When I was in high-school, one of my classmates asked the question “What is love? I mean, how do you know when you’ve got it?” I remember fumbling my way through the ‘right’ answer (love is a decision more than a feeling, etc.), and predictably I got an exasperated sigh and a brush-off. The issue has resurfaced recently in a very close-to-home sort of way which I’m not prepared to get into. But let me just add some more perspective that age has offered.

The actual right answer is that love is a feeling. And a decision. In fact it’s a decision to maintain the feeling just as much as it is to maintain the commitment in its absence.

There is no way that you can separate feeling from love. It’s inherent. Love will break your heart. And when your heart breaks, well, that’s how you know you’ve got it.

But when your love is only causing you pain, it’s time to get out.

Okay, I’ll be following up this post with a bunch of links. Because I feel like the train of thought I just joined is more like a roller-coaster. It has come at me from multiple sources. And I’m perplexed, bewildered, inspired and curious. I need to write just to clear my head. This is all about the idea of free — I’ll try to keep my contribution short. That way you can spend the next hour day week sifting through the other ideas I’m pointing you to.

Basically there’s an evident trend on the web of cheap-to-free. Your internet connection is cheap. And after that, content is free. Ideas are free. Information is free. This persists in the face of all conventional logic that says stuff is worth money. Copyright is being contravened at a far faster rate than it can be policed. Which essentially means it’s like a backwards lottery. Participate and there’s a good chance that you won’t get caught. But if you do, ouch! There’s a cultural shift suggesting — nay insisting — that trying to defend it is a waste of time and energy. It’s an irrelevant holdover from a bygone era.

On the other hand, work deserves payment. Duh, right? Well that almost sounds like a foreign concept when creatives are launching their own initiatives for no cost. Work that by all rights deserves payment. Photographs are being shared. Software is being released. Books are being published. Movies — even good ones — are being put out there. All for free. The motivations may be different in each case. Some bands may crave exposure. Some authors are looking for a book deal for their next work. And some people get a philanthropic kick out of blogging. But free has another inherent meaning — there is no cost or sacrifice involved in participating. The confluence of reasons for free is having one cultural result: an expectation that more and more should be free, and that the work it takes to make something has no value.

Seth Godin calls this an ‘attention economy’. I like the term. Free is an easy way to get people’s attention. But the problem is that no matter how many people you get clamouring for a free product, you can’t make any money off of it. There’s more than just attention to this economy.

I think free is a great ideal. I like the idea of breaking down the threat of scarcity. If all our stuff could be free, we’d all be infinitely rich. But as long as anything costs any amount of money, free is impossible. I guess ultimately my take on it is that it comes down to story. (Business types call it model.) If your brand is about free (or really, really cheap), then you need to stick with it. And well frankly, once that’s established, good luck trying to change it. There’s a massive draw to free that evaporates at the introduction of any cost. In fact, I can’t think of an online business that survived the transition to monetising a previously free service. How you sustain free is sure to be interesting. It seems to me that it’s better to pick a price that can sustain you, and work your butt off infusing that price with value. I honestly don’t think that’s fundamentally different than it’s ever been.

• Doug Menuez majors on the business end of photography.
• Seth Godin is a marketing expert from New York.
• Malcolm Gladwell wrote a response to a book called Free.
• Chris Anderson wrote the book called Free. (Which, by the way, isn’t.)
• Chase Jarvis is a photographer, and a philosopher, and, and, and…
• Finally, Squidoo is keeping a pretty good record of the entire debate.

I’m not on Twitter, but I follow what’s happening there as an interested observer. I recently heard of a tag called #cnnfail. It’s a way that Twitterers are tracking stories that CNN hasn’t done its homework on. That’s starting to become an internet meme, appearing on various blogs and other channels. I’ve always expected social networks to take over the job of news media. I thought that reporting would happen from people at ground zero in catastrophes, atrocities and other events. I didn’t envision it would serve to hold the industry’s feet to the fire. Though, having heard of it, I highly approve. I wonder what CNN thinks. (It’s probably the easiest target, but it certainly isn’t the only target.)

In another realm, Chase Jarvis picked up on a story that’s been bubbling out of France. There is a prestigious photojournalism award that is annually awarded to promising photojournalism students. This year’s recipients got up to receive their award, and dropped a rather large bomb. They unveiled that that their compelling photo essay was entirely fabricated. Using their peers as actors, it had been carefully crafted to appeal to the selection panel through trends that they’ve witnessed over the years. This from Horses Think:

The winners claimed that the idea was hatched a year ago when they looked at all the work students were competing with for the 2008 prize. They realized that the “world view of this work was limited and seemed more like vacation photographs as opposed to photojournalism. The photographs depicted small children with big wet eyes in order to illustrate the misery abroad.” Speaking to Le Figaro, Guillaume Chauvin confided that they “wanted to enter the contest in order to show the codes used too often in photojournalism and to prove that something real could be translated into something staged.”

There’s lots of discussion and further links available on Chase’s post.

I think there are rather serious and exciting implications from these efforts. I’m fascinated by where these are going. Will they be a sobering reality check to the mainstream media? Or will they push them one step closer to simply not caring at all anymore — thus, taking another step toward their demise? I’m really curious about this. It has great bearing on how all of us explain the world to each other. Recognising that our media constructs are all houses of cards is a good first step.

If you aren’t challenged and challenging,
If you aren’t passionate, excitable and engaged,
If you aren’t inspired and don’t crave to be an inspiration,
If you aren’t always striving for what’s next, and better,

Then, in all honesty, what good are you?

(This isn’t directed at any LM readers specifically. It’s directed at people that I wish would read LM. So that I wouldn’t have to direct this at them any more…)

Ford’s new slogan is “Powered by You”. Which as the Bugle (great podcast, though it comes with an “parental advisory” alert) would say, “That sounds like something, but don’t worry: it’s nothing.” Unless Ford has changed their business model to selling bicycles…or handmixers.

Some of the probable runner-up slogans to this campaign:
-Hey, it’s Ford. Remember Us?
-Without Ford, there would be no Fords! Think about it!
-Buy a Ford. Please? Somebody? Anybody?

There’s lots more I could say about this (too much job security in marketing departments, trillion-dollar government bailouts, etc. etc.), but I’m going to cap it here. This is already too much of a diversion from whatever it was I was supposed to be doing…

I’m surrounded by people that claim to know. The strange thing about trust is that the more people claim you should trust them, the less trust there is to go ’round. TV is famous for being able to find anyone to support any radical claim. One extra drop of rain means we’re heading towards Noah-esque floods. One less, and they start predicting tumbleweeds and pow’rful thirst.

By claiming to know, you short-circuit your ability to feel. In a recent conversation between my wife a stranger, she was made very aware that she was on the ‘wrong’ side of issues like infant baptism and cremation. (For the uninitiated, these are pretty minor faith issues that some people tend to major on.) See, this woman knew all her opinions, but I don’t think I’ll ever get a grasp on how she let flee so many of them in one short conversation. Certainly she didn’t think through how close to home those are. Not the type to be easily offended, my wife didn’t part ways in a huff. But she didn’t part ways with a hug either. Wearing your opinions on your sleeve is one way to live, and a lot of people do. But that way you approach everyone with a wall instead of a door. If you investigate everything that comes your way, you are bound to live a lot more richly. It’s good to have an anchor that holds you to a set of beliefs and ideals, but ultimately those are supposed to be a point of connection, not division.

I have opinions, but I choose to hold to them fairly loosely. It means that I have to be more engaged in sussing out what I believe. Trust is a choice. Please carefully consider who you are going to trust, and regularly assess why. ‘Cause if you pick your wardrobe based on recommendations from a gay guy on TV, I might have to call you on it. After all, he’s just someone walking around in needlessly uncomfortable shoes.

I had a little mp3 player that I loved. I loved it more than Apple fans love their iPods. It was a little Samsung unit with a 30GB hard-drive, and capability to not just record with an internal mic, but also record a line-in signal as well as. In a pinch it could also play videos, and show pictures, though with rather diminutive 1.8″ that might just be pushing it. But for playing music, it was top notch. Its battery would allow me nearly two weeks of regular commuting time, and the odd road trip thrown in. But that chapter is over. ‘Cause it takes a player more robust than the little Samsung to survive a full wash-and-dry cycle in the laundry. So yeah, don’t do that with your tech toys.

I’ve got an Archos 605 that I bought on Boxing Day. It’s decent enough, but I bought it primarily to be my walking photography portfolio, and its battery doesn’t allow extended play of music or video. I get a lot of comments and compliments when I show off my pics — it’s got a great screen — so it was a smart move despite its limitations. But I wanted a player that I could throw around, that could store a good chunk of my music, and that could stand to be away from its charger for a while. I was an inch away from buying a new Zune, but it’s critical to me that my tools and toys be as open as possible, and you need Zune software installed on every computer you use to deploy it (apparently). As I’m right now in the process of switching between about 5 different boxes (not exaggerating!), that wasn’t a great option.

What I settled on is the Zen 16GB. It’s the same player that my siblings bought my parents last Christmas. I’m making a few compromises here — it has less capacity than the player it replaces. But it’s solid state memory so you can play soccer with the thing and listen to it on the way home. (Of course trying that might just have you writing your own “Don’t Do This…” post.) It has comparable battery life to the outgoing one. I can do impromtu voice (or whatever) recordings. (It goes without saying there’s no line-in. There’s never going to be another line-in…) And it’s also infinitely upgradeable as it has an SD card slot built in. Hey, I have a few of those kicking around. It’s got a decent screen and can playback video, but, of course, it doesn’t lick the shoes of the Archos. (In fact I was tempted to pop another $100 in and get a second Archos but I’d be stuck with the same battery issues. Deal-breaker.)

My only fear is that the Zen is small enough, and light enough, to also find its way undetected into the laundry. Here’s hoping we can avoid that.

I just made a Wordle. (This is created from my recent wedding post.) And now, you can do it too. This little graphic design trend can/must end now — it can’t survive the over-exposure of this technological onslaught. I wonder what it’ll be replaced with.

But I don’t wonder too hard, ’cause whatever it is, the programmers will catch up even quicker to it, and kill it with more deadly accuracy. Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about all that.

I just found out about an effort called The Girl Effect. Essentially its goal is to empower young women in poverty-stricken nations to improve their (whole!) world. The logic is that when girls have better education, they can make a better and bigger contribution to society, economy and in turn education. Now, I applaud just about anything that brings hope on any level. But this feels a little simplistic to me. Does it make a difference knowing that Nike is behind it?

This is why working internationally is very difficult. Because you are torn between working with and through the culture, or trying to directly change it. And when it’s the extension of a corporation with a relatively bad public image, it just smacks of disingenuousness. Is it trying to right its wrongs, or is it just trying to improve its reputation? (Is it even aware of the Western-centric cultural implications at work? With its primary goal to be a money-making enterprise, can it be trusted to carefully navigate those?)

Do you believe the fundamental assertion of The Girl Effect? Or does it seem to you, as it does to me, simplistic, even sexist? (For the record, I would love to have my cynicism about this soundly clubbed.) The comment board is open.

This post is a response to this one written by an inspirator of mine.

Copyright is a sinking ship. In legal dictionaries, you’ll soon be able to find it under “unenforceable”. The internet moves faster than a speeding corporation, and jumps continental divides in a single bound. Add to that the fact that copyright itself is not black and white, but a whole gamut of grey (there are so many loopholes, bizarre rules and general red tape that go into it), and that the shades flip around from country to country, well let’s just say that things have gotten really messy.

Here’s the bottom line: we are so far advanced that nearly anyone can reproduce nearly anything. If you hear a song you want to use, you don’t even have to use the original. You can come up with a hook that is very close, lyrics that are very close, and record the whole thing in your basement with some buddies. So a group hears a song, turns around and whips out another that bears no resemblance to the original except that it’s almost exactly the same. Good luck nailing them with an open-and-shut copyright case! Ditto that for photography, and just about everything else, as digital tools become cheaper and better.

Add to that the fact that many (many!) people are actively giving away copyright privileges (“Take it, make copies, use it wherever you’d like!”), and the established practices of our culture begin to change in a big way. When copyright is regularly and intentionally exchanged for promotion value, it erodes the power of copyright law even further. Scary as that may seem, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, in no way am I arguing that ethics are dead. Actually that’s all we have left here. We should be on the up and up, follow the prescribed structures, and offer credit, and of course money, where it’s due. But in order to salvage anything on the ethical front, there needs to be real education. I’m not talking about “You wouldn’t steal a car, so don’t steal a movie” type education. That’s laughable – copyright is not nearly as clearcut as theft, and doesn’t fit in the same place at all in law. It’s a huge conceptual leap from concrete object to abstract information – nearly like saying “You wouldn’t steal a building, so don’t take a picture of it,” or “You wouldn’t steal a book, so don’t have ideas.” I suppose if pressed, I’d agree with those cinema ads in spirit, but they’re so hyperbolic that their impact is of no greater importance than the average fart.

Instead education needs to come in the form of understanding what it takes to be sustainably creative. And that is especially challenging because that itself is in the midst of an immense paradigm shift. Just look at RIAA with its hilariously nauseating game of international Whack-a-mole. They’re nailing people left and right for copyright infringement, but how much offenders actually owe is entirely arbitrary. And all the while they’re making enemies out of their customer base, and so by extension their musicians too! To continue the ship metaphor, it’s like they’ve decided that drilling holes in the hull is the best way to keep it afloat. And every other “art industry” had best be watching them. (I think they are.) Of course, far better than a bigger beating-stick would be a sweeter, crunchier carrot (good content, anyone?).

The artist needs to be honestly and continuously creative. Bands make the majority of their money from live gigs (unless they lip-sync!), not their recordings. That’s a radical shift from, say, 5-10yrs ago! Professional photographers are making more of their money from gigs too, not reselling their stock portfolio over and over like they used to. I foresee that the net outcome of all of this could be a huge benefit to human expression! Perhaps it’s strange to say this, but I think it’s actually more honest. The talent, craft and experience of art is where its value lies. There is a quest for the true, the pure, and the personally connected, not just the most replicable and mass-marketable. Realistically, the worth of recordings of whatever experience is determined by what people are willing to pay for it (uh, nothing?), rather than what companies say it is. Radiohead’s most recent pay-what-you-want CD is a flaming cannonball launched into a knife-fight – no matter what money it has made when the smoke clears, it’s already a huge success simply because it’s the first real victory of artist over institution.

Copyright is going down. Pull out your bugles and mourn it if you must — just be aware that you’re going to be drowned out by a jubilant street party!

“Right now, we have freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time!” (Just so we’re clear, I got that from Austin Powers. And I didn’t download the movie on the net, either.)