I’m variously amazed, amused, bemused by the amount of misinformation about IP issues in circulation, and the attitude of hapless bewilderment adopted by many otherwise competent professionals in relation to them. While copyright law, trademark law, and patent law certainly have their complexities, the basic principles thereof, including the “fair use” exception to the copyright law, hardly qualify as arcane. Don’t let the laziness or ineptitude of others discourage you from learning about this. It ain’t rocket science. Even trademark law and patent law, much less familiar to the lay public, function according to elementary rules and reasoning that aren’t hard to grasp. […]
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As should be obvious to even the most casual visitor, I don’t produce this blog for dumb-and-dumber types who call people “dude” and think [email protected] is a clever email address, nor for self-absorbed Brit-twit fashionista wannabes convinced the world takes an interest in where they shit. How on earth did these twerps find their way here? Another mystery of the intertubes. Immanuel Velikovsky was right: See what can happen when universes of discourse, definitely not parallel, collide? […] As one unintended, unexpected consequence of attending the tech expos, I’ve achieved a definite level of geekiness — which makes me, given my chronological age, a geezer geek. I don’t feel especially geezerish, nor for that matter particularly geeky. But I can converse with segments of the tech crowd and understand much of what they say; and I find myself explaining technical issues to people less versed in these matters than I, who seem to find those distillations useful. Who’d have thunk it? […] Photography itself was of course a fad, until it wasn’t. Same goes for stereo sound, blue jeans and T-shirts as casual wear, and rock & roll. One function of cultural journalism (and I have that hat, among others, in my wardrobe) involves looking at fads in order to gauge the likelihood of their turning into trends, and from trends evolving into relatively permanent aspects of the cultural landscape. […] The steadily shrinking size of all electronic gizmos, with the consequent vulnerability to theft, loss, and misplacement, will lead to subcutaneous implantation thereof in the foreseeable future. The nanotech breakthrough that has enabled the use of living cells — including human cells — as data storage and transmission units certainly places this possibility visibly on the event horizon. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |