawkins is not a very convincing philosopher. The simple fact is that the science does not back his philosophical conclusions the way he thinks they do.

Still, the rise of creationism among Muslims is interesting, but completely predictable. Here’s this for science among Muslims (and this came from the Imam of a very large, Manhattan mosque): Adam was white because he was made from a bone; Eve was black, because she was made from the dirt. This was the Imam’s explanation for the origin of the races. And no, when I asked, he specifically answered that he didn’t mean it metaphorically, but literally. Yikes.

While I’m tempted to just say that Evangelicals (and Muslims) should just get over their opposition to evolution, I know that’s counterproductive. Sure, the whole thing is really based on a misreading of the intent of the authors of the Old Testament (it’s more about who we are as humans in relation to God than it is about the physical, scientific causes for the existence of man), but their philosophical arguments about the relative merits of scientific materialism are worth taking seriously. As usual, most Evangelicals take up the wrong flag in defense of principle. There are any number of arguments they could use to put people like Dawkins in their place, but arguing the science isn’t it. After all, it’s not the science Dawkins gets wrong. It’s most everything else.

But I digress…

tags: religion, science
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John Scalzi’s got an article over at AMC on the coolness (or lack thereof) of SF. He mentions two movies in particular which achieved the elusive SF goal of coolness: 2001, and The Matrix.

I can agree with his points, but I find it interesting that he picks two movies (both are classics, of course) which, on later viewings, are incredibly dated. It’s understandable that 2001 is dated, given it was released in 1968. It was very much a product of the time, an extension of the jet age into space. But its imagery was, without doubt, very cool at the time.

The Matrix, amazingly, does not stand up well even after just ten years. I think this says more about the nature of American pop culture than the movie itself, which is still amazing, but it’s difficult for me to watch the movie without becoming amused at how bloody seriously it takes itself. The heavy metal goth subculture, the first-year philosophy student “deepness” of the thing. Yes, it was damned cool at the time, but it’s not that time anymore. It will always be cool for the moment it captured, but that moment has long passed as the subcultures it glorified had their moment of fame and then became the subject of intense mockery.

I do love Scalzi’s descriptions of the SF scene, though. SF fans are often quite earnest. They really do want everyone to share in the love of the genre that they do (even if they can be elitist about the depth of there knowledge within the genre). They’re often quite unselfconsious about it as well. It strikes me as very similar to new Evangelicals (don’t get too offended here, please). They love it, they want you to love it, and they have few if any qualms about overt (and sometimes embarrassing) displays of enthusiasm. So, cool is generally out of the question. But I think cool is overrated, as well. SF may very rarely be cool, but that doesn’t matter so much to its acolytes, most of whom are not used to being members of those strata of society considered cool.

I’m not sure I could put my finger on what I, for instance, think is great about SF. I can say that I enjoy it, and that I think it’s important. Being cool, though, is not a part of it.

Scalzi asks if there are any other movies people can think of that capture that moment of coolness. I’ll say that Lord of the Rings captured a series of cool moments for fantasy fans in a way that will never, ever be repeated. All those years of reading LOTR and committing vast amounts of brain cells to it paid off. For a few years. SF, though? Movies? No. SF movies have, in general, been my least favorite media for the genre. I prefer novels and TV. And TV SF has never been cool, sorry to say.

tags: movies, science fiction, television
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Amy Wallace has an excellent article at wired.com about the anti-vaccination movement. She interviews Philly pediatrician Paul Offit, one of the creators of the RotaTeq vaccine and an advocate for mandatory vaccination, who is often one of the targets of anti-vaccine activists. Hell, my instinct is to allow people some leeway on choosing to vaccinate or not, but even I understand that herd immunity is important. And given how extensively these vaccines have been tested, I can’t see any rationale for not vaccinating save for some religious reasons.

Sorry, but the anti-vaccine people are just so damned infuriating. Right up there with the anti-DDT people. You know, the #^%!@#% who indirectly killed millions of Africans. Yeah, my blood is boiling a bit now. Time for a deep breath and a count to ten… Ah. Better.

tags: culture, science
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I don’t normally do lists, but I recently saw a list of technologies that we use today that will be gone in ten years. Now, I also don’t like to make tech predictions (they’re always wrong). So I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to list a few technologies/industries that I think should die. And soon.

1. Network Television/Movie Studios/Recording Labels

I’ve thought quite a bit about this over the years, and I wish that television networks would die. And movie studios, for that matter. With the internet, there is an easy, low-cost distribution mechanism for artists. I would prefer something like a guild system, where artists of similar styles or goals share resources and distribute directly to consumers. We get lower prices, more direct contact with the artists, and no more of the intervention of studios in the artistic life of writers, musicians and actors. Good riddance.

2. Drive media

By this I mean optical discs of all types. There’s simply no need for them anymore. Download things off the Internet. If you want to save them, save them on a mass storage device like a hard drive. For portability, flash storage is smaller, more durable, and more convenient.

3. Coax Cable

I’d like coax to die and be replaced with fiber. It’ll be a long and expensive road, but in the end we’ll have so much bandwidth we won’t know what to do with it.

4. Cables, period

There’s no need for cables. Wireless bandwidth is enough for nearly all data within a home. Why shouldn’t my audio components simply know when my TV is nearby? Why shouldn’t my laptop instantly be able to stream music directly through my stereo system just by being in the same room? Why shouldn’t my iPod simply see any home speakers and be able to use them without connecting things with a cable? And why can’t the same thing be true of power?

5. DRM

Data, as the saying goes, just wants to be free. The fact is, we have a difficult time at the moment knowing precisely what people would pay for digital content. Purchased data is so heavily encumbered by rights management that I can never be sure of its true market value: I purchase a song or video on iTunes, but can’t share it easily between my systems. Certainly DRM free movies, television shows and music would result in an immediate deflation of value. But eventually I imagine a market could emerge where people who want the data will pay for it on their own, not because it’s how they get the data, but because its the only way they can guarantee they’ll get more of what they like.

There’s more I could think of. There’s also some tech that I imagine we’ll still be stuck with in ten years. Some have said that the keyboard and mouse are on the way out. I am not convinced of this. Along with the keyboard and mouse, I’ve seen people predict the end of the standard game console controller. Only someone who has never played games could say this. The reality of motion and touch controls is that they remain far more inefficient than standard controllers today. Just as voice recognition has been on the cusp of acceptance for thirty years, the mouse and keyboard is the mousetrap of computer interfaces. It’s too simple and intuitive to be easily replaced. Why? Because it just works. Anyone who has struggled with voice recognition systems and Wii motion controls knows this first hand.

Wired telephones are already going, replaced by cell phones. I rather suspect gasoline cars will be gone within my lifetime. Perhaps within twenty years. I hope to see more distributed power generation. In fact, I might go so far as to make a general prediction about technology in the next twenty years: distributed systems, rather than centralized systems, will prevail. Distributed power. Distributed data. Fewer gatekeepers. At least, I hope that is the case.

tags: drm, markets, media, technology, whatever
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I wanted to wait until I saw a real episode of Stargate Universe before I commented further, and yesterday I watched the most recent episode. The first two-hour episode and the one-hour episode that followed were of a single piece, and I knew I couldn’t make too many judgments about the show from that episode. But this latest is a full episode in itself. So now I feel more comfortable making a judgment about the show.

The show is fantastic.

My earlier concerns about the show slipping into a wash-rinse-repeat cycle have not born out. At least not yet. The show seems to be taking a lot of hints from the early Battlestar Galactica episodes which were strung together rather tightly, though focusing on individual problems. The show ends with a lead up to what the next challenge will be, and I find myself eagerly awaiting the next episode. I’m very happy with the show thus far.

One of my other concerns was that the crew was too large, and I wasn’t getting a good enough sense of who the characters were. They were a blur. I recognized faces, but could not remember their names or their particular role, save for the four or five primary characters. This episode remedied that a bit by introducing us to the characters again via a video diary narrative device. Short, sweet, and effective. And not distracting from the already tense situation on the ship.

So far, I’m giving it a thumbs up. It’s certainly not like the previous Stargate shows (thank God), and manages to build a real environment around the distinctive technology of the first two seasons. Stargate Universe is turning into everything I wanted Altantis to be, but wasn’t. It helps that the show is filmed more casually, more artfully, and that the production values seem a bit higher. Overall, I recommend people give the show a shot, despite the Stargate branding. It’s early BSG without all the political posturing. Very good stuff.

tags: science fiction, television
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