New Pearl Jam single

Don't waste your time with stupid pizza songs... Pearl Jam is giving away free downloads of their new single "world wide suicide" from their upcoming album. Download it at bootlegs.pearljam.com

When advertising becomes culture

In her book No Logo, Naomi Klein discusses what happens when corporate sponsors of cultural events become more important than the event itself. A recent example is the song "respekt for Grandiosa", a song from a frozen pizza TV-commercial that the ad agency decided to launch as a single.

The song has been number 1 on the charts for several weeks, and has beome immensely popular. Has advertising become culture, or is the song's popularity a result of smart marketing? While it is a catchy tune, the song would never have made it to number one without smart marketing. The advertising agency has really done their job well, but when advertising becomes culture, I get scared.

I don't want to live in a society where culture is whatever big business tells us it is. Where people are afraid to think for themselves, not because of brutal prosecution from a police state, but from fear that the trendsetters will disagree with them. Where people are no better than sheep, going "baaaaah" whenever the head sheep tells them to.

Unfortunately it seems that is just the kind of society I'm stuck in... Why can't people just start thinking for themselves?

Wireless addicts

Today, Netcom's mobile phone network fell out for three hours. People were furious when they found their phones not working, and politicians called for increased competition in the mobile phone market.

Young women interviewed by NRK P3 radio were frustrated, as the downtime meant they were unable to get in touch with their friends and co-workers, and some even considered switching networks.

I understand that people are frustrated when the phones are out (the outage affected me as well), the reactions show how dependent of technology we have become in less than a decade. Eight years ago, I was the first one in my class to buy a mobile phone. But I never had any problem finding my friends or staying in touch with people without mobile phones. While mobile technologies are helpful and makes it easier to stay in touch, the outage today shows how much we have come to rely on technology. The question is; Do we control technology, or does it control us? Have we forgotten how to live without it already?

Say no to ads with Opera 9

 Opera software recently released the beta-version of Opera 9. Opera 9 let's you download widgets, has a built-in torrent program and allows you to block certain kinds of content from a site, such as ads.

I've missed a good ad-blocking service. even though I design Net ads for a living, some sites are just flooded with ads. 
 And since Opera 9's ad blocker lets you specify which sites you want to block content on, 
you can still see the ads that I make  :)

Spreading the news

Six students from a high school in Fredrikstad were recently expelled because of a relatively innocent prank.

The students removed the hinges of a classroom door, causing it to fall on the teacher when she entered the classroom. More or less innocent, and kind of fun if you're not too old to remember what it was like being in high school. The problem is that the prank didn't stay in the classroom. A student filmed it with his mobile phone, and spread the video via MMS. The school reacted to this by expelling six of the students as well as reporting it to the police. A reaction many believe is far too extreme.

It was, after all, just an innocent prank. But when students started spreading the video the incident changed from an innocent highschool prank into something far more serious. People need to learn that when they put things online, they loose control over it. Even something as innocent as this blog post can come back to haunt me for reasons I still don't know about. In that context I can understand why the school chose to go to the police.

But I still feel that going to the police was unnecessary. The school has to live with these students even after the commotion has settled, and could have solved the problem by more tradtionial means, such as talking to parents. By their reaction, the school shows that it was not prepared for the consequences of the information age.