Rael Dornfest: Rules for Remixing

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2005/view/e_sess/6336

At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

San Diego, California, 15 March 2005

Impressionistic transcript by

Cory Doctorow

doctorow@craphound.com

--


Remixing in action:

Remix the Web: view source

	* Firebox/Thunderbird: A great upsurge of creativity

	* Javascript: We forgot that it existed because it didn't do anything 
	  very interesting

	* Desktop integration as with new Google search


Remix your Music:

	* Rip: the music industry's customers were trying to say, "We hate
	  your format so much we're willing to break the law to change it"
	
	* Customers weren't listening either: it was about free music, free beer

	* Apple listened: delivered a service customers wanted
	

Remix your TV:

	* Every night is Thursday night: no one dashes home to catch TV anymore
	
	* Replay offered 30-second skip [[Ed: no, it was a commercial skip]], got sued
	
	* TiVo leaves things open enough to activate your own 30-sec skip 
	

Remix your network:

	* Apple untethered the laptop
	
	* Commodity hardware made it cheap
	
	* WiFi hackers untethered everything else: cons, hotel rooms, coffee 
	  shops, corners
	
	* Hotspots spring up like dandelions
	
	* Intel brands WiFi
	
	* Apple Airport Express untethers the base-station: just plug it in 
	  and wait for the light to turn green
	

Remix your movies:

	* BitTorrent scares everyone except its users
	
	* Video on demand suddenly actually works
	
	* Netflix scares Blockbuster
	
	* Blockbuster scurries to catch up
	
	* Everyone teams up with everyone else
	
	* BitTorrent suddenly seems attractive
	

Remix your data:

	* Scraping begat XML which begat APIs
	
	* Hacks led to standards led to business models


Remix your text:

	* I'M BLOGGING THIS tees used to excite some (now many) and scare some (now few)
	

Remix syndication:

	* RSS enabled MyNetscape to catch up with Yahoo!
	
	* RSS reinvented syndication
	
	* RSS flows into MyYahoo
	
	* Everyone monetizes RSS
	

Remix your bookshelf"

	* important knowledge is locked up on paper where is' not searchable 
	  and not easy to get to, Bezos, Web 2.0
	
	* Project Gutenberg
	
	* Internet Archive
	
	* Amazon/Google search-inside-the-book
	

Remix IT:

	* Doc Searls: IT is like construction
	
		* slew of specialists (architects, builders electricians, etc)
		
	* Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you emit
	
	* Hacks become frameworks become foundations
	

Remix the browser again:

	* Firefox finally hit the mark
	
	* Does a few things well, can do anything
	
	* Firefox is the darling of the IT dept (makes security go away)
	
	* Darling of family sysadmin -- makes Windows usable again
	

Remix brick-and-mortar again:

	* Use Amazon to search meatspace and then in-store pickup
	
		* Without leaving the house
		
	* Remix with location, a routemap and a shopping list
	
	* Even if there's a huge Wal-Mart around the corner, it effectively 
	  disappears if its not online
	
	
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man 
adapts the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the 
unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw