Something's been on my mind...

A dragging economy, sluggish and self-serving government, broken political system; the list goes on.  Today there’s more wrong with this society than there were good intentions founding it some 200+ years ago.  We’re no longer in the era of fear of alienation.  What some would consider the “Era of information communication” is under constant political attack with bills that want to sway for control over the freedom of the internet.  Gone are the days of specialization and “profession”, this Era is something totally new.  It’s beyond just the DIY era; technology is so affordable and easy to access that even without much education someone is able to put together a small plan and call themselves a professional in whatever industry they like, with or without license or background.  That’s only half the problem, the government (and the special interest groups looking out for themselves) continually make it unscrupulous to enter into business, do business, or get out of business than ever before. 

During a report on CBS earlier this week I learned that currently in Stockton the city charges $52,000 in fees and anywhere from six to nine months to approve a single home building project.  A bit high considering the estimated median household income sits at around $45,000 (Stockton CityProfile).  In Washington DC, Interior Designers managed to get laws fabricated to secure their market for themselves by introducing legislation that requires strict and expensive entry as a newcomer.  Not only does this allow the current Interior Designers to be grandfathered in, it’s a win-win for the local and state governments.




The recording industry has experienced a complete change in landscape over the last 2 decades which in the last quarter of that span has completely shifted.  In 2009 the estimation was that half of LA’s commercial music business was up for grabs due to the economic climate change (Recordingstudios are being left out of the mix).  It used to be the kind of landscape where bands focused on writing and creating the musical and creative material that connected with an audience, the labels focused on how to market the act, and studios and producers practiced the obscure art of marrying the ideas the act created – the art; to a finished and polished product the label could sell.  Today, the major label studio is succeeded by the home studio; often powered by a single computer and software (which one could easily question how some of the software was acquired).  Now, a single person can pick up an instrument, hit record, and release a song or an album without so much as a single course supporting any skill in the various trades they’re covering.

The Film and TV industries have just started feeling similar effects over the years as the technology changes the landscape and it’s only going to make leaps in the harder direction (ThePost-recession model:  Fewer Jobs inDigital Hollywood).  In my opinion, they haven’t yet felt the turbulence the music industry has, but that’s only because the video technology shifts have not yet happened; not completely at least.  HDSLR revolution has only just begun to remold the landscape.  HDTV is being met with 3d stereo imagery; which will get superseded very soon as resolution wars continue to shoot into the 2k and 4k consumer devices. 

Even big industry moguls are trying to adapt to the quickly changing landscape, adopting digital distribution and copyright licensing methods to keep the business alive.  But my guess is that not too far from now the film and TV industry will be replaced with the ubiquity of the internet, the revolution of HDSLR empowering a single person the ability to create from the comfort of his or her own home; as our major news and Television network outlets are already trying to shift to an internet-centric medium.  The big hustle then will be proof of intellectual property.

Copyright law is severely outdated and special interest groups are kicking into overdrive to try to gain some control of the marketplace and protect what they can of their precious life’s work.  Due to the freedom of the internet and affordable technology combined the music industry has crashed down on itself.  Most of the market relies on impulse buys of singles on iTunes and digital distribution while music departments of brick and mortar stores sit with nearly full racks of physical cd’s which sales have plummeted further than ever before. (AlbumSales Hit Record Lows. Again.).

Meanwhile, [special interest groups] bankrolled by corporations with an agenda for self-preservation fight to pass bill after bill for control of the internet effectively “blacklisting” sites from U.S. Citizens by gaining unprecedented access to ISP’s and internet gateways (PROTECTIP Renamed E-PARASITE Act). This would force users to be unable to access a particular site because of copyright infringing material residing on it without so much as a notice to the site administration to allow them the chance to take down the offending material (House Hearing on SOPA).  What’s next? I can easily imagine not being able to publish anything to an online website without FIRST getting a copyright claim number to show proof your original material was indeed created by you.  Youtube, Twitter, instaGram and numerous other social media networks and services would effectively get shut down, at least in the U.S.  (Congressto Make Streaming A Felony).

So that’s not so bad right?  Finally making people take accountability for what they publish!  Maybe this turn could lead to better context of the internet instead of the sea of half-truths and unfounded opinion and personal trash; we could ideally separate from the flood of social newscasters.  Except in order to submit a copyright claim currently in the U.S. there is a global charge of $45.  Not bad… but every time you want to publish something you need to submit it before you can publish.  Government would make a killing off this, especially if you “tweet” every 10 minutes, or post up a picture from your iPhone on Facebook frequently just to share with the world whatever it was you wanted to share.

Here’s the downside, social media and the internet in general has been the final frontier in free speech and one of the few freedoms Americans and the world proudly defend.  Being required to show proof of ownership to publish a post on a social media site or upload that photo of your darling adorable kid could be considered a gross invasion of privacy and profiling.  Your entire life being categorized processed and stored for records at government facilities and databases on file no matter how innocent or suspicious it looks.  Suddenly, wanting to share your opinions behind the veil of the internet doesn’t feel so empowering anymore.

What’s this all mean?  Honestly… I have no clue.  I’m a big proponent in the words spoken by a very famousCharlie Chaplin, “we have developed speed, machinery that gives us abundance has left us in want.”  I believe it is true, that we have lost humanity to the cold and isolation of technology.  Technology itself has become our avatar.  Nowadays audiences are so floored and captured not by intriguing tales with great morals, but to the intricate and believably photorealistic special effects and every ounce of adrenaline-fueled action packed onto the screen.  Of course, the film and TV industry is not all action.  Each genre has an idiom but most are self-serving, shallow, or pedantic.

We concern ourselves more with the “feel good now” and the aesthetic than we do on the purpose, and true nature.  Even more sinister at the heart of general social culture is the disinterest in global good.  Make no mistake, I do not point a finger at any individual and say that he or she is unwilling to learn at all; most are just so concerned with only the individual goal, that anything beyond in science or nature that does not directly relate to that goal is usually not worth learning about.

All throughout grade school and high school I shared that sentiment.  Something changed though; as I reached adulthood I found myself curious about every facet of life, nature, and the world.  I jump at the chance to absorb new knowledge about something when I am introduced to it.  Now, I yearn for deeper understanding, even philosophical; I don’t just question what, but why.  Especially with these kinds of issues our society currently faces, I ask why about politics, laws, even new technological emergence. 

I have a deep passion for audio, an affinity for learning, and an equal passion for film making and the dying art of telling stories.  So naturally, when I see a film, play a videogame, or read a book, I tend to experience it differently than most.  The first time when I watched Jurassic Park and the T-Rex pounded its way onto the screen and roared a majestic roar, the sound evoked a visceral feeling in my gut that resonated with some undefined emotion; it makes me smile and drop my jaw in awe, and instantly wonder how the creators made that sound.  What sources natural or synthesized did it take to get it to sound that way, and how did they make it sound so believable.  In fact, what was it about that particular sound and sight on screen that made it so believable?  I’ll bet when most people watch a TV show or film (at least for the very first time) they probably don’t wonder these things.  I know, some of you will; we apparently have something in common: we’re not the majority.

Today, in a world where the line between what’s real and what’s fabricated is so hard to distinguish, it forces us to scrutinize and become all the more skeptical.  Suddenly, everyone’s a critic.  People have such potent and distasteful opinions of our own media, yet we consume it still like it’s quite the opposite.  We all focus on the negative and explain how we would have done it differently (if not better).  We all aspire, we all have ideas, but in the wake of technology advancing beyond our capacity for compassion and kindness, have we lost touch with humanity, or is humanity evolving into this beast?

What industry are you in or aspire to get into?  What challenges have you faced in it, and what ideas can you think of to creatively troubleshoot the issues at hand?