Week 5- iPhones Instead Of Digital Cameras.

     I guess I’ve always called myself an iPhone photographer.  I just never knew that it was actually a “thing”.  Growing up, I had always saved all my coins for more expensive things versus frequent stops to the candy shop.  I splurged on a computer once, a nice compact little SONY one as well as digital cameras that are now going out of style.  Probably because of iPhones.  I was always kind of a weird kid, my mom just called it perceptive.  I wanted a camera to take snap shots of everything because I knew someday soon I would look back on my early childhood and think “damn, those were the days, not a worry in the world….”  I would take video recording of my great aunt Martha, literally asking her questions about life.  She was at the end of a very long and beautiful life.  She never married and lived in a glamorous New York City apartment all her life so I guess I was just interested.  Looking back she probably thought it was strangely humorous that a 12 year old holding a machine a foot away from her face always proclaiming “wait, no, don’t answer yet!  I havn’t pushed record!” 

     As the years passed and I was a junior in high school I was introduced to the iPhone and didn’t really get all the hype.  Probably because I lived in Elmore where there was no cell service and no wifi.  My iPhone was just a fancy means of basic communication until I started to discover free apps like instagram.  This is when I probably first started to believe that I was an IPhone photographer, when I discovered instagram.  I’m still sort of obsessed with Instagram.  I love all the different filters and how you can boost a photo and choose a border.  I can’t really afford to have an iPhone but I still choose to keep it because I feel like my pictures look great and I’ve never lost the little girl who feels like they need to capture everything through some sort of lens.  My iPhone is just the most convenient lens I’ve found and its awesome that the convenience doesn’t comprise the quality of a shot!  

This week I was really intrigued and interested in the article Lisa shared about the women who compose short novels via their iPhones.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_goodyear?currentPage=all 

     I use the "note" section of my iPhone to write down intense thoughts that I have in the moment when I don't have a journal handy.  I have notes on my iPhone that date back to 2012 around the time my dad died.  I love reading them because it brings me back to the moment I wrote the note.  Raw emotions that I had to let out via my iPhone.  Maybe one day I'll write a book based off the notes of my own iPhone.  My own little short novel :)

Week 4- MagnatuNe ~ "we are not evil"

John Buckman created this awesome music sharing site called Magnatune that basically allows the average Joe to share his music and talent with the world.  Joe might have limited resources, like low money funds and not knowing any big shots in the music biz, but what he does have is raw musical talent that should be shared with the world.  Sometimes I get annoyed at the money making cooperate feel of the music industry in terms of labels and record deals because it seems like passion and raw talent are no longer the target points.  Money is.  The average Joe would never have the means to compete with stars like Miley Cyrus EVEN IF the average listener would much rather listen to the raw talent of Joe versus the ludicrous and raunchy lyrics of Miley.

Average Joe isn't rich, he has 3 kids to feed and only has the time as well as the means to send his music to sites like Magnatune because this site is "not evil" and believes that "musicians should keep the rights to their music"and still make some money off of it.  Magnatune is so great because it allows people like Joe to share the music they create without having to deal with the music politics of copy right laws or without having to sign away the rights to their music over to be a record company.  According to Buckman, the music industry in the US is worth about 12 billion dollars.  8 Billion of that is used on licensing music (copy right laws) in lawyer offices.  Wow.

Basically, Magnatune and the Artist have an understanding that their music is free to the public and theirs to use.  Buckman explains that "as long as you don't make money off of it, you're just marketing for us".  Buckman chooses 3 percent of the best music he receives from self made music artists and he makes his money by charging users 15 dollars a month.  Buckman gives half of that money to the artist.  Before checking out the sight (which is beautifully designed) and listing to the interview (rules-for-the-revolution) I was a bit iffy.  Why should I pay 15 dollars a month when I can download "hit" songs from youtube to my iTunes for free?  Then it hit me.  I think that Magnatune is a part of the "fair trade" movement, just on a smaller and much more local scale.

fair trade

noun

1.

  

trade in which fair prices are paid to producers in developing countries.

John Buckman seems to be a smart and ethically aware business man.  I was curious to find out more about him which led me to the discovery of his blog.  I learned that him and his girlfriend recently got mushroom poisoning and were violently ill for two weeks....humorous and informative blog for sure!

http://blogs.magnatune.com/

The Internet is 5,000 days old... *SIGH*

Kevin Kelly made me think…

When he said we aren't amazed I literally looked at the screen and started to shake my head profusely.  I was watching in BoCo café (I work here) eating food.  I wanted to point to the kid whipping out his iPhone 5 and using his parents platinum credit card to pay for his breakfast via an ipad (I talked about during my last post) and declare “OMG you Aren’t amazed, are you?  Keven’s right you aren’t and you should be!”  I mean come on who am I to judge? Maybe deep down inside he was amazed… buuuut then again he was probably too dazed by the cloud to really even know or care or both.

I had to stop watching the Ted talk and write.  I think I’m starting to slowly figure out how I want to live my life.  I used to always be such a hippie.  Being a hippy was always smoking weed and being all earthy, I gave up drugs but yet I still feel like I'm fighting.  I was a rebel fighting for a cause, that cause I’m only now starting to figure out what the hell exactly means.  I always thought I was supposed to be born in the 60s because they actually had a clear reason why they revolted against society.  There was this huge counter culture of people who rebelled against society for legit reasons.  They took it too far with the whole phyco-delic drug thing but I mean they were just testing the boundaries of what was right and what wasn’t.  They became rebels of this wonderful army fighting for peace, love, and harmony for all people under this one nation that was founded on the grounds of Christianity.  One nation under God, something I believe we should have never left behind BUT how in the world would we have managed to take it with us?  There were these confused people who ended up burning the bible because the people on the opposite end of the spectrum were even more confused and manipulated the word of the bible into being a set of rules that turned out to be impossible for people to uphold, thus making Christianity a disgusting turn off to anyone with a creative soul that felt as if their individual creativity and inter most desires and passions were a work of the devil and something to be ashamed of.  The bible was taken so strictly, rigidly, and so black and white when it was never meant to be that way.  My god would never want people to turn to drugs and become perma-trips which is what happened to some people of the 60s BUT EVEN MORE SO he would not want people calling themselves Christians if they twisted the bible into thinking that woman's rights, the curiosity of sexuality, and spirituality through yoga and anything “new age” was surely going to give you a ticket straight to hell….

I think this relates to a lot of today's problems.  Why young kids are becoming drug addicts and developing drinking problems and all that.  There is such a HUGE generation gap between older people and younger people and so much misunderstanding.  We are the technology generation going through a revolt of our own.  The counter-culture back then (hippies in revolt) looks so damn simple compared to today's counter-culture.  There’s nothing wrong with technology, it’s a wonderful thing but I feel like my generation is so “stuck in the cloud” that it might be hurting us more than benefiting us.  We know more about about our iPhone and who Siri is than we know about own selves. 

I just couldn't believe it when Kevin stated that "First, that basically what this machine is doing is embodying. We're giving it a body. And that's what we're going to do in the next 5,000 days -- we're going to give this machine a body. And the second thing is, we're going to restructure its architecture. And thirdly, we're going to become completely codependent upon it."  He went on to explain that soon we won't even have to remember our own phone numbers, we can just google it.  So does this mean the extinction of human memory is soon to come?  I mean I don't know...

BASICALLY YOUNG PEOPLE NEED MORE SPIRITUALITY (which is a journey, by no means am I preaching) AND TO PLAY IN THE DIRT...

I'll be back later to edit this, I understand it is a bit of a rant and should be a bit more organized and factual :)

My Life in the Cloud

I guess I never realized how much "in the cloud" I truly am.  I thought my online presence was so non existent that I was almost invisible but nope I'm right here, you can see me. 

The blogging topic of the week "Are you in the cloud?" reminded me a lot of this cafe gig I got going on for the time being.  We have a little iPad in replacement of a cash register.  I take peoples' credit cards, run them through an attachment on the iPad and WALLA you have officially paid for your food and drink via a computer app.  After the payment goes through I flip the iPad so it faces the customer and then they have the option of selecting a tip, whether they want their receipt emailed or printed, and then they sign their signature by using there finger to draw on the screen.  I prompt the customer telling them what they are going to have to do just because I think it would be rude to let someone be a bit embarrassed because they don't know what the hell to do when I flip the screen to them.  I don't want them to feel like they are outsmarted by a computer, I guess.  Occasionally I'll get the techy Boulderite who feels the need to quickly let me know "I already know how this works" as if saying "oh my god girl get with it the times are changing and if you don't know this shit well girl you ain't shit."  I mean pretty much, something like that.  But most of the time I get "oh my god, what? Haha, that is too funny" or "wow you've got to be kidding me, what are they going to think of next?"  The other day one girl was so shocked by this technology she just shook her head at me.  I laughed and was like "dude I know one day we're all going to be robots".  We then went on to talk about how scientists are now coming up with something along the lines of an artificial heart.  Think about the tin man from the Wizard of Oz for a second.  He wanted a heart and he wanted to be oiled so he wasn't so stiff, he just wanted to be normal which meant be natural.  Now fast forward to modern times; the tin man is now thinking that its okay he has no heart and it's pretty cool he looks like a robot.  The times are a' changin'. It sounds like I'm saying it's a bad change but I mean its good change for the most part.  Our resources are expanding.  I think any sort of change is a bit scary.  It's scary to think that 10 years ago AT&T promised we would be able to have business conferences "in our bare feet" and they were right.  What seemed like an impossible prediction turned out to be the future.  Makes me wonder what is going to come next.....??? Flying cars and credit cards embedded into our thumb print for the sake of convenience :)