Digital Musings

Californian brain, Chinese muscles

Have a look at your iPod, its base or its plug and read what it says: "Designed in California, Assembled in China or Taïwan."

Interesting. Easy to rephrase: "Inspired in California, Perspired in China."

Or, if you wish, "Californian brain, Chinese muscles."

This reflects a rather binary view of the world.

A recent work at MIT offers a different perspective. Indeed, I am currently reading MIT Professor Suzanne Berger's new book entitled: How We Compete. It's a good read because it offers a balanced view of globalisation and shows, as always, that nothing is either black or white, in other words that the world has not become flat.

By the way, I prefer the French title: "Made in World" (not exactly French but more to the point!): Made is both brain and muscles.

Amazon recommande Nicolas Sarkozy

Loïc Le Meur interrogeait récemment les blogueurs sur l'achat par l'UMP et Nicolas Sarkozy de son nom de famille comme mot-clé Google. Avec son sens habituel de l'humour, Loïc a simplement souhaité que le parti socialiste fasse de même.

Je ne suis pas si sûr qu'il faille prendre l'intrusion de la politique sur le Net à la légère. J'en veux pour preuve la capture d'écran suivante amazon_links.JPG . Il s'agit en l'occurrence du résultat d'une recherche sur Amazon (un des livres dont je suis auteur). Le livre recherché apparaît avec les informations usuelles sur le livre. Quelle ne fut pas ma surprise lorsque je me suis aperçu qu'Amazon émettait en outre l'avis suivant:

Les internautes intéressés par cet article peuvent être intéressés par:
    - Les dossiers de l'UMP: Nicolas Sarkozy vous invite à....

Je trouve pour le moins surprenant qu'au travers d'un lien sponsorisé Amazon se permette d'émettre non seulement des avis politiques, mais aussi de lier ces avis à des livres sans consulter les auteurs et en outre d'en tirer rémunération. Je trouve tout aussi choquant le comportement de l'UMP et de son Président qui consiste en quelque sorte à faire de l'affichage sauvage.

Je ne sais pas ce que vous en pensez mais je trouve cette intrusion, cette collusion business-politique intolérable. Tous les coups sont permis, tous les espaces sont envahissables: allons-nous longtemps accepter d'être mis devant le fait accompli?

Saving audio-visual archives: Not a piece of cake

Nobody discusses today the necessity to renovate, protect historical buildings. These are tangible assets that everybody can see and visit. When it comes to audio-visual content from the past, the story seems to be a bit more complex. It is however quite urgent to act as a lot of this "memory" is stored on material that is not aging well.

A Belgium company, Memnon, has been very active in the audio archiving area. They have inked prestigious contracts such as the British Library or the French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel.

What's interesting is that the major difficulties they encounter are not technological but legal and economical. For instance, at the British Library, they have two full-time persons in charge of contacting, say, ethnologists who taped tribes in Africa some fifty years ago to get their permission. Hard work indeed. But the worse is when it comes to paying the bill. Indeed, as Memnon points out, more often than not, institutions such as RTBF (Belgium national radio and TV channel) claim that their archive is a collective good and that they should not be alone to pay for its protection and dissemination.

The paradox is that when it comes to the monetization of the said archive everybody wants its share of the pie. Suddenly, the collective good has a private good flavor! Nobody wants to pay but many would like to get paid. Maybe the guys at Creative Commons could help.

Revolution goes capitalist: Fon, Google, Skype

If what I heard this morning on BFM is right, the Foneros are going capitalist. Indeed, Google and Skype are said to buy FON equity valuing FON at 18 millions euros. Anyone having more on this?

Correction: I just read on Fon blog that Skype, Google, Sequoia Ventures and Index Ventures have put up 18 millions euros. Congrats for the achievement!