“There’s a hardware solution to intellectual property theft. It’s called a .357 Magnum.” — K.W. Jeter, “Noir.”

I recently finished reading Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget,” a self-described manifesto against what he calls the “cybernetic totalism” of the Internet age, embodied through social media, Wikipedia, and the like. Lanier, a virtual reality innovator, computer scientist, lecturer, and all-around genius, is hardly your typical Internet critic, so I was compelled to give the book a read. It’s a strong polemic for about the first two-thirds, where he decries technologies such as file-sharing for robbing musicians of their livelihood, social networks like Facebook for robbing the Web of its individuality, and Internet culture in general for robbing modern interaction of maturity, reducing us all to anonymous “trolls.”

He tends, like most, to fall apart when it comes to concrete solutions to these issues, preferring instead to wax rhapsodic about everything from cephalopods to using computers to recognize smells,  but some of his points rang true for an avowed techno-optimist like me. And it gave me pause to think about some issues that passed my desk recently and why it’s important to pay attention to them.

• A friend of mine recently vowed to switch banks after his current bank promised him that it would not process fraudulent transactions on his account — and then did so anyway, as the result of an automated process. This is something we’ve all gone through — the act of screaming at some poor hapless call center worker who tells you it’s all the doing of the Machine, and they can’t fix it. It’s a state of learned helplessness that you find in people of varying stripes (not just your grandmother), a renewed infantility that goes beyond just not understanding computers, but being literally incapable of affecting the outcome of a situation because it’s totally automated at a level they aren’t able to access.  You encounter this again and again in your daily life–with the loan you can’t get because your credit score is too low due to garbage data, your identity being stolen and your bank being incapable of doing anything about it, etc. As author Daniel Suarez says, forget about HAL or other machines taking over a few years from now. They’ve already done it–this is a ‘bot-dominated reality.
• You may remember the “Amazonfail” debacle from a few months back, where a bunch of LGBT authors’ books were suddenly and randomly “disappeared” from Amazon’s sales rankings. At the time, the company blamed it on an employee mistake, but it happened again, and this time, it was no joke. I’ll leave the economics behind these decisions to those who explain them better, such as Charles Stross, but this is yet another example of how willingly giving up control in exchange for convenience weakens us on every level. Your books can be disappeared from your shiny new e-reader at a moment’s notice, for any reason. You no longer own the gift of knowledge or entertainment you’ve purchased. It can be removed at the whim of the content creator (which is fair), the publisher (less so), or the intermediary like Apple and Amazon (Definitely less so).  You might get your money back, or you might not, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Worse, if you’re a bookseller or novelist who relies on Amazon to ply your wares, you can be disappeared just as readily. As Stross notes, this isn’t even about DRM, but the simple mechanics of a dominant player in a market using its power to control what information gets distributed to whom. (Of course, to me that philosophically returns to DRM, but that’s me.)
• Then, of course, we have the iPad. I’ll refer back to this article from Frasier Speirs about opponents of the iPad decrying its walled garden, lack of functionality, and so on. I’ve had arguments with devoted Apple fans like Kelowna that sound just like this. I remember her saying something very profound to me about why she liked Apple so much — it was the experience of control. Of feeling empowered and able to do anything with the gadget in the palm of your hand. But if the gadget shuts down and you can’t fix it, or your apps are suddenly “disappeared” through no fault of your own, or you find yourself unable to use the programs you want due to esoteric restrictions you don’t even understand, how much control do you really have?
• Meanwhile, in secret and without any oversight, the government continues to negotiate a copyright treaty that would essentially empower Internet service providers to be “content cops,” and grant insane enforcement powers to shut off your Internet access if you are ever found to be downloading any sort of illegally procured content. As much as file-sharing is deemed akin to organized crime or a deliberate way to starve the artist of income, This may not seem like a related issue to you, but again, it’s all about convenience versus control. Cable networks, broadcast TV networks, and telecoms want you using their networks, watching their preferred material, and so on. As much as companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast may grouse about not wanting to police the Internet, they will be more than happy if they can be assured of locking down more and more of our modern entertainment options in return. If this continues, you could end up with an Internet regime very much like Korea’s, where even the smallest act of file-sharing is potentially criminalized.

All of these things are emblematic of the same thing–as more and more processes become automated, they become harder to control, harder to understand, and impossible to change. Eventually, you end up like the Pakleds, those guys from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode who kidnap Geordi in order to fix their ship, because they no longer have the smarts to do it themselves and can’t be bothered to learn how–they’d rather just steal what they need.  The more we allow everything from Facebook to Apple to Equifax to promote convenience over control, the less of both we end up having, because it’s most inconvenient when you realize that control is lost.

Look, people should be paid for their work. I want DJ Shadow to make money so that he can keep making music. I want authors like Stross, K.W. Jeter, and yes, Jaron Lanier to make money off their books as a welcome exchange for the gifts of knowledge and entertainment they give. I want my computers to work efficiently, quickly, and easily. I want to be able to download and read books instantly on my laptop, cellphone, reader, etc.  I want to know right away if I can take out a loan to buy a house or a car. All of these things are perfectly understandable and logical.

But they don’t have to come at the cost of things like our control over our technology, the currency of our privacy (as both Mollie Vandor and danah boyd have written recently), or our general understanding of the way social interaction works. I think one reason why social interaction on the Web is often so easily derailed into cruelty and banality is because we not only lack the nuances in face or voice conversation, but because we also know, on some level, that we have so little control over our daily lives these days that we look for any excuse to stand up and say, “I count. I matter. I am important.” Unfortunately, the mask of anonymity twists that into the ability to say whatever you want, without consequence.

Companies and institutions lock down their processes and data to protect trade secrets and profits. Governments lock down data to preserve secrecy and keep hidden things you don’t want to know. People keep secrets to prevent drama, often only letting them out under the cloak of a false name or Web identity. We do all of this for convenience, for security, and to go about our daily lives. But the Machine breaks down, and when it does, you have to be ready and able to fix it yourself. You can build a more open society without sacrificing the tools people need to do their jobs, and you can build systems that are open, usable by anyone, remixable, and reworkable that don’t infringe on a person’s way to make a living. Unfortunately, all the trends I note above point instead to a widening of the gap between people who think that any sort of move towards an open culture is the death of society, and the “cyber-totalists” who want artists to live wretched, penniless lives while all the techno-nerds upload themselves to the Matrix. Meanwhile, the people who really profit from these things — the entertainment companies, governments, and the like — will continue to do whatever they can to assert their power, rendering these debates academic.

I guess on the scale between die-hard happy techno-optimists like Jeff Jarvis, and dour techno-pessimists like Lanier, I’m sort of in the middle. Luckily, Adam Thierer has done a great job of sketching out where folks like us stand, so I happily take my place as a pragmatic Internet optimist. But in a world where practically everything is automated and beyond your control, it becomes harder to remain optimistic. And when you lose optimism about the world, you lose your ability to make any effective change for the better.

I saw this on Friday, but had a busy weekend and didn’t get to reviewing it until now. The plot, as you’ve probably gleaned from the trailer, is pretty simple — Denzel Washington as a serious badass roaming a war-torn America, carrying a mysterious book that people, such as Gary Oldman’s corrupt small-town despot, will kill for. The movie itself is both more and less than I expected–the Hughes Brothers spin an awesomely shot and visually slick tale that melds the archetypes of the lone gunslinger, the masterless samurai, and the postapocalyptic nomad into a single narrative that satisfies for much of its length, but eventually collapses under the weight of too much implausibility.

Major SPOILERS beyond the cut. Don’t read if you haven’t seen it yet.

As you might guess, the book Eli is carrying is the King James Bible. He claims to have been commanded by a mysterious voice to “go west” and bring the book where it’ll be safe, thirty years after a war (provoked possibly by religious differences) and at least one environmental disaster have ravaged the planet and sent civilization back to pre-industrial times, with people wearing goggles and sunglasses at all times to protect them from the sun’s deadly rays. Eli’s quest apparently not only grants him absolute resolution and purpose, but a degree of superhuman ability as well–though he bleeds and needs food like any man, he’s wicked with a machete, has unerring aim with a gun, and is apparently incapable of being hit by bullets event at point-blank range. Eli’s quest, at least at first, has detached him from the needs of the present — he doesn’t interfere when passing by a couple being murdered by marauding bandits, telling himself to “stay on the path.”

All this changes when he enters a small town run by Carnegie (Oldman). Carnegie, like Eli, is old enough to remember the world before the disaster, and knows that a Bible can bring enormous faith–and power–to those who wield it. Once he finds out that Eli has it, he sends his army of thugs (led by Ray Stevenson) after it. Also in the mix are Claudia, Carnegie’s long-suffering blind concubine (Jennifer Beals) and her daughter Solara (Mila Kunis). Solara befriends Eli and eventually becomes his apprentice, following him on his quest and trying to understand why the book is so important.

The movie plays with a few conventions of the genre to good effect. First, it’s great to see that at least one black man survives a global disaster event — as most of these movies are as lily-white as you can get — and is the hero to boot. Second, rather than the usual frenetic jump-cut short-take style most frequently used for fight scenes, the brothers employ long rotating takes to make sure you know it’s really Denzel kicking ass, taking names, and cutting heads. The cinematography is beautiful — long stretches of Eli walking desert wastelands really give you a sense of vastness and scope as to the lonely world he lives in. Third, it’s also quite funny in spots, especially in an extended sequence when Eli and Solara stumble across a kindly old couple (including Michael Gambon in a cameo) who’ve developed something of a taste for the red meat — specifically, the kind you get from unwary passers-by. You might’ve also heard that Eli carries an iPod with him, and yes, he does–but it actually works in the context of the film, especially since it’s one of the really clunky first-gen models.

To critique Denzel on his performance would be pointless, at this point — the man comes in, does what he does, and does it well. Eli gives off all the trademark Denzel notes — confidence, fatherly authority, and effortless charm — but always with a slight undertone of both menace and craziness. You’re never sure if Eli really does hear voices, but he believes it, and that’s all that matters. Gary Oldman, like Denzel, also does what he does, which is portray a villain at times both slimy and sympathetic. Carnegie’s goals are actually laudable — he wants to use the Bible to bring back civilization and restore communities — but his means are ruthless and his lust for power is transparent. Jennifer Beals doesn’t get to do much except look beautiful (Much like Catherine Zeta-Jones, the woman simply does not age) and be blind and pitiful until a crucial sequence at the very end (I’ll explain in a bit). Mila Kunis acquits herself very well in both dramatic sequences with Denzel (No easy task) and the fight scenes, though she comes off a little too Valley Girl-ish for a chick born and raised in a post-apocalyptic brutal frontier settlement. Titus Pullo himself, Ray Stevenson, does what he does, which is be intense, intimidating, and glowering, with a hint of pathos and sadness underneath.

Now, for the big spoilers. I’ll leave a little space here for those who want a general review but don’t want to know all the gory details.

THIS

IS

YOUR

LAST

WARNING

The first big twist is that the “voice” directs Eli (and eventually Solara) to a sanctuary on Alcatraz Island, where a community has slowly been rebuilding humanity’s accumulated knowledge. They already have copies of the Torah and the Qu’ran, but not the KJ Bible. This is where the movie starts to fall apart for me. The Bible is the most-printed and most-read book in the world, every year, for decades running. Even if you buy into the conceit that humanity burned Bibles after the war to prevent another religious conflict from happening (A doubtful idea, given the level of religious fervor in the world today), there should still be literally millions of Bibles lying around that anyone should be able to find. That God (or whomever) should command Eli to travel for 30 years(!) across America with one specific book, allegedly the last of its kind, strains credulity.

But it gets better. Carnegie, in the movie’s climax, gets his hands on the Bible (dealing Eli a near-fatal gunshot wound in the process) and gleefully opens it up — only to find it’s written in Braille. Eli, you see, is blind, and has been since the disaster scorched the skies. Though there are some very slight hints at this through the course of the movie, there’s nothing to balance the fact that he clearly looks right at people when he talks to them, and more importantly, is able to shoot, cut, and stab enemies with a great degree of visual acuity. So the idea is that either the book, Eli’s faith, or both not only grant him ninja skills, but literally sight beyond sight. (This, by the way, is where Jennifer Beals gets her big moment and gleefully refuses to transcribe the book for Carnegie, telling him how much it sucks to have the thing you want so close, yet so far away.) Thus, when Eli loses the Bible, he loses his powers and can be shot. But because Eli has memorized the Bible backwards and forwards, he is able to recite it from memory to the Alcatraz community leader (Malcolm McDowell in an understated cameo), and dies peacefully, knowing he’s done his job.

The movie is all about faith. Not a specific kind of faith, necessarily, but faith in general. The animating force and drive people need to get through the day and survive to the next, even if it’s just more of the same. The hope that things can and will get better, and that you should do all you can to make the world a place worth living in, no matter how hard it gets. This principle works on a metatextual level as well, as the Hughes Brothers ask you to have faith in the overall premise — as well as Denzel’s typically awesome performance — and overlook the film’s rather big structural flaws. What bothers me is that the book itself is invested with magical power, rather than Eli’s faith or belief in himself. Or perhaps he simply needed to lose the Bible in order to realize where his power and faith really came from, as is often the case with stories like this.

I think the movie is much like the finale of “Battlestar Galactica,” in that if you’re a believer in the hard sciences and demand plausibility, you will loathe it, especially at the end. If you’re someone who has faith, or is simply willing to accept the idea that faith can move mountains — or help restore a ruined planet — then you’ll dig this movie. If you’re just the type of person who is a sucker for badass action heroes stalking the badlands and taking no prisoners (as I am), you’ll LOVE this movie. Recommended for the theater.

But this year is the big 3-5, and unfortunately, my birthday proper falls on a Monday, so I can’t really celebrate it the way I’d like to. And, again being blunt, I’ve had a tough year and feel like being indulged. So, to wit, here are my Amazon and Barnes & Noble wish lists. I’ve prioritized the stuff I really want, and I believe both stores eliminate items from lists as they’re purchased, so there shouldn’t be any missteps if you guys trample all over each other trying to get me crap.

If you’re in a more charitable mode, there are numerous organizations I support that would benefit greatly from a donation in my name. They include Open Left, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, The Free Software Foundation, Causecast, and Charity Water. I also have several causes on Facebook you can donate to.

Whatever you choose to buy for me or donate in my name is greatly appreciated and will make my impeding slide into senility that much more enjoyable.

I’ve been a customer of yours for just under a year now. In that time, I have been mostly pleased with your service. Unlike the vast majority of your customers, I’ve never had a long-term outage (touch wood), or serious issues with my Internet or cable — the former being essential, given that I work from home and rely on steady Internet for my job. Your customer service has generally been pleasant and helpful the few times I’ve called them. Even when you pulled a bonehead move like threatening to phase in metered broadband, and I went in hard on you, I was still willing to break bread and see it from your perspective. The representatives of your company I’ve talked to on Twitter have been pleasant, forthright, and honest about what they do and where they stand vis-a-vis company decisions. I even supported you when Rupert Murdoch tried to hold you hostage over transmission fees for Fox content, if only because I think he represents a greater threat to the free flow of information.

That’s why a recent email I got from your company really pissed me off.

My service contract, which is quite pricey, is coming to an end next month. If I retain the service, it goes up by 3 dollars, which, combined with the increased state and local “regulatory fees” on my bill, means I’ll have a $10 increase with no change in services or benefits. Fine. Fair enough. But my only other options are either to downgrade to a slower Internet speed, or retain my current service at the same price–but tack on your landline digital phone service, which I will, in all likelihood, never use.

So, to recap, my options are: 1) Pay more for the same service without any changes to my service, 2) Downgrade to a slower Internet speed, or 3) Add a service I won’t use. In what world is this supposed to be attractive to me, the customer?

In a perfect world, I would simply cancel the channels I don’t watch and keep the ones I do. But because cable a la carte is not a reality yet, broadcasters sell their channels in bulk, so the profitable ones can carry the less-profitable networks. That means if I want to buy, say, SyFy, I have to get five other channels I don’t give a shit about. If I want to cancel a channel I don’t watch, I lose five other channels I do give a shit about. This slams the customer to profit the content creators. This is not your fault, of course, but I add this to illustrate the reality of why so many people dislike cable today.

Look, I understand you want to protect your legacy business model. But the reality is that your way of doing business is dying. There are an increasing number of set-top boxes and other products that enable viewers to bypass cable altogether and get video of all kinds from the Internet, right to the TV. In fact, one reason why I bet you knuckled under to Fox over the fee battle was because live sports are the only thing keeping most cable broadcasters afloat. When a workable business model to broadcast live football and baseball games over the Web in HD becomes reality, that’s it for you. John Rogers has it right–as the Netflix model becomes more prevalent for all forms of old media, it’s going to win, and you guys are scared to death of that.

As I wrote to you before, it’s not enough to pursue aggressive growth to please your shareholders. You have to do more to build loyalty among your longtime customers and prove to people that you’re not to be despised and loathed–which, I hate to tell you, you pretty much are across the country. If you want people to respect your company more, do better. And you can start by not forcing regular customers into a three-pronged Morton’s Fork like you’re doing with me.

Give this some thought, please. As much as I support the concept of new ideas and models supplanting the old, I’m sympathetic to you. You’ve got families to feed and bills to pay, and hey, I love TV, or else I wouldn’t bother at all. But there’s a lot I could do with the money I spend each month on your service, and if stuff like this continues, that’s what’ll be done, guaranteed.

Yours sincerely,

Martin

Much as 9/11 was able to irrevocably change the everyday life of the world due to a single catastrophic event, humanity adapts frighteningly well and rapidly to this change. Cars are adapted for daylight driving with sun-proof shielding and video cameras to see the road. Cities build “subwalks” for people to get to and from work during the day. Coffee shops sell blood-laced lattes.

But just as 9/11 didn’t really change anything, so too does this change fail to paper over the cracks underneath. The remaining few humans are hunted and farmed for blood, but as they die and the good old O-positive becomes scarce, the vampire population begins to starve and degenerate into “Subsiders,” monstrous bat-winged horrors that eat anything in sight. The richer vampires, naturally, hoard all the blood they can get, leaving the poorer to starve and atrophy, with all the inevitable riots and social unrest. If this sounds familiar, it should — directors Michael and Peter Spierig deliberately paint this future world as an analogue to our own, both of which are too reliant on finite resources to prop up a decaying model.

Enter Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), chief hematologist for pharmaceutical giant and premiere human blood farmer Bromley Marks. Dalton, transformed against his will by his brother Ronnie, feverishly works on a potential blood substitute, as he refuses to feed on human blood and desperately wishes to be normal again. A chance encounter with sexy human rebel Audrey (Claudia Karvan) leads him to the small resistance movement and lead vampire hunter Elvis (Willem Dafoe). Elvis, who used to design custom cars for vamps, was turned back to human in a freak accident, and Edward wants to duplicate the incident in the hopes of finding a cure. Meanwhile, CEO Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) is determined to keep the blood flowing by any means necessary, even if it means charging exorbitant premiums to anyone who can afford it.

“Daybreakers” combines retro-goth (rainy nights, 1940s-style dress) with futurist/minimalist tech to create a functional, familiar, yet alien world where vampires literally battle it out on the streets (well, subways) for the smallest drop of blood. It’s hard to look at it and not imagine a similar fate befalling our world. It’s interesting to note that the vampires in this world are really bitches compared to most vamps you see in prose and cinema–they can’t fly, don’t seem to have super-strength or speed (except in Subsider form), or super-senses of any kind. This is probably due to the Speirigs not having a particularly large budget, but I also like it for playing up the plague/curse aspect of vampirism, rather than the “Wow! I have superpowers” model that’s been prevalent for so long. Oddly, they don’t cast reflections, which makes no sense if the disease is virally transmitted.

The biggest problem I have is with the cure(s). One involves being burned by the sun while soaked in water, while the second comes from cured vamps’ blood being ingested by bloodsuckers. Neither cure is really explained in depth as to how or why they work, which is a sloppy oversight given how much effort the Spierigs put into creating their world. The movie’s general brevity is also a problem–at barely 1 hour and 40 minutes, there’s not nearly enough time to really explore what this world is like. Maybe the DVD version will go into more depth.

Willem Dafoe steals the show as Elvis, an aging rockabilly who shoots a mean crossbow and gets all the best lines (”About as dangerous as barebacking a $5 whore” got a huge laugh from the crowd) as well as a hilariously over-the-top faux-redneck accent. Sam Neill does what he does, which is play smoothly sinister with a trace of humanity, and Ethan Hawke does what he does, which is mope and brood a lot. Claudia Karvan as Audrey was a new discovery to me, as she’s apparently an exclusive Australian/New Zealand actress, but she plays strong, smart, and hot without being sappy or (thankfully) falling for Edward.

“Daybreakers” is an interesting and smart take on the extremely stale vampire genre. Nothing you haven’t seen before, but worth seeing in the theatre if only to cleanse your palate of all the happy-slappy nicey-nicey faux-bloodsuckers stinking up the joint of late. Be careful, though–this movie is a hard “R” and earns every bit of it. Don’t take your Edward Cullen-obsessed kid or sister if they’re under 17.