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Articles

Video Transcription

Documentaries rely heavily on audio transcription to transform interviews and conversation into a malleable form. Many new automated transcription tools have recently arrived on the scene, many with tight integrations to Final Cut and other editing software. Here’s a list of a few I’ve found most promising.

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Quotes

Against Techno-fascism

Aral Balkan has written an excellent treatise against surveillance capitalism and the rise of techno-fascism:

If we extend ourselves using technology, we must extend the scope of human rights law to include this extended self.

—Aral Balkan
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Photography

Floripa vibes

A great essay and a great view

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Photography
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Articles

Software is Politics

We are programming the digital age—not of democracy, but of whatever political structure our current situation emerges into. What we are in now can’t be called a democracy. Large entities hold out-size power to swing elections based on benefits to them (advertising units sold against fake news on Facebook, for example). That’s not democracy; it’s something else.

It’s not just a crisis of democracy, but a crisis of code. Our systems of governance are run by software written mostly by white men, programmed largely for the benefit of large corporations who sell advertising. We are inheriting the world that results from this moral hazard.

Code is poetry. Poetry is political. Programming is a political act.

We need a rebellion—a software rebellion—to write code for the future we want to see. Is that future diverse, democratic, and decentralized? Is it fair? Is it based on equity and inclusion? Does it punish bad behaviour and reward those who treat others with respect even in their differences? These values (or not) are embedded in code, in the software that runs the apps that we use for hours every day.

It’s a political act to write software that’s against the grain of surveillance capitalism. Broadcast TV piped culture into our rooms by faceless corporations. Today it’s piped directly into our eyes via software—software that faceless corporations are writing and we are choosing.

And.

There is a very big, very important, politically crucial “and“: we, anyone, can write new software if we have the skills and tools. And we are free to install whatever software we choose on our devices. Software remains free—free as in freedom—to create, compile, download and run. So if we don’t like the future our software is writing for us, we need to write and use new software.

Here are some top-of-mind examples of alternative visions of the digital future: slightly kinder, slightly more human, written into code:

MastodonTwitter without Twitter
PixelFedHost your own Instagram
PeerTubeFederated videos, without the ads
Standard NotesPrivate notes only you can read
LibrehostCommunity-based resilient hosting
Pinebook & PinephoneOpen-source laptop & mobile phone
Elementary OSPrivacy-centric, easy-to-use OS

… along with vast swaths of software that make up the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) world.

If you can’t write code, you can still choose. You can make a political statement in the software you use, the platforms you support, the people you interact with and the voices you support in your digital life. As Twitter / Trump and Facebook / Fake News have made evident, everything is politics. People sometimes say “vote with your dollar” but that gives out-size votes to those with more dollars. In a world where software is free, vote with your attention. Put your digital care and energy towards systems and people who lead by example towards a world that’s a little bit more like the one you want to see.

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Updates

It just might be…

finished?

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Video

28 Days Later

Producing a daily vlog is a revealing, invigorating creative experience. The format flexes artistic muscles and forces fast decisions. It pushes boundaries of participation and relationship. Failure and success are immediate, all with the chance to try again the next day. In the space of a month, I produced 90+ minutes of something worth watching.

Check out the final vlog here, and click through if you want to see the whole series.

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Video

Engine Vlog!

“What are you thinking?” … “On Death”

I’m working on a daily vlog of experimental films with Engine while we travel in Italy & France. Check them out on YouTube!

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Updates

To all my lovelies out there…

Alone in Rome for a few days and thinking of y’all. I miss you. Grateful for so many good people in my life.

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Video

If Death Comes…

… may it find you living

A fun project with Engine from an afternoon in Albuquerque is released today. Go check it out!