"Pearl Harbor" has been compared to "Titanic" by many here, but this note brings up an idea. How different would the movie have been (and how different the reaction) if it closed, not with Doolitte's raid, but with that 1995 ceremony? Just re-create it and age one of the principals (kill off the others), bring up the music....and watch the WWII veterans howl!
Re:Japanese (and American) revisionist history
on
Review: Pearl Harbor
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· Score: 1
Everyone engages in revisionist history, especially after losing a war. The least-controversial (here) might be the Southern revisionist history of the Civil War, resulting in such things as D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation."
But the author has a great, important point. Revising history has a real impact. In the case of Southern revisionism, we had the second rise of the KKK and America's apartheid era, which didn't begin to lift until the Civil Rights era began.
Japanese revisionism, fortunately, is neither as vicious nor as popular (in Japan) as Southern revisionism was here.
There are many other examples of revisionism we could discuss here (but I won't). German revisionism after WWI, Holocaust deniers, Vietnam...after WWII the most popular revision of history was that a "conspiracy" kept us silent and ignorant of what the Germans and Japanese were up to. "Conspiracy" theories are another byproduct of historical revisionism, and just as dangerous.
There's an awful lot to think and talk about here, which is what gives a Jon Katz piece its value. (It's not whether he's right, but whether he gets y'all going, and he does that.)
Is p2p going to sweep the planet? No. Not right away. Does p2p enable theft? Yes. But does it also enable freedom? Also yes. Absent an Internet government of, by and for the people, freedom and license are going to remain the same thing.
As a journalist, I caught on to Jon's skepticism about whether p2p journalism is valuable. It is, very. To deny that is to deny the importance of Slashdot (despite its server), because most of what happens here is p2p. (Look at the notes on this thread -- count how many are addressed to Jon's main piece and how many are addressed to other notes. That's p2p journalism.
Journalistic authority today is created by the market, which is gamed by those who dominate the market and/or have a great interest in this part of the market. P2P journalism can work as a check against this power, which is what attracts people to it.
I wrote recently about an outfit called Opion that uses software to determine who has real credibility on various subjects (using publicly available traffic), then tracks the changes in opinions of those with credibility. P2P journalism, in other words, is already being analyzed.
Why hasn't p2p made a bigger splash on the market? Simply because, under the present laws, most applications are illegal. Napster is illegal. So is Gnutella. So is DECSS. That's why p2p is underground.
What's missing is a business model that lets p2p work and brings money out the bottom for those who need to make a living creating stuff -- words, music, movies, and (oh, by the way) computer code.
No one has yet developed such a model. (Katz mentions micro-payments but that doesn't work.) Make one and the world really can change.
Slashdot Mirror
"Pearl Harbor" has been compared to "Titanic" by many here, but this note brings up an idea. How different would the movie have been (and how different the reaction) if it closed, not with Doolitte's raid, but with that 1995 ceremony? Just re-create it and age one of the principals (kill off the others), bring up the music....and watch the WWII veterans howl!
Everyone engages in revisionist history, especially after losing a war. The least-controversial (here) might be the Southern revisionist history of the Civil War, resulting in such things as D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." But the author has a great, important point. Revising history has a real impact. In the case of Southern revisionism, we had the second rise of the KKK and America's apartheid era, which didn't begin to lift until the Civil Rights era began. Japanese revisionism, fortunately, is neither as vicious nor as popular (in Japan) as Southern revisionism was here. There are many other examples of revisionism we could discuss here (but I won't). German revisionism after WWI, Holocaust deniers, Vietnam...after WWII the most popular revision of history was that a "conspiracy" kept us silent and ignorant of what the Germans and Japanese were up to. "Conspiracy" theories are another byproduct of historical revisionism, and just as dangerous.
There's an awful lot to think and talk about here, which is what gives a Jon Katz piece its value. (It's not whether he's right, but whether he gets y'all going, and he does that.) Is p2p going to sweep the planet? No. Not right away. Does p2p enable theft? Yes. But does it also enable freedom? Also yes. Absent an Internet government of, by and for the people, freedom and license are going to remain the same thing. As a journalist, I caught on to Jon's skepticism about whether p2p journalism is valuable. It is, very. To deny that is to deny the importance of Slashdot (despite its server), because most of what happens here is p2p. (Look at the notes on this thread -- count how many are addressed to Jon's main piece and how many are addressed to other notes. That's p2p journalism. Journalistic authority today is created by the market, which is gamed by those who dominate the market and/or have a great interest in this part of the market. P2P journalism can work as a check against this power, which is what attracts people to it. I wrote recently about an outfit called Opion that uses software to determine who has real credibility on various subjects (using publicly available traffic), then tracks the changes in opinions of those with credibility. P2P journalism, in other words, is already being analyzed. Why hasn't p2p made a bigger splash on the market? Simply because, under the present laws, most applications are illegal. Napster is illegal. So is Gnutella. So is DECSS. That's why p2p is underground. What's missing is a business model that lets p2p work and brings money out the bottom for those who need to make a living creating stuff -- words, music, movies, and (oh, by the way) computer code. No one has yet developed such a model. (Katz mentions micro-payments but that doesn't work.) Make one and the world really can change.