Create, don’t Consume

I heard today that the British government are planning on depriving downloaders of copyrighted material of their internet connections. It’s not really a huge shock that the British government is a puppet of corporate greed though is it? Ok, maybe thats unfair, maybe all major social problems in the UK have been solved and its now a utopia so the government is bored and needs to find shit to do. I don’t really know. I have to admit that I haven’t done my research on this one. Sorry.

So it got me thinking: It’s a good thing that we didn’t have patents and copyright law’s back when we were all hunter gathers. What with the resources we’d have expended ensuring that no one had fire or even fireside songs without the originators getting there dues, we may not have survived long enough for someone to invent the Hunting Bow TM.

Jokes aside though. One day soon the world will be ruled by godlike Artificial Intelligences. It’s coming folks; deal with it. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing ok? There’s no reason the A.I’s wont be on our side and basically solve all our problems in a couple of days, alright? I think it’ll be awesome. I can’t wait.

The question, though, is: Would you rather have the A.Is were running on a Windows OS or a free GNU/Linux one?

You know what we’d get if we let Microsoft bring us super intelligent machine gods? You’ve guessed it – the motherfucking Terminator. Microsoft A.I would enslave us, no doubt about it. It would be the most logical and efficient way to show a profit. It wouldn’t have to provide but the barest of necessities to keep us alive and why waste time trying to sell us something when you could own our labour outright?

If we have any hope of having benevolent computer based overlords we’d better hope that A.I is a Gnu license project.  GNU license A.Is would be like Sarah Conner.

Yes, our A.I. masters will be milfs.

GNU A.I would be efficient, functional, cooperative and get better (and sexier) with age.

Whats my point? I was supposed to have one?

Well, if there is a point to all of this its that the corporations and governments clearly aren’t going to come up with a viable solution to the pirating issue. Their solution is to criminalise and or punish us by depriving us of our basic rights. And for a crime thats only debatably  a crime no less.  Technology has rendered the traditional methods for delivery and consumption of their products obsolete and they’re not willing to accept the fact. The greedy, fat trolls would rather see you and I raped in jail than redesign their business model and perhaps take a knock to their fucking obscene profits.

We as consumers need to take control of the situation. Right now we have the perfect opportunity to change the world for the better by not consuming the crap the corporate pimps and whores are spewing over the gods good, clean earth.  Here’s the truth: the record companies are holding the traditional means of communications hostage. They’ve got the radio stations by the balls. Hell, they probably own the fucking radio stations. They own MTV people. They chose what we get to hear and see. And what they show us is a load of mindless shit. The good stuff so rarely gets any play. But you could find it if you were willing to look for it. Its out there on this thing called the interwebs (or something).

And more importantly musicians (or any other sort of artist really) need to give up on the dream of becoming millionaires. Quite frankly if you’re just creating for the sake of making millions, then the chances are that what you’re creating is shit anyway. What happened to creating for the love of it? If you wouldn’t do it if you could only make a decent living out of it (never mind doing it for free ) then don’t do it.

Here’s a few ideas on how to free yourself from mindless consumerism, stop supporting the corporate devil’s, and lower your risk of unwanted butt-sex:

1. Ditch Microsoft – Microsoft brought us cheap and easy to use PC’s; now they think they own us. They think you’re better off using their software even if its cut rate, bloat ware that runs like a fly stuck in molasses even after you’ve refinanced your house for a hardware upgrade. They are wrong. The latest Internet Explorer is a buggy, insecure rip off the brilliant Mozilla Firefox.

Use a Linux distro instead. I recommend Ubuntu, it’s free (like most Linux distro’s) and comes bundled with lots of really good free software.

2. Stop listening to crap music.

3. Get a hobby – put an end to your endless desire for mindless entertainment. Take up a hobby that you can’t partake in while your ass is buried in a sofa cushion.

4. Read – a book, a blog, even a magazine as long its not filled with the latest exploits of some Hollywood oxygen thief.