The Convergence and Decentralization of TV and Film

I knew that broadcast TV was doomed, to be replaced by TV on the internet that can be viewed at any time (TiVo/DVR is a transition technology, like combination VCR/DVD players, that will be phased out). I didn't realize until recently the extent to which movies are going to be forever changed as well. The cost of shooting and editing high quality movies has radically decreased so that anyone with talent can make one, not just giant studios. And of course distribution is no problem on the internet. The term 'independent' may drop out from in front of music and movies, not due to a lack of independent art but due to the absence of anything against which to contrast it.

This realization came when watching short films that are better than almost anything that a production studio has ever put out. Projects like Future Shorts and films like these on Vimeo are creating shorts that have more beauty and power in each minute than the average Hollywood film has in the full two hours. Soon full length films of this kind will become common as well, or better yet, the idea of 'full length' will be lost altogether and stories will just be told in the length it takes to tell them, be that five minutes or fifty hours. Long form TV is becoming less episodic to the point where shows are only indistinguishable from absurdly long movies by the presence of theme song intros and the frequency of the credits rolling. The Wire, Rome, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Band of Brothers, and the like may not simply be the future of television, but the future of audio-visual art.

I'm currently reading The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurtz, which (appropriately) may be the last physical book I ever buy now that I have a Kindle. The central point of the book is that technology is advancing and growing exponentially, and we are just starting to enter the knee-bend of the parabola where it really begins to shoot upward. This will revolutionize every aspect of our lives, and we should remember that art is a part of that, which is all the more important since that new technology should also provide us with lots of time to pursue what we love.

The future

Another road block to my ever updating about my actual life and adventures (I will someday soonish, I promise) has arrived in the form of a blog about architecture and cyborgs, which has posts with titles like "astronauts and super villians".

(hat tip Emily Horne)

Potential

Before I decided to come to Korea, I spent a long time deeply depressed due to my attempts to figure out what I was doing with my life. I was terrified of setting myself on a career path, and wanted to opt out of the whole system, and I think I'm beginning to be able to put into words why.
All the jobs I've ever wanted don't exist. As a child I was sure that starship commander, ambassador to an alien race, or robotics engineer would be available to me as career options. I've always known that I was more intelligent than those around me, and because of this I thought I had world-altering brilliance instead of recognizing the reality that I was very bright in a dull town and school system. My family and teachers always gushed over my potential. They seemed so confident that I would do something important and amazing, and they encouraged me with the oft told lie that I could be anything I wanted when I grew up with the result that I don't want any jobs that actually exist because they all fall lightyears short of my expectations. Now the times I spend sleeping in gutters are the highlights of my life. I have worked about a dozen shitty short term jobs to avoid having to face the fact that I will never explore the far reaches of the galaxy, or even live on the moon.

Another part of my dissatisfaction with careers is that I think that the current conception of jobs is growing ever more anachronistic. As far back as I can remember I have worked under the assumption that advances in technology and increases in population would make work unnecessary for most people. I think this is why I am so open to socialism: I think that in the near future there will be far less work that needs to be done than what would be sufficient to occupy people, and I don't like the idea of just inventing useless busywork to fill the ever growing gap. I have recently come to realize how unusual that assumption is, especially when talking to people a generation or two older than me. I have a tutor student who is the parent of one of the children at my school, and she was telling me about what a big problem old age was in Korea. People have been saving on the assumption of a shorter lifespan than the current average, and so they have come to need jobs in their old age, and there are no jobs available. The difference in our world views became clear to me as I was thinking how the problem was that society is stuck on the idea that people need to perform full time jobs in order to have their basic needs met when really we could all work less if we were willing to stop obsessing over careers and stop associating people's worths with their level of employment, whereas she saw the problem as being that people live too long now. With my assumption socialism seems nearly inevitable, with the only alternative being people doing things that were totally useless to themselves and others (and almost certainly devastatingly consumeristic). I'm beginning to see why many people have major issues with socialism since while I take it as a basic assumption to take into account whenever contemplating the future that there will be a massive gap between the work that needs to be performed and the available workers, the idea has clearly never even crossed their minds. It was one of those moments when I recognized a core assumption as what it was—an assumption—which let me recognize that it might not be shared.

In the meanwhile, though, I am performing the busywork of teaching English in a part of the world that will probably overtake the English speaking world in importance and prominence in the near future. However, I don't really think of myself as an English teacher, but as a world traveler, which is a job title that is probably as close as I can possibly come to living up to my childhood imaginings.

Update: I should mention that my musings on potential were influenced by this comic.

The point at which politics, twitter, and comic books meet

Given recent events, I have reevaluated twitter. I earlier rejected it as annoying, shallow, and stupid. I maintain that this is true in most cases. However, currently in Iran it is the only way to communicate with the outside world. The government has blocked most sites, from email servers to facebook, but the way twitter is routed it is difficult to trace and block without shutting down the whole internet (they have in fact slowed it down considerably to prevent people from uploading videos or pictures). It reminds me of a scene from my favorite graphic novel, Transmetropolitan (actually, maybe it's tied with The Watchmen, but that's beside the point), where the protagonist discusses the fact that creative use of technology is out pacing the attempts to regulate or control it.

Thus, while I still don't see why anyone would want anything to do with twitter in ordinary life, it has become an important part of resistance to oppressive regimes (Obama's state department even requested that twitter not take the site down for maintenance as scheduled so that Iranians could continue to send out information.) As Andrew Sullivan has been saying for the last few days, the revolution will be twittered.

Flying cars

It's about damn time. We were all supposed to have flying cars years before 2009, and this still isn't exactly what I was expecting. Still pretty cool though.

Dubai is the Future

The party for the most recent opening for a hotel in Dubai was visible from space (I think this term has to be considered short-hand for 'visible from space with the naked eye', given that with Google maps my backyard is visible from space). This hotel is far from my favorite project in Dubai. In fact, the whole building islands in the shape of palm trees and continents as foundations for luxury hotels thing strikes me as Las Vegas-level gaudy and tacky. However, the architecture there is unbelievably amazing. I am very seriously considering architecture school when (if) I get back to the states. Of course, a lot could change between now and that point. As things stand, though, these planned buildings make me salivate (I can't wait to see buildings that belong on the cover of sci-fi novels in real life):

(I'm willing to forgive Donald Trump for his hair and his show if he actually builds this newest Trump Tower [above].)






The picture above shows the three parts of an underwater luxury hotel.

This last one is my favorite. The building will contain hidden wind turbines, which not only power the building and the neighboring buildings, but will also provide the energy for it to be a kinetic sculpture. Each floor is build disconnected to the others and around a central axis, so each floor can spin, creating the cool effects seen above. It's called dynamic architecture, and I hope that Dubai actually ends up making it but also that the idea is utilized in major cities around the world.