Just reading an article that made me laugh while looking around my current situation.
A morning in the life of a "generation @": Get up and make coffee. Turn on my just downloaded podcast - this one happens to be a interview with Omid Kordestani (man on the biz side of Google). Turn on the tv (but it is on mute) since Leo Laporte (a host of another fav podcast twit) is supposed to be on Regis and Kelly this morning. I check my email which leads my boyfriends del.icio.us link where he has posted some condos we are looking at. I then open "newsfire" to get my morning RSS feeds - keeps me up to date on news/interests/blogs that I follow. From here I usually open about 15-20 articles from the RSS reader description, drink my coffee and read. From a post on a fav blog I follow a link to an article about MySpace - and "generation @" I am reading about. (ps: I am also listening to Death Cab for Cutie - a band my sister shared with me over her ftp site and Janis Joplin Greatest Hits- which I just downloaded from iTunes and want to share back with my sister)
So the article speaks of a typical generation @ scenario - something that closely parallels my own life. As this is a norm for me it is funny to read about it in an "article". I guess sometimes I forget that everyone is on very different levels with respect to technology and so this scenario seems foreign to a lot. Living intermingled in this world adds a very different flavor to social and policy views.
I was out to lunch with my patent law prof the other day and we were talking about copyright law. I was voicing my frustration with the music/video industry and their litigious approach to the digital age. He is a young prof and educated lawyer and even he asked "well, what band can ever make it big without the backing of a big recording industry?". ???????????? In the age of the Internet, distribution channels include: myspace to listen to songs or NMC, OR hear about a band and downloaded the song on P2P, OR read a review on a cool website and grabbed it on iTunes/record shop, OR listen to a music podcast and heard about a new band. I mean sure the band may have a label, but they are no longer dependent on the big Label and all the past required marketing dollars.
We started talking about Google Print (for the NYPL debate go here) issue and he asked "What is Google thinking?". (to quote molly shannon frm SNL - "don't get me started, don't even get me started")
It is important to educate everyone from all generations around us. I view the web as the best sort of education I've ever had - and available at my finger tips at the sole cost of my iBook laptop and monthly internet connection.
So this craziness has a point - a new grassroots project has just launched. It is called "Online Rights Canada" and is supposed to represent the "public" stakeholders view/interests on copyright and digital policy. With the fall of the government came the fall of some legislation that I don't fall in line with (like a surveillance bill that I wrote about a while ago and Bill C-60 which brings Canadian law digital). I think everyone should try to represent the public interest as much as you can - and here is the place to do it. (note: the random pic is what was returned when I typed generation @ on google images)
