The UnSub

When you are immerse in an working environment where hostility is norm, getting back is the motivation behind doing the things we do. I’m really tired working for other people’s agenda, especially to learn that within the same building, they are so many people who want to see each other’s unit dead.

I left the first company because I no longer see myself creating solutions but fire-fighting issues created by politics. I left the 2nd company despite a nice pay check. But what’s the point of money when you have no say over your own work. I rather take less than be a rich puppet. Now, all I can see is vengeance within a bloated corporate facade and an association of seniority with mediocrity.

I do not invent or create products so that you can kill off bloated divisions. I am more concern with organizing ourselves to produce viable and sustainable solutions. I do not like to wait or listen to your reasons for things not done. Units with no skills or passion will die a natural death. I see no need to hold a meeting to discuss pointless strategies revolving around personal vendettas. I really want to excuse myself from these stupidity and pursue my own agenda…

http://cameh.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/education-corporation/ a well-written and interesting entry on our education system. As I am still reading “What Happy Companies Know” by Dan Baker et al, I can’t help it but link the concepts and contrasts of businesses driven by fear vs that of love in our own education system.

Given the young impressionable minds who are going through our system geared towards winning competitions, for the majority who do not thrive on winning, it is reasonable to assume their motivator is fear. Fear of not winning, fear of not doing well comparatively, fear of not living up to the system standards. Then again, I might be over-generalizing and victimizing our youth too quickly with my opinions and views without proper statistics.

Hopefully, the highlighted badminton CCA (Co-Curricular activities) incident is just one of the minority incidents. It is fair to assume the parent who invested training for the 2nd son for badminton did it out of the child’s interest instead for the sake of the CCA system. Unfortunately, as system evolve, we are left to wonder if the original intention of CCA has turned into yet another metric serve to fuel unhealthy competition.

Even though our young society managed to enjoyed economic success in a short time, we really have to consider NOT engaging in things out of fear, but from appreciation and understanding why we are doing what we are doing.

http://www.songwriters.ca/studio/proposal.php

Though I am not a Canadian, I strongly support SAC’s direction towards monetization of peer-to-peer music sharing. The point here is NOT just about money. It is about their willingness to propose, open up discussions, listen to alternatives and adapt to changes for positive outcomes.

These are worthy efforts to work together for a better environment for all multi-parties, the consumers, the creative folks and associations/lawmakers. Technologies are nothing but tools, in the end, it is how people master and adapt the tools for win-win-win situations.

Avenues to connect fans and musician directly through blogs and social networks are already there. In short, it is way cheaper to get information and news to the people than it was in the past. It is also good that technology providers can make it even easier for independent artistes and musician to enjoy direct monetary rewards (simplest eg. “Donate” buttons from Paypal).

We can now even jam in a virtual online portals together, what’s stopping fans to pay to jam with favorite musicians online or even book a time-slot with your favorite guitar hero? Even if it were to be free, it makes a good PR activity!

It is reasonable for more musician to perceive technology as less a threat but more of an ally to bring creative works to the people, and be rewarded for effectively and efficiently delivery. In short, the present reality of internet opens up ways to connect people and different revenue models for musician.

No matter what the outcome of law suits and debate is, the fact remains that peer-to-peer technology is one of the most cost-efficient ways to distribute digital contents. One positive example is the case of Dutch University deploying software patches across campus with Bittorrent. I strongly believe that peer-to-peer is already the de-facto carrier for creative contents, legal or not, is more a matter of distributing money to the right people.

Interesting prediction: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm

The idea of machines capable of reasoning and emotion like humans sounds very scary because it is most likely that such inventions will model after their creators and fail in some catastrophic ways.

Most humans cannot handle power. The tendency is to abuse power and the likelihood that self-aware machines that think like us going amok is not very remote. Look at our world where guns are available at our disposal and imagine the possibilities of “weaponizing” machines with human-like artificial intelligence.

Perhaps this sort of thinking comes from a struggling-optimist-wannabe like myself, who in some ways believe in the apocalyptic “Terminator” story line.

The ultimate way of playing God (and the price that may come along) is to re-create ourselves into inorganic forms that are capable of eradicating the creators.

My first love is not computer science but audio engineering. The process of capturing and reproducing sounds was something fascinating as a teenager, so much so that I wanted to be an audio engineer after I flunked my 1st O’levels attempt. Somehow the practical self back then wanted to play the safe way and chose an electronics-computer engineering course instead.

Making noise/music (depending on the audience) was very much part of me during the school days in the concert band. This interest has since outgrown to business and marketing aspects of the industry as I started playing with the Internet and various enabler technologies that are within the reach of hobbyist. So long one has the right talent and inclinations, cutting your own tracks/album and marketing yourself is no longer a fantasy.

There are times I’d like to pretend to be the boss of a let’s say CD store and ask how would I survive the disruptive changes brought about by ever increasing network speeds and popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing technologies. I believe the best move is to turn the threats into opportunities, in this case by leveraging on internet and technology. Instead of selling what is easily available online, I would choose to sell good music that are hard to buy and find online and use internet blog marketing to the get the word out.

It would be interesting to have a store that plays good local independent music that needs marketing. A store with social network accounts for consumers to add so as to receive latest merchandise and product news. How about a simple system within the store that allows consumers to download the current song in promotion wirelessly into their phones. Targeting the youth and young adults wouldn’t be something that difficult since the adoption of technology is highest amongst these two groups.

Having a web store that sells at track-level and comes packaged with a personalizable CD cover would be a good complement sales channel. The consumer can either ship it to their place or have an excuse to go down-town to the store to collect and buy more stuff. I am not quite sure of the current indie music scene in Singapore. But I am pretty sure if local stores help to promote promising bands more along side with mainstream. We too can have our own brand of music.

Likewise, I am not 100% sure what I’d described will work. Most people have tonnes of reasons why things would not work, few can creatively come up with ideas that work. But I am certain that the old-school-easy-way-out of getting a shop front, bringing in some CDs and waiting for sales to happen is definitely a road to business grave.