Author: MK

By now most of you have heard of, and probably watched the video of, the cab driver* who made it on air at the BBC, in place of pundit Guy Kewney.

Guy was supposed to be on air speaking about the recent legal skirmishes between Apple Corps (The Beatles) and Apple Computer. As the story goes, a cab driver was pulled from the reception area, a mic slapped on him, and before he knew it, was on air being interviewed about this trial. Link to the video and story on the Daily Mail.

Here is a nice excerpt from the interview:
Karen Bowerman: Guy Kewney is editor of the technology website Newswireless.
Face of horror
KB: Hello, good morning to you.
Mr Goma: Good morning.
(snip)
KB: With regards to the costs involved do you think now more people will be downloading online?
Mr Goma: Actually If you can walk everywhere you are going to see a lot of people downloading the internet and the website and everything they want. But I think eh It is much better for development and eh to inform people what they want and to get the easy way and so faster if they are looking for.
(snip)

Yes, this is pretty hilarious on one level. Also is it quite absurd that this fellow ended up on air at all, given that Guy Kewney is pretty well known, and known to not be a black person with a French accent, but rather a bloke who is “…fair-haired, blue-eyed, prominent-nosed, and with the sort of pale skin that makes my dermatologist wince each time I complain about an itchy mole.” (quoted from Kewney’s website)

One of my first thoughts upon seeing this wasn’t that “hur hur hur, doesn’t the BBC look stupid, ha ha ha” but more – “hey, hats off to this poor chap who got stuck in this weird situation somehow, he at least tried to answer the questions!” A few bloggers and commenters around the Big Web congratulated the trapped interviewee for his intestinal fortitude and stabs at answers. It led me to wonder why pundits are always necessary in this situation. I’m not advocating bringing randoms onto the nightly news for comedic value, but in many cases, the opinion from the person on the street could actually be more insightful, and perhaps connect more with the person at home, than the highly specific, tightly constructed argument of the pundit.

I mean, questions about downloading music – wouldn’t it be more interesting to speak to a fifteen-year-old girl? Or someone who uses MySpace to promote their band? Someone, anyone, just not a pundit? Or maybe not someone, anyone, but – an intelligent amateur.

Paul Miller blogs about the “Pro-Am Revolution“, which in other words means the methods by which passionate amateurs are transforming the notions of professionalism, breaking all kinds of barriers and changing the way business is done, et cetera. Some of the “amateurs” that are profiled on the Pro-Am blog would be much more interesting interviewees than some pundits, surely.

This is not advocating that Guy Kewney (who I am sure is a really great guy) or any other pundit be put out of a job. Nothing sadder than a pundit in the unemployment line. But maybe a bit more of a balance, and a bit more public debate between “pro” and “amateur”, to keep the pundits on their toes.

* this is in dispute. The new story is that the chap was a business school graduate from Congo at the BBC for a job interview. Who knows, eh? …

I have been thinking a lot about what I have come to call the “smallweb”. It’s inspired by many things, and perhaps the best way to get started is by listing those things.

The smallweb is like the old BBSes of yore, when you dialled up and knew all the other dudes (mostly dudes) online. Long-distance charges were an issue, so you wanted to call locally. My brother maintained one called “Dragon’s Lair” or something. Small, local, intimate.

Robert Sharp maintains a Yahoo Group for his family, and another one for the people who live in his tenement. They are closed groups, obviously. The one about his tenement is so they can basically complain about whose turn it is to clean the stairs (correct me if I’m wrong, Rob.) I love this idea. I would love to join, just to eavesdrop – but that would ruin the point. The point is, I don’t live at 123 Wherever Road, so I have no business knowing who has forgotten to sweep the stairs for the fourth time in a row.

Before I arrived in Edinburgh, I thought that backnet was the local community wireless group. Turns out I was pretty wrong. Instead, what we have here are a group of people interested in creating a virtual private network and connecting to each other, experimenting with network infrastructure, and in general, having fun designing, building and managing local and wide-area networks. They are not outward-facing. At first I will admit I was a bit surprised. Eventually I realised that what they are doing is less glamourous but just as interesting as more public-facing community connectivity projects. It’s like a barn-raising. Everyone pitches in to build and maintain the network. There are no passive “users”. It is a very small web.

Another random problem is the “who’s listening” problem. I just posted something very Montreal-specific, the announcement about Nicolas Fleming’s show. According to my current web statistics, only 5% of my web traffic comes from Canada. Who knows what percentage of that is from Montreal. So realistically, much less than 5% of my visitors will even care about this exhibition that I so lovingly described, and encouraged you all to attend. While I wish I could just follow Robert’s lead and make a Yahoo Group for all my art tips for my Montreal friends, it would just be simpler if I filtered IP addresses and geo-specific posts only showed up if it was relevant to where you are – which I think (again, someone correct me if I’m wrong) is how the BBC managed to filter out people who were not in the UK from watching their downloadable episodes of their new show, “The IT Crowd”.

Think small.

This concludes part one. I am going to synthesize these thoughts and come back for part two.

If you live in Montreal, you really ought to check out the current exhibition at the Galerie de l’UQAM. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s piece The Paradise Institute is on (which many of you may have seen already – it has toured extensively), but also on view is À Ras Le Paysage, an exhibition of performance documentation/paintings by Nicolas Fleming. I really enjoy his work and wish I could pop over to Montreal and check out this show (which is on until the 17th of June, FYI).

I recently had the pleasure of writing about Nicolas’ work for an upcoming exhibition of his at Eastern Edge Gallery. It feels very meta- something to do this, but to better explain what I think of Fleming’s work, I thought I would link here to a previous blog entry I wrote on this work, and also quote from the text I wrote for Nicolas’ show at Eastern Edge: “Fleming’s unconventional process reflects a desire to attain a deeper intimacy with his subject matter through focused concentration and sheer physical effort. He imposes performative restraints that subvert the ease of the gaze and replaces it with the difficult task of relying on tactile and aural memory. Fleming’s methods address questions about one man’s relationship to the land, as well as one man’s relationship with his own sensory input, and how both sets of relationships may be developed. As the final paintings reveal, the interactions of these internal and external relationships render a highly personal portrayal not just of place, but also of perception.”

Ahhh that feels better. Now I can be un-meta and write normally, not in hyperlinks and quotes of writing that I did for another purpose.