Are Piracy, Knock Offs and Minecraft Good For Us?

PBS Idea Channel recently celebrated their one year anniversary. One year of provocative and funny questions to view the world from a new perspective. I am a big fan of the Idea Channel from PBS Digital Studios. In honor of their anniversary, over the next couple of days I'll be sharing some of their recent work, catching up with some and introducing new ones. 

​Is Piracy Helping Game of Thrones? 

If you're like us, you LOVE Game of Thrones. But if you're also like us, you may not, technically, have... cable. So how are we seeing this amazing show on HBO, which is stuck behind a pay wall? A huge amount of viewers (not us of course, no no no) are downloading the show illegally. But despite being the most pirated show of 2012, the Game of Thrones DVDs are top sellers, breaking HBO's own sales records! Could it be that piracy is actually HELPING the show?

Do Knock-Offs Prove the Value of a Brand?

Living in the consumer culture that we do, we've learned that specific brands can carry very different meanings and values. We're willing to pay hundreds or thousands more for a specific brand name item, but sometimes it can be tempting to go the way of the knock-off for a fraction of the price. The counterfeit industry is huge and isn't going anywhere, and companies spend huge amounts to dissuade people from buying "fakes". But are knock-offs REALLY a negative for the brand?

Is Minecraft the Ultimate Educational Tool?

If you've watched past episodes of Idea Channel, you know we're huge fans of Minecraft. This totally amazing video game allows you to build your own world from scratch, what's not to like? But it may be good for more than just fun and games. Some experts have brought Minecraft into the classroom, allowing teachers to customize lessons and students to engage with concepts in new ways. And while educational games aren't new, Minecraft has some unique advantages that could usher in a new direction in education. In the future, students across the world may spend their class time punching trees.

What Does the Russian Meteorite Tell Us About Surveillance Culture? 

A meteorite crashed into earth! This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, but it is the first time such an event was captured by SO MANY CAMERAS! The incredible number of views and angles filmed was made possible by Russia's bizarre driving culture and the MILLIONS of car dash cams installed all over the country. But besides providing the world with some hilarious, frightening, and amazing footage, the dash cams also make us think about surveillance, and what role it will play in the future.

Are Bitcoins and Unusual Hats the Future of Currency?

If you've ever played Team Fortress 2, you know how valuable hats are. To those who haven't: yes, HATS! If a community agrees on the value of something, then that thing can become a currency, to exchange for other goods. Just like american dollar bills (or euros, yen, or any other currency), or... bitcoins. Bitcoins are an online currency worth over $200,000,000, and though they are just 1s and 0s, some think that this is the future of money. On the other hand... mo bitcoins mo problems.

Is Futurama the Best Argument Against Transhumanism?

Transhumanism is a scientific philosophy that says technology will solve all our human biological constraints and that immortality is right around the corner (well not RIGHT around the corner, but WAY closer). They envision a world of endlessly euphoric robo-humans that represent the next step in evolution. And while this sounds super awesome, we had to ask, will this really make us happy? If you watch Futurama, than you know that the answer is probably NO. While not an exact illustration of transhumanism, Futurama does show a future of vast technological ability, where today's everyday problems are rendered moot, and yet the characters on the show still seem to find themselves in some very non-euphoric emotional states. Does this disprove what transhumanists expect for our future?

Are MP3s & Vinyl Better than Live Music?

If you've ever talked to a vinyl purist (or are one yourself) you know that people can be pretty passionate about what format is king when it comes to music. And based on how much people like to brag about what band they saw live and how many times, we clearly value the authenticity of the live performance above all else. But when we see a performer live, we're judging them based on what we know from the mp3 or record that we've already listened to 1000 times. . . because what is a song SUPPOSED to sound like anyway? As music has evolved from solely performance into "media", the issue of what the most authentic even IS has become increasingly complicated. So which is the most authentic? 

Previously on the Idea Channel.

The Devil Is An Artistic Director→

Adweek covers the promotion of Anna Wintour last week: ​

Powerful Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour is expanding her role at Condé Nast. Today, the publisher announced that Wintour—who is also the editorial director of Teen Vogue—was named artistic director of Condé Nast. In the newly created role, Wintour will be responsible for "curating and cultivating the creative vision" for the company, according to a statement.

In an interview with The New York Times, Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend said that Wintour would be assuming some of the responsibilities left open by Si Newhouse, the 85-year-old chairman of Condé Nast parent Advance Publications, when he scaled back his role, including oversight of Condé Nast's editorial division, last fall. "Si Newhouse leaves a void, inevitably," Townsend told the Times. "Anna, without even having to think twice about it, is the most qualified person to pick up that torch and carry it into the future."

Townsend added that the role of artistic director had been created, in part, to keep Wintour at Condé Nast, telling the Times that he "would go to great distances to avoid losing Anna, particularly in the prime of her career." Wintour had been rumored last year to be a possible Obama administration appointee to the U.K. ambassadorship, but she maintained that she had no plans outside of Condé Nast.

I find Wintour to be truly fascinating. While everyone is discussing the death of publishing as we know it she secures herself an even bigger position of leadership at Condé Nast​. At this moment it's not clear what this new position really means for publications like Wired, Epicurious or The New Yorker and I can not help but find myself very curious to see how her obvious influence will extend beyond the world of fashion. 

​In conversations I often compare Wintour to Steve Jobs. Most of us were willing to dismiss his most demanding character traits while acknowledging that he was a visionary genius, and yet similar behavior and success from Wintour results in her being branded a Prada-wearing devil. 

I gained a better understanding of who Wintour is from a film, not that one, the other one. The R.J. Cutler directed documentary The September Issue (available for streaming in the usual places.)​ Cutler spent eight months following Wintour and filming over three hundred hours of footage. 

While making The September Issue, I observed Anna Wintour day-in and day-out as she single-handedly commanded the $300-billion global fashion industry. In a business where last week's fashion shows are already old news, she has been at the top of her field (and the top of her game) for two decades and counting. Shortly after we began filming, I observed to a friend who asked what it was like to watch Anna work, "Well, you can make a film in Hollywood without Steven Spielberg's blessing, and you can publish software in Silicon Valley without Bill Gates' blessing, but it's pretty clear to me that you can't succeed in the fashion industry without Anna Wintour's blessing."

​Cutler even learned four lessons in management by watching Wintour work. 

Another reason to watch the documentary is to discover Grace Coddington. Every influential public figure always has a behind-the-scenes person who is equally, if quietly, influential to the work. 

Watch the above trailer for the documentary. At around the 2:00 mark there is a moment that resonated with me when I watched the film and that I confess I've stolen. ​In many meetings over the past few years I've been known to paraphrase her and demand "where is the quality?, where is the elegance?, where is the follow through? Come on, elevate it."

​If God is in the details, so is the Devil and she is an Artistic Director.

The Real Work Of Writing: Elizabeth Gilbert Takes On Philip Roth→

In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and share a little secret about the writing life that nobody likes to admit: Compared to almost every other occupation on earth, it's f*cking great. I say this as somebody who spent years earning exactly zero dollars for my writing (while waiting tables, like Mr. Tepper) and who now makes many dollars at it. But zero dollars or many dollars, I can honestly say it's the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege. What's more, you have no boss to speak of. You're not exposed to any sexual abuse or toxic chemicals on the job site (unless you're sexually abusing yourself, or eating Doritos while you type). You don't have to wear a nametag, and--unless you are exceptionally clumsy--you rarely run the risk of cutting off your hand in the machinery. Writing, I tell you, has everything to recommend it over real work.

As I have mentioned before I didn't discover Elizabeth Gilbert through her books, but rather through TED. I find her to be charming and witty in a way that motivates. In an essay for the wonderful Bookish site, quoted above, she takes Philip Roth to task for telling a newly published author who was waiting on him (Mr. Tepper above) the following: 

"I would quit while you're ahead. Really. It's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you."

Learning to code is learning to think. Kids should learn programming.

And that is exactly what Code.org is trying to do. Code.org is a non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education, visit their site to learn how you can help. 

And to those of you that already know programming, here is a perfect complement, HackDesign, design lessons for programmers. ​

Humble

Jonathan Ive on Blue Peter. ​