The other day I was in the little supermarket across the street from my apartment. I was trying to find some fruit and cereal when one of the employees came up behind me: “blondie (loira), hey, we’re closing soon.” I said okay, no problem, I’d be done in a second. And I went to the back of the store to get another apple, came back to check out, and then it hit me:
I answered to BLONDIE. And I didn’t even think twice about it. Heck, I didn’t even notice right away.
Yikes.
There’s really nothing like the feeling of opening my eyes to the first faint light coming in the window in the morning… only to realize that it’s 6:05am and I had planned to be at the airport by 6:00. I don’t know what happened. I never, literally never sleep through my alarm, and normally I get so jumpy before a trip that I barely sleep at all. [Update: this morning, after I "slept through" my alarm for the second time in 2 days, I realized that I somehow switched the clock from 24 to 12-hour time, meaning that my alarm was set for the afternoon. I feel colossally stupid, especially since this, unfortunately, has happened before.] I guess there’s always a first time, and leave it to Murphy’s Law for that first time to be when I have a plane to catch and a 9:30am conference in another city. That, my friends, is the kind of panic that takes years off a person’s life, and I hopefully will never have to get ready for a trip that fast again, ever. It reminded me of those normal-size people who lift up cars when their friends are trapped under them and stuff like that, the way that superhuman capacities only come up in emergencies. Or okay, not really… but I surprised even myself by pulling up to the airport in the taxi at 6:25 (the adrenaline didn’t let up until well after 7).
My trip to Sampa was last-minute and somewhat random — I left in the morning to attend one day of a law conference downtown, and came back in the evening. There’s something a little bit tragic about business travel: it reminds you of how big the world is and how much cool stuff is out there, while mocking you with (best case) tantalizing snapshots and beautiful panoramas of places you’ll never have a chance to explore, or (worst case) the four walls and artifical light of a basement conference room. Luckily, this conference room was on the 2o-somethingth floor of Avenida Paulista, which is the main commercial street in the city, and it had fascinating wraparound views. So even if I couldn’t explore much, I could at least get my fill of the skyline.
From high up, Sao Paulo reminds me of nothing so much as a giant mushroom forest: overgrown clusters of buildings sprout out of the hills without any apparent pattern under a gray sky and perpetual drizzle. Unlike Rio and most other cities I’ve been in, where the biggest buildings tend to be concentrated in just a few neighborhoods, Sampa scorns the notion of a cohesive urban plan, with giant buildings juxtaposed with smaller ones as far as the eye can see.
It’s also cold. It was 13 degrees (C) by the time evening fell and I was trying not to shiver as we waited outside to hail a taxi. In a way, it’s nice to be able to whine about above-freezing winter temperatures… but the thing is, I actually mean it now when I say that Sao Paulo, or even Rio in the winter (it’s been in the 60s at nights), really, truly feels COLD. Sad how living through 4 New England winters gives you such temporary bragging rights…
But even with the weather, this trip made me excited to plan the next few rounds of travel. Luckily, Sao Paulo is a very comfortable 5-hour bus ride (I am not doing the air travel thing again — it seems like flights are delayed so often at night that it’s just not worth it) away, and this mini-trip only made me want to go back when I have a little more time on my hands. Also, I hear that Salvador is less than a $100 round-trip plane ticket away. So I’ve got some ideas. Including buying a whole suite of alarm clocks and setting at least 3 whenever I need to travel.
In the spirit of nothing in particular, here’s another one.
Things I love: the CTS, Flamengo, brunch at le Brants, 90s music, good advice, my roomies, hugs, weekend siestas, Creative Commons, o sotaque carioca, the used bookstore in Largo do Machado, geeks, genuine smiles, the ridiculous drama on Paraiso Tropical, chapstick, beijos, o jeito brasileiro, sunrise/sunset, randomness, Rocinha, my roof deck, people thinking I’m from Portugal, KRUU fm radio, tropical fruit juice of all kinds.
Things I miss: Zambezian prawn curry, my friends in other countries, Burt’s Bees, the beach at night, Fairfield, hablando castellano, Firefox tabbed browsing, the Berkman center, the dollar above R$2, getting jokes, knowing all the answers, home-cooked meals, boarding at the Snow Bowl, Breeze & Breezy, West Wing, Hyde St in SF and Palermo in BA, shredded wheat.
Things I’m over: Copa, my cellphone, rush hour traffic on Sao Clemente, the leaks in the ceiling, not being able to pronounce the name of my country, watering plants, experimental punk rock, air travel.
Things that scare me: creaky old elevators, Internet Explorer, and Zimbabwe on the UN Sustainable Development Council.
Like many people who read Mark Helprin’s jaw-droppingly protectionist rant in the New York Times on Saturday, I immediately turned to Lessig’s blog. As one of the “fathers” and intellectual demi-gods of the free culture movement, I figured, he’ll have something to say about this. And he did, I guess, just not exactly what I was expecting. Instead of lashing back with a strongly worded attack on the piece, he threw the ball right back at his readers:
So I’ve gotten (literally) scores of emails about this piece by Mark Helprin promoting perpetual copyright terms. “Write a reply!” is the demand. But why don’t you write a reply instead. Here’s a page on wiki.lessig.org. Please write an argument that puts this argument in its proper place.
Since then, I’ve actually become more interested in watching the evolution of the wiki than in the content of the response itself to Helprin’s piece. Possibly it’s because it’s clear that there’s no convincing someone who is determined to ignore the differences between physical and intellectual property to the point where he practically makes it sound like an idea or work of art will be confiscated when the copyright expires, forcefully torn from its rightful owners to be sold off at the county fire sale of public domain.
But passing over for now all the (many) little things I find bothersome about the op-ed, my main problem is the way in which Helprin somehow manages to quote the relevant part of the Constitution, while completely missing the point — that the entire point of copyright as it is envisioned in the US Constitution is “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” That — providing balanced incentives to support the cultural and intellectual life of a nation — is the public good that he then (literally!) equates to slavery.
I’ve read enough on this topic to know where I stand, so I might as well just put it out there: the net benefit of a perpetual copyright would be decidedly negative, not only because of the sometimes enormous transaction costs required to access copyrighted works (always assuming they are even available, which is a pretty big assumption) that in many cases put the works out of reach of those who could most benefit from their use, but also because of the way that cultural and intellectual production works. Much as Helprin would like to believe that genius operates in a vacuum, it’s hard to find support for that position if you are willing to take any cultural history into account. Cultural production is above all — and whether one is explicitly aware of it or not — a collaborative process, one in which participants both draw on and contribute to their shared intellectual and cultural heritage. And on a side note, it’s particularly ironic that he later brings Mozart in as an example, since Mozart (like many composers of his day) had no problem with “borrowing” significant portions of his compositions from other composers.
In other words, overly protectionist copyright like Helprin proposes ends up short-circuiting the creative process while also giving people like those who run MLK Jr.’s or James Joyce’s estates a longer window of opportunity to intimidate legitimate “fair use” of the works, which in many cases are an indelible and vital part of the historical record. What’s more, this benefits not those who create the works — who are long-dead by the time copyright expires even under the current regime — but (best case) their many-generations-removed descendants and litigious estates, or (worst case) even more litigious random corporations, like the one that holds the copyright to the Happy Birthday Song.
But back to the wiki at lessig.org. It’s definitely still a work in progress, and one that you can take either as a validation of collaborative technologies (the wiki has way more on it now than any one person could have come up with in such a short amount of time) or a case study of some of their limitations (it’s harder than it looks for scores of random collaborators to produce a coherent, succinct position piece). One of the things I’ve always been a little doubtful of is whether wikis can get past their most successful incarnation (Wikipedia, obviously) to venture into the very different world of crafting “group opinions” among people who may not really agree at all. Facts are tricky enough as it is without the pressure of trying to distill everything down to its essence, and the rhetorical necessities of a good debate. No NPOV here — and really, you don’t even want one.
So I’m looking forward to seeing what happens over the next few days… how will the process work? It’s been really interesting to see people’s takes up til now, like the people who were genuinely convinced that Helprin’s piece had to be satire. So far, though, I particularly like this response on the discussion page:
Dear Mr Helprin,
In light of a rumored bill before Congress to retroactively extend the limited copyright in the US to 25000 years after the death of the author (or the destruction of the last copy of the work, whichever comes last), we are investigating several potential copyright infringements in your last op-ed entitled “A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?”.
Descendants of James Madison request to be compensated for any citation, partial or full, of any of his works. Descendants of Hammurabi (currently estimated at about 127 million) claim copyright on any western law text and discussion thereof, as they are all derivative works of Hammurabi’s Code of Law. Finally, there have been claims by descendants of Evander, son of the Sybil, that all Roman letters fall under their copyright, and that therefore any text using them needs to pay them a fair share of proceeds.
Preliminary calculations put the projected statutory infringement fines at 4.2 trillion dollars. This number may change as more claimants come forward. As it is unknown how much more the US Congress is going to extend copyrights, we suggest to settle sooner rather than later.
Sincerely,
Howard Howe, Dewey, Chetham
& Howe, LLP
RFT
00:00 21 May 2007 (PDT)
Okay, it’s absurd. But let’s remember that sadly, satire is often only a step ahead of reality…
Beijo is Portuguese for kiss. But while the concept, the translation, and the action are all the same, “beijos” is one of those phrases that just.doesn’t.belong. in English. Contextually, it’s completely ubiquitous as an email signoff — even for people you don’t know very well. And logically, a lot of Brazilians who write emails in English translate the signature part of the email too. But be that as it may, “beijos” in English is just wrong. Even though I’ve gotten emails from a lot of Brazilians over the past couple of years, I still think it’s weird to see a business email that ends “kisses”, even though I know they’re just the air-cheek-kiss kind. On the other hand, English closing phrases like “best” or “regards” sound completely ridiculous and way too formal if you’re talking to a Latin American.
My solution: I put everything in English, but the beijos stay Portuguese beijos. I was thinking about this today — how interesting it is that you can have a word where the cultural context is so different that there’s literally just no way to translate it. I know there are others, but I can’t think of any right now. Suggestions?
I figured that after almost 3 months (!) in Rio, it was time to take the plunge. What plunge, you ask?
I’m getting serious about Orkut.
Or at least I’m trying. Orkut is the Brazilian social networking site, kind of equivalent to Myspace in the States. I’m not really sure why or how Orkut swept the nation, but it definitely did — according to Wikipedia statistics of dubious accuracy but which I can easily believe, over 50% of all registered users on the site are Brazilian.
I personally think it has something to do with the way that Brazilians wear their hearts, and lives, on their sleeves. At times it seems like no topic is off-limits, no emotion too private to broadcast to the world, and no public display of affection too tacky. It’s the jeito brasileiro and I have to say that it’s one of the things I love most about living in Rio: people who are extroverted to the point of absurdity sometimes, but who live big, live public, and don’t look back.
Which naturally goes extremely well with the way that Orkut, or any social networking site, functions. Through your profile, your testimonials, and your “scraps” you can create and display a persona for the world to see. Unlike Facebook, which is the elitist preppy (but feature-filled) social networking destination of choice, Orkut doesn’t restrict things by networks and offers fewer options for the behaviors affectionately known as “online stalking.” Instead, Orkut takes the public message, or “scrap” board attached to everyone’s profile to a new level — to the point where as far as I can tell, private conversations no longer exist among large chunks of Brazil’s under-30 population.
A scrap can function as just a random comment to someone, but more often (at least on my Orkut profile) they’ve been serving the purpose of a 2-line email that I have to jump through annoying extra hoops to read. As in: CALL ME I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!!! sent at 3:00pm while I’m at FGV, which of course blocks Orkut access from non-authorized computers like mine. As far as I can tell, the only advantage to sending a message like that over Orkut (other than the fun of annoying me or the spice-up-your-life possibility that the message will be irrelevant by the time I read it) is that now it’s public. Instead of just me being able to see that you REALLY NEEDED TO TALK to me last week, everyone who visits my profile can see it too.
As you can maybe tell by this point, my decision to embrace Orkut has been a while coming. Mostly because I find the site’s features slightly aggravating, but also because sometimes, I just don’t get how I’m supposed to act. Not only do I find the scrapping thing a little silly but I’ve been kind of bemused by how different an Orkut profile and personality tends to be from one on Facebook. I’m not quite sure why this is — is it a Brazilian v. US thing? Is it just the way the sites are structured? In any case, Facebook profiles tend to be deliberately understated and self-consciously eclectic: dry humor, sarcasm, and in-jokes are the order of the day and as far as interests, quotes, and cultural tastes go, the more random the better. On Orkut, the more detail the better, and don’t forget to include several references to your boy/girlfriend and a testimonial or two saying how happy they’ve made you in the 2 weeks you’ve been together. And capital letters. People on Facebook spend a lot of time getting that minimalist “don’t-look-like-you-tried-too-hard” balance of sophistication and crudeness/childishness. On Orkut, people seem to spend that time just filling in every imaginable detail about themselves and then adding a bunch of exclamation points for good measure…
But there you have it — I’m hopping on board. If you’re trying to find me, look for the girl who loves Paraiso Tropical!!! and my friends!! Yeah, let’s scrap.
By the way, Orkut in Rio is pronounced or-KOOTCH.
Let’s take the plus side first: there have only been a couple of times since I got to Rio where I didn’t manage to get a seat on the bus. Unlike in Buenos Aires (the only other city I’ve done a lot of bus riding, believe it or not), the buses here don’t run completely full, and you can usually manage to get a seat even during rush hour. Plus, the seats are generally newer, have better headrests, and are much more comfortable than those in BA’s colectivos.
On the minus side, though, I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason the buses are so uncrowded is that the bus drivers purposely make the ride so uncomfortable that people avoid it whenever possible. And I remain amazed, and (sometimes) amused by the way the bus drivers, who theoretically drive these same routes day after day, still slam on the brakes every 2 blocks as if that bus stop came out of nowhere.
The most interesting thing is that people are completely used to it. Maybe the recollections of my bus rides in BA have been softened with time, but I have memories of people waiting in orderly lines to get on chock-full buses, which then ambled on their somewhat run-down way to the next stop. I’m not saying that the buses were polite, exactly, but they were at least slow (maybe the age of the vehicles had something to do with it) and if the colectivo drivers there pulled any of the stunts that Rio’s drivers do at every single stoplight, they could expect a fair amount of grumbling — maybe even shouting/swearing — from the passengers. Here, on the other hand, it seems to be a point of pride to shift gears as awkwardly and with as much jerking as possible — bonus points if you send that hapless little old lady and all her shopping bags flying, or manage to dislodge those girls walking down the aisle in their 5-inch platform heels. And contrary to what one might assume, sitting at a red light and knowing that there’s a stop just a block away is more a challenge than anything else. Wanna drag?
But moving on from Rio’s buses to public transportation in general, I’ve been fascinated for awhile by trying to make some links between a society’s attitudes toward women and my chances of getting a seat on a crowded bus or subway. In Argentina, there is a clear hierarchy of who should offer to give up their seat, and it is very normal and almost expected that in general, a younger person will give way to an older one, and almost everyone gives way to people with obvious movement problems or disabilities. If the older person is an able-bodied guy and the younger person is female, this code is often waived, and in general, younger guys are expected to cede their seats to pretty much everyone.
I’m oversimplifying here. It’s obviously not quite as much of a “system” as I made it sound, and you probably noticed that I’m conflating 2 issues (disability-based preferences and gender-based preferences) that shouldn’t really be lumped together. But leaving that aside for the moment, I just want to say that in Rio, as in the States, I’m often amazed by the degree to which these sort of preferences aren’t followed. To me, if an elderly gentleman hobbles onto the bus, he should not only get a seat but he should get a seat right up front (because we’ve already established that the sooner he sits down the less likely he is to be thrown on the floor the next time the bus lurches to a stop). But there have been plenty of times when I’ve seen people sitting obliviously while a mobility-impaired person hobbles, clutching the rails, to the free seats at the back of the bus. And it’s the same on the subway: don’t think that old trick of hobbling around on cruches will guarantee you a seat or anything like that.
Backing up a little bit: the question of gender-based preferences is kind of a loaded one, and the more I try to talk it out, the more I realize that I don’t really have time or interest to deal with it here. Argentine society is ridiculously macho, and so is Brazilian, but in a different way. American society, on the other hand, is I think more confused than anything, and I noticed while in Boston that it’s comparatively rare for people to give up their seats on the subway. So leaving gender generalizations aside, I find it obnoxious when people assert anything except obvious disability preference as a “right”… but I can’t deny that I do really appreciate it when someone is nice enough to notice that I’m falling asleep on my feet, my shoes look uncomfortable, and I seem to be having trouble juggling my bags while holding on as the bus careens around a corner. Maybe that separates me from those radical 70s-era feminists who supposedly terrorized a generation of guys into thinking that opening a door for a girl or giving up your seat on the bus is the functional equivalent of “make me a steak, woman.” On the flip side, though, I like to think that I’m willing to give up my seat if there’s someone who needs it more than I do. The problem here is that it seems to be so rare to do that that if you get up, people assume that you’re getting off, not ceding your spot — there have been a couple of times when I tried to give my spot to someone who looked like he/she needed it, only to have another (and in my opinion much less deserving, although I guess I shouldn’t really judge) rider dart into the seat the moment I stood up.
I guess that means that in general, I like polite people, and to me that means people who aren’t self-absorbed. And that not all kinds of machismo are created equal, and that independent of any steaks involved, that it’s possible to be both polite and macho — and it’s possible to be neither one.
And also that it’s not at all a shock to hear that Brazil is among the world leaders in Formula 1 racing. I bet if you looked into it, you’d find that a goodly number of those racers got their start as bus drivers in Rio.
For anyone who was thinking about visiting me here in Brazil… well, I’m not much for tourist guides. You can find that information plenty of other places anyway. Today’s list is about something that is somewhat related, though: the top 3 ways I’ve found to get weird looks in Rio.
Ask about…
3. Recycling. For awhile I was saving the water bottles I’d used because I felt so guilty throwing them away, especially since many of the very poorest people in the city actually collect them for the rebate . But when the ceiling fell in over the fridge (that’s another story, though), I finally had to give up the ghost. The porteiro who came to help us clean up the mess looked at me like I was insane when I asked if the building had a recycling program. Of course it does, he said. The trash. Lixo. Didn’t I get it?
De facto, of course, the trash is the recycling and no one seems to think that’s a big deal. You throw it out, they pick through it, everyone’s happy — right?
2. Mosquito nets. In a city where dengue fever is endemic and practically epidemic (they said it, not me), you’d think they’d be all over this stuff. You’d think that until you actually tried to find a mosquito bednet, or window screens or anything like that. Why use screens when you can just spray the streets and put a few dengue-prevention advertisements in the subway?
1. And if you’re still feeling adventurous, try this: a virgin daquiri. By “try” I don’t mean you should actually drink one (they’re disgusting) but just ask for one and then sit back while the waiter tries to a) process the fact that you’re asking him to leave the alcohol out of an alcoholic beverage, and b) convince you that you’re making the mistake of your life.
Categories: Uncategorized
It’s another Friday afternoon at the office, except for one thing: the director of the Center for Technology and Society (CTS — where I spend a good deal of my time during the week) just got off the phone with “a radio station in Iowa.”
Of course I perked up my ears. Iowa? You don’t hear too much about my state here in Brazil. But it gets weirder. Turns out the station wasn’t just from Iowa, it was from the town of 10,000 (okay, technically I think the population hovers just below that) where I spent the first 18 1/2 years of my life. Yep, Ronaldo Lemos, the director of the CTS at the FGV in Rio de Janeiro just got off the phone with KRUU, “the voice of Fairfield.” Of course I immediately went online and looked at their site, and now that I’m (sort of) over my small-world goosebumps I have to say: I’m impressed. Really impressed. And kind of shocked that I’ve gone as long as I have without knowing that something this cool existed (my own fault, I guess, for missing its mention on the CC blog, the description on this blog, on or Doc Searls’ praise in the current issue of Linux Journal (can’t find the link). Not forgetting, I’m sure, its moments of fame in the Ledger, the Source, or the Weekly Reader.
Yep, believe it or not, KRUU in Fairfield, Iowa is on the cutting edge of free-culture radio. It’s fantastic to know that the issues I came to Brazil to study — things like free culture, access to knowledge, participatory media, and all that jazz — are alive and well back home. Even if I was slow picking up on it.
In any case, I’m feeling pretty darn proud of Fairfield at the moment.
