The World in 50 years

The Mayas predict the end of the world for the year 2012, but even if we survive another year, can we hope something for our future?

Fifty years from now, men might have changed their habits and might protect the planet Earth. Maybe the planet Earth will be the nicest place to live in the entire universe or maybe we’ll have to deal with the Martians, I don’t know.

Maybe we’ll forget the meaning of the word “crisis” and the capitalist system will just be a bad memory for old veterans like us.

But 2060 could also be the start of a nuclear war between the United States and China (or others countries), which could destroy the entire planet and kill the entire population, who knows?

In my opinion;, I know that a lot of things could happen in fifty years, and not just bad things, as some of my friends think. I hope that our children will live in a better world than ours. Maybe I’m an eternal optimist and maybe I’m wrong but let me dream!

Thirty years from now

Thirty years from now, I might be dead, I might be a musician, I might be a good father (or a drug dealer), who knows?
Nobody can predict his own future but I hope that I could fulfil my main dreams.
Thirty years from now, I hope that my lifestyle will be the same. At the age of 50, I would drink beers and play music with my friends, even if some of them might have great responsibilities and important jobs. Oldness shouldn't rhyme with boredom! I want to enjoy every moment with people I love.
My main wish is to become a professional musician and to travel the world thanks to music. Thirty years from now, I hope I played all over the world, especially in the United States, in Germany and in Japan.

Does war photography have a future ?

To answer this question, let's take a quick look at the war photography history. The first war images date from the Mexican-American war in 1847. In Europe, the first war pictures were taken during the Crimean War by several photographers like Carol Popp de Szathmari or Roger Fenton.

At this time there were few war photographers but war photography already raised a question: is war photography showing the reality of the war?
Some photographers from this time, like Alexander Gardner, recreated battle scenes to take better and clearer pictures.
This question about the reality was also a problem for the photographers of the 20th century, who covered all the majors conflicts in the world. One major change of the 20th century is that photographers can shot moving scenes thanks to the progress of the technology.
Photographers try to inform people, that's why some pictures become the best conflicts illustrations. During the 20th century, some photographers like Robert Capa or Joe Rosenthal became stars, well-known for their war pictures.
War photographer is still a dangerous job and some photographers died during reports, like the founder of the agency Magnum, Robert Capa.
Today, does war photography have a future?
One of the problem is that everybody can take pictures with a mobile phone, and these mobile pictures are published in newspapers. Video is also slowly killing photo, we can see more war scenes on Youtube then in newspapers, and war photography is still extremly dangerous, as we can see with the most recent conflicts.

A quick look at the online music stores

 
The online music stores are different from music streaming services because it enable users to download songs (and not just listen to it).
In 1993, the first online music store, called Internet Underground Music Archive, was launched. Another important step is the foundation of Ritmoteca.com in 1998. This website had a a catalog of approximately 300 000 songs. Ritmoteca.com offered the possibility to download a single MP3 song for $0.99 and an entire album for $9.99. The site had distribution deals with four major labels: BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group), Warner, Universal and Sony Music.

With the emergence of services like Napster or Kazaa in the 2000's, the major labels decided to launch their own online music stores, but it was a great failure. For instance, on Sony's one, the user had to pay $3.50 to download a single song. The major labels didn't find a right answer to the problem of illegal downloading and today, the only online stores like eMusic or Rhapsody, which have a large audience, don't belong to major labels. And the leader of the market is more than ever the Itunes Store, but how long people will pay to buy a song online when the same song is also availaible for free ?

Who am I ?

10 "too serious" rules to survive the Internet

1. Try not to say "see ya bro'" when you're talking to your boss or one of your colleague. And try to employ forms of adress.

2. On a topic, when you're quoting someone, try to only quote the important part of the message and not the entire message.

3. Try to give a precise object to your mail; not to send another "no subject" mail.

4. DO NOT WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

5. Do not send files that are too large. Try to put the file on a server.

6. Do not answer to an entire contact list when you want to talk to a single person.

7. Respect the simple rules of a website or a forum.

8. Do not forward spams or useless chains of mails.

9. Do not send too personal pictures of you.

10. The entire world doesn't need to look at your personal photos.

Three reasons to watch Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch

Ghost Dog is maybe my favourite Jim Jarmusch’s movie. The movie is inspired by Le samourai, a movie by Jean-Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon. Here are the three main reasons to watch this great movie:

-         Forest Whitaker. Maybe one of my favourite actor. You might have seen him in several other movies like Bird (by Clint Eastwood), where he plays the role of the great be-bop musician Charlie Parker, or in The last king of Scotland, where he plays General Idi Amin. He’s perfect in this role of silent hit man, who follows the ancient code of the samurai and lives on a roof surrounded by his birds.

-   The general atmosphere of the movie. The alternation between day and night scenes, the beauty of certain sequence-shots, the slow rhythm and the hip-hop influence create a very special atmosphere. The viewer is inevitably stuck by the quality of Jim Jarmusch’s direction.

-   The soundtrack, composed by the RZA, famous rapper and producer of one of the best rap bands of all time, the Wu-Tang Clan. The RZA also makes a little appearance in the movie, and played in another Jim Jarmusch joint, Coffee and Cigarettes. The soundtrack contributes to create a special atmosphere during the entire movie, especially in some mythical scenes like these:

Click

Click again

The impact of the financial crisis on European football

First, we need to take a look to the situation of the Premier League clubs (name of the English championship). Many English clubs are registered on the stock exchange and many investors are part of the financial sector. Logically the English football economy is suffering from the crisis. Other European countries are subjected to this crisis in England but they also directly suffer from the crisis. For instance, the French clubs have more difficulties selling their best players (that’s how they survive) to English or Spanish clubs.

Amateur clubs have other difficulties. They’re often sponsored by little companies, which are the victims of the crisis. But we can notice that big clubs like Barcelona or Real Madrid in Spain still spend millions to buy and to pay the best players in the world. One of the main explanations is that there is no economic regulation for Spanish clubs. They can have big debts and the King Juan Carlos sometimes pay off their debt.

One other fact is that very rich families buy out clubs, which become automatically richer than the others. Since this summer, the Paris-Saint Germain Football Club belongs to the royal Qatari family.

To conclude, we can say that the financial crisis creates a bigger gap between rich and poor clubs.

A work in progress on my online resume

Here you can take a look at my first online resume on vizualize.me

False celebrity death reports

There are many examples of premature obituaries, many celebrities were announced dead despite they were still alive. The Internet and the social networks emphasize the phenomenon because informations can circulate very quickly, without any verification of sources.
For example, one week ago, there was rumours that the famous singer and guitarist Carlos Santana was deceased. There were even fake Carlos Santana death pictures.The rumour began on Twitter when users said that Santana look like Muammar Gaddafi and pictures of Gaddafi were published with the mention "RIP Carlos Santana". Many fans thought that Santana was really dead and started to panic a bit.
One more time, it shows that  the Internet and its users create false death rumours, but false celebrity death reports existed before the development of the Internet.

But, with this kind of performance, Santana will always live in my heart!

The relation between democracy and human rights

What is the relation between democracy and human rights? First, we must define these two notions. In theory, democracy is a political system where citizens are sovereign. For Abraham Lincoln, “democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Human rights are something else, a concept, almost an ideology that says that human beings have universal rights.

There is a tendency to associate democracy and human rights but we can notice that there are many counterexamples. For instance, a tyrannical political regime like the Terror (during the French Revolution) pretended to respect the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”. And almost all the democratic countries, even France or the United States, don’t always respect human rights. This is why the European Commission for Human Rights sometimes condemns France.

Some people criticize the human rights ideology. They wonder whether human rights should really be the same for everybody, without any distinction of country, place or culture. Are human rights an imperialist ideology? For some people, human rights are the perfect illustration of the occidental civilization and of its cultural imperialism. For universalists, they are a big progress for mankind and must be defended in any situation, everywhere and at any time.

Cloud computing

To show how the Internet can allow mobility, I would like to talk about virtual offices and cloud computing. A virtual office is a computer program, which centralizes (stocks) our computer data on a distant server. The user can access is personal data from everywhere. He just needs a computer, a smartphone or a numeric tablet and a good Internet access. The virtual offices also offer the possibility to work online on some programs. It often reproduces classical computer offices and it has the same functionality.

Apple is about to appropriate this idea of the cloud computing with its iCloud. With iCloud, you can synchronize your iPhone, your Macbook, you iPad or your iPod and have access to the same content (music, photos and applications) for free. It automatically actualizes your mails, your address book and your calendars.

It appears that cloud computing could be the future of the Internet and shows that the Internet allows more and more mobility.

A real blogroll

Well, I think that this is a great example of Internet mobility and how we can share knowledges toward the same goal !

If you don't understand what's going on, start here !

Working in a network environment ?

For me, one of the major advantages of working in a network environment is the possibility to work together on a same text/document without being in the same place. It’s extremely practical for group work and it allows to gain time. No more never-ending meetings! No need to find a common schedule!

For instance, Google Docs allows us to share some content and offers the possibility to correct or to complete someone’s text. It creates synergy, all the members can contribute to the work and the result can only be better. We just need an Internet connexion to share content.

On the other hand, personal contact can be very important for creativity. Creating something in common is not just about sharing information but also about physical presence. The sound of a voice, eye-contact and so on are part of the communication which can be necessary to develop ideas. 

Treme: take a little trip to New Orleans

Treme is an American series co-created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer. David Simon is the author and the creator of the critically-acclaimed series The Wire. Treme is broadcasted by HBO since April 2010. For now, there are only two seasons but HBO has renewed it for a third season.

The series takes place in New Orleans, especially in the neighbourhood called Trémé, three months after the hurricane Katrina. It shows the everyday struggle of several New Orleans inhabitants, who are trying to rebuild their homes and to find again their ancient lives.

Two of the main characters, Antoine Batiste and Albert « Big Chief » Lambreaux, are both musicians. Antoine Batiste (played by Wendell Pierce, a New Orleans native, who also played Detective Bunk Moreland in The Wire) is a trombone player, who is always looking to find his next gig. Albert Lambreaux is a Mardi Gras Indian Chief and he’s trying to reunite his tribe despite the destruction of the bar where they were practicing.

Mardi Gras Indians are “African-American carnival revelers in New Orleans, who dress up for Mardi Gras in suits influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel”.

It’s interesting to notice that many local and non-professional actors and real musicians play in Treme. In The Wire, there were many local actors too. It shows that David Simon wants to be as realistic as possible.

For people, who love great music and The Wire, Treme is really an incredible series but I think is also very interesting for people, who want to discover New Orleans and the everyday life of the inhabitants after a major disaster like Katrina.

A common position for the BRIC countries

In April 2011, the BRIC countries took a geopolitical common position for the first time in their history. They criticized the European and American military intervention in Libya. And declared that the situation needed to be resolved diplomatically. 

The main goal of this position was to show that they can be united as major political actors.

But the war in Libya is now behind us. The western countries consider this war like a success because their troops forced Colonel Kadhafi to quit the power and the strategy if the BRIC didn’t work. Somehow,  at the moment, they seem not capable to have enough influence on the international scene. Moreover,  the BRIC countries, especially Russia and China, sometimes seem to give priority to their own interests instead of working hand in hand with the others. They try to reinforce their diplomatic unity, but it seems that the way is still very long.

The 2008 Barack Obama campaign: how Obama became a leader on the Internet and a leader thanks to the Internet.

During his campaign, Barack Obama was omnipresent on the Internet and the social networks. On the social networks,  he was supported by 5 million people (3,2 million people on facebook), without counting his own social network on his website.

His Internet campaign team took care of his profile on 15 online communities like Facebook, Myspace, BlackPlanet... According to the statistics, people who supported him on Facebook also voted for him.

Some interesting facts about his campaign site, mybarackobama.com: 200 000 events were promoted, 400 000 posts were written on the blog space and 35 000 volunteers were recruited thanks to this website.

His strong presence on the Internet was one of the key factors of his brilliant campaign and one of the reasons of his victory.

Are we all addicted to the Internet and the social networks?

Every morning, when I wake up, one of the first things I do is starting my laptop. Then, before eating something or cleaning my room, I check my e-mails,  I read some press articles on lemonde.fr or I watch a video on youtube.

But as we all know, I'm not the only person to do this. But are we Internet addicts? Can we live without facebook or the billions of web pages?

The computer is not any more an addiction per se: during my holidays, I check my mails with my mobile phone. I think that, as I am a student in a communication school, it's hard for me to be disconnected, and the Internet offers me so many possibilities: I can have access to free information, free music and movies, and so on. The Internet takes such a big place in our lives that it's hard to live without it. But I know I'm not an addict because I'm sure that I could live without the Internet and the social networks... for at least two hours!

A link between the Internet addiction and nervous breakdowns

According to a study published in 2010 in the american magazine "Pediatric and Adolescent Medecine", and supervised by Lawrence Lam (from the Sydney Medecine School) and Zi Weng-Peng (from the chinese Ministry of Education), teenagers who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to get a nervous breakdown then others.
More than 1 000 chinese teenagers (from the area of Guangzhou) have been asked about their use of the Internet. A huge majority are considered as normal Internet users. Only 6,2 percent have been identified as Internet addicts and the psychological evaluation shows that these teenagers could more easily have a nervous breakdown then others teenagers.

The BRIC countries are trying to help Europe

About two weeks ago, the BRIC countries ( Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) met in Washington to think about how they can help Europe to get out the debt crisis. The main goals for the BRIC countries is to
show that they are now major actors of the world economic system. It's really interesting to see how a country like Brazil, which received an urgent help of 30 billions from the IMF in 2002, is now a helping hand for Europe.
Brazil suggest two things :
- the BRIC countries should buy debt titles from european countries like Italy, Spain or Portugal
- the BRIC countries should more financially contribute to the IMF

But there are still disagreements between the BRIC countries. For example, China and India don't want to increase their contribution to the IMF because they consider that they are under-represented in this institution. The main difficulty for the BRIC countries is to share same views and to find a common position.

To go further : just click

Digital divide

Digital divide by Arno Denzler

Some facts about the gap between rich and poor

Some facts about the gap between rich and poor by Arno Denzler

Digital divide

http://soundcloud.com/arno-denzler/digital-divide

Soundcloud seems to have a problem for uploading my record. So, here is the written version of my audio post :

The digital divide

In 2011, Asia is the continent, which counts most Internet users in the world.

It’s interesting to study the world Internet penetration rates, because this type of statistic shows the digital divide between the North and the South. The statistics published on the web site World Stats are very revealing. The average of the Internet penetration in the world is 30,2 percent. It means that almost one third of the humanity has access to the Internet.

Only two continents are under this average, Asia (without the Middle East) with an average of 23,8 percent and Africa with an average of 11,4 percent. North America leads the classification with a penetration rate of 78,3 percent.

These statistics show that digital divide is another example of inequalities between rich and poor countries. It seems that the situation doesn’t evolve very much. But some people think that the digital divide isn’t a priority, and that more important problems like the economic gap or hunger need to be resolved first.

In my opinion all these inequalities are linked.

Is HADOPI a success ?

Two years after the creation of HADOPI (in french : Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et de la Protection des droits sur Internet), which was set up to fight illegal downloading on the internet, how can we interpret the results and the efficiency of this organisation ?
Between january 2010 and june 2011, 500 000 warnings and 20 000 recommandations to recidivists have been sent. For Marie-Françoise Marais, the president of HADOPI, HADOPI "works" and is "a reality", it also promotes the development of legal downloading.
But, according to some studies, more then one billion files are illegally downloaded each year in France. This impressive statistic shows that the number of warnings is very weak. Moreover, the statistics doesn't show how many internet access are really cut off because of illegal downloading. We can wonder about the efficiency of such an organisation because it seems really hard to fight against digital technology and an uncontrolable media like internet.
Maybe it's time to find other solutions, like to lay down a tax on internet subscriptions...

Copyleft ?

At first sight, we might think that the notion of "copyleft" is just the opposite of the notion of copyright (and a play on the word copyright). But "copyleft" more describes the possibility to use, study, distribute, copy or alter someone's work with the permission from the creation's author. The only restriction is that modified versions of a document can be modify as well. "Copyleft" is a different form of licensing and the main goal of this type of license is to offer free available content.

To go further, here is a text from Richard Stallman, who developped one of the first copyleft license called "GNU General Public License": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

The "reversed" C is the copyleft symbol.

Jean Ziegler talks about hunger refugees

I just read an article entitled "Réfugiés de la faim" by Jean Ziegler, published on www.monde-diplomatique.fr. Jean Ziegler is a swiss sociologist. From 2000 to 2008, he was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
In this article, Ziegler denounces a dramatic situation, the situation of men, women and children, who risk their lifes to flee from poverty and hunger. Each year about 2 million people try to reach Europe illegally to get a better life. And each year several accidents happen.
After this assessment, Ziegler talks about the reaction of the European Union to this situation. I learnt that the European Union created a military organisation called "Frontex" to protect the european borders from illegal immigration. "Frontex" uses planes, armed boats and radars. Above all, "Frontex" organises refugee camps in countries like Morocco or Lybia, so that these refugees can't go to Europe.
Michel Rocard once said "la France ne peut pas accueillir toute la misère du monde" but it seems that the European Union doesn't want to welcome anyone.

To go further : http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2008/03/ZIEGLER/15658

An answer to illegal downloading ?

While major companies are still looking to find "The" solution to fight illegal downloading, some artists explore a new way to reach an audience by proposing their music for free on the Internet.
Let's take the example of "The Weeknd", a 21 years old canadian singer. The Weeknd released his first project on march 2011. This project was available for free on his website (http://the-weeknd.com) so everyone can have a direct access to his music. For me, it's a great example of a modern use of the Internet. This singer belongs to a generation, who grew up with computers and the Internet, and he knows the customs of Internet users. Here, the main goal is to use the Internet as a springboard to reach a large audience and to get fans. Later, maybe these fans will buy his first physical release or buy tickets for a show. Because almost all new releases are available for free with illegal downloading, concerts and shows are now the better way to become famous and to earn money with music. Nowadays, cd's are maybe just supports to find some new gigs.

"Global Warning"

Nowadays, the world is facing multiple ecological problems. It’s interesting to notice that for centuries, the occidental civilization has been considering nature as something which would be separated from humanity and only there to be exploited. In other traditions and cultures, human beings and nature are part of the same whole. For example, Rastafarians (like the members of Steel Pulse, the musicians who inspired this post) think that they belong to nature and this is why they say that they want to live in peace and harmony with their “mother nature”. As long as we consider nature as something that we can master, it seems very difficult to find solutions to the ecological challenges we are facing. Maybe the only solution would be to adopt another philosophy in which we are part of the nature, which would mean that if we do harm to nature, we do harm to ourselves.

My friends

A guy I met on the Internet has over 1000 friends on Facebook. But, actually he doesn’t know any of them. One day, he organized a party to meet them all. But nobody showed up. I didn’t intend to go either, because he lives in Japan.

One of the main dangers of the Internet is the creation of a gap between virtual and real life. A social network like Facebook encourage us to reproduce our real life on the Internet because we are naïve enough to believe that Facebook is a place of exchange where people can be or become friends. It seems really nice to have 1000 online friends - but how many of them are there when you need support or money? And what means the word “friend” when your online friend, who asked for your friendship, ignores you in the real life? I leave you now, sorry, a bunch of friends are talking to me on Facebook.

« In 10 months, humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year »

Even if global warming is a big issue, there are other ecological problems in the world like ecological overshoot. Ecological overshoot happens when human demand is bigger than “the regenerative capacity of a natural ecosystem.” The ecological overshoot shows the ecological limits of the earth and that humanity use “more resources” and produce “more waste” than the earth can regenerate. The 27^th September is the earth overshoot day. This means that for the rest of the year we’re living on credit and will have to draw from the earth’s non-regenerative resources

To go further : www.footprintnetwork.org

What are the real dangers of the Internet?

In addition to the dangers for the computers and the personal data, which can be easily avoided by having a Macintosh, a strong antivirus and not buying on-line, the main dangers of the Internet are: the access to pornography and violence for children, the sexual predators for women and children hiding themselves behind a false identity on the social networks, the cyberbullying and so on.

Let’s talk about the children.

There are easy solutions to avoid these dangers:

-       Not having Internet at home

-       Not having any computer or mobile phone

-       To live in China

-       Not having any children

More seriously, one solution could be not to put any computer in the children’s room but to have one family computer in a room where the parents can watch their children without having to supervise every move they make on the Internet. It’s also important to talk with them about these subjects and explain them that violence in movies and pornography are different from the reality and to have confidence that they are intelligent enough to understand that some contents are harmful for hem. And, most of all, to always be aware that real life is more dangerous than the virtual world.