I've always had an active healthy interest in the future. The focus this blog has had on Peak Oil is not just about forecasting when global production of all fuels will permanently decline in output, but about trying to socially prepare for what kind of world we will live in. That type of forecasting is usually done best through fictional scenarios. James Howard Kunstler has done that deliberately through the literary efforts of
A World Made By Hand and
The Witch of Hebron. I've enjoyed his works, but I want to get into a book by Walter Mosley that doesn't deal directly with Peak Oil (though one story does obliquely, I encourage you to read the book to see if you can find it) but deals more with the sociological aspects of a high-tech, low resource, overpopulated future. That book is
Futureland.
Futureland is a collection of nine short stories that was released in the wake of 9/11 (November 2001, though obviously the writing of these stories occurred prior to 9/11) set in an America of the future where the divide between rich and poor has never been wider; many corporations have become sovereign nations. There are many fascinating aspects of this dystopic vision as far as the different types of technology, the different types of drugs and the different types of living arrangements. One aspect I found particularly fascinating is how working people in the future don't seem to own anything. It seems like everything from the place you reside to the furniture you sit on to the appliances you use are all part of your life on a rental or subscription basis. As long as you can pay the bills to your subscriptions, you can enjoy the life of a "prod". If you can't, you become part of the White Noise (permanently unemployed) in an area below the super-skyscrapers called Common Ground which never sees the light of day.
So why am I writing now about this aspect of a fictional book written twelve years ago? Well, my good buddy DC sent me an article about the future of DVDs that he thought would feed my sense of paranoia regarding conspiracy and corporate control. He was right!
One Day, Two Rants (or… They Can Take My Discs When They Pry Them from My Cold Dead Hands!)
snip
Okay, finally we come to Rant #2... some concerns about Hollywood’s “digital streaming” future. Anyone
remember DIVX? The pay per view disc format that thankfully came and
went in the early days of DVD? Well, if and when physical media finally
goes away – say over the next decade or two – the Hollywood studios’
whole motivation behind DIVX will finally be realized. Consumers will
have no option or ability to own or copy films or TV shows. In fact,
the whole concept of “ownership” will disappear as it currently exists.
Your access to movie and TV content will be completely controlled by
the studios. You’ll have pay to access content – either per title or as
a monthly subscription – and if one of the studios wants to take away
that access, they can do it. Just like that. If a studio decides all
those old Westerns aren’t popular anymore and they’re just taking up
valuable server space “in the cloud”, they can just pull them down and
you can’t watch them anymore. And if you’d like to watch the widest
variety of titles from all the different studios, you’re probably going
to have to subscribe to more than one – maybe even several – different
streaming services. Each studio could have their own. That’s about as
consumer unfriendly as it gets.
Today, of course, if you want pretty much any film or TV show that’s
currently (or formerly) available on a physical disc, you can just
one-stop shop on Amazon (or eBay) and the disc is at your house in a few
mouse clicks plus a couple of days. On the music side of things, at
least the all-digital music industry is more friendly. I currently have
iTunes installed on my computer’s hard drive filled with thousands of
songs in high-quality that I’ve ripped from legally purchased CDs and
downloads. The files exist on my hard drive, and they’re backed up on a
second drive and on my iPod. I control them. I can listen to
them whenever I want. The record companies can’t take them away from
me. (Film and TV video files downloaded from iTunes are a different
issue, as they have DRM.) But Hollywood doesn’t want to work like that
in the future. Are you an UltraViolet user? Cool, right? Your movies
are stored in the cloud. Sure, you can access them from any device you
want via the cloud, but the movies aren’t on your hard drive.
You have no real control over them whatsoever. Whatever you do, be sure
to keep those Blu-ray and DVD versions! Because if you sell the discs,
thinking that all you’ll ever need in the future is the UV version
online, sooner or later you’re going to lose access to those films.
You’re going to get screwed.
The bottom line is this: In the all-digital future, Hollywood needs
to revise their concept of ownership to be more consumer friendly.
Hollywood needs to let you own and keep legal digital movie and
TV files on your own drives – files they can’t remotely deactivate or
deny you access to by pulling them off the cloud. But trust me, they don’t want to do that
and they’re going to fight doing it tooth and nail. Hollywood is,
right now, building a digital future in which your control over your
media that you’ve purchased legally is an illusion. Now, some of you
younger readers are probably thinking, “Yeah, so what? The cloud is
cool! Discs are for dinosaurs, man!” Well… if you’re a movie fan,
especially someone who has loved building and enjoying a large library
collection of your favorite films and TV shows on disc – discs that you
can watch whenever and wherever you want – it’s something you’d be smart
to think long and hard about.
It's not exactly Walter Mosley's complete vision come to fruition, but the writing on the wall is quite legible. I hope that everyone, but particularly the teen-25 demographic that is devouring the latest technological advances, takes Mr. Hunt's advice to heart and thinks long and hard about what this direction from the Hollywood studios portends regarding the future of corporate control and the popular reaction to it. Anyone who cares about putting a freeze on creeping fascism should oppose this developing trend with both their dollars and sense!
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