This is how I greeted Gilberto Gil after I had the pleasure of meeting him after his rousing performance at UCSB. The packed house of 850 people, danced, and sang in the aisles. There was an aura in the air that a great musician is present. After his first song Festa Na Fé, he greets the crowd and took them by the hand. He explained eloquently the history of Forró, how it came from the large parties open to the public. When Brazilians tried to say “For All” it came out sounding like “Forró”. Language is always changing, and this is a good example of Brazilians taking something from another culture and making it their own. (Antropófagia)
But of course, when Gil does it on stage only the word ‘perfection’ can be used to sum up the experience. He moves like Jagger across the stage, giving a history lesson of the different sub-genres in between songs in which the whole audience is shaking their hips and grooving. He covers Bob Marley ‘No Woman, No Cry’ with a Brazilian twist. Gil transcends genre. He played songs of Luis Gonzaga, or ‘Gonzagão’, the man responsible for popularizing Brazilian Northeastern music. The band is tight. Every musician on the same note, the rhythm blaring in typical fashion, the band’s performance is amazing.
After the show I had the great honor to meet Gil backstage. I sat next to him while the school news reporter asked him questions, and later I asked him some of my own. I asked about protest, and if there are parallels today to 1969. He explained the history of language and the Brazilian culture. He explained that as Duke Ellington used to say, “There are two kinds of music, good music and bad music”. Cleverly the name of the concert, was Gilberto Gil “For All ” presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures series.
In the video above, a student news reporter from The Daily Nexus interviews Gilberto Gil, while he sits next to UCSB Professora Élide Oliver.
The video below shows Gilberto Gil covering Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ at the concert. Video below was taken by random audience member.
The internet will always be free. It is the new digital frontier where censorship will never exist and every opinion is equal. Right? Well, not exactly. The internet is a powerful tool that is now a part of the lives of most people living in the developed world. It can be used for mundane tasks such as watching YouTube, or utilized to overthrow oppressive regimes, as was witnessed during the Arab Spring. The idea that the internet is, and should continue to be, completely free and non discriminatory, is a concept known as network neutrality or net neutrality. In the United States, the FCC has passed laws in favor of net neutrality, laying out three basic rules: Transparency, no blocking, and no unreasonable discrimination. However, there are those, including large internet service providers, who do not see this as a right, and do not agree with the principles of net neutrality. The legislation passed by the FCC is being challenged in court by big telecom companies Verizon and MetroPCS. The fight over the future of the internet is ongoing, as it continues to appear in the headlines, with no clear winner in sight. At stake, is the freedom to send and receive information, in any form, which has been granted to us by the internet as we know it today; A freedom which we have come to expect. The internet of the future however, might look very different than it does today.
A principle just as American as freedom is capitalism, and these two imperatives come head to head in the debate over net neutrality. Proponents of free internet want to preserve it’s neutrality, while large telecom companies have an economic interest in controlling bandwidth. Internet service providers (ISP’s) such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have been at the forefront of the fight against net neutrality. They want control over bandwidth, especially in the wireless market where space is more limited. Proponents of net neutrality argue that you cannot trust large corporations to focus on anything but making money. Comcast for example, is also a provider of cable television, which the internet is starting to come into direct competition with due to online video. It is in their economic interest to throttle speeds of users who are participating in sharing online video. In fact, in 2007 Comcast entirely blocked the ability of its users to share files on BitTorrent, in direct conflict with the concept of ISP’s being neutral to the content of it’s users (some who share files illegally, while many share files legally on BitTorrent). The FCC tried to stop this behavior, but Comcast ended up winning the legal battle throwing into question whether the FCC has the power to regulate the internet. In 2010 the FCC authored a report laying out guidelines for net neutrality which include transparency, no blocking, and no unreasonable discrimination. According to the report “The internet’s openness promotes innovation, investment, competition, free expression and other national broadband goals”. Verizon and MetroPCS have taken the FCC to court regarding the legality of the FCC’s jurisdiction over the internet, in a case which is ongoing.
Proponents of net neutrality are passionate about keeping the internet a free place, where ISP’s are content neutral, and in essence act solely as a delivery system, without ulterior motives based on corporate profit. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, and Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor, are two of the most outspoken proponents in favor of net neutrality. Wu is a former student of Lessig, having studied under him at Harvard Law, and he is actually the one credited with coining the term net neutrality. Both men have helped shape current public policy, having served on advisory panels to the FCC regarding net neutrality. Wu argues for net neutrality in a Darwinian evolutionary sense, in which, when allowed to operate freely, the strongest services and applications on the web will survive based on the response from consumers. In an internet which services are given preferential treatment by ISP’s, this is not the case. A recent example of this principle is the Xfinity app from Comcast, which operates on the Xbox360 game console. Comcast has decided that when internet video is streamed through this service, it will not detract from the users alloted monthly bandwidth of 250 gigabytes, giving an edge to this application over Hulu, which performs the same service. This is one of the fears: That ISP’s will provide preferential treatment and allow faster bandwidth to services that are aligned with their interests, while slowing services to those that are not directly aligned with their short term profit goals. The free market has never been able to keep itself in line with the public interest. Regulation of the financial markets are currently in place and the internet should be no different.
One of the main reasons for net neutrality is to keep the internet a free forum for expression and innovation, which is in the public interest. ISP’s need to be transparent in their broadband network management practices to ensure the public knows how they operate. According to the 2010 FCC report, widespread interference with the internet’s openness would have a chilling effect on innovation. Large ISP’s would contract with innovators to give preferential access to their services and applications, causing those not in contract with the large ISP’s to slow innovation due to the belief that their ideas would be blocked. Lawrence Lessig states that “the architecture (of the internet), and the competitive forces it assures, is the only interesting thing at stake in this battle over net neutrality.” In a world without net neutrality, it would only matter whether an innovator was in contract with a large ISP. The great ideas like YouTube and Google would be blocked unless the ISP deemed it worthy. Ralf Bendrath and Milton Muellar have studied the dangers of a world with no network neutrality, specifically as it relates to deep packet inspection. DPI allows ISP’s to know exactly what you are doing on the internet in real time, and if they wished, to be able to react to it by slowing your connection or blocking it to certain sites and services. This is why broadband network management practices must be transparent: So that government agencies like the FCC and users themselves, can know how ISP’s are handling information on the internet.
Opponents of net neutrality also try to prove that innovation and investment will be stifled due to enforcement by the FCC. This argument is made from an economic perspective however, rather than a creative one. Robert Hahn and Scott Wallsten, in an article titled “The Economics of Net Neutrality”, argue that a mandate would erode incentives to provide new applications and services from ever being developed.” The large ISP’s are spending vast amounts of money on developing infrastructure providing the backbone for the internet, and net neutrality limits the profit they can make. John Thorne, a senior vice president at Verizon has accused companies like Google of riding on the coattails of the the ISP’s, who are spending the real money and doing the real work, in his opinion. According to Thorne, “The only way we are going to attract the truly huge amounts of capital needed to build out these networks is to strike down governmental entry barriers and allow providers to realize profits.” In this outlook on net neutrality, where profits are center stage, governmental oversight limits the profit ISP’s can make, which in turn limits investments into expanding infrastructure. With so much seemingly unimportant activity happening on the internet it seems logical for ISP’s to be able to prioritize information based on deep packet inspection. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has pointed to telemedicine as an example of this, where important medical information should be given preferential speeds over someone watching cat videos on YouTube. However this is preferential treatment is not allowed under the FCC’s guidelines for net neutrality. Also, with the huge amounts of data being used Telecom companies argue that they should be able to prioritize some information over others. It has been seen however, like in the Case of Comcast, that large telecom companies cannot be trusted to make decisions in the public interest, and allowing the prioritization of data on the internet is a slippery slope.
I think the issue of net neutrality is one of the most important of our time. The decisions made today, and the outcomes of pending cases, like that of Verizon v. FCC, will shape the future of the internet as we know it. The Arab Spring was said to have been an internet revolution, unknown bloggers can break national stories from their homes, and applications are being created that enhance our lives. The great thing about the internet is that it levels the playing field; All information is treated equally and the gatekeepers have less power in this domain. The internet must be kept free and unfettered for the good of mankind, and for the sake of freedom. In laying out the 2010 guidelines for net neutrality, the FCC took an important step “to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression.” Their legal right to preserve a neutral internet must be upheld.
sources:
Federal Communications Commission, (n.d.). In the matter of preserving the open internet gn docket no. 09-191
Bendrath, R., & Milton, M. (2011). governancethe end of the net as we know it? deep packet inspection and internet . New Media & Society, 13(7), 1142-1160.
Hahn, R., & Wallsten, S. (2006). The economics of net neutrality.
Commercials are all around us all the time, whether in print, television, or more commonly these days, online. They are vying for our attention 24/7 with the sole aim of trying to get us to buy a product. Does this work? Are we even aware of it sometimes? Did you ever suddenly have an urge for a certain food, maybe it’s a fast food hamburger, you know it’s not the healthiest thing you could eat but you WANT IT NOW! Maybe that’s because you’ve seen the commercial for that burger 1,000 times, and you now are convinced that you need to have it, whether subliminally or even sometimes more overtly.
Some ads use different tactics to gain our attention, comedy is often employed as a tool to sell products. One of the most successful ad campaigns of recent memory was the Old Spice man who keeps moving from scene to scene “Ladies, look back at your man, now back at me”. This was first aired during the 2010 Super Bowl, which is the “Holy Grail” for advertisers to reach their target demographics, sometimes paying millions of dollars for 30 seconds of airtime.
The fact is that it is important to be aware of the media that is being presented to you, and especially be aware of advertisers who are getting more savvy, and becoming less overt, sometimes launching social media campaigns or other types of product placement, where you might not even be able to tell that someone is trying to sell you something.