Public

Listening to the NPR on the way home, a series of letters between Gregor Samsa, aka Kafka as a Roach, and Doctor to the bugs - Seuss. There exists an unofficial podcast, since the CBC hasn't seen fit to provide this wonderful bit of mash-up. (Don't want to link directly, in case someone decides to make them take it down. It's a simple search, though.)

Grateful as I am to KCPW for broadcasting news and stories, there is a mixed blessing to only having a radio in the car. I hear stories part way in, or miss endings - all the time. We tend to listen to D's extensive music files at home, our own radio station. Often, or alone, silence is fine. The podcasts have been wonderful, for those other times. When in Boston, with no decent radio reception, we listened online to this local Utah station, and kept up our membership.

It's all the stuff of science fiction, how a technology changes everything by changing a few pervasive habits across a population. Telegraphy changed the world, and our sense of time and weather. Radio connected the world, and probably started a few wars in the process. And the internet is in the process of transforming us again. Into what? is always the question, perhaps putting stars upon ours, or thars.

We were talking last night about the end of the cycle of public outcry over streetwalkers, with the concomitant drug trade and general seediness of areas they frequent. Because Craigslist, cell phones and other web based methods have shifted the risk/benefit ratio from sidewalks to a more private space. And because it's no longer so in-your-face, there are no doubt fewer loud complaints. Just as XXX movie theaters have largely disappeared in the flood of home video availability.

There are forces trying to stop it all, vainly attempting to thwart the oceanic change. Blocking-software that errs on the 'safe' side, and censors out anything near the line. The Seuss estate is trying to stop all the parodies, meaning Dylan Hears A Who is no longer available, as other legal forms of creative expression are being intimidated away, by the threat of litigation, under the banner of copywrite protection. Public Domain is shrinking away from the public. It's all too complicated for any silly government to deal with, but that ain't stopping 'em from tryin'.

Kafka would understand. I suspect Theodore would as well.