District 9: A Watchmen moment?

District 9, the new film directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, is getting a lot of good press. Critics like the vision of the young director:

"District 9 proves that genre films, besides being a hell of a lot of fun, can say things you hadn't considered and show stuff you haven't seen." Time.com

They like the quality of the acting, and the special effects:

"District 9 is the rare arms-and-ammo flick in which the central human performance is as high-caliber as the hardware." Washingtonpost

And they like the setting; squalid Johannesburg slums in the blinding glare of the African sun:

"Who needs Manhattan when there are so many megalopolises and sprawling slum-republics about which brilliant films like District 9 can be be made?" Telegraph

I liked the film a lot too. Despite a slightly flappy story, the heavy-handed metaphor and a short-change ending It's almost certainly the best sci-fi film of the year and possibly the film of the year. You should go and see it.

But what really struck me about it was not the quality of the acting, the set-pieces, nor even the CGI, but the construction of the film itself. This is an oddly put together piece that starts as mockumentary, before descending into a more traditional third-person style, but peppered with news stories and spliced with character interviews and soundbites. Honestly, bits of this film resemble Transformers, and other bits resemble The Office.



Different scenes draw from different filmmakers and styles, but there is only one thing that the whole reminds me of, and that's not a film at all. What Blomkamp has done is pick different styles purposely and deliberately, his choices have cinematic and story purpose (for example, the mockumentary approach quickly normalises the bizarre idea of an alien slum, the news clips establish the broader context and set up audience expectations, while the action-packed third act accelerates the story and creates a sympathetic context for a little sentimentality).

This postmodern raid of the stylistic drawer reminded me heavily of Watchmen - not the mawkish film, but the brilliant original graphic novel. What Alan Moore did with Watchmen was use different media to get past some of the shortcomings of the comic medium. He interspersed the graphic chapters with letters, book chapters and newspaper articles, and even interweaved a second text, a comic within the comic (The Tales of the Black Freighter). The medium is the message, and with Watchmen the genius was in the telling - which is possibly why the literal film translation was a little disappointing.

Well, Blomkamp is doing with film what Moore did with the graphic novel. He throws away convention and presents a disrupted narrative, making stylistic choices that make his film deeper and more interesting while keeping it lean. It's just different enough from what we normally expect to be a little disconcerting, but it's very effective.

I liked this film a lot, but I'm more excited about what it's shown us is possible. These past two decades we have gotten a little to used to the polished tropes of epic sci-fi, District 9 reminds us that there is another way, that filmmakers are free to draw on all the facets of our media age and make their films the way that best fits their story rather than our expectations.

Changing the Blog Roll

It was about two and half years ago that I belatedly jumped on the blog bandwagon. I had resisted for a few years because I already had a perfectly serviceable website, but by the beginning of 2007 it was increasing apparent that if I wanted to continue to teach and research people's relationship with digital media and online content then I really should be one of the guinea pigs.

I've got a surprising amount out of it, from simply sharing fun stuff I've discovered online, or getting things off my chest, to developing ideas that are a bit to speculative for academic publication. I've discovered that for a professional academic a blog can fill the scholarly hole left by journal letters and other informal correspondence, it's a good lightweight way to get ideas out there and participate in community discussion that may or may not lead to a more formal publications.

It also turns out that it's a perfectly good way to put other types of occasional content onto the web without having to mess up a perfectly good site-map, although its a bit of a reality check that my Ticket to Ride map gets more monthly hits than my academic-style articles - even if you add them all together :-/

Old site design: Blogger

I chose Blogger out of laziness, and went with one of their standard templates, but it's been looking more and more tired, so this week I started having a play with the templates, and have redesigned the site using the SoulVision open source template and an icon set from WebTreats.

New site design: SoulVision

Twitter may have taken the place of short and pithy posts, but all things considered I've enjoyed being a blogging guinea pig, and I've had a lot of fun writing in a less formal style. Academic workshops, conferences and especially journals will continue to be the gold standard for new science and research, but there's a soft spot in my heart for the humble blog and the new voice that it can give to all of us.

Adolescent 30's: Grand Theft Morality

Two years ago I wrote how the arrival of a bouncy baby Wii for my birthday had caused me to revert to childhood, well my birthday has rolled around again and this year I received a much more mature and responsible present: an XBox 360.

I know, I know (holds head in hands), I'm just so late to the party. However, there comes a time when a man must put away childish things, set aside his Wii-motes, and tackle a series of 18 certificate gaming titles.
Before you do that you need to set the XBox up - and it turns out to be a large, heavy, noisy, warm and rather clumsy beast. Having spent nearly 18 months in Apple Nirvana, it was an odd bump to return to Microsoft land. Setting aside the ludicrously tiny 256MB memory, probably the nastiest surprise was being fleeced for the leads. For some reason the HDMI cable didnt seem to transmit audio (could be my TV for all I know) so I need to connect an audio component cable the AV slot as well as use the HDMI connection. However, the component lead supplied with the XBox covers the HDMI port when plugged in, meaning that you cant plug both in at once, and instead are forced to buy a special Microsoft lead (for 30 ukp) to do the job for you.

Awkward, and perhaps just one-of-those-things? No, I'm afraid not. The component lead is intentionally too big, designed to make you shell out more cash, but in fact you can do something about it. Following this advice I broke the cover, removed the fat piece of useless plastic blogging the HDMI port, and managed to get the original lead working alongside the HDMI connection just fine.

Microsoft, you are truly evil.

Since getting the XBloat 360 up and running I've been venting my frustration on Gears of War 2 and Grand Theft Auto 4 (which makes me feel really old because the last GTA game I played had a top down view :-(



Both are a lot of fun, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for GTA4 in particular. What is so cunning is the way in which it gently coerces you into a life of crime. Starting as a legitimate taxi you pootle around the town being careful to avoid other cars and pedestrians and doffing your hat to the occasional police car, but then a few missions cause you to get a bit reckless, drive dangerously, get into a fight or two, and you realise that there are no consequences to your actions. The character you play, Niko, deals with the gathering mayhem in such a matter of fact way that its all nicely normalised, and before long you're tearing along pavements, pedestrians bouncing off your bonnet, while strafing police cars with machine gun fire.

This is no smiley Wii-faced party-game, this is a full on case study of social disorder, nihilism and psychopathy. I think I'm going to enjoy it :-)

Thank you for the music

For over two years now we have been able to download music online - and by music I of course mean music that you have rights to, music that you own, music with no Digital Rights Management (DRM). In fact the trickle of real music download sites became a flood when Amazon stepped in, and this year even iTunes decided to let you buy music online.

This is great news. DRM technology was the result of small-minded pernicious thinking, and I am glad to see the back of it.

I'm not sure where we got the view that technology should replace social responsibility, we don't seem to be keen to do this elsewhere in our lives (if we did our cars would all have speed limiters and we'd all be wearing electronic tags), but hopefully now that the media companies have grown out of this view we can start to have a sensible conversation about piracy, funding models and the criminality of file-sharing.

(don't worry, it didn't and it isn't)

Perhaps the first step is to move the conversation about piracy into reality. The image above is from the 1984 campaign to save the music industry from home taping. Twenty-five years later the music industry seems in rude health, and you might think they would be sheepish about their tendency for exaggeration. Sadly, while the technology has changed, the overstatement lives on.

Hats of to the Guardian newspaper for challenging the figures and for looking at the real evidence about how we spend our disposable cash. To summarise: if you unpick the industry figures they assume that every download is a lost sale, and that each lost sale is worth £25 (if you follow these figures through that would mean that each UK citizen would spend a third of their salaries on music and movies were it not for piracy - this is clearly a fallacy). In fact the Guardian points out that the amount of money spent on media items over the last ten years has actually risen (its almost doubled to £8bn!) but that music as a proportion has fallen (the increase is in DVDs and Games).

So if piracy isnt the problem that the industry makes out then what are we to make of file-sharing and of file sharers? In his latest podcast Steven Fry made an impassioned call at the iTunes festival for a change in the way that file-sharing is viewed, and called on the industry (he is the first to point out that it is his industry) to stop prosecuting and criminalising ordinary people.

He makes a number of interesting points, top of which is that piracy is not the same as theft (they are demonstrably different processes, whatever the ad-men say), and that casual file-sharing should not be criminalised as piracy, but as a natural part of human behaviour that self-regulates across different social and financial circumstances, ultimately harming no-one. Although it's far from proven, the sales figures we have already mentioned seem to support this hypothesis - that in general people buy what they can afford and act within a sensible moral framework.

This does not mean that the industry should not be looking at alternative funding models. Spotify is probably ahead of its time (let's see how their mobile apps pan out), but advertising and subscription is certainly one approach. There is also money to be made from live performance, and the sale of rights to other media that has a more secure funding basis (such as pre-pay TV or movie ticket sales).

The music industry is not a sacred cow, it has no right to make money hand over fist, and while I respect the rights of musicians, singers, producers and writers to make a living and have their work protected from abuse, this does not mean that things should not change. Simple economics dictate that if music/media is more available then it will also be perceived as less valuable.

As long as it's still viable, I'm not sure why the rest of us should care.

Torchwood Ex Machina

The BBC have just screened the final episode of the five night Torchwood season three, Children of Earth, and already the fan sites are exploding with debate about characters lost, plot holes, and open endings.

I don't normally watch Torchwood, but I was pleasantly surprised by the mini-series. It was well-made, intelligent sci-fi.



There were flaws, mainly in the actions of the government, which was realistically evil but uncharacteristically feeble (when will people learn that our government is dangerous precisely because it is capable!), but I have tremendous respect for the way that the series challenged our conventions of heroic sacrifice - through the tragic homosexual romance of its leading men, and the cold-hard rationalism behind not only the government's actions, but also those of Captain Jack in the final concluding moments.

Perhaps most impressive part of all was the final conclusion. This is so difficult to do in a grand story, because Act II is so necessarily dark and full of despair, that when the light finally shines it can seem trite and forced. But Torchwood paid for its particular Deux Ex Machina moment - and the cost fitted the theme so perfectly that it concluded the story neatly, without leaving the viewer feeling cheated.

Having praised modern American drama, I was very happy to see similar quality on the BBC. Torchwood aired on BBC 1 and apparently attracted nearly 6 million viewers. It was brave of the BBC to pitch this over five consecutive nights, and very brave to put this subject matter on at prime time, but I think its worked. Torchwood is not genius - check out Psychoville for that - but this was solid mainstream sci-fi drama, and a real return to form.

Ticket to Ride - New UK Map

A few years ago I created a UK board for Ticket To Ride, the excellent board game from Days of Wonder. Since then the board has been downloaded thousands of times, and I've received loads of kind comments from players around the world who have tried it out.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Ken Meyers, an American who fancied having a go at updating the board. I'm pleased to say that Ken has just finished his update, and the new version is now available from Ken's website.

I think Ken has done a fantastic job, some of the key improvements include:

• A new map graphic that better replicates the canvas look of the real boards
• A 100 space points counter (my version used the original 80)
• An improved spread of colours around the board
• An improved track layout (sticking more to the grid layout principle)
• More destination tickets (a la the 1910 version of the game)

I love the fact that someone has taken the time and trouble to improve the board in this way, and I'm genuinely impressed by the effort that Ken has made. If you're into Ticket to Ride its definitely worth taking a look at his version, and remember to send Ken a note via email or BoardGameGeek to say thanks.

Prepare for Disruption

Back in November I wrote a blog article on the momentum that was building behind Open Educational Resources (OER) and I have just published a similar essay in the Language and Linguistics Area Studies (LLAS) Liaison magazine.

When I was writing the article I was hoping to address many of the concerns that teachers and lecturers raise over OER, such as worries over copyright and competitive advantage, but I increasingly found myself seeing OER as part of the Education Sector's response to a significant challenge - the Web as a disruptive technology:

"It seems that the Web is changing the balance of power; in the future Universities will no longer be seen as the primary custodians of public wisdom, there is a need for us to reinvent ourselves as voices of authority in a more open information world.

The growing movement for Open Education Resources (OER) is one attempt to rise to this challenge. OERs are teaching materials that have been released into the public domain, normally through one of the Creative Commons licenses that makes it free for public or educational use as long as the original author is acknowledged.

The argument is simple, by developing OERs Higher Education Institutions are able to contribute to the public information space, share new ideas, raise the profile of teaching, and give individual academics a more public voice."

Having also written recently about the demise of the TV industry I think that its likely that any industry that is based on information will need to change its business model or practices. Higher Education may be dealing in knowledge and learning, rather than just disseminating information, but it will still be effected by this change in values.

Increasingly what I like about OER is that it's pro-active action to reorientate ourselves to a world where information itself is of low value. The core business model of Univeristies, providing an education for a fee, may be reletively stable, but the way in which we deliver that educational experience, and how we participate with broader society is likely to change dramatically. If we accept OER it should mean that we are better prepared for that disruption.