Remix Culture update

From a recent interview with Lawrence Lessig on developments in the remix culture efforts:

One way I've begun to think about this is to question whether within our culture, writing is allowed. Now when you say the word writing, for those of us over the age of 15, our conception of writing is writing with text, and in fact our tradition protects the right to write with text and to draw upon other people's writings with text quite substantially. People can review my book and quote my words in reviewing my book, criticize me, do whatever they want, and that's protected by a tradition of fair use that has taken hundreds of years to develop but is now pretty strong.

But if you think about the ways kids under 15 using digital technology think about writing--you know, writing with text is just one way to write, and not even the most interesting way to write. The more interesting ways are increasingly to use images and sound and video to express ideas. Well, all of those ways of writing under the law as it's understood right now are basically illegal unless you secure permission from the author up front. So the same act of creativity in some sense, you know, taking, creating, mixing out of what other people do, is legal in the text world and illegal in the digital media world. And the struggle is to get people to recognize that there's no good reason for the rules to be so radically different between the two contexts, and that we ought to be encouraging a wider range of creativity using digital media--both because there are many people who would be extraordinarily talented in exploiting those types of creativity, and also because it would really spur growth in collective literacy about how media itself functions and how it has its effect.

O'Reilly Network: Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig

US Zipcode Spatial Map

This may be old for some of you, but this morning when I arrived at EA, there was this cool link circulating for a MIT project. Check it out:
http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode/

good read

interesting new essay in the ny times by steven johnson, author of emergence and mind wide open. you'll have to google those since I don't have the energy to link to them right now.

the article basically goes into how using software has helped johnson see connections between things he never would seen by storing his stuff in databases then performing cross-refs and etc.

a good read via boingboing (or, the Cory Doctorow DRM talk translation Blog)

BBC hoaxed on Dow Bhopal responsibility story

(EMEA News, 12/3/04) The BBC has issued a retraction of an interview aired on BBC World this morning, which purportedly showed a Dow Chemical spokesperson taking responsibility for the Bhopal gas tragedy and promising huge compensation to victims. More

(London Times, 12/3/04) The Yes Men are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, two enigmatic activists who use the internet and media to lampoon corporations and politicians. Although it is unclear which of them fronted the elaborate hoax that tricked the BBC into broadcasting a fake apology for the Bhopal disaster - the so-called spokesman looked like Bichlbaum - the stunt carries all their hallmarks. More

Clueless

Hi. Please explain again how to log in to comment (step-by-step). If our Movable-Type logins don't work, then which one is it?

Thanks!

fcc rules!

ABC affiliates are so freaked by the FCC that some won't broadcast Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg and ABC won't allow the broadcast to be edited for content, or aired outside of primetime.

"Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law?" [ABC Affiliate in Des Moines, IA] WOI-TV President Raymond Cole said in a statement appearing on its Web site. "With the current FCC, we just don't know."

Janice Wise, spokeswoman for the FCC's enforcement bureau, told Reuters it had received calls from broadcasters asking if the film would run afoul of the agency's indecency rules. Wise said the commission was barred from making a decision before the broadcast "because that would be censorship."

"If we get a complaint, we'll act on it," she said.

But at least one watchgroup group that has urged the FCC to levy harsher fines for questionable programming said the broadcast should go ahead.

The group, the Parents Television Council, said in a statement on its Web site that "context is everything."

via cnn

'Brain' in a dish flies flight simulator'

A Florida scientist has developed a "brain" in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy.
Read the Article

A message from Randall Packer: Do You Still Own Your Reality?

Message from the Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology:

The Republicans are heightening the attack, ramping up their spin
strategies to reinforce disinformation in order to fool the country
into re-election.

Straight out of the playbook from Orwell's 1984...

They continue to retool their highly refined doublespeak tactics to
maintain a stranglehold on the reality of unsuspecting Americans.

Have the Republicans co-opted your reality?

According to columnist Tina Brown in the Washington Post discussing
the VP debate:

"Cheney found a more primitive way to bluff with a bad hand... In a
culture of blatherers, Cheney intimidates with his silences, his
stingers, and above all his awesome capacity to stare down the
evidence and assert that black is white."

Despite the fact that this week, the administration's own Paul
Bremer, Don Rumsfeld, and the weapons investigator Charles Duelfer
have all declared the reason's for going to war were deeply flawed,
as well as the so called follow-up plan, Bush and Cheney not only
stand their ground, they tighten their tenuous grip on a fictional
narrative designed to disguise their true ambition to control the
oil-rich middle east.

The real issue in this election though, is America going to wake up
to the dream (or nightmare) it finds itself in? Can we lift the veil
on the disinformation pouring out of the White House. Can we take
command of our own reality?

Or has America's reality been permanently hijacked by the Republicans
and their media propaganda machine?

Randall M. Packer
Secretary, US Department of Art & Technology

awesomeness on the election front

not sure how many of you watched the veep debate last night, but apparently some funny "internet" based fun went down as a result of the part where DICK cheney told viewers to check the facts of an edwards response (which actually turned out to be true...) at factcheck.com

One problem with Cheney's rebuttal: He misspoke. He meant to say "factcheck.org," rather than ".com." According to the Wall Street Journal, the company that owns factcheck.com, Name Administration Inc., took advantage of Cheney's error to redirect traffic to a page titled, "Why we must not re-elect President Bush: a personal message from George Soros."*

from a slate article via waxy:

Living Room Candidate

The Living Room Candidate - Presedential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004 is a wonderful electronic media archive of Campaign Ads essentially since Television became a medium relevant to campaigning. Amazing. It would be great to have access to those this election's campaign ads that only make it to the "swing" states.

Test Post (is this mike on)

Testing testing 123.

couple of /. links

usc robotics gets shoutout
An Anonymous Reader writes "LivingCreatures.com has released several new photos of the humanoid robot platform that it developed for the USC Interaction Lab. The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child and will serve as a human-robot interaction (HRI) testbed for studies involving imitation, learning, and the effects that interaction with humanoid robots has on children."

mike, will and i were discussing reappropriation of media last night (from mashup tunes to cut n paste video), so this story caught my eye:
slashdotbs writes "The New York Times writes that 'A handful of Web users are programming their own virtual TV newscasts and eclectic collections of video clips using a free media-sharing tool called Webjay. The site makes it easy to build, share and watch playlists of audio and video links culled from around the Internet.' Although the site was originally intended to be used for audio playlist creation, it turns out that it can also be used effectively for video. In addition, you can create "video mashups", where you blend audio and video together to present a new message. By using simple smil commands in a URL, a CBS news report can become a short clip of George Bush saying "I can't do my job" (the third track on this playlist)."

and finally, again for brinker cause we were talking about mods and games and this reminded me of his final last year (or what i knew about it before i got sick):
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the official 'The Ship' website, featuring "a free downloadable [multiplayer] Half Life 1 mod" described by a forum poster as "a twisted version of Agatha Christie meets Clue." The welcome page details: "You've just won a free ticket to a dream cruise onboard a spectacular, replica 1920's cruise ship!", and the official play guide explains some of the intriguing game mechanics, which involves each player needing to "find out the name [of each fellow 'passenger' on the Ship], eliminate unknown passengers, and find out which one is your quarry", then "kill them without being caught by security or too many witnesses." There are also additional wrinkles in the recently released mod, since: "To curb excessive killing, players are traumatised by committing murders", and "Each player has basic needs [including going to the bathroom] which must be taken care of."

ZML Down

I'm only posting this here because this is important and I want people to see the message. Essentially - important news.

The Zemeckis Immersive lab is currently without electricity for a while. This means that none of the computers, projectors, or rack mounted equipment will function. The only thing that can be turned on are the lights. I received the following email from Alan Starbuck, the manager of the Zemeckis center. Here is his message. I am sorry if this is a hinderance to any of you. Please read below for more information. I will send out an email the minute things are fixed.

From Alan Starbuck --

Hello--

--Alan

Clock

Check out this clock:
http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/~yugo/storage/monocrafts_ver3/03/index.html

output

so appropriate and relevent I can't handle it., esp. concerning the recent annenberg symposium and the collection of material for our submission of a Siggraph sketch. Taken from Micheal McDonough’s 10 Things They Never Taught You at Design School via archinect

9. It all comes down to output. No matter how cool your computer rendering is, no matter how brilliant your essay is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if you can’t output it, distribute it, and make it known, it basically doesn’t exist. Orient yourself to output. Schedule output. Output, output, output. Show Me The Output.

Gates: "Buy" stamps to send e-mail

...the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith.

Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates. A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.

"In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up," said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favors market-based approaches.

"To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is "living in Fantasyland," Arrison said.

damn Marxist e-mail users. Shame on you all.

via CNN

DVDs give directors another shot

These days, a filmmaker's job isn't always finished when the movie plays in theaters. Peter Jackson's definitive DVD version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will top 11 hours — more than two hours longer than the theatrical version. New Line releases the extended Return of the King DVD in November.

Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart, a movie he yanked out of theaters in 1982 after just a week and a half because of poor reviews, was resurrected on DVD last month. Coppola's American Zoetrope DVD lab restored the film. "The DVD represents a more direct access to the audience," he says. "(Now) I have the satisfaction of knowing a good version is out there to see."

Full USAToday Article

MGLA February Mtg.

Tuesday, February 17 @ LA Film School
------7:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. ------ Cover charge: FREE ------

MGLA focuses on techniques for getting "real work done",
ranging from Photoshop tricks for motion graphics to text for film
titles to 3D for a weekly television show. Here's an overview of the presentations they have planned:

LINEUP: 3D Motion Control Camera Moves / Titles for "Cold Mountain" /
Graphics for "More Than Human" / Projects with Combustion

* Digital Motion Control Camera Moves in 3D *

First came "motion control camera" moves on still images...then came
tilting these images in 3D space...then came the technique
popularized in the movie The Kid Stays in the Picture of cutting
portions of a photo out from its background and separating the
elements in 3D space, resulting in more realistic multiplaning as
virtual cameras move around them in 3D. But many users are still not
100% clear on exactly how you would go about preparing elements for
and executing this advanced technique in programs like Photoshop and
After Effects.

MGLA regular Thomas Luth will
demonstrate this technique for us, including some tips for cleaning
up photos, and creating variably soft edges of elements on layers,
with demonstrations of 2D and 3D variations of the technique. He is
working on a music video (Teri Hitt's "Free Yourself") that uses this
technique extensively, so he has plenty of first-hand knowledge of
how to pull it off.

So that you can put what you learn to work, we've arranged a number
of related door prizes - including a copy of Photoshop CS, Total
Training on DVDs for Photoshop, and excellent Photoshop book - more
details in the door prize list at the end.

* Opening and Closing Titles for "Cold Mountain" *

MGLA co-host Trish Meyer of CyberMotion
was the animator for the opening and closing titles on the recent
mega-movie "Cold Mountain" (working with Deborah Ross Film Design).

She will demonstrate the techniques she used to make the text and
images of Cold Mountain emerge and disappear back into the rippling
water of a well. Trish will undoubtedly have additional war stories
on the overall issues of working with film elements (especially when
the film editorial team is a continent and ocean away), and how stock
footage came to the rescue. Enter
in your
browser to download a QuickTime movie (2.95 meg) of the opening
portion of the titles.

Tying in to this, we will be giving away one of the Artbeats
libraries used in the Cold Mountain tiles, as well as a full set of
Trish and Chris Meyer's After Effects books. Again, more details
below.

* Kicking Out 3D Graphics for a Weekly TV Show *

MGLA co-host Lachlan Westfall will discuss how his shop, Quiet Earth
Design , has approached cranking out 3D
graphics for a weekly hour-long show on Discovery titled "More Than
Human." Lachlan is tasked with creating illustrative 3D graphics
depicting scenes ranging from people who survive steel rebar piercing
their head, to sword swallowers, to people who catch arrows shot out
of a bow and much more.

Lachlan will discuss how he determines where to put the focus of
certain shots when the deadline is so tight and there are inevitable
compromises to be made. He'll also show how layered rendering and
integration with Adobe AE is also key in turning this stuff out
quickly, as well as the development of various "looks" to be used
when photorealism is not an option due to both time and budget.

* Projects with Discreet Combustion *

During the January meeting, we received an update that the Mac
version of Discreet's combustion 3
was "hours" away from shipping
- and indeed, it shipped later that evening! As a follow-up, motion
graphics artist Brendan Lambe will share with us tips and techniques
for some projects he's been doing with combustion for clients such as
Disney. We will more post more details here as we have them.

* demo reels *

We plan to have time to show a couple of reels. You are welcome to
show your reel or a recent project, as long as you are willing to
come up to the mic beforehand to share with us what tools you used
and some other ideas on how you executed it (a great opportunity to
plug you and your business). Reels are shown on a first come/first
shown basis until we run out of time; hand your reel to Warren Heaton
before the meeting or during the break. You will be asked to come
down front and discuss your work, so don't be shy!

Please keep the running time under 3 minutes, and make sure your
sources are copy-right cleared and properly attributed. Formats we
can play include DVD, DigiBeta, BetaSP, VHS, DV, and DVCAM. Please
bring your contact information so we can list you in the meeting
summary.

* door prizes *

The prize theme this month is Photoshop and stock footage. Tickets
are free, and are handed out during the second half of the meeting
(take one and pass the remaining down the line). You must be present
to win; winners get their choice of the remaining prizes in the order
they are drawn. This month's list of prizes includes (nearly $2000
worth):

* courtesy of Adobe, a full copy of Adobe Photoshop CS (for either
platform $649 value)

* Artbeats: Liquid Ambience stock footage library ($399 value). Note
if you buy any library worth $229 or more from them in January, you
can add on Cloud Flythroughs 2 for just $249 more (a $450 discount).

* the just-released Total Training for Adobe Photoshop with Deke
McClelland ($299 value)

* a Logitech Z-560 THZ-certified 400 watt speaker system, courtesy of
3Dconnexion ($200 value)

* Texturing Concepts Texture Map Fundamentals with Adobe Photoshop
training DVD from Desktop Images ($60 value)

* a copy of After Effects in Production by MGLA co-hosts Trish &
Chris Meyer from ($50 value)

* a copy of Creating Motion Graphics Volume 1: The Essentials by MGLA
co-hosts Trish & Chris Meyer ($55 value)

* a copy of Creating Motion Graphics Volume 2: Advanced Techniques by
MGLA co-hosts Trish & Chris Meyer ($60 value)

* a copy of Photoshop CS Artistry courtesy of Peachpit Press ($55 value)

* a copy of O'Reilly's Digital Photography Pocket Guide 2nd edition ($15 value)

And again, thanks to Adobe's sponsorship of MGLA this year, admission
is free! We look forward to seeing you on the 17th.

Chris, Trish, Lucky, Tony, Warren, and Marshal
Your MGLA co-hosts

------------------------------

Directions:
LA Film School
6363 Sunset Boulevard
(the corner of Sunset and Ivar)
Hollywood, CA 90028
Phone: 323.860.0789

The theater has its own entrance on Ivar - do not try to enter on Sunset!

From the 101 Freeway:
If coming from the East, exit Vine and turn right (South) to head to
Sunset Blvd. Turn right, go past the Film School to Ivar, turn right
again, and then look for street parking or enter the parking
structure on your left (see below). If you are coming West, there is
no Vine exit; go to Cahuenga, South to Sunset, left, and left on Ivar.

From the 10 Freeway:
Exit La Brea and go North to Sunset Blvd. Turn right and go to Ivar;
turn Left on Ivar, and then look for street parking or enter the
parking structure on your left (see below).
Click here for a MapQuest interactive map, including the ability to
get directions from your location to this address.

NOTE ON PARKING: There is parking available in the building (entrance
on Ivar) for a $4 fee (goes up to $5 later in the evening). The
garage closes at 11 PM. There is also parking on the surrounding
streets if you want to avoid the fee.

If you get there early, Amoeba Records across the street is a great
place to kill time browsing for music; they also donate a portion of
their sales to the Rainforest Action Network. If you want to catch a
bite or drink before or after the meeting, the Cat and Fiddle at 6530
Sunset is a funky place, with the kitchen open until 11:30 PM.

===========================================================

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the
MGLA email list. To change your subscription status, go to

===========================================================

let them sing it

amusing...They definitely need a larger database of sounds, as common words like 'I,' 'want,' etc have the same sound. it would be easy to randomize this, so why not do it? I've seen things like this before, but not on the web. It's also nice that you can help augment the database: when you enter a word that is not found, you can suggest a artist and a song title where that word can be found.

Link via BoingBoing

MTV Gives Magazine a Remix
By DAVID CARR

Major magazines are generally introduced with a great deal of fanfare: news
releases, lavish parties and bold statements about the paradigm shift the new
publication represents. The much awaited MTV magazine will land a bit more
quietly this week. There will be on-air and on-Web promotion, but for the
most part, MTV is letting the first issue speak for itself.

But it will speak in a language that will leave many in publishing baffled.
SN, as the first issue is called (part of MTV's Spankin' New franchise),
represents a huge curveball in retail presentation and editorial execution.
It arrives in a plastic bag containing one large magazine that covers coming
releases in film, video games and toys, a smaller magazine that looks at new
music, and a multimedia compact disc with movie and game trailers and samples of music, games and movies. Graphically, the package is inhabited by "urban vinyl toys," photographs of little characters built out of motifs from punk
to hip-hop to horror movies.

MTV ignored offers from major publishers, most notably Hearst Magazines, and
hired Smoke, a New York-based firm that has created a variety of programming for various media clients. The issue it created is one of a kind; the next issue, due in January, will have another name and take a different approach. MTV is distributing 500,000 copies of the initial issue and promises
advertisers a rate base of 300,000.

"The essence of our brand is the unusual, the innovative and the unexpected,"
said Daniel P. Sullivan, group publisher at MTV. "We wanted something that
enabled us to be flexible and fluid in bringing MTV to our audience."

The large magazine's cover has a tiny logo, two vinyl characters seemingly
shrink-wrapped, and 10 words. In an age of busy, exclamation-ridden covers
that shout for attention, the approach relies on the MTV logo and the
idiosyncrasy of the visuals to entice readers. Bagging different media
elements into a single package for $5.95 is not without precedent, but the
publications inside are clearly aimed at the 21-year-old reader. The voice is
collegiate and friendly, the articles are very short, and topics are sampled
as opposed to thoroughly explored.

Mr. Sullivan said the size and the business plan for the publication would be
shaped by the response, but he and others at MTV were convinced an audience
raised on quick-cut videos was ready for a print product that reflected the
network's sensibility. "This could be a very good business for MTV," he
said. "It is a big brand and this is one more way for us to reinvent
ourselves."

ACM Launches New "Computers in Entertainment" Magazine

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the professional society for computing and the mother organization for SIGGRAPH is launching a new magazine called Computers in Entertainment. I don't know how many of you might be ACM student members, but I think it's $50 for members, so maybe the Division should get its own subscription . . .

Some of our own faculty at USC are on the Editorial Board, like Ulrich Neumann, the director of the IMSC; Tom Holman, the developer of THX; Elaine Chew; Cyrus Shahabi; Peter Vorderer; and Richard Edlund, who's an alum and occasionally teaches here, but he's also the chair of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy, so, being the local VFX enthusiast, I had to mention him.

data addiction

yeah, i know some of you have read this, but i think it's applicable to our research project.

Data Addition Article @NYTIMES

word.

Reclaiming the public domain

From Larry Lessig's blog:

We have launched a petition to build support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don’t, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years. The Act would do a great deal to reclaim a public domain.

If you are an ally in at least this cause, please sign the petition. Please blog it, please email it, please spam it, please buy billboards about it — please do whatever you can. And most importantly, please help us explain its importance. There is a chance to do something significant here. But it will take a clearer, simpler voice than mine.

Genderspace

Kurt: I'm glad you decided to re-post this entry as it raises questions that are certainly worth discussing.

Let me start with the obvious. Given that the majority of games are created by men for men, it isn't surprising that the women characters depicted in them are going to model the attitudes of a highly sexist culture. This just furthers the author's point, and I agree, of how immature game culture is. Given the demographics of both the players and creators, what do we expect? Furthermore, are we still surprised that women fail to take pleasure in these games that continue to depict us as prostitutes and princesses?

The harsher reality is that even though some creators think they are revolutionizing the gaming industry by creating action-hero women, the truth is that their efforts are totally lost because of their often sexist views of women. (Let me stress that I am not limiting my critique to the gaming industry. Misogyny manifests itself in a plethora of conscious and unconscious ways, thus marginalizing women politically, socially and economically.) Having said that, I often wonder how many gamers are avid porno-watchers. I wonder this because the women in both pornograhic films as well as games have the same look. Just look at the pictures of the women that the author posts within her article - all are beautiful, big-breasted, smiling and posed perfectly for the male pornographic gaze.

I can't say that if game companies started paying attention to this sad reality, thus creating believable female characters, that I would be any more inclined to play games. The truth is that I lost interest in gaming years ago ... sometime shortly after Mario Bros. for the Super Nintendo. While it's hard to determine exactly why I lost interest, I feel confident in saying that, like most women, games simply don't appeal to us like they do to men. This is decently obvious given the unfeminine goals of games: shooting people, raping prostitutes, racing cars, making tons of money, conquering the world, etc. Personally, it all seems like a waste of my brain power to sit in front of a TV, push buttons, and get upset, for no meaningful reason.

The good news, as I see it, is that this illustrates the potential for artists/game developers to create material that non-gamers can feel an emotional attachment to. From what I have heard, this is something that game companies are aware of and are certainly trying to implement into their products. I certainly don't think that game creators are sitting around saying, "We don't know how many women play our games, but we really don't care." I'm sure they are wondering how they can make their products appeal to an even larger demographic. While I give them the benefit of the doubt, I find it hard to believe that their priorities lie in developing material that is entertaining for women. In order to accomplish that feat, they would first have to hire women. We know how difficult this concept is for Hollywood.

Persistent digital identity

from http://www.headmap.com/blog/

3 years ago, [when the headmap books were written] most individuals didnt really have a persistent stable identity point on the internet. They had email, but that doesnt persist and doesnt have an address independent of the mailbox its in. There were web pages, but most were linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be sprawling and impersonal. Now with blogs there is a sense of an individuals time and location stamped presence on the web, blogs are for the most part inherently personal, subjective, locatable, extensions of individuals.

Individuals have instant access and control over that identity.

http://www.headmap.com/blog/

December 28, 2002

Persistent digital identity thoughts

3 years ago, [when the headmap books were written] most individuals didnt really have a persistent stable identity point on the internet. They had email, but that doesnt persist and doesnt have an address independent of the mailbox its in. There were web pages, but most were linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be sprawling and impersonal. Now with blogs there is a sense of an individuals time and location stamped presence on the web, blogs are for the most part inherently personal, subjective, locatable, extensions of individuals.

Blogs resurrect the concept of persistent identity. [I blog therefore I am].

Individuals have instant access and control over that identity.

A blog makes location more interesting. The individual is presumed to be moving, and to be having a subjective view of the space through which they are moving - whether virtual space (websites or whatever) or physical places.

A blog is not the same as a website, its an extension of an individual, it has an address

the individual has a physical location and is linked to the blog, a virtual location

the blog subjectively references addresses (physical and virtual)

A blog is potentially the vital conceptual bridge between email and a website, the one being private and the other often being too sprawling or collective to function as a simple personal identity.

It used to be that everyone who used the internet had something called a .fingerfile; which was a text file entirely written by and related to you, the user. You could put anything you liked into your .finger file and it served as your public identity to other users on the UNIX system you were using. You would type finger username and the person with that usernames finger file would come up.

The way internet use has evolved means that most people use email without having to deal directly or at all with unix and consequently most people dont use finger files. Subsequently the main expressions of their personal identity online were email (for the majority) and web pages (for the few).

An email address is an identity, but you can only send email to it or receive email from it. It lacks the functionality of a finger file, it carries no identity information independent of the status conferred by the address and whatever email is sent or not sent in reply.

Web pages largely evolved linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be impersonal, or personal but sprawling and not functioning like a simple finger file (which in some sense is just a status message telling you something about the user and whether they are logged in)

The blog, which is sub-species of web page, finally resurrects the finger functionality. It is independent of whatever webpages may belong to the author and owner of the blog, it functions as a status message which can be referenced whether the user is on the internet or not, it is subjective and owned primarily by individuals.

[&]

Blogs resurrect the concept of persistent identity. [I blog therefore I am].

A blog makes location more interesting. The individual is presumed to be moving, and to be having a subjective view of the space through which they are moving - whether virtual space (websites or whatever) or physical places.

[&]

..identity is a *vital* concept for the future of mobile computing.

Blogging may well be the basis for an open source equivalent of microsofts .net passport intiative. You log into your blogserver (whether running on your personal server or on a public service like blogger.com) you upload personal data (including your physical location) and your entire internet identity is mediated by your blogserver.

Some of this information will be public (your blogface)

But if a company or an individual wants to negotiate with you, or you with them, it will all happen through your blogserver. You log into your blogserver and it handles passwords etc as you move through physical and virtual space

Blogs are models for future persistent identity. [forget hotmail ..read the business plans of the blogservers]