You may have not heard of this song, but The Amen Brothers by The Winstons was a fairly popular rock/jazz song released in 1969. However, what you really may not have known is that there is a particular break in the middle of the song (about 1:27 in this youtube video of it: that was inevitably one of the gateways into hip hop in the early 90s. Also this break is so familiar to our ears today, it is still being used in modern songs and countless commercials today as well. This may not seem like that big of a deal (even though it is) but what If I told you that none of the members of The Winstons actually signed off on this song or actually allowed there song to be taken and used like that?

Although none of the original members of The Winstons are playing today, they are all still alive and have seen the way their song (or the 6 second break in the song) has been simple handed out. This is a blat-en sign of Copyright infringement. And for this song to be so well known and not from its original origins, that is a problem. For example, what happens if something like this happens again when a song is taken with out the proper legal procedures and just used and used and used for multiple contexts? It’s to the point where no one recognizes the band, yet everyone can pin point a song or commercial from when they heard it. Even I didn’t know who the Winstons let alone that they created this song, but I was able to recognize the beat from pop culture references. It’s interesting hearing this song in it’s original form and then hearing countless 90s hip hop and rap songs incorporating this beat, the Amen Break, as their main threads. They even tried to speed it up or up it next to a different beat as well or tried placing it into a different genre, but through it all, you can still hear that original beat. It’s almost as if those people are just not being creative enough to create their own music and their own beat. One point made was one musician tried to mix it with Led Zeppelin, “whole lotta love” which was ironically released in 1969 the same date Amen Brothers was released. An interesting point that the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac points out is how it almost opened the door for our generations music. By not putting a copyright on that beat it has given other artists the opportunity to use it and make it their own and in result create genre within a culture. What is annoying though, is that the company Zero G has appropriated the Amen Break and now you must go to them in order to get copyright permission to use it when they weren’t even the ones who created the song. While the members of the band are still alive, none of them have pressed any charges or have tried to obtain the rights, however situations such as the Amen Break should not go unnoticed in this society of “new” music. With each new generation, it is important to learn from the past to help fuel the future. However, that doesn’t mean copying a whole’s song originality and claiming that it is their own.

People say that a picture is worth a thousands words. However, no one ever said that a picture can potentially start a war. When using a certain type of photo with a certain type of message during a particular moment in time, the consequences of what can come of those pictures can be life changing or even detrimental. Now, let me throw in a twist: what happens when those pictures that can start a world war….are fake? That’s a scary thought, because it is entirely plausible. There images “created” everyday meant to changes people’s perspectives that are actually not even true. And what does that say for us as a society that we are so willing to believe everything we see before looking into the facts. In this post we will discover key points of Errol Morris’, “Photography as a Weapon” and try to understand what could inevitably be the true weapon of mass destruction.

The article first talks about the Missiles from Iran that could of potentially started a war, but were to be revealed as Photoshopped later on. At first I didn’t see it, but when they actually circled the areas where you can clearly see where they had Photoshopped, as you can see in the image provided:

To me that’s CRAZY that so much hype and controversy can come from something that does not even exist. I found it funny how Charles said they didn’t even do a good or creative job if the image is supposed to create such an impact.

CHARLES JOHNSON: Well, you can take the image into Photoshop and exaggerate the contrast, or do some other kinds of manipulations. That can show you where areas were cut and pasted. There is no need to really put it under the microscope when it’s staring you in the face.

 

It’s nice to know that some images such as these can be spotted so easily. However, what about the Photoshopped images that are a little better at covering their tracks…

It’s true that the majority of us are visual learners and can better retain images than listen to someone telling us about said image. It comes down to a neurological level where 30 to 50 percent of our brain is taking things in visually. With that said, though, even though someone is showing us a photo under the pretext of, “This is fake by the way.” We still remember the image nevertheless and still associate that image with certain memories and things we know. Photographers know that and use that to their advantage. That doesn’t mean though that every photo that isn’t Photoshopped is automatically true. It could mean that they were staged to tell a certain message or come across as if they were true or in other words… they’re false. Such as the photo taken at Kent State to give a message about the war:

On that note, Morris makes an excellent point by stating that you shouldn’t try to figure out if something is Photoshopped or not by comparing it to a real image, but rather comparing the fake image to another fake image as a way of confirmation.

However, beside focusing so much on how awful Photoshop can be for our society, let’s change the focus on how is can be used as a positive thing and a weapon to make a point about corruption instead of an actual weapon. Helmut Herzfeld is a perfect example of one who knows how to up this practice into good use. During the time of World War I, propaganda was really starting to make a claim where the government was basically trying to shape how the people of Germany were supposed to feel. Therefore, Herzfeld used that notion to his advantage and incorporated irony to make his point by creating (not even Photoshopping) an image of a German man who’s head is completely covered in newspaper or “propaganda” with the caption saying,

“Whoever reads bourgeois newspapers becomes blind and deaf. Away with these stultifying bandages.”

All in all I found the article extremely informative. Perhaps my favorite article I’ve read so far. It incorporates the subject well, but in a way that I’m constantly engaged and and concerned at the same time. When the article is so good that at every turn you are correlating what it’s saying to elements in your own life, then that’s when you get a successful story. While the notion of Photoshop is barely reaching it’s true potential, what’s important to understand is not only the power it holds, but what that means for us, the ones who get to control the type of power in-store for humanity.

So after finally realizing that google searching wasn’t going to cut it, I have found hopefully what I was looking for.

I ended up using ProQuest, which I have never heard of till last class so I figured I would give it a try and found quite a lot. When I put in the search for the first item,An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970, I ended up with this article, a strike without reason. It was very informative and covered the requirements for the scavenger hunt.

The Second item in the scavenger hunt,the first documented use of solar power in the United State, It was a little more difficult because the request itself isn’t that specific in search and therefore, received a lot of broad results on ProQuest. I found some options, but the dates seemed to vary too much and seemed like they were too recent for being the first use of solar power. After much search, I found myself unsatisfied with the dates I was finding and couldn’t really find anything concrete so I just moved on.

The third item on the scavenger hunt’s list, the best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data, was kind of frustrating to find on ProQuest and I ended up just not using that sight. Therefore, I ended up searching on google…scholar. I did happen to find this snazzy pdf that fulfilled the credentials it required for the scavenger hunt.

The hunt wasn’t as bad as I thought I was going to be. My immediate thought was, “Oh no! Where am I supposed to search If I can’t google it?!” But eventually I realized there are plenty other search engines out there that prove to be more beneficial academically. I do prefer the way Google goes about their search and how they organize it such as, relevancy verses alphabetically like some do. In terms of research itself, the other university provided search sites are better for legitimate research.

First of all despite the fact that this article was extremely long, it was at the same time very informational and very insightful. What is something that I feel that is highlighted in the beginning of this post is that life is unpredictable. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control and all you have recorded via hard copy or non electronic sources can be destroyed without any back up, and…poof! No more history. However, now that we have the vast and complex resources we have, that is no longer a problem. We live in a society that is constantly searching for ways to move forward in this technological world we call our own. It seems like in the past 30 years, though, we have been accelerating in our technological expansion. And in order to keep up with the race to become digital, historians are racing now more than ever to open up as many technological and digital opportunities as possible. However, with the race to be the top and the fastest is in mind verses trying to help society push forward into the future, historians may find themselves faced with certain limitations they were not expected because they are blinded. With that said, progress does represent an aspect of faith that our future is unlimited.

Also, there are other draw backs… for example, although it is through a digital route, they are humans who are transcribing the data. Therefore, mistakes are eminent if not almost expected leading to sometimes not everything being saved. In addition, as the article states,

First-time digitizers typically overestimate the production costs and underestimate the intellectual costs such as those associated with making the right selections and providing the most helpful metadata. Even a sophisticated library team at the University of Virginia reports that they “dramatically underestimated the labor and time” in preparing the documents for a digitizing project on Walter Reed and yellow fever.¹¹ An equally important, but even less often considered, cost is maintaining the digital data, as Chapter 8 covers in greater depth.

However, there is accommodating and learning with experience, which you could say for any activity.

On the other hand, when there are obvious mistakes to be made through something so momentous and revolutionizing such as digitizing our world, there are also many benefits that would not be expected when these discoveries were first made. For example, as stated in the article, art historians can greatly be benefited by digital recording of history.
What is also great about becoming digital is because is can make our world smaller and actually bring it closer together. For example, while we all may have disagreements socially, politically, or culturally; there are things digitally that we can all agree on like certain methods such as font and ways to record the history around us with computers.
There are many other aspects to consider as well such as:

• Different languages on keyboards such as latin use
• Digitalizing specific images
• How  to get auido or moving images into digital form
• And much more to be discovered

The final paragraph I found specifically insightful. It draws on the importance of collaboration and what that can lead to innovation wise, but what the authors really focus on is the idea of anyone can become digital if they desire to be. They promote starting something on your own and letting your mind expand with each record recorded and each form of the digital world discovered. It’s not just up to the historians out there to record everything, it’s is also up to us if we care enough to take the initiative.

Well, after finally finishing the article on the Atlantic, “As We May Think” by Vannervar Bush  I feel like it left me thinking about a number of different things. First of all with the amount of content that was provided in this article, I feel like that was unnecessary in terms of the simplistic nature of what the the article is trying to say. The title itself, “As We May Think” almost implies the idea that we think we know the reasoning and context of why and how we create the technology that we do. When in reality the rhetoric of the title implies that we are unable to truly grasp the psychological element for our motivations and therefore, this article acts as a light (in a way) to illuminate the deeper meaning of what we don’t know.

One aspect in the beginning of the article that I found fascinating is that creation will only arise out of it’s necessity to be created. It’s almost a supply and demand quality, but more in terms of innovation and invention. For example, when war strikes a civilization, there is this need for survival and adaptation. And in order for the two to thrive, we must adjust, or invent, accordingly. If there was no war, there would be no need for specific types of weapons that were only created for the sake of survival, not discovery. To simplify, if one takes a darwinian approach, instead of adapting ourselves physically to survive, we adapting our surroundings and creating in order to survive. I sincerely believe that if inventions were created only for purpose of innovation and discovery, they wouldn’t be used for destruction. It’s the need to survive that allows us to be put into the position where creation is not only important, but vital.

On that note, Bush brings up an interesting thought:

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy, have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

 

What happens to our world of discovery if the need to create in order to survive is no longer the driving force. With the use of war as an example, there is an urgency and almost a deadline (no pun intended) for the creation to occur. While, as peach approaches, as Bush states, how much will discovery be actually worth while. I honestly believe that if there is no actual need for the invention to manifest, then it will not. Why would someone want to invent something that is not needed and will not be used. If there was no war, then why would we need specific combat weapons. Everything in that regards is therefore linked to the idea of what is there to come and is conflict and demand to only way for it to be introduced into the world?