Wouldn’t it be nice to have all the knowledge in the world accessible right in your hands? Too bad that nothing really in today’s society is free. Someone always owns property to a source you want so you have to pay your rights to use it. Richard Stallman believed in a free software movement which included the four freedoms of software: the freedom to run a program for any purpose, freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what you wise, freedom to redistribute copies to neighbors, and freedom to improve a program. Microsoft and ITunes goes against these programs. Ben Franklin invented a lot of cool stuff and never patented any of it this way he could share it with all man kind. We know many things today about Plato, Aristotle, etc. because copyright did not exist; we had the freedom to learn. Stallman’s idea was you deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs. Back to having all the knowledge in the world, what is one source you can think of where this exists? That’s right, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an example from the digital media revolution; idea of crowd sourcing. With a large group of people you will get better results rather than two to three experts. Lots of people know lots of stuff. Ideas are improved and get better when they are freely expressed. You can remove information and control of ideas from elites that make things more accurate and better. This is why Wikipedia is great! This made it seem like the authority of experts was undermined. Because Wikipedia is a collection of millions of people, we can’t cite it. It goes against this idea. The point of Wikiepedia was to envision an encyclopedia as an open document for anyone to fix with millions of people as the audience to have better sources to get the best knowledge. Information wants to be free. Wikipedia is better than most textbooks. It’s revolutionized access to information. It’s what Busch imagined. One more example of crowd sourcing is recommendations on Amazon. Have you ever ordered let’s say a book on Amazon and then below on the screen, recommendations of other books people have also bought with the book you’re purchasing? It is crowd sourcing. They’re showing other people like you with similar interests. They are freely expressed. You should not be able to charge for information but distribute it, like a software. But then who pays for the workers? NOVA (as a city example) does because they like it. LINUX was Stallman’s free software he made to be shared with everybody.  No one believes in this idea of free software though, it goes against what they think they know.

In another topic about copyright, did you know singing happy birthday to someone at a party or even playing music in a club is technically illegal? You have to pay your rights to the owner to play the song. But why has no one ever been in trouble for it before? They just haven’t been caught/ it’s a smaller issue to worry about. It’s like owning property. You do not own the property so you have to buy your rights to “borrow” it.

What is a corporation? A corporation is defined as a disembodied immortal being, a fictitious person. The entity is created in law as if it were a natural person. It is about transcending time or being immortal. Lets say we start a town called AngelinaVille and it’s run by five families that originally landed there. It has legal entity to buy land, the ability to sign contracts, etc. How does AngelinaVille still have legal existence after the people who have founded it died? They legally find another partner to run. The corporation goes on forever. It has a lot of rights similar to a person because a corporation is understood as a “natural” person. This is so weird!! George Mason University is a corporation. If the president dies the university still exists just under a different law. A corporation can also raise money, like selling shares to raise them money. The best part is, if something bad happens involving the corporation, not a single individual could be responsible. The whole corporation is responsible.

Maybe in the future free software will exist for everyone to use, or is that wishful thinking? I would like to see it happen.

Rock and Roll is a genre of popular music that first started in the African American community in the late 40s to early 50s. The music then was known as a mix of R&B, country, jazz, blues, and gospel. If you think about one of the most famous singers of Rock and Roll during this time period, Elvis Presley, the description of the music fits. In the earliest of styles of rock and roll in the 50s, the saxophone was often the lead instrument. This is now replaced today by the guitar. The rock and roll music of the 50s was essentially a rhythm of blues with a back beat of drums. Certain members of society back then, however, did not agree with this type of music. There were fears among many whites with the mixing of the dance floor that rock and roll would lead to blacks and whites spending actual time together, let alone the fears of sexual relations. “It should not surprise us that a member of the white Citizens Council of Birmingham, Alabama fulminated against rock and roll as immoral music that was part of a plot to infiltrate the minds of southern teens by the NAACP.” The first of the bans of this music started in the South (oddly not shocking), at dances then and become widespread to radio stations who were banned to play this kind of music.  Rock and roll music contributed to the civil rights movement. I never knew this information about rock and roll and I’m honestly really surprised.

Reference:

ProQuest article titled: ROCK AND ROLL, CRT, AND AMERICA IN THE 1950S MUSICAL COUNTERNARRATIVES IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH

What is nationalism? Nationalism is a group of people who abide by the principles and the same framework of laws. An example that we all follow everyday is the U.S. Constitution.  I guess you could say we are all equal because we all agree to follow the same rules right? Some people were romantic nationalists. They said that there is something to a nation beyond law and beyond individual rationality. There is a “soul.” But how would we be able to spot that? One answer could be racial nationalism. You can use a race to define a nation. But why isn’t the U.S. not part of any other country? The U.S. is not really “unique.” We are open to everyone: every race, every personality, every culture, etc. This does not tend to make us unique. A country like Germany for example, is unique because everyone is the same. There are only white people living there who share the same culture and values. Another problem with the U.S. not being unique is the idea that the American character consists of frontiers, unlike other countries. Think about it. In the west, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Indian, etc. cultures are more prominent because that is where they first migrated from. You would not find many people who speak these languages or are from the culture on the east coast.  European countries are known as a place of “whiteness.” One serious study in the 1890s was folk culture. This was like the traditional, untouched people. The only place to find them is on the economic margins, the Appalachia swamps of Louisiana. You could also think of these people as hillbillies, ignorant or primitive. But now because of the whole point of folk culture, they are considered pure and uncontaminated.

Huddie Ledbetter was raised in Texas and worked as a laborer and also played music. He went to prison for manslaughter in 1930. He was discovered by John Lomax. He was looking to bring folk culture and music back and what a better place to look than in prison? Lomax got Ledbetter out of prison and they went on college tours with “folklore” programs. Ledbetter eventually split from Lomax but could only make a living as a “folk” singer.

The song Honkin Tonk  by Hank Williams is about people moving to the south, a man cheating on a women, and then asking her to bring money. His voice in the song sounded like a donkey. It was very odd. The country music during this time is different than what it is today. Today’s country music has been more modernized and I think it also is trying to lean toward the genre of pop rather than being a pure country song.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos are the second country band to play at Carnegie Hall in 1963. Their music was different than older country music, like from Hank Williams, because it involved drums. This is where the country music started to sound more like pop.

King Records was run by Syd Nathan, a Jewish immigrant in Cincinnati. This industrial city has a lot of black and white immigrants. The first singer he signed in the record label was Cowboy Copas. The song Filipino Baby is about a romance with a Filipino woman. Is this an artifact of white privilege, a white man talking about a dark skinned woman? It is. It just sounds like the women is a “collection of body parts.” You would not normally see a dark skinned woman writing about a white man. This adds along to the topic of racism.  White people tend to speed up the music.  Within the structure of segregation, there are alternate desires to be expressed.