If you clarify by saying "innovative and disruptive" business, then I think you are 100% correct. You can be innovative, but you can't disrupt revenue streams of larger corporations.
I don't think you can have innovative technologies that aren't disruptive. If it plays nicely with what's come before, it's evolutionary, not revolutionary... and it's a doomed revenue stream.
Re:How far do you want to extend this argument?
on
KaZaA Collapses
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· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
3) Perhaps someone should copy your credit card number, SSN, name, birthday etc etc. After all, it's just a copy and you've lost nothing.
No, it's not at all the same thing. The things you mention are valueless in themselves but serve as keys to more worthwhile resources. A Brittany Spears song does not serve as a key to anything else. It is enjoyed (or not) but it is not an authentication system.
That's it, exactly. Copyright law (pre-DMCA) has a long, detailed history in the courts. There are lots of precedents, including relatively wide fair-use harbors. The DMCA, while paying lip service to fair use, actually narrows its applicability a lot. But more importantly, no one knows how courts will interpret the DMCA, as few cases have percolated through the system. It's that element of uncertainty that serves as a bludgeon... many companies would be unwilling to fight tooth-and-nail against a lawsuit if they aren't relatively sure of how the underlying law is going to be interpreted.
The kids still will be ill-prepared to work in any normal job, though, as Linux is nowhere near standard in the real life world.
I don't buy it. First of all, the whole point of commercial products (according to MS and their bannermen) is that the interface is "intuitive" -- which means it can't take all that long to become a power user. Second, anyone who's grown up on a complex and responsive system like Linus will find Windows a breeze -- plus they'll have actual problem-solving abilities. Let's face it: One reason that Unix conceded the desktop world to Microsoft involved the inability of any seasoned Unix user to take Windows seriously. Yeah, that was a mistake, but going from Linux to MS definitely does not tax the brain...
Besides, this isn't about preparing students for the real world. Students are remarkably flexible and adaptable. This is about the inconvenience to the old dinosaurs who can't conceive of a computer as anything more than an intimidating electric typewriter...
If you're a consumer, and you want a cheap product, the vendors are there for you. MS Office cost too much for your school papers? Get a copy of Works. Photoshop expensive for making web graphics and removing red-eye? Get Photoshop Elements for a fraction of the price.
Or OpenOffice rather than Works, and the GIMP rather than Photoshop...
Well, what are you going to do with it? Goof around and build crappy animated interfaces for your web site?
That's right. Building crappy animated interfaces for web sites is clearly the prerogative of professional web designers... At least, that's my conclusion after viewing the truly awful sites out there.
You know, this is something that really bothers me, because apparently no one else sees it: Tying expiration to death just dumb. People are living longer. In a century, the expectancy might rise to 80 or 90 or... 200? 300? Aging is a problem solvable in principle. I tell my students that they, or their children, will live effectively forever. I'm pretty sure I'm right. So should any copyrights they hold also live forever?
One of my worries is that the encryption of information under proprietary schemes, linked to the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA, will lead to huge swaths of "public domain" works being lost or locked behind access-fee walls.
I also believe that pre-DMCA copyright law, if vigorously pursued, would be capable of defending legitimate interests in content.
So here's my proposal. When a work is published, the author must make a choice:
The work is presented "in the clear" with no encryption, no access-control mechanism (or digital rights management scheme), completely and totally accessible. Upon discovering a violations of copyright, the copyright holder can instigate a case in civil court with full and harsh remedies available.... OR...
The work is presented with access-control mechanisms, DRM schemes, etc., and/or encrypted. However, if someone manages to crack the scheme and undo all those limitations, there is no legal penalty. The work itself is considered to be public domain and anyone who can distribute a clean copy is entitled to do so.
In other words, you can try to fence off parts of the intellectual landscape -- but you don't get to use the full might of the US judicial system to do so.
Well, actually, ...Re:2600 cant get no respect
on
2600 Appeal Rejected
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· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
The current standard is 50 years beyond the life of teh author - let's stick with that.
Well, actually, it's seventy (70!) years beyond the life of the author. Life expectancy is about 75 in the US. So, if on her deathbed, an author bequeathed her copyrights to the grandson born at that very moment, said grandson could live off the proceeds for essentially his entire life, having contributed (by construction) nothing toward the creation of the original work... Sure, that really encourages creativity.
Why should anyone benefit from copyright once the author has died? The heirs can benefit from the proceeds realized by the author, since those are actual property and logically persist. But why continue to draw benefit from the creation when the creator is gone?
Don't even get me started on corporations having nearly a century to derive benefit...
(And I don't buy the "Well, it encourages one to create so as to pass something on to one's heirs" line. By that argument, infinite copyright would be even more valuable and therefore encourage even more creativity -- why limit it all? Indeed, why not pass it on to the heirs forever? Maybe we can include something to indicate the ownership; maybe an inheritable title. Yeah, that's the ticket.)
But this is democracy, the majority have said they don't want nazis so they aren't allowed. Welcome to democracy.
And that's why I called it a "tension": between license and protection. Again, in the States, we have long resisted -- though this is eroding -- the concept of "direct democracy", also known as, "vox populi vox dei". We (well, some of us, including the Founders of the country) do not believe that the will of the majority is absolute and supreme. Our Bill of Rights -- in my opinion, the most astonishing piece of political machinery ever devised -- lays out explicit areas wherein the government may not trespass, regardless of how many people want it to.
In other words, 99.99% of the people might want a KKK rally prohibited on the reasonable grounds that it's nasty, racist, and disturbing. That would be insuffiicient. Banning speech based on its content is forbidden to the government. We weasle around this a lot, but the principle is relatively clear.
Democracy is not (necessarily) direct democracy. You can believe that all political power derives its legitimacy from the will and consent of the governed -- that true authority lies in "the people" -- and yet also believe that such power must be muzzled, diverted, or channeled at times. Instead of a misplaced idolization of "the people", you instead have an elevation of the individual. Acting together, much is possible -- but not everything.
well apart from anyone who looks like an Arab, or any random pesky scientist who has ideas that Adobe or Disney don't appreciate.
Well, I'd be lying or insane if I alleged that the US lives up to the ideals it espouses. But in the US, our failures to live up to those ideals are recognized as failures -- as mistakes made along the way. Does everyone in the States agree with my somewhat-lofty view of things? Far from it. We have a lot of people who feel that bad messages, or bad people, have to be banned; that there is legitimate state interest in obscuring or suppressing certain areas of debate; that one can apply a label to make an annoyance disappear.
But luckily we had these bright guys meet in Philadelphia, way back in 1787. And we have had the extreme good fortune -- by-and-large, and lately, somewhat precariously -- of well-informed, well-intentioned members of the bench, keeping alive the idea of a free market of ideas.
The Adobe (and Disney) line is not really a propos. Neither of them are persecuting people for the political ideas they express. It's far more base: Each company is protecting its bottom line and its revenue stream, and principle be damned.
In any event, it's fair to say we miss the mark a lot in the States. But I still feel the target that we aim for is the better one.
We've been there, we're not going back. We like democracy, we like freedom, we like being able to say whatever we want without being locked up
... except pro-Nazi things, apparently... and that's the irony, and that's the problem: a faux respect for democratic opinion, unless it is the "wrong" one. I'm not German, and I cannot really prescribe to Germans how to handle this tension in democracy. But I am an American, and without being too jingoistic, I think we get this one right: Allow a free market of ideas. Don't allow the government, or the moral minority, or "the People" to legislate that some ideas are "wrong". Let them all fight it out. Because I believe in democracy and in the basic dignity of humankind (both possibly ludicrous beliefs, but hey...), I also believe that the right and the true will triumph.
This isn't mealy-mouthed bleeding-heart East Coast liberalism. It's a hard-eyed view drawn from the history of a free people: The only cure for darkness is light -- it's never more darkness.
If a people is presented with the neo-Nazi thugs and the radical idiocies, and given the chance to honestly evaluate them, and still fall for them... well, there is no power in Heaven or on Earth that keep such a people free. If they cannot be trusted to see through this propaganda, then they cannot possibly be protected from it. And no well-intentioned political elite is ever going to safeguard them from their own democratic process.
People are free, or they are not. They are not made free by the actions of someone else; they are free by the strength of their commitment to freedom. Let the idiots, the racists, the radicals bray and howl. I know that a free and educated people will rise above that, will see them for the sham they are, will cast them back into the darkness and ooze from which they crawled.
Not to pour water on a good conspiracy theory, but are people sure this isn't just a misconfigured nnrpd.conf (or equivalent)?... all it would take is for some admin to foul up a config line.
The same mistake, made everywhere at once? From the article:
replacing whatever information a user enters with "Organization: Road Runner - (location)." All RoadRunner customers nationwide, including business customers, have apparently had their organization identity hijacked
The ideal of a totally unbiased presentation, of only the true "facts", remains just that: an ideal, unattainable.
That's like saying that since all software has bugs, therefore we shouldn't strive to fix any of the bugs.
No. Your strident calls for the "unbiased" classroom is like saying, "Software shouldn't have bugs. Therefore, we should not discuss the bugs our software has." Such a silence creates the impression that there are no bugs but it doesn't actually eliminate them and it doesn't empower others with the ability to route around the bug. Likewise, acting as if teachers have no opinions -- or, as if those opinions have no bearing on the classroom -- creates the impression that only the "unbiased" facts are being presented, even though this is in fact impossible.
Look at it this way: Which news source is more valuable and more trustworthy? One that admits its viewpoint up front and makes no bones about it, or one that layers it behind a veneer of objectivity?
Indoctrination is when the teacher cares about what opinion the student ends up with.
Why does having, or even expressing, an opinion mean that I "care" what opinion a student ends up with? Why should things be different for those who disagree than those who agree? For that matter, why should students be deprived the opportunity to convince an intelligent adult, whom (I flatter myself to think) they might admire?
Keeping my opinions out of the classroom entirely is every bit as much a disservice to them as it would be to make my opinions the focal point. At root is a denial that a teacher is human or that a teacher should have opinions. I will not strip myself of all the things I believe in just because I stand in front of a class.
The ideal of a totally unbiased presentation, of only the true "facts", remains just that: an ideal, unattainable. It is a much more powerful lesson for students to learn that all sources of information, be it a propaganda scandal sheet or a trusted teacher, must be evaluated and weighed. When you recognize that every presentation has bias, conscious or otherwise, you begin to look for and ferret out those biases. When you learn to see biases, no matter the source, you begin to compensate for them and weight them. And at that point, you begin to have some hope of actually finding the truth.
A presentation that purports to be free of all biases is intrinsically a lie -- either by the presenter to his audience, or to himself.
The teacher should be able to argue from any side of the argument to keep the debate going. If the teacher can't make arguments for EULA's as they are written (and yes, you can make arguments for them), then that teacher should not be teaching the lesson.
OK, I'll forfeit by Goodwin's Law, but sometimes it's just damn necessary: Are you saying a teacher should, for example, argue in favor of the Holocaust to "keep the debate going"? And that doing so somehow helps students form a viable moral model?
YOUR OPINION IS COMPLETELY WORTHLESS TO THEIR EDUCATION.
Well, I am glad to also be a teacher who violates your standards. Intelligent people have opinions; and those opinions influence what they say. A primary role of a teacher is model an intelligent citizen, to offer an example of a thinking person. I will tell my students that my opinions are my opinions, but I will also tell them my opinions. Often enough, they disagree, vocieferously. Then we have a discussion, a debate, sometimes even an argument.
You know what? They hold their own, and they walk out knowing that at least one adult views them as worth debating. Any ill-advised attempt to strip out all personal beliefs leads to worse than cookie-cutter education. It leads to dull, unengaged teachers spouting useless information to dull-witted, unengaged students. It makes education irrelevant by removing all context and all passion.
It is obviously possible to take this too far, but -- perhaps less obviously -- it is also possible to go too far the other way.
I would also say that he was making a social statement about the failure of bureaucracy to achieve where socially mind individuals/cultures succeed.
Ah, but blockquoth the LA Times article:
He thought about complaining to Caltrans. But he figured his suggestion would get lost in the huge state bureaucracy.
He didn't even try to get CalTrans to fix the problem. So this wasn't "a social statement about the failure of bureaucracy". It was a personal statement about his own failure of initiative and inability to work within a system, which he tried and condemned in his own head. It is, as too much modern "art" is, self-indulgent narcissistic claptrap.
allowing me to very quickly know whether the information I require is in that book. Try that with 200 pages of HTML.
Or with digital text, I can type in exactly what I'm looking for, press "Search", and find in 0.002 seconds whether it has what I am looking for. Right now, image searches are harder, admittedly, but that's because we haven't developed the important skills.
If the artist chooses to use a nontraditional medium to make his point, that doesn't make it not art.
If the artist chooses to use a nontraditional medium to make his point, that doesn't make it art, either. Too much of modern art -- to my admittedly untrained eye -- is the form of "Look at how clever I am to do something to this medium." That's not enough to qualify.
Modern art seems to be a collection of people screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" I disagree that this is really art. Art is a transcendant statement about the human condition. This is a road sign. I don't think they overlap.
I would personally consider calling it art to be a stretch, but it's an incredible hack, and if you consider hacks to be artistry it is an excellent example of it.
I don't think this is an incredible hack. Its invisibility depended only on its utter reasonableness. He crafted a good sign but essentially he was just an unpaid independent contractor for CalTrans. True hacks, the really good ones, fade into the background by taking advantage of your preconceptions, but then get you to scratch your head and wonder, how did I ever think that was normal. A true hack, in the same vein as this alleged one, was when MIT students replaced the engraving(!) in one of their halls. They changed the motto of the school to something more, well, offbeat, and did it by carving the letters into foam, then placing them in front of the actual letters. Thus, people saw engraved letters and just filed it away, not noticing till much later that the mottom was wrong.
That was a great hack. This, this is just roadwork.
Besides, art imitates life (or in this case, makes life a little easier for everyone else.)
No, engineering (supposedly) makes life easier for everyone. Art says something transcendant about the human condition. I don't think "Interchange coming up" quite rises to this level.
Just because it's difficult and takes care, doesn't mean it's "art". Just because it was subtle doesn't mean it's "art". Just because he ret-conned it as sticking it to the faceless bureaucracy, doesn't mean it's "art".
It might qualify as a hack, which is orthogonal to its being art, but I have my doubts even there. This guy had his sign seem invisible because it made sense. A good hack plays with what's there, in a way not consistent with the original scene, so that later, you ask, "Why the heck didn't I see that?"
You'd think that the people in charge of the signs would notice that there was an addition that hadn't been authorized.
Yes, because certainly everyone in CalTrans in charge of signage undoubtedly passes by that exact stretch of road every day... I don't this even counts as clever unless he can document that the sign had been seen by anyone competent to have ordered a change. Reading the article I didn't get any sense that this was some long, drawn-out crusade to get a sign put up, where "the Man" dragged his feet and stuck it to the little guy. No faceless bureaucrat decreeing, "No, you shall always be confused that that interchange, for Policy has made it so".
The guy saw something that CalTrans hadn't noticed or hadn't gotten around to. He took it on himself to fix the problem as he saw it. Kudos for the initiative... but it ain't art.
Because once you have developed the skill of processing technical books/documentation, you can scan through them and pick up critical information rapidly - far faster than you could click through them as hypertext.
.... at least, until you develope a comparable skill with hypertext. The manner of reading is different but not necessarily inferior. Why does everyone assume that what we've used simply due to technical limits will actually prove to be superior in a new context? You can't grep books -- that already limits them.
How does running a BASH shell help anyone learn how computers actually work?
OK, it doesn't help you understand all that solid-state stuff, but that's not really relevant. On the other hand, command-line interfaces absolutely demand a greater awareness of what each program does, what it expects, and how it interacts with other programs. Plus it encourages a can-fix attitude to problems, as opposed to the learned helplessness of most GUIs.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you can have innovative technologies that aren't disruptive. If it plays nicely with what's come before, it's evolutionary, not revolutionary
No, it's not at all the same thing. The things you mention are valueless in themselves but serve as keys to more worthwhile resources. A Brittany Spears song does not serve as a key to anything else. It is enjoyed (or not) but it is not an authentication system.
That's it, exactly. Copyright law (pre-DMCA) has a long, detailed history in the courts. There are lots of precedents, including relatively wide fair-use harbors. The DMCA, while paying lip service to fair use, actually narrows its applicability a lot. But more importantly, no one knows how courts will interpret the DMCA, as few cases have percolated through the system. It's that element of uncertainty that serves as a bludgeon
I don't buy it. First of all, the whole point of commercial products (according to MS and their bannermen) is that the interface is "intuitive" -- which means it can't take all that long to become a power user. Second, anyone who's grown up on a complex and responsive system like Linus will find Windows a breeze -- plus they'll have actual problem-solving abilities. Let's face it: One reason that Unix conceded the desktop world to Microsoft involved the inability of any seasoned Unix user to take Windows seriously. Yeah, that was a mistake, but going from Linux to MS definitely does not tax the brain...
Besides, this isn't about preparing students for the real world. Students are remarkably flexible and adaptable. This is about the inconvenience to the old dinosaurs who can't conceive of a computer as anything more than an intimidating electric typewriter...
Or OpenOffice rather than Works, and the GIMP rather than Photoshop...
That's right. Building crappy animated interfaces for web sites is clearly the prerogative of professional web designers... At least, that's my conclusion after viewing the truly awful sites out there.
You know, this is something that really bothers me, because apparently no one else sees it: Tying expiration to death just dumb. People are living longer. In a century, the expectancy might rise to 80 or 90 or... 200? 300? Aging is a problem solvable in principle. I tell my students that they, or their children, will live effectively forever. I'm pretty sure I'm right. So should any copyrights they hold also live forever?
I also believe that pre-DMCA copyright law, if vigorously pursued, would be capable of defending legitimate interests in content.
So here's my proposal. When a work is published, the author must make a choice:
In other words, you can try to fence off parts of the intellectual landscape -- but you don't get to use the full might of the US judicial system to do so.
Well, actually, it's seventy (70! ) years beyond the life of the author. Life expectancy is about 75 in the US. So, if on her deathbed, an author bequeathed her copyrights to the grandson born at that very moment, said grandson could live off the proceeds for essentially his entire life, having contributed (by construction) nothing toward the creation of the original work... Sure, that really encourages creativity.
Why should anyone benefit from copyright once the author has died? The heirs can benefit from the proceeds realized by the author, since those are actual property and logically persist. But why continue to draw benefit from the creation when the creator is gone?
Don't even get me started on corporations having nearly a century to derive benefit...
(And I don't buy the "Well, it encourages one to create so as to pass something on to one's heirs" line. By that argument, infinite copyright would be even more valuable and therefore encourage even more creativity -- why limit it all? Indeed, why not pass it on to the heirs forever? Maybe we can include something to indicate the ownership; maybe an inheritable title. Yeah, that's the ticket.)
And that's why I called it a "tension": between license and protection. Again, in the States, we have long resisted -- though this is eroding -- the concept of "direct democracy", also known as, "vox populi vox dei". We (well, some of us, including the Founders of the country) do not believe that the will of the majority is absolute and supreme. Our Bill of Rights -- in my opinion, the most astonishing piece of political machinery ever devised -- lays out explicit areas wherein the government may not trespass, regardless of how many people want it to.
In other words, 99.99% of the people might want a KKK rally prohibited on the reasonable grounds that it's nasty, racist, and disturbing. That would be insuffiicient. Banning speech based on its content is forbidden to the government. We weasle around this a lot, but the principle is relatively clear.
Democracy is not (necessarily) direct democracy. You can believe that all political power derives its legitimacy from the will and consent of the governed -- that true authority lies in "the people" -- and yet also believe that such power must be muzzled, diverted, or channeled at times. Instead of a misplaced idolization of "the people", you instead have an elevation of the individual. Acting together, much is possible -- but not everything.
Well, I'd be lying or insane if I alleged that the US lives up to the ideals it espouses. But in the US, our failures to live up to those ideals are recognized as failures -- as mistakes made along the way. Does everyone in the States agree with my somewhat-lofty view of things? Far from it. We have a lot of people who feel that bad messages, or bad people, have to be banned; that there is legitimate state interest in obscuring or suppressing certain areas of debate; that one can apply a label to make an annoyance disappear.
But luckily we had these bright guys meet in Philadelphia, way back in 1787. And we have had the extreme good fortune -- by-and-large, and lately, somewhat precariously -- of well-informed, well-intentioned members of the bench, keeping alive the idea of a free market of ideas.
The Adobe (and Disney) line is not really a propos. Neither of them are persecuting people for the political ideas they express. It's far more base: Each company is protecting its bottom line and its revenue stream, and principle be damned.
In any event, it's fair to say we miss the mark a lot in the States. But I still feel the target that we aim for is the better one.
... except pro-Nazi things, apparently... and that's the irony, and that's the problem: a faux respect for democratic opinion, unless it is the "wrong" one. I'm not German, and I cannot really prescribe to Germans how to handle this tension in democracy. But I am an American, and without being too jingoistic, I think we get this one right: Allow a free market of ideas. Don't allow the government, or the moral minority, or "the People" to legislate that some ideas are "wrong". Let them all fight it out. Because I believe in democracy and in the basic dignity of humankind (both possibly ludicrous beliefs, but hey...), I also believe that the right and the true will triumph.
This isn't mealy-mouthed bleeding-heart East Coast liberalism. It's a hard-eyed view drawn from the history of a free people: The only cure for darkness is light -- it's never more darkness.
If a people is presented with the neo-Nazi thugs and the radical idiocies, and given the chance to honestly evaluate them, and still fall for them... well, there is no power in Heaven or on Earth that keep such a people free. If they cannot be trusted to see through this propaganda, then they cannot possibly be protected from it. And no well-intentioned political elite is ever going to safeguard them from their own democratic process.
People are free, or they are not. They are not made free by the actions of someone else; they are free by the strength of their commitment to freedom. Let the idiots, the racists, the radicals bray and howl. I know that a free and educated people will rise above that, will see them for the sham they are, will cast them back into the darkness and ooze from which they crawled.
We have this already. It's called "the RIAA".
... but it would probably make more sense if you watched it in about 2 hrs, like the rest of us.
Then again, being a Neal Stephenson work, maybe not...
The same mistake, made everywhere at once? From the article:
No. Your strident calls for the "unbiased" classroom is like saying, "Software shouldn't have bugs. Therefore, we should not discuss the bugs our software has." Such a silence creates the impression that there are no bugs but it doesn't actually eliminate them and it doesn't empower others with the ability to route around the bug. Likewise, acting as if teachers have no opinions -- or, as if those opinions have no bearing on the classroom -- creates the impression that only the "unbiased" facts are being presented, even though this is in fact impossible.
Look at it this way: Which news source is more valuable and more trustworthy? One that admits its viewpoint up front and makes no bones about it, or one that layers it behind a veneer of objectivity?
Why does having, or even expressing, an opinion mean that I "care" what opinion a student ends up with? Why should things be different for those who disagree than those who agree? For that matter, why should students be deprived the opportunity to convince an intelligent adult, whom (I flatter myself to think) they might admire?
Keeping my opinions out of the classroom entirely is every bit as much a disservice to them as it would be to make my opinions the focal point. At root is a denial that a teacher is human or that a teacher should have opinions. I will not strip myself of all the things I believe in just because I stand in front of a class.
The ideal of a totally unbiased presentation, of only the true "facts", remains just that: an ideal, unattainable. It is a much more powerful lesson for students to learn that all sources of information, be it a propaganda scandal sheet or a trusted teacher, must be evaluated and weighed. When you recognize that every presentation has bias, conscious or otherwise, you begin to look for and ferret out those biases. When you learn to see biases, no matter the source, you begin to compensate for them and weight them. And at that point, you begin to have some hope of actually finding the truth.
A presentation that purports to be free of all biases is intrinsically a lie -- either by the presenter to his audience, or to himself.
OK, I'll forfeit by Goodwin's Law, but sometimes it's just damn necessary: Are you saying a teacher should, for example, argue in favor of the Holocaust to "keep the debate going"? And that doing so somehow helps students form a viable moral model?
Well, I am glad to also be a teacher who violates your standards. Intelligent people have opinions; and those opinions influence what they say. A primary role of a teacher is model an intelligent citizen, to offer an example of a thinking person. I will tell my students that my opinions are my opinions, but I will also tell them my opinions. Often enough, they disagree, vocieferously. Then we have a discussion, a debate, sometimes even an argument.
You know what? They hold their own, and they walk out knowing that at least one adult views them as worth debating. Any ill-advised attempt to strip out all personal beliefs leads to worse than cookie-cutter education. It leads to dull, unengaged teachers spouting useless information to dull-witted, unengaged students. It makes education irrelevant by removing all context and all passion.
It is obviously possible to take this too far, but -- perhaps less obviously -- it is also possible to go too far the other way.
Ah, but blockquoth the LA Times article:
He didn't even try to get CalTrans to fix the problem. So this wasn't "a social statement about the failure of bureaucracy". It was a personal statement about his own failure of initiative and inability to work within a system, which he tried and condemned in his own head. It is, as too much modern "art" is, self-indulgent narcissistic claptrap.
The guy made a sign. He didn't make art.
Or with digital text, I can type in exactly what I'm looking for, press "Search", and find in 0.002 seconds whether it has what I am looking for. Right now, image searches are harder, admittedly, but that's because we haven't developed the important skills.
If the artist chooses to use a nontraditional medium to make his point, that doesn't make it art, either. Too much of modern art -- to my admittedly untrained eye -- is the form of "Look at how clever I am to do something to this medium." That's not enough to qualify.
Modern art seems to be a collection of people screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" I disagree that this is really art. Art is a transcendant statement about the human condition. This is a road sign. I don't think they overlap.
I don't think this is an incredible hack. Its invisibility depended only on its utter reasonableness. He crafted a good sign but essentially he was just an unpaid independent contractor for CalTrans. True hacks, the really good ones, fade into the background by taking advantage of your preconceptions, but then get you to scratch your head and wonder, how did I ever think that was normal. A true hack, in the same vein as this alleged one, was when MIT students replaced the engraving(!) in one of their halls. They changed the motto of the school to something more, well, offbeat, and did it by carving the letters into foam, then placing them in front of the actual letters. Thus, people saw engraved letters and just filed it away, not noticing till much later that the mottom was wrong.
That was a great hack. This, this is just roadwork.
No, engineering (supposedly) makes life easier for everyone. Art says something transcendant about the human condition. I don't think "Interchange coming up" quite rises to this level.
Just because it's difficult and takes care, doesn't mean it's "art". Just because it was subtle doesn't mean it's "art". Just because he ret-conned it as sticking it to the faceless bureaucracy, doesn't mean it's "art".
It might qualify as a hack, which is orthogonal to its being art, but I have my doubts even there. This guy had his sign seem invisible because it made sense. A good hack plays with what's there, in a way not consistent with the original scene, so that later, you ask, "Why the heck didn't I see that?"
Yes, because certainly everyone in CalTrans in charge of signage undoubtedly passes by that exact stretch of road every day... I don't this even counts as clever unless he can document that the sign had been seen by anyone competent to have ordered a change. Reading the article I didn't get any sense that this was some long, drawn-out crusade to get a sign put up, where "the Man" dragged his feet and stuck it to the little guy. No faceless bureaucrat decreeing, "No, you shall always be confused that that interchange, for Policy has made it so".
The guy saw something that CalTrans hadn't noticed or hadn't gotten around to. He took it on himself to fix the problem as he saw it. Kudos for the initiative... but it ain't art.
.... at least, until you develope a comparable skill with hypertext. The manner of reading is different but not necessarily inferior. Why does everyone assume that what we've used simply due to technical limits will actually prove to be superior in a new context? You can't grep books -- that already limits them.
OK, it doesn't help you understand all that solid-state stuff, but that's not really relevant. On the other hand, command-line interfaces absolutely demand a greater awareness of what each program does, what it expects, and how it interacts with other programs. Plus it encourages a can-fix attitude to problems, as opposed to the learned helplessness of most GUIs.