Here’s a great article from Wired about decline of manga in Japan and the rise of manga all over the world. The article discusses the types of manga and the unspoken agreement between manga publishers and doujinshi artists. Doujinshi is like fan fiction, or manga featuring existing characters drawn by fans. What’s interesting is that the publishers have recognized that the presence of doujinshi does not negetively impact sales of the original manga, but rather fans buy both. It’s also interesting that the publishers see doujinshi as a means to cultivate new artists and encourage creativity.
On a side note, the buzz on the bittorrent distributions portals is that Japan has asked the US to crack down on the illegal distribution of copyrighted TV shows within the US. I find this strangely contradictory since this is the way anime series get introduced into the US. Since I’ve been watching, most of the popular shows (that don’t run too much afoul of an American sense of decency) get picked up by the cartoon network. “Bleach”, “Naruto”, and “Full Metal Alchemist” come to mind. All of these shows I watched at least 2-years prior to their US release. (Original versions are much better due to better voice acting in Japanese and, also, the stories tend to get dumbed down and censored for American audiences.)
Here’s a reprint of a blog entry from CNET. I’m fan of NIN and I personally plan to buy whatever music Trent puts out there that I like. I’ve never had a problem with paying for digital content so long as it’s decently priced and the artist gets most of the money. If people don’t want to pay money for music, believe me, the artists will figure out how to make some money, which means that artists will resort to subjecting fans to advertising subsidies — which may or may not be a good thing for the quality of music. Anyhow, I really see this type of approach as returning control of music back to the artists and the fans, where it should have been all along.
How will this affect music though? Will this get rid of the “album” as we know it now that artists no longer have to come up with 30+ minutes of music at a time? Will this bring back the era of the “single”? Could we possibly get better, more creative music now that artists don’t have to obey the corporate marketing machine? Will the radio stations finally play more than the same 20 songs over and over again?! How fast will this revolution happen? I can’t wait to see how this all plays out.
Last night Gwen Stefani made her “Sweet Escape Tour” stop in San Diego. It was truly a special event because all the proceeds from the show were donated to the victims of the recent San Diego fires.
This is the first concert that I’ve gone to in 5 or 6 years since I went to see Bjork’s Vespertine Tour when it came to the Hollywood Bowl. At that time I thought it was pretty cool that Bjork introduced her system administrator as part of the band ;p. This time, the experience was very different because the glow of cigarette lighters and the like were replaced with the glow of digital camera and cell phone screens. Wow! I forgot to bring my camera (I was so sad), but I’d say nearly everyone else in the arena had some so sort of way of taking a digital image or video. This was truly amazing because recording is not always allowed at concerts.
I think the show lasted about 1.5 hours (we missed Sean Kingston, the opening act — we were not very sad about that) and within in that 90-minutes, there was lots of singing, dancing, costume changes, set changes, and direct interaction with audience. Gwen Stephani really puts on a good show. It was also nice that she left the dancing to her dancers so she could concentrate on singing (Her dancers were really good. It was obvious that some of them were former gymnasts). The show itself was very audience participatory. We were encouraged to get on our feet to dance and sing. I’m a sucker for a sing-a-long and bass, so I had a really good time singing and doing my little Jen-dance. I sung my voice out by the end of the concert and I’m still feeling the effects of the loud singing today.
Once again we listened to the news via AM radio. As we drove down the 15 we passed in and out of fire zones. At the end of the Cajon Pass we spotted at least 6 or 7 big rig trucks in various conditions toppled on their sides in response to the Santa Ana winds. The same Wal-Mart truck we saw downed when we drove to Vegas was still there. The drive passed Fallbrook was the most telling of the disaster. The air was thick with smoke so it was hard to breathe and visibility was greatly limited to a few car lengths ahead. We saw burned out houses and still burning flames eating brush on the side of the road. We drove on hoping that this is not what it is like at home. I took pictures a long the way and I had to take pictures of a few land marks as there is no geotagging yet in current consumer cameras. As we approached Escondido, the air cleared and we were relieved to see that there were no signs of fire near home. Later we would find out that the fire in San Marcos was a very small brush fire next to Cal State San Marcos that was quickly put out. When we got home, Snowball cheerfully greeted us with “fweets” of joy and bounced all around his cage. He wanted his welcome home treat.
The local news was surreal. They were referring to pages in the Thomas Guide to help people identify locations of active fires and areas under evacuation. The local government was informing people to leave their houses via reverse 911 calls and because telephone service was cut off, the local government was relying on TV to relay the message to evacuate to a remote community in San Diego. Where were the SMS messages, Google maps, and mash-ups of web services to keep people in the know? My company seemed on the forefront with a wiki. What good is technology for people camping out in Qualcomm Stadium when cellphone “circuits” are jammed and batteries are dying? How are the millennials surviving without text messaging? For 2 – 3 days, SD was put back 10 – 15-years. We were calling over land lines, watching TV, listening to AM radio, and using the Thomas Guide. It seems to me to be a scary and out-of-control situation made worse by a communication breakdown when we need to communicate the most.
The web is very much still in it’s infancy and all it takes is a disaster to show just how “loose” the web is. We’ve been thinking a lot about paper in a Web 2.0 world and, well, I think we’ve got a while to go before paper goes out of style.
More Rambling 