Defending America in the digital age. Flow of Terror
"Nothing is Free", I have been told by my parents many, many...MANY, times. Obviously, because I am our households most expensive child...or maybe even human? Private schools all the way will certainly blast a hole through somebody's portfolio.
But other than education, which should be available to every American/human being BTW, Is the easily accessible new medium; internet, iPhone, cell phones, skype, a substitute to education? None of this is free. However, people have been able to watch FULL movies online for FREE even before that movie comes out in theaters. Of course there are your cyber-police out there who shut these sites down, but just as fast as someone else is creating them.
I guess the cost in ripping Hollywood off is in the morals, ethics..and ..the guilt?...right?
But I would have to say ripping off Hollywood does not make me feel as guilty as ripping off the music industry. Music, to me, is a whole lot more meaningful when it comes to managing things in life. I have overheard, and ripped off the idea that managing things is what life is filled with.
Movies may help some people manage things - they certainly inspire ideas, and feelings, and substitute as a "How-to"..'How to date a girl?'..'How to feel when your significant other walks off with..another'..and maybe even a "how to"..'act when you get a job', but my argument for music being more valuable than movies, is that when you are listening to something you are applying your OWN visual to the music, and in a way practicing your own creativity. Music inspires thinkers, and Multitaskers, and athletes. Movies require ones full attention - as do books (but this is a new media conversation) And ripped off ibooks are only in the future (at least mine).
Therefore I feel more guilty ripping musicians off than Hollywood as a whole. The individual in the music industry is hurt more than any actor or actress in Hollywood when you rip off a film.
Will Natalie Portman lose any jobs because somebody ripped off a movie that she was in? Will she lose money? No, because the director already paid her, probably before the movie was even finished.
But a musician relies on album sales, and radio as a main contribution to their continence in the industry because rating are based on having the public actually hear the music, Academy Awards are not based on Box Office sales.
The expansion of new mass media opening our access to the world ..let's say ..outside of America can substitute as education but - such as is said in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "people only believe what they want to believe" - even if you smack them, hit them, scream, and shout - people will not succumb to the truth (whatever it might be at the time), especially Shakespearean characters, who are so stubbornly written down, sometimes, that there may be no reason at all for them not to listen, other than for Shakespeare himself to produce a more exciting, deadly, and/or laughable ending.
So apply this idea to new media and you have people who only search for things the believe in and/or consider relevant to them. Individualism, especially in the US, is first and foremost when making a search in www.google.com or www.wikipedia.com. Can it be possible that people in Africa research and hear more about America and Europe than they do their own continent/country? Is this due to new media expansion? Why are they not as self absorbed as Americans?
CNN first went international when "the network, in large part a result of Ted Turner's Globalization ideals, began transmissions in 1, January 1984 at first primarily broadcasting to American business travelers in hotels." - wikipedia.com This expanded to local newsstands, boutiques, etc around third world countries and Canada and Europe. American culture blasted out of CNN. For awhile America was only giving and never receiving, now with the capitalization of new gadgets in the US, that Asia probably made popular, globalization continues its trend to bring each culture to another via invisible semes or strings. However, a natural American reaction to imports (including information) is "Are we secure?".
Is freedom something that restricts things that are from an 'unfree' world? Is freedom defined by how secure one is playing with ones own toys and no one else's toys?
Since the US does not have complete control over the world, instead of the US govenrment mistaking new mass media as a form of peacemaking, they are considering it a threat and a tool that portrays the US as vulnerable. We are only vulnerable because we think we cannot/do not understand the mediums involved, nor do we have control over them. Does our freedom offend other culture? groups? traditions? religions? Yeup. Which makes the US even more defensive.
