Freedom of People

As an EU citizen, one of the major advantages that I enjoy in life is the ability to freely move and work within the EU with minimum fuss. This is a right that was accorded me by the Treaty of Whatever (there are so many EU treaties that it's hard to keep up), although (shamefully) not to all EU citizens because of the various laws enacted in national parliaments in fear of a wave of Eastern Europeans in the wake of the recent large expansion.

As a result it was very easy for me to decide to live and work in the UK. I just stepped on a plane, got a job and a tax number and that was pretty much it. I can also move back to Ireland at any time, to France, Germany or wherever I need to without any major fuss. I can't vote in national elections but it doesn't bother me that much. If I didn't like the country, I'd just move somewhere else.

My point is that it's generally a positive thing. What I don't understand is why this sort of arrangement does not exist in most of the developed world (or even globally), because it seems to make sense. It is not so easy to move to Australia for example. You have to qualify for immigration, which involves a points-based system and an application process that can take time. Similarly in Canada, which is a pro-immigration country by any international standard, there are still tests and requirements. And the US is legendarily difficult to get into and unsafe as an employment option for many workers stuck on H-1B permits if their employer needs to let people go. Likewise it is very difficult to get into the EU from outside.

What does this bureaucracy achieve?

Fake asylum seeking. Illegal immigration. Stuck economies that can't get the skill-bases that they need. Closed border syndrome. It is frustrating to the individuals and economies and hampers supposed self-correcting mechanisms for markets. It is the very definition of inequality, and any security that it is supposed to achieve is highly suspect at best.

I simply think it's silly. We should be liberalising the international laws that prevent people from living in other countries. In this day and age especially, I should be able to decide that I want to live in New York and write books, and just go and do it. My friend Heather from Seattle should be able to decide that she wants to live and work in Dublin and simply go do it. Maybe we shouldn't be handed voting cards the day we walk in the door, and maybe we should be required to prove that we can support ourselves independently in the local economy for a year.

Beyond that, what is the point of keeping people away?

Twenty Ninety Seven

Jim Rossignol wrote a piece for The Escapist for what remains to this day my favourite racing game ever ever ever. Flaws and all (and it is flawed), 2097 is still the most fun drivin and shootin that I've ever had.

The Awesome Mike Daisey

I saw Mike's "21 Dog Years" show and hung out with him and John Tynes. It was 6 years ago in a great little cafe with a back stage in Seattle (since burned down I'm told). He's awesome, this clip is awesome. This is how you deal with ignorance.

nou: Getting Creative

Why is the Web uncreative?

This is something that I've always wondered. Not that there is no creativity on the web (there is) but rather why it only arrives up into the public consciousness in fits and starts. Is there something about the internet's structure that somehow makes it harder for creative work to shine? This is an anecdotal analysis at best, but bear with me.

There's a lot of media hosting and aggregation going on out there, from blogs and uploaded videos through MP3s and news. Most of it comes in one of a few forms:

• news/gossip
• education/information
• riffs of existing ideas
• comedy moments/funny clips

It's much more common for pre-existing information/entertainment to make an impact on the web than anything coming from the web itself. Technology news, celebrity gossip, movies, remixes and mashups, diaries of off-line life, self-help guides, youtube clips and so on are the meat and potatoes of it. Most traded files are of movies, TV shows and music coming from the offline into the online, not the other way around.

This stands in direct contradiction to the supposed "You" year that Time Magazine made such a brouhaha about a few months back. In the age of mass, free tools, information spreading and so on, we are supposed to be seeing the rise of the homebrew artist. Is the material not out there? I think it is, but I think much of it is not being seen and the results are discouraging to would-be creatives.

For example, last year I made a short film with some friends. It's ok, a student film. It's on Youtube, it's on Google Video. There's plenty wrong with it, some right, but the thing that mystifies me is why, in the 8 months that it's been up on both, it's managed to garner a grand total of 600 views between both sites (at least 10% of which are me checking to see they're still up there, or reminiscing, and 5% are my aunt who was googling my name for some reason).

Looking further into it, I think maybe it's how the film is named or billeted. It's a mockumentary short film about some failed auditionees. Hard to sell? Definitely. Regardless of whether it's good or terrible, my little film goes unwatched, where tens of thousands of fart joke clips draw in thousands of viewers.

And yet the thing is that the Web should not make it harder to sell a strange idea, it should make it easier. It should be a discovery medium, but it can only do so on the basis of what people search for. This is why I think it has an unintentional wall up against creative ideas. Outside of a relatively narrow set of criteria, people simply don't seem inclined to search for "crazy short films about Shakespeare plays made in community halls."

Where do you even begin to get the notion to search for that? Well actually I have an idea about that and it starts with a label: nou.

The idea is simple: If the problem of getting new and difficult-to-express ideas is one of naming, search terms and people being at a loss to describe something that they may not even know exists, then they need a helping hand. We're falling over ourselves to define new words for media, technology and so on all the time, and that strategy works. So why not take it one step further and adopt a very small label that says "This is new, fresh from the web."

It can apply to podcasts, flickr photos, videos, indie games, fiction blogs, anything that is web created. You stick "nou" in the meta-tag, tag cloud and whatever other search assistants that you can find out there and it means that people can find it. Since it's short, it's simple for people to remember. Since it sounds like "new", it's conceptually in the right area. Since it looks like "you" it's not aggressive. It's just nou.

Hey you.
What's nou?
Well...?

A Date in my History

On this date, the 5th of April 2007, I saw the dead body of someone that I knew. He was one of my cousins, one that I used to play with as a child and have many memories of. His name was Peter. He was only slightly younger than I.

This was my first time seeing a body. He looked smaller, quiet even, and his skin was pale. His fingers were crossed across his chest and looked slightly translucent. Relatives passed by the coffin and said prayers, stared and contemplated. Some touched his hands or his brow gently.

I suspect that this event will inspire change both in me, and those around me. It was an unexpected death, in that he collapsed very suddenly and died a few days later, and it has sent waves through my family and extended clan which will likely be felt for some time to come. All manner of questions, from "why" to "what does this mean?" to "why am I living my life in this way when it can all be taken away so easily?" are bubbling under.

I'd like to have some instant answers for them, but I don't. Tomorrow we bury him, on Good Friday, and then...? Choices maybe. I may have a better obituary to write in time, but for right now this is what happened on this day.