Andrew Dubber » Book

The best thing I have read all year

dubber — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:18:39 +0000

Heaven is not a place guarded by immigration officials interested only in passports and certificates, nor is it the higher class to which we are promoted by passing an examination showing what we have learned in this world. Heaven is this world as it appears to the awakened imagination, and those who try to approach it by way of restraint, caution, good behaviour, fear, self-satisfaction, assent to uncomprehended doctrines, or voluntary drabness, will find themselves travelling toward hell, as Ignorance did in Bunyan, hell being similarly this world as it appears to the repressed imagination.

- NORTHROP FRYE (1947) Fearful Symmetry: A study of William Blake, Princeton University Press

Piracy – at sea, on air, and at the library

dubber — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:23:00 +0000

I have a book out from the library. It’s a little overdue. Actually, it’s about eight years overdue. I suspect they’ve cancelled my Auckland Public Library membership by now.

The book is called ‘The Shoestring Pirates’ by Adrian Blackburn. It’s the true account (more or less) of four men who set sail to establish a pirate radio station on an old ship anchored in a small triangle of what was deemed to be a patch of ‘international waters’ in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf – as the result of what can only be described as an accident of cartography.

They broadcast pop tunes as well as friendly and hip DJ banter – not to mention commercials and, on occasion, distress calls, for about four years (actually 1111 days, believe it or not) before finally being given a legal licence to broadcast on land.

There are parallel stories to that of Radio Hauraki in other parts of the world at around the same period in history. Radio Caroline in the UK and Radio Veronica in the Netherlands are two close to what is now my home. It’s a story of the battle for independent, private radio in an age of state monopoly control over broadcasting. And it involves men in boats, rock ‘n’ roll records and legal battles.

What makes it of particular significance to me is that I later worked closely with several of the people involved, mostly at other stations (two of the four original “pirates” were management at Radio Pacific, where I worked for five years), but on occasion at Hauraki itself as well.

Of course, what Radio Hauraki represents today is about as far from ‘piracy’ as it’s possible to get in twenty-first century media. But echoes of what it symbolised in the late 1960s and earliest part of the 1970s carried through the station’s development and multiple changes of line-up and ownership until quite recently.

These days, of course, ‘offshore’ means something different to the people of Hauraki. It’s just where the profit goes. And counter-culture has long since been replaced by corporate culture.

But as I go into 2012 – a year in which I write my own book about radio – it’s nice to take a bit of that history with me. And I like to think I’m commemorating their important and historical act of disobedience with a small act of rebellion of my own.

I’ve decided I’m not actually planning on taking the book back for at least another year. And I may even photocopy the whole thing before I do.

Swine flu update

dubber — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:10:31 +0000

I’ve had a bit of a cold over the weekend, and so of course everyone is claiming that I have swine flu. It’s possible, I guess – but it’s far more likely to be man flu.

Swine flu, of course, has already claimed as many victims as Bird flu, the Millennium Bug and the Titanic film combined – all equally and preposterously overhyped pandemics.

But I can’t talk at all today – my throat is sore, so I’m taking it easy. Missing the scheduled conference at that ‘other’ Birmingham University; staying at home and writing things instead.

Book appointments
I have a fair bit to carry on with. Most important (or, rather, most urgent) is the undergraduate textbook ‘Understanding the Music Industries’ that I’m co-writing with some friends of mine at Southampton Solent University.

It’s designed to be a general introduction to studying the music industries, and while I have my bit all mapped out, it’s taking rather longer than anticipated to come up with the actual words.

The deadline for my opening chapter went whizzing past on Friday, so with an allowance for a long weekend, today is probably the day I should get that in. However, the deadline date itself was completely arbitrary and was only offered when I actually requested one. Last minute panic always gets me working at my best, and even artificially created milestones help.

But if you’ve ever been involved with an academic textbook before – or indeed, any kind of book project – you’ll know that deadlines are a fluid concept at best. The most recent one I had anything to do with was a model of efficiency, and that went on for about a year or so longer than anticipated.

It’s called Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context, and should be coming out this month. I just did a few bits and pieces, mostly on the online stuff, and anywhere I could shoehorn McLuhan into the conversation.

The real work was done by Paul Long and Tim Wall, and the Interactive Cultures team who stitched it all together.

So, today is all about the writing. I tend to do 45 minutes on, and 15 minutes off – working with a timer. Seems the best way to get things done. That said, it’s taken me till lunchtime to get going.

Meanwhile, I’m sipping lemon drinks and eating plenty of apple sauce.

After the crunch

dubber — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:46:15 +0000

A little while back, I was invited to write a piece for a book that was released this week, called ‘After The Crunch’ – about the ways in which creativity might help Britain emerge from the current economic recession.

My copy of the book arrived in the post today, but the whole thing is free to download. Some really great writers in there, and some of my favourite thinkers about this stuff. It was a real honour to be asked.

They asked for a short essay on the theme, and after a bit of thought, I came up with this:

THE ENDGAME OF CREATIVE ECONOMY

To ask the question ‘how can creativity serve the economy?’ is, I think, to misunderstand both concepts.

Economy stems from the Greek word oikonomos, “one who manages a household,” from oikos, “house,” and nemein, “to manage.” It’s a straightforward enough concept, and it appears self-evident that a healthy economy is a good thing, and a recession a bad thing. But when you ‘manage a house’ – whether literally at home with your family or figuratively on a national scale, you do not do so purely for its own sake. It is a means to an end.

The purpose of household management is not that the house is managed, but that the people who live in it do so well. Prosperity facilitates a nice life; poverty causes misery. Money is the numerical measure we use for the degree of prosperity or poverty encountered – but it serves as an unreliable indicator of happiness or despair.

Likewise, creativity is also a means, rather than an end. It is the capacity and the activity of making new, original and possibly unique ideas, works and artefacts. Again, the function of creativity is not merely so that there can be new stuff. It is so that the people for whom the new stuff is made can be enriched in some way.

Scientific progress, innovation and new works in design, arts, music, media and crafts serve the health, well-being, intellectual life and progress of human beings who are inherently social creatures. Creativity contributes to culture, and culture is the word we use to describe the experienced, shared lives of the citizenry. It is the sum of the beliefs, values, traditions, ideas, behaviours, experiences, conversations and artefacts jointly held by the members of a society.

In a sense, neither economic prosperity nor creative ingenuity are of any intrinsic value if the people they are supposed to enrich do not benefit. The propagation of what we call ‘culture’ is of utmost and primary importance. It is insufficient that creators create and are rewarded for doing so. It is insufficient that organisations and corporations can reap commercial gain. If this is what we seek for its own sake, then we have forgotten our purpose.

In other words, economics and creativity do not simply serve each other. Rather, both are means by which quality of life can be served. And it’s clear that there is significant overlap between the two strategies. Creativity suffuses business. It’s the entrepreneurial spark that finds a solution to a problem, meets a need or fills a gap in the lives of people. By creating value for people, capital flows.

Similarly, business suffuses creativity. Acts of invention, creation, performance and construction create value. Sometimes that value is intangible and unrewarded, but frequently that value converts to a sustainable income. It is the way in which we ensure that a steady flow of further works of creativity will be possible.

It’s a virtuous circle, and things are, generally speaking, better when both are doing well. A vibrant economy and a vibrant creative environment contribute positively to the experienced lives of the people in society. But just as when things are going well we tend to overlook the intended outcome, and instead celebrate the means for its own sake; we also rush to fix the broken bit when things go awry, rather than ensure that the end result is maintained no matter what the conditions.

That is to say the very obvious – that the important thing right now is not that the economy is suffering, but that people are suffering.

In situations of great prosperity, the economically powerful can bolster the creative sector. In times past, having amassed most of the available wealth, monarchs and the church were able to commission breathtaking works of creativity, from awe-inspiring architecture to symphonic works and frescoes of incredible beauty.

Likewise (and in hopefully more egalitarian ways), creativity can often support and engender economic growth. Bohemian areas of a city where artists congregate, and find ways to express and invent, create a buzz and draw business and development towards them. People want to live and work where there are interesting and exciting things going on.

There is, in fact, no end to the ways in which creative activities generate economic prosperity. But my purpose here is not to enumerate them, but rather to raise a flag. Misinterpreting what we are trying to achieve as “how can creativity help business?” is a trap. And it’s a trap that we’re currently trying to climb out of. Economics as an engine for generating more money out of thin air is self-deluded and counterproductive. Yet it is undeniably the source of current financial woes.

So then asking how creative industries can lead us out of recession takes us inevitably toward the talk of protecting and advancing intellectual property and extension of copyright laws. To do so without at least equal attention (even, I would argue, much greater attention) to an open and vibrant public domain is to forget the reason we are doing any of this in the first place.

Creativity and economy can support and grow each other. And when one stumbles, the other can take it by the hand and lead it back to its right path.

But the endgame of both is culture.

Ui mai koe ki ahau he aha te mea nui o te ao, Māku e kī atu he tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

Ask me what is the greatest thing in the world, I will reply: It is people, it is people, it is people!

(New Zealand Māori proverb)

Meanwhile, this is cool

dubber — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:43:08 +0000

I blogged here a couple of days ago that I’ve started a blog for the book I’m writing. I chose the name ‘Now We Are Different’ and added it to the list of blogs I’m running at WordPress.com.

These are not the blogs that I host myself, just those scrap-booky ones where I throw stuff for temporary projects or things that just have no budget attached to them whatsoever.

But I wasn’t delighted at having the overly long domain http://nowwearedifferent.wordpress.com – which is what you end up with when you have a free account.

But there’s a new thing: domain mapping.

For the about £5 (the cost of the domain again) you can set up domain mapping on a WordPress.com blog (once you have that name registered of course). So now, without the usual expense of getting hosting sorted out, I can have http://nowwearedifferent.com. And I do.

Quite pleased with that. Now I just need a decent banner – and some content.

Now We Are Different

dubber — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:10:15 +0000

Remember how I said I was starting to write a book? Well anyway – I said I was going to write a book. Even did a bit of research and mapped out a structure for that book. It’s about how human beings have changed in response to shifts in the media environment.

Interesting stuff – and there’s even a pop video to go with it:

There is a point to all this. However… I’m not going to talk about it much here, because it seems such a separate thing at the moment from what I’ve been talking about on this, my personal blog… and I kind of think it’s a big enough project to warrant its own blog.

So I gave it a working title: Now We Are Different… and if you click on that title, it’ll take you to the blog of the book.

Very early days now, and it will probably end up getting its own hosting and everything, but for the moment, that’s where my thinking about that stuff will go. So if you’re not interested in the evolution of the human species under the effects of digitalisation, then you’re probably pretty safe here. At least – as safe as you ever were before I had this book notion.

How to make wishes

dubber — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:22:49 +0000

Phase two of the I So Wish website is now complete. I had the idea and Stef made the site in a day (as he explains here). Then I wrote an e-book in a day and we put it up for sale on the site.

Writing the e-book was an interesting process. It’s the fastest writing exercise I’ve ever been engaged in: over 10,000 words in a single day – and my criteria was pretty tough: I decided that it had to be something that I was happy to put my name to – rather than some cynical ‘put your faith in the universe’ kind of mystical rubbish. That approach would have been easier, though probably would have descended quite quickly into merciless parody.

The book is equal parts your standard goal-setting workshop and project management – but applied to personal rather than business management ends. The blurb on the landing page explains it pretty well.

Obviously, all my wishes haven’t come true. I’m not wealthy and nor do I have a comprehensive classic jazz vinyl collection or an amazing array of rare single malts. But I have lots of other good stuff in my life, and I’m working on those last few. They seem like they might be achievable things to attain over the course of my life.

And, of course, setting up the website, writing a book and making it available for sale is one of the strategies towards making those wishes come true. Simple, practical steps. I could close my eyes and cross my fingers, but that doesn’t seem like it’ll be quite as effective.

Go have a look at what we did – I think it’s kind of cool that it’s come together so quickly.

Here’s the wishing site… and here’s the ebook.