Slashdot Mirror
William Gibson on Movies, Music, Media
automatic_jack writes "William Gibson gave a talk at the Directors' Guild of America's Digital Day last week. The text of it is up in his 'blog, and in it he says some intriguing things about the nature of the entertainment and media industries. There's a bit of a surprise conclusion at the end!"
He quit blogging?
There's a bit of a surprise conclusion at the end!
:)
Don't tell me...he's really a ghost?
No, the proper term is crapflooding, but if we called it that, no-one would buy ad space. ;)
I don't know about you but my stone tablet version of the bible has been getting dusty now that I can read pretty much everything under the sun on the internet.
or, hell, have the computer read it to me. (and if you have a Mac, have the computer SING it to you in various melodies that's - if nothing else - creepy but hilarious at the same time)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
'blog?
Reminds me of that time I was on the 'bus, and someone called me on my 'phone.
There's a bit of a surprise conclusion at the end!
He is Tyler Durden.
(Or Keyser Soze... take your pick)
Meryl Streep in a Kung Fu pose with a dogs head.
We're all doomed.
The Matrix has you ....
seduce me into actually reading the article.
I mean, when was the last time that the man did anything that didn't suck? I mean, most people will agree that "Braveheart" and "Lethal Weapon 3" were great, but his career has taken a nose dive since then. Mr. Gibson, I don't claim to know "What A Woman Wants", but I can tell you what this man wants is more action and less chick-flick fluff.
In only a single draft, even the greatest of writers will only produce content on par with the average thinker. Mr Gibson has "pettered out" as it were as a novelist. As if to reward himself he publishes countless first drafts: unpolished ramblings not ready, nay, not WORTHY, of consumption. Most blogs, including this one are about as narcissistic as hit counters on your personal home page.
Hang on: "blog" isn't a word, but "weblog" is?
I found one of his observations very interesting. The only useful function the record companies still serve is promotion. People can make studio recordings all on their own at home. However, people can not make blockbuster films at home. The cameras, the computers, the artists. Technology has not yet advanced to the point where hollywood no longer has a monopoly on movie production.
But one day, it might.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
That might have made me want to go and see it. Nicole Kidman killing herself almost had me in the door.
Well, if you want to be punctilious - I believe the bible has been originally been on parchment (i.e. processed horse-skin). I don't know if people are aware of this, but paper was invented in china many centuries later (600-900CE, i forgot), and not introduced to the west until even later.
My point, however, was that books has INDEED changed (even since the press). For one it's more accessible and more convenient. That, by itself, changed books in ways that greatly altered the way information is consumed from books. For example, what's the most frequent method of getting things out of (especially on-line) reference manuals? I usually load up the PDF and search for the item I am interested in. Now, I wouldn't do this to a novel, but that's exactly the thing - books are no longer only a medium to convey a continuous string of information like news or story, and this "search" functionality greatly improved the usefulness of books that are not continuous.
Moreover, the format of books are changing. Not even going to the tell a story with nothing but pictures approach, you can view a blog as a living book that's constantly updating itself to reflect the present, and re-examine the past.
So yes, books have changed. but of course you have to look at it at a different angle - though, really i guess the problem is that definition of a "book" isn't so clear anymore.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
..does not diminish the old media.
It's as if he saw MTV for the first time and claimed "people will never listen to music the same. Children born now will never be able to listen to popular music without a moving picture accompanying it. They will have to relearn how to listen to music".
New forms of media traditionally start in their infancy through a convergence of old forms of media. Many of the first motion pictures were adaptation of plays. Many of the earlier organized plays were retellings of traditional written or verbal folklore. Many of both still are. But that doesn't mean either haven't evolved into their own unique style, and the forms of media they borrowed from haven't been dramatically changed.
Film as a non interactive media is here to stay. Because the new and still developing genre of interactive media seems to be--at least at this moment--closely tied to film won't degrade the entertainment or social aspects of the cinema. And interactive media will most likely evolve into its own right.
The Internet is generally stupid
... but it needs to be said.
Slashdot needs a "-1: Pompous Arse" category.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
The patron-sponsored musician has been talked about for a while. Wonder if IBM would sponsor Korn or Avril Lavigne?
What about this though - a young movie maker talks the owner of the local cineplex into showing his latest masterpiece on one of the 38 (or 56 or 99, whatever it ends up being) screens. Agrees to split the profits 50/50. That's way more than the cineplex normally gets to keep. Turns out it's pretty good and then the cineplex in the next town over wants to show it for a while.
This is, of course, assuming that there will eventually still be a reason to go the movies. The offsetting technological innovations will be better home TV's, sound systems, and people with disposable income making themselves movie rooms. Of course, at that point you distribute over the internet. Hollywood's distribution monopoly can be broken just as easily as the RIAA's.
I think theatre going is changing and the theatres know it and are changing to accomodate. I'm certainly more inclined to wait for most movies to come out on DVD and see less at the theatre because of it. I'm sure the average (rather than avid) filmgoer is the same. On the other hand when I do go to the cinema it is usually for a special movie and I'm happy to pay twice the price for a gold class seat and buy a couple of glasses of wine while I'm at it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It is appearent that you did not get the gist of what Mr. Gibson was saying. People have an inborn drive to create. They have a capacity to project their imaginations and to interpret the creations of others. These characteristics can be traced back through the earliest artifact made by man. But more importantly, man can abstract reality through sybolism.A study of "cave painting" shows the skill and creative nature of some of our most distant ancestory. Some of this art actualy needs to be interpreted as if its a movie. What apears to be several individuals, in some cases is realy the same individual at different points in time, a moving picture. Now we have tools that can enable us to express ourselves unimaginable to our ancestors. Mankind will always find ways to use the cutting edge tech for self expresion. Our childrens childrens childrens will be doing things that today are just fantasy. And guess what, it will still be in the quest for self expresion
Not to insult your family or anything, but you guys seem to be completely lacking in imagination. The 10 year old that I babysit, was into putting jackel heads on his drawings ( influence of the mummy movies). He creates his own Pokemon and DBZ characters. Some can be rather bizzare. If your children do display some imagination, are you going to punish them? BTW, I've been doing anthropmorphic art since I was a kid. I have started retraining to become an animator. This is truley a great time to be alive. I am able to express myself in ways that I could only dream about as a kid. And I did dream. Only hope the MPAA and that other mafia controled organization don't totaly screw us over.
As usual with Gibson, the text is full of memorable quotes.
Had nations better understood the potential of the Internet, I suspect they might well have strangled it in its cradle. Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes.
Probably correct.
He thinks that once it is technologically feasible, and by that I don't mean having some movie studio produce a movie with crazy realistic special effect, rather, I mean that the home user can pick and choose things and change elements of their media that they view/listen to/experience on the fly, that THAT will be the next evolution of our media. So again, it is not simply that we will be able to have dog-headed actors doing kungfu, but instead lets say you're watching a movie, and you wished it would play out in a different way, or you wished you could change a certain element of it, the technology would be so simple to use and so embedded in the media (read: completely digital) that you would be able to do so with a simple command. This is big, very big, but unfortunately, we are very unlikely to see its realization in our lifetime in anything other than perhaps a scene in a good sci-fi movie that demonstrates this through a mock-up.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
And lo and behold, it's 2003, and interactive TV is still dead. The closest we have are video games, and P2P networks for "video on demand."
I see the same thing happening here. As usual, Gibson has interesting ideas about society and technology, but his economics are bunk. Where does the money come from to pay the person that does all the modelling to render The Great Escape as a Playstation 13 game? Nobody wants that.
This is the cyberpunk equivalent of the future with the airships and radiator fins on everything.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.