The San Francisco Public Library intends to change its book tracking system from bar codes to RFIDs. “Several consumer and public interest groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, oppose the widespread introduction of RFID without careful limitations on how and where it is used.”
Tag: 02.26.04
Some Rights Reserved
A few years ago it was rare to hear authors and publishers talking about alternative copyrights. But thanks to success stories and the efforts of copyright reform groups like the Creative Commons organization, the publishing industry is beginning to warm to the idea of some rights reserved.”
An Arts Incubator At Ground Zero
At the World Trade Center site, “an unusual nexus of arts philanthropies, arts organizations, and far-thinking designers is set to create an autonomous complex fostering the creative spirit on stage, page, and canvas. Tentatively dubbed the ‘Arts Incubator,’ the project is being bankrolled by such well-heeled organizations as the American Express Foundation and the Norman Lear Family Foundation and will be the handiwork of architect-turned-set-designer David Rockwell and Kevin Kennon.”
Challenging The Nea Funding Increase
President Bush’s proposal to increase the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by 15 percent is a good thing, right? So why are so many arts supporters talking down the idea?
Multiculturalism – Trust The Ones You Know?
“A large ongoing survey of American communities seems to show, uncomfortably, that levels of trust and co-operation are highest in the most homogenous neighbourhoods. People living in diverse areas, it turns out, are not just more suspicious of people who don’t look like them; they are also more suspicious of their own kind. Because of that, they suffer socially, economically and politically.”
The Golden Age Of Music (It’s Right Now)
There’s no end of doom and gloom about the music business these days. But that’s just the business. “There’s never been a better time to be in the music industry? Try telling that to the thousands of music workers who have been laid off over the past couple of years. Universal slashed its workforce by 11% last year. Tower Records filed for bankruptcy in the US two weeks ago. But with album sales rising and the phenomenal growth of ringtones and legal downloads, plus record-breaking years for merchandising and publishing rights, it seems the death of the music industry has been greatly exaggerated.”
Acousti-Guard – How Do You “Fix” Royal Festival Hall?
London’s Royal Festival Hall has a big problem. “The main problem is the hall’s acoustics. They’re awful. Simon Rattle once said that playing there ‘saps the will to live’. Even the RFH’s resident orchestras, who have historically been defensive about their home, now openly admit it ‘leaves a lot to be desired’.” But doing anything about the sound is more problematic than a mere acoustical upgrade…
Asking Questions Of Louise Bourgeois
Sculptor Louise Bourgeois is 92. The Guardian asked artists to submit questions to her. “In a way, Bourgeois’s history has paralleled that of modernism and surrealism. Yet she has always been somehow apart. This too is her strength…”
Pierre: How Music Saved My Life
Booker prize-winner DBC Pierre was at a low point. Contemplating suicide. Then he discovered the Romantic classics. “I realised my feelings were being set to music. I froze, and heard every detail of my turmoil being painted in symphony. The music acknowledged tumult, contradiction, confusion, fear and the ultimate conquest of the dark plains of psyche and soul. It announced that misery was life’s default, and beckoned me to stay close to it, proposing conflict to be a sweet and human thing, a many-textured set of riddles that needed recourse to nothing but a working nervous system. The Romantics had found me. I took them full in the vein.”
Omnivore – A New Magazine For/Of Culture
Former New Yorker Magazine staffer Lawrence Weschler is trying to launch a new magazine called Omnivore: A Journal of Writing & Visual Culture. Weschler is “dissatisfied with current newsstand choices, contending that extended nonfiction reportage intended for general-interest magazines has atrophied amid ‘the increasingly peg-driven, niche-slotted, attention-squeezed, sound-bit media environment of recent years.’ In short, writers such as A.J. Liebling, John Hersey, and Joseph Mitchell would feel crunched for space today.”