Re: [PD] "I'm on unix, I'm much better than windows users!" (was Pd-extended 0.42.5 release candidate 6 released!)
HI, I'm a linux user since more than one year and I teach at a South American university in design and arts faculty.
Before I was on Win or Mac depending on the hardware I was using. I think nowadays people cannot decide easily what OS to use because of market pressures. One responsibility of teachers in media, design, and arts subjects is to provide students with alternatives to these systems. Reasons have been largely expressed in this mailing-list and thousand of forums of free software. But still, I believe if at universities and educational institutions the dominant platforms for media productions are still based on closed and proprietary systems, then future generations of designers and artists all around the globe would not see other options.
Today students barely have the choice to experiment with software to media production as almost everything has been coded and packaged in nicely looking interfaces. These interfaces do not allow them to think out-of-the-box. Software companies allow them/us to produce what is supposed to be produced, nothing less nothing more.
Teaching that free software do exist, that free software is a worth alternative to proprietary software (adobe, microsoft, apple, autodesk, and the like), that free software enables you to control what the machine does it is a moral duty in educational academies today. What is at stake is the property of knowledge production because knowledge has become mediated by the computer. Free software stands then for the freedom to access the knowledge and its production.
Ricardo Cedeño Montaña dRNn1076
(and the most "coherent" is that they always rebel
against windows, but not against mac, which in these days is more commercial and bigbrothery than windows ever was - acording to some comments from friends that use mac)
Microsoft has got 90% of the computer market by the balls. They don't really need any other tricks than that (such as DRM or whatever). For Apple or any company, it's a lot easier to expand themselves in a place where Microsoft isn't already. I think that you understand that Microsoft got its 90% not just by selling quality software, and that you understand why so many shops absolutely refuse to sell a computer without Windows even though there's a market for it. Isn't this the most damaging thing going on every day in the industry ?
Maybe, but to get around that problem you just do what Yves was talking about and help someone switch to a free os. Regarding music specifically, however, Apple's actions are more worrisome to me.
Apple is involved deeply in getting computer files to behave less like "pure data" and more like old media formats. Actually it's worse than that, because with an audio cassette player you could record as many copies of an album as you could afford. You can't even make your own personal copy with Apple's aac files from Itunes (and if you do it's illegal in the U.S.).
Unlike Microsoft users, who usually have a healthy dose of animosity toward the os, Apple users love their software. To me, this is one of the biggest problems in the industry because it means that people aren't asking really obvious questions in response to DRM. (For example: why is fair use _shrinking_ when technology is making the cost of copying/distributing music next to nothing? Instead, it should be expanding, right?) If in 10 years sharing my music files with you isn't as easy as touching you on the shoulder, you'll mainly have Apple and the RIAA to thank.
Another obvious question: if I'm buying an entire album of music files in a restricted format that locks me into using Itunes and makes it nearly impossible (AFAICT) to transfer over my music library to GNU/Linux, shouldn't I be paying _substantially_ less for those files than if I bought the album on CD?
-Jonathan
Great points Ricardo. You give the thread new wings! :)
This tension is in every course I teach or work with. It is almost a dispair of modern education. Vocational pressures demand the students learn shrinkwrapped tools. The tools themselves hide the problem domain. And thus the abstracted knowledge cannot be taught. The "one problem - one product" philosophy leads to a shallow disposable experience, which cheats students of real education.
However, they pay high course fees and expect employable skills. Companies demanding skills expect "shrinkwrapped" knowledge and use proprietary products, feeding the cycle. But then they constantly decry shallow, unthinking graduates, prefering more creatively vigorous candidates whose 'poorer', old-fashioned education actually taught them to make more from fewer resources. This early industrial revolution mentality, gives people just enough knowledge to operate the machines that will enslave them.
However, if so called new economies are built on grander values, and if phrases like "information ecomony" or "knowledge economy" have any substance, then the question is, if knowledge has value, how do you create new knowledge, and thus new value in the world?
By teaching both fundamental/ axiomatic principles, and abstract reasoning/ problem solving. This causes 'critical thought', rather than mere activity. Many students seem to enjoy my classes because I will not teach with proprietary workflows. They know any fool can read a manual, or show some slides on Protools shortcuts. This is not what you need a teacher for. Go home and learn this trivia in your spare time.
Further, I think there are carefully maintained misunderstandings about some proprietary tools. They are marketed and aggressively promoted to educational establishments as "Professional". This word is so overused as to ring hollow. They are crafted more for a _domestic_ market of aspirants. Real "professionals" at the high-end of many disciplines use obscure, expensive or experimental tools themselves, with mass-market gear there as a reference point or exchange mechanism.
Advantages of Free software in education are:
It exposes alternative (and often user definable) views of the task model. Many task models in popular Mac and Windows software (and some Free equivalents that slavishly copy them) ain't that great anyway, from a cognitive/HCI standpoint. They just happened to be the first to build a base, or adhere to an established design pattern. Many are arbitrary when you think about it.
The task model should be challenged anyway. That is the creative prerogative.
Integrating diverse views allows one to clearly see the underlying concept.
This all presupposes you care about the quality of the outcome and the humanity of the producer. I'm not sure those vaules can be taken for granted any longer.
Way, way OT. I apologise.
a.
On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:24:41 +0000 Ricardo Cedeño drnn_1076@hotmail.com wrote:
HI, I'm a linux user since more than one year and I teach at a South American university in design and arts faculty.
Before I was on Win or Mac depending on the hardware I was using. I think nowadays people cannot decide easily what OS to use because of market pressures. One responsibility of teachers in media, design, and arts subjects is to provide students with alternatives to these systems. Reasons have been largely expressed in this mailing-list and thousand of forums of free software. But still, I believe if at universities and educational institutions the dominant platforms for media productions are still based on closed and proprietary systems, then future generations of designers and artists all around the globe would not see other options.
Today students barely have the choice to experiment with software to media production as almost everything has been coded and packaged in nicely looking interfaces. These interfaces do not allow them to think out-of-the-box. Software companies allow them/us to produce what is supposed to be produced, nothing less nothing more.
Teaching that free software do exist, that free software is a worth alternative to proprietary software (adobe, microsoft, apple, autodesk, and the like), that free software enables you to control what the machine does it is a moral duty in educational academies today. What is at stake is the property of knowledge production because knowledge has become mediated by the computer. Free software stands then for the freedom to access the knowledge and its production.
Ricardo Cedeño Montaña dRNn1076
(and the most "coherent" is that they always rebel
against windows, but not against mac, which in these days is more commercial and bigbrothery than windows ever was - acording to some comments from friends that use mac)
Microsoft has got 90% of the computer market by the balls. They don't really need any other tricks than that (such as DRM or whatever). For Apple or any company, it's a lot easier to expand themselves in a place where Microsoft isn't already. I think that you understand that Microsoft got its 90% not just by selling quality software, and that you understand why so many shops absolutely refuse to sell a computer without Windows even though there's a market for it. Isn't this the most damaging thing going on every day in the industry ?
Maybe, but to get around that problem you just do what Yves was talking about and help someone switch to a free os. Regarding music specifically, however, Apple's actions are more worrisome to me.
Apple is involved deeply in getting computer files to behave less like "pure data" and more like old media formats. Actually it's worse than that, because with an audio cassette player you could record as many copies of an album as you could afford. You can't even make your own personal copy with Apple's aac files from Itunes (and if you do it's illegal in the U.S.).
Unlike Microsoft users, who usually have a healthy dose of animosity toward the os, Apple users love their software. To me, this is one of the biggest problems in the industry because it means that people aren't asking really obvious questions in response to DRM. (For example: why is fair use _shrinking_ when technology is making the cost of copying/distributing music next to nothing? Instead, it should be expanding, right?) If in 10 years sharing my music files with you isn't as easy as touching you on the shoulder, you'll mainly have Apple and the RIAA to thank.
Another obvious question: if I'm buying an entire album of music files in a restricted format that locks me into using Itunes and makes it nearly impossible (AFAICT) to transfer over my music library to GNU/Linux, shouldn't I be paying _substantially_ less for those files than if I bought the album on CD?
-Jonathan
-
Andy Farnell -
Ricardo Cedeño