CMYK is the new SXSWi

This is to continue a twitter-burst about print, and the digital age.

I work at a commercial print shop. No, my company did not pay me to go to SXSWi. Hmm. Can't figure why not.

I actually had a pretty tough day at work today. The company is refiguring itself, and in the process, this means that often there is a lot of work to do with few people to do it. Other times, it means there is little work to do and too many to do it. But this is all part of "refiguring", right? I'm sure you know what I mean.

It's weird being a young person, artistic and idealistic, and working in the print industry. And I don't mean working as a "designer", because this is what all the young folks want to do these days. No one wants to learn how to operate a six-color press with a perfector, or mix ink, or play the irritating and demanding fast-slow-fast game known as "bindery equipment".

For some reason, I chose this. Not for least of reasons, because I'm a writer, so I have an interest in knowing a bit about it when all the old folks in the industry are gone. But also because I believe in print, even though I listen to mp3s, blog, tweet, and really really like my iPhone.

Those who "design" things, using computers almost entirely, regardless of age, know very little of the details about how the things they design turn into, often times, physical realities. Those who use those physical things mostly know even less. But the funny thing is, despite how digital everything is now, many things still wind up on paper, and probably still will.

As I just mused, ever see anyone using a ZIP disk? No. But still, despite Amazon, despite the iPhone, paperback book stores are still open for business. Paper is a hell of a medium. You can shape it, recycle it, repurpose it, you can even eat it. You can't erase it, you can only destroy it. It's made from plants, and you can make it in your kitchen sink.

My great prediction for the future of print is not really a prediction at all. It's more of a comment on any cheap, easily available, widely usable technology. Its use will change, as soon as we all figure out how to use it.

The greater change, if there is a change, is in capitalism. Capitalism has done the production and distribution of print for a long time now, and this production and distribution has followed capitalistic standards and typical tendencies. This will change, because capitalism, despite what the open-market profligates will tell you, is actually a pretty narrow window of production and general cultural momentum.

Economics, on the other hand, is not a narrow window. But economics has never been dependent on a so-called "open-market", or any of the features thereof. Actually, most economics has operated free from the idealistic zone of an "open-market". Black market, grey market, state market, or non-market economics is just as big as it ever was, and operates without an open-market at all.

Open-markets, which supposedly have their own prestidigititous logic less like the I Ching and more like a Ouija Board, have less to do with capitalism, than with an general ignoring of causes to prove the general fortuitousness of the effects. You have to admire it really. It's not even tautological, i.e. using the supposition as proof of its own validity. It is assuming anything to be valid, as long as it can be used as an argument for the validity of the status quo. "Things are great! This proves that things will continue to be great!"

I'm getting off track, but basically the open-market has allowed capitalism to not even wonder why it's getting so rich, and then when it stumbles, it can't figure out what to fix. Instead, it fixes nothing, and instead argues that it's still rich, and this is why it will be richer tomorrow. Anybody you know have a really expensive purse, and several thousands of dollars in credit card debt?

Print was sold as a commodity for a long time, not wondering about what sort of a commodity it was, not caring, as long as it continued to sell. When print stopped selling so well, all of a sudden the print industry had to make up some bullshit about what it actually was. Working in the print industry, I've had a lot of people try to tell me that print is actually junk mail, and that junk mail is actually the key to how businesses (the businesses paying for the junk mail) make money. This is funny, because they are arguing that junk is a commodity, and not only that, but that junk is the commodity that makes all commodities valuable. If we printed money, perhaps they would have a bit of a point. But we don't. So it just sounds stupid.

It should also sound stupid to anyone who has read a book.

I'm not trying to argue that there is some sort of a long-tail in POD publishing, or artisan books, or self-published e-marketing with a twitter presence. All of these arguments are just more of the same, i.e. the print industry trying to convince themselves that the products they have been selling at a profit all this time are still profitable, even though they can't make such a big profit on them anymore.

But I'm not in the publishing industry. I'm in the print industry. So let me tell you a little bit about print that you might not know.

- Print still exists. Sure, there's less work now. We lost the clients that had us print their forms in triplicate, and those that send out company wide newsletters every week. Now they do all that online. But we still print catalogs, envelopes, packaging, letterhead, business cards, magazines, postcards, art cards, posters, maps, manuals, and other stuff. We print less of that too. But we still print it. And we will, because people realize they don't need to spend money on it all the time. But often, they decide they do need to spend money on it. And not just because they can't use their computer.

- Print is still profitable. Did you know that five, ten years ago, it was normal to charge a 100-300% markup on print? Print literally was printing money. Now we make a 50-100% markup over cost. Apple makes a supposed 500% markup over cost on the iPhone. But that is assembled in foreign sweatshops. We can make a 75% markup with american materials and living wages in any american shop space with a strong floor, electricity, and fresh water. Yeah, I know: the capitalists are pissed they lost their gold mine. But this brings me to my next point...

- Apple can charge so much over cost for the iPhone because it is Apple, not just because it is something people want to buy. I don't mean that they simply have a brand, though obviously that is involved. The iPhone is a world-wide technological infrastructure, requiring world-wide IT support, communication networks, sales structures, and so on. They wouldn't have made X billion dollars if they didn't acquire X market share of the ENTIRE WORLD'S SMART PHONE MARKET. You and I could never make and sell an iPhone. Only Steve Jobs could. The best we could hope for is to maybe work in an Apple Store, or program an iPhone app.

On the other hand, you can earn a 75% markup by printing a thousand books. True, you have to find someone to buy a thousand books (wholesale or retail), and you have to own a print shop. To open a commercial print shop, you probably need 5-10 million dollars. That's not nothing. But if you are dreaming of opening a print shop, you could do it. If you are dreaming of inventing and selling an iPhone, you are an idiot.

- And the technology is changing. Thing about this example. You can lease a color digital printer, for, say, $1400 a month. You pay the base charge for all your supplies except paper, and then 5 cents per impression (one printed sheet). If you charge 10 cents a click (that's way conservative) you can make 100% over click charge, and it would only take you 21,000 impressions to break even. That's one run of 100 books with 210 full color pages. You sell another 100 books, and you just made $1000 pure profit. All you need is twenty square feet of floor space, and electricity.

- But then, of course, you have to think about paper, and binding, and someone to run the machine, and someone to buy the books (in the example above, a retail establishment could sell the full-color 210 page book for $30 and make 70% over the production cost), and someone to make the content of the books (do your own math for that). And this is where the capitalist says, "damn it, why can't it just print gold, or why aren't people showing up at my door with orders for 100K flat color sheets and providing their own paper?"

Well, this is where things are changing. The print industry would love to sell flat color sheets in runs of 100K. The rest of the world calls this junk mail. But the fact is, no matter how digital the world gets, can you see a world where there is not someone who would want to make/buy full-color books?

The fact is, print is just too damn easy, and too damn big. If you look around, you'll see a lot of new paper products you've never seen before. Some of it is cute letterpress stuff, some of it is paper craft inspired by Japanese arts, who have been more interested in paper than us for a while, even though they have plenty of smart phones of their own. Some of it is stuff you would have seen mimeographed or faxed or xeroxed twenty years ago, but now is crisp, colorful, and well-printed. Some of it will be free, or nearly so, because it is that easy to cover the costs, if you know what you're doing. Most of it, I would imagine, you will only see a few places, and then you will never see it again. But I'd bet you'll be seeing more of it than ever.

So the lesson of the example is that print is still possible, and even profitable, but it is shrinking in size. This means the capitalists are pissed, because no single book is going to be an iPhone. But it also means that someone is going to be making money, even if they are doing it in a garage, in runs of under 100, and racking their brains on who they are going to get to fill the pages and who is going to buy it. They might have a few hard days at work, like I'm having. They will never get any noticeable market share of anything. They will never be a publicly traded company. They likely will not be capitalists. But they will create their own market, as they learn about their industry and about their technology.

IF(mp3=digital, createnewrecord, ctrl+A, Del)

I can't believe what a nerd I am. Look at this post I just wrote, and thought was a good idea! Can you believe the nerdy title I gave it? Wow. Anyway, posting anyway, as an example of the weird analytical stuff I actually think about during the day.

So I did this really stupid thing about a year and a half ago. While working as a karaoke DJ (this wasn’t the stupid part, okay?) I decided to copy over the external hard drive of DJ tunes to my own hard drive. I knew it wouldn’t be the best music of course, but I thought, here’s a chance to get all those classic party songs they put on those monthly mainstream DJ compilations, and well, I just never could turn down an opportunity to make my music collection more encyclopedic.

Big mistake.

Not only did I severely over-estimate the number of “classic party songs” to pure crap, I also forgot to take into account that the guy whose hard drive it was is one of the most unorganized, non-encyclopedic people I’ve ever met. My music library became clogged with unlabeled, mis-labeled, duplicate tracks, most of which I didn’t want anyway, with their titles written in all caps. To the tune of about 200 gigs.
If you are not acquainted with the true depths of my analytical neurosis, let’s just say that such a poorly organized “library” has been a heavy weight bearing on my database soul for the past year and a half.

But never fear dear reader, because I am working through. Little by little, I am making my way through the genres and deleting, re-categorizing, consolidating, stripping, and re-writing the metadata. I first did “alternative”, “punk/hardcore”, “classical”, and “jazz” so at least I could listen to some music without going crazy. I got rid of the “other” and “uncategorized” categories little by little, and eventually consolidated “hip-hop”, “hip hop/rap”, “gangsta rap”, “rap/hip-hop”, and “hip-hop/R&B”. Last night, I finally finished “pop”. The only ones left are “rock/pop” and “rock”, which are large, but by this time I am being brutal with my deletion, so I hope to finish this week. If I don’t immediately recognize the name, it goes. If they have a single song I don’t like, it goes. If they have a single song with a Christmas theme… Ctrl+A, Del.

Throughout this process, I have had much time to lament how horrible the music player programs are at sorting music. I use iTunes primarily (iPhone user). But for sorting purposes, I also tried Songbird, Media Monkey, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. They differ a little bit, but without buying extra modules, there really isn’t any improvement. The best thing one can do is to sort by a metadata category, and just brute force your way through it. Even so-called “duplicate” finders are pretty weak, with no way to qualify how close or far a supposed duplicate might match its pair. And then, they are remarkably proprietary. iTunes is notorious (at least among the people who discuss music library databases online) for not allowing the language of its library files to be touched. There are some Applescripts out there for making some changes, but amazingly, it is very hard to re-organize a music library any other way than through a browser.

Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about the music library, which is different than the actual mp3s on your hard drive. The library is basically a database file, in some derivative of XML, for organizing the track names, numbers, artwork, actual file locations, and other metadata for display through the player’s browser window. There is a re-write process between the file itself and the database (what iTunes calls “organizing”, or maybe “mediaTunes” now?) that will adjust the actual metadata of the mp3 to cohere with the library database.

Now, I know when I say this, the reason it is so is because so few people have the disposition to categorization that I have, but all the same—the databases available for media organization are abysmal. I don’t really see why—it is easy enough to add XML interpretation into a program. Your word processor can probably do it. But I guess in the effort to make media players as “cleanlined” as possible, (i.e. iPod/iTunes-like) these are abandoned in favor of tools that let the program do all the work.

And I’m not interested in trashing the iTunes mentality, because through it all, they’ve still put together an excellent media player. Sure, it’s a bit heavy for a media player program. And it has a tendency to do things “automatically” that really screw up—like losing user-uploaded artwork trying to auto-download it, and we don’t even need to get into the DRM stuff. But as basically a front end for their music store, it is still pretty damn usable for someone like me, who has only bought maybe two things from the iTunes Store ever.

For example, I love the Smart Playlists. This is the sort of functionality I’m talking about. These are basically database queries, where you can define ranges of the metadata variables like “times played” or “date last played”, and insert randomization and total record quantity. I have several personal “radio stations” made from these tools, and they work great. Of course, there is not as much flexibility as I would like. The same thing goes for the Genius function, which is basically a personalization query, based on variables iTunes doesn’t disclose. Of course, you can’t edit this, and for someone with +100 gigs of mp3s and a computer 5 years old, it kind of gums up the works. But it’s the right idea.

The thing I realized, while deleting 50+ copies of duplicate shit-club mixes of Akon’s three biggest songs of 2007, was that despite the hysteria about intellectual property insinuating that a song is infinitely replicable, and a mere collection of digital bits, we still don’t look at our music files as data. There is an aspect of the commodity in every mp3; it takes on more than what it is. An mp3, to a consumer, is purely the music experience, not the possession of data which can create the music experience. My DJ associate with bad file habits thinks to himself, I want this song in my music collection, and adds it in, with no thought of where it will go. When he wants to play the song, he searches for that particular track, and plays it. There is no browsing, no querying, no organization. The more duplicate tracks he has, with different spellings and different data in different categories, the more likely he’ll find an instance of it when he searches for it in the search bar. The entire analytical process is, Want->Get. It’s the purest sort of production/consumption there is.

This is good for record companies, who try to institute the fear that if they can’t make money, then you won’t have any more mp3s. Actually, with DRM, they’re probably right. But it isn’t true—being able to drag and drop an entire collection of mp3s proves the point. An mp3 is only data. Music has long since past the point of expressive performance, and has entered the realm of digital data, along with many other aspects of our life. Now, expressive performance, the actual production and consumption, live within the differences of binary digits.

So what are you going to do? Well, as any database administrator will tell you—stop doing that! That is, having poor data habits. We know to back up our data, and to be careful where we get our data, but now we need to learn to organize it. A well-kept database is a useful database. Only one item of data per variable, each record separate, no duplicates, proper linking conventions. Clean query programming. It’s just what makes sense.

Of course, no 13 year-old just starting their mp3 collection is going to do this. You just throw ‘em in a file as you download them. So instead of instituting my Universal Rules of Epistemological Fortitude, as I would like to do, I instead look to the media players. I want MS Access, with a media player function. I want write combo boxes for my playlists. I want SQL queries in mp3 queries. I want to add IF/THEN statements to my iPhone syncing. Maybe with some top-down redesign of software, we could start treating our mp3s as what they are—valuable data.

This Revolution Should Be Downloadable

You may have heard of Creative Commons, which helps us creative folks distribute our work in open formats. But here is Open Access, which is a similar proposal to not only distribute scientific articles in open-format, but also to maintain access via open, accessible databases.

Although they do not offer the different levels of protection as Creative Commons does, they do take it a step further by arguing that permissions are only half the battle. The database is equally important, or opening one's re-print permissions is no different from having a CC blog.

Here is their Open Access Publication Definition, pulled from the Statement on the Bethesda meeting on Open Access in 2003:

An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions:

1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

Notes:

1. Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.

2. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

I like this for several reasons (besides the fact of its general opposition to intellectual property arguments).

1. It notes that "Open Access" is a distinction of the work itself--in other words, not the author, printer, publisher, or content provider. The work itself is denoted to be free and clear of copyright restrictions.

2. Related to the previous, "Open Access" does not mean that the work is free from copyright by its authors. You can copyright it, CC it, chisel it in stone if you want. All the denotation means it that the work itself must, in addition to whatever else, be available free, forever, and to whomever.

3. Furthermore, it specifically states that an Open Access Publication is available digitally. This is not a free-for-all, bootleg as you like permission. You can't print and sell copies. But it does this without the proscription of CC's "non-comm" category by taking advantage of the digital medium. By forcing it to be available "in any digital medium", it is by substantial fact making it free, un-controllable by material means such as DRM or anything else. "Any digital medium", means, materially, free and endlessly distributable.

This is perhaps the most important feature of the statement. In an essay I wrote about digital reproduction and intellectual property, I argued that the change digital reproduction engenders to our material conditions is forcing us to consider "property", and accordingly, labor, in new ways. Open Access takes this principle up directly by not simply stipulating that a work is "free property", in the form of Creative Commons, which despite intentions, still recognizes the material fact of intellectual property as a form. On the contrary, Open Access does an end run around old-form notions of property by defining a new sort of property: it takes digital reproduction as the de facto material process for its publications, because if information must be available in digital form, it is simply inconceivable that the content could be owned as property in the old way. You want to print journals? Fine, make a business of it, go wild. But if you want to publish, it better be Open Access, and therefore, digital.

4. Which leads to the fourth point. By taking this approach they are ignoring the form of production entirely, and focusing on content. If a document is available in any digital format, it cannot really be formatted or typeset. The goal is the propagation of the information: plain text. As a writer, printer, and publisher, I abhor plain text. Typesetting is part of the art. But these are scientists, and they are interested in the conclusions of research--publications, not publishing. And so, through this selective targeting of text via the material conditions of information reproduction, they are absolutely brilliant in crafting this definition. They allow authors and publishers to retain any rights they want, as long as it is available absolutely free, digitally. This should in no way impact publishing. People who want to read books, subscribe to journals, and collect first editions can go on doing so. But the people who need access to the information, like students, researchers, historians, database compilers, and etc. will have all of the text for free. They are drawing a line between published materials, and digitally-available text, and are doing so clearly, distinctly, and concisely.

5. The second half of the definition deals with the digital access--which is the current issue, in my opinion. Copyright is dead; that fight is over. Of course, there are still partisans out there in them hills, but everybody knows we're not going back to the pre-mp3 days. The fight currently, is one for access, which could potentially be more complicated. The Google Book controversy, for example, is exactly what's important these days. All books will be scanned eventually, and I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The big deal is not that the books will be scanned, it is that Google will hold the keys to the library. Of course, they've made many homages and odes to the "ease" with which content rights holders will be able to "manage" their works through a no-doubt free Google app. But who are you going through to manage your rights? Google. Who has control the second your rights lapse? Google. Who controls who gets to access, and more important in the days of masses of content, when and at what rank? Google. Google is shaping up to be the Amazon of digital books, because they are doing what Amazon did right the first time--be the paradigm of digital access to ____. Amazon chose print books, and "look up something on Amazon" is the Internet-synonym for the common task of finding something the way the all-mighty search engine is for search. Amazon chose wrong with Kindle, because they still thought digital content was the same as print content (DRM). Google choose correctly, betting there would be much more money in free content than in paid. Which Napster was popular, the old, illegal Napster, or the new, crappy subscription service Napster? And Google Book Search, it is becoming increasingly clear, will remain legal. The problem is, the analogy to Napster is not true, because with Napster you could download your mp3, but with Book Search it's all on the Internet. Cloud based, in this case, means you don't actually own the material, you simply get to stare at it from the ground. And the best and only view is on Google's grassy hillside.

Hence, the requirement in part two of the definition of Open Access, stating that the publication should be "deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving". Google likes to pretend it is an academic institution, scholarly society, and maybe even a government agency, (Always look to the future with a fear of the feet of the giants of today!) but it is none of these things. "At least one" is the key. Does Google Book Search allow you to copy one of their works to another database? Why not? Because controlling digital media is about controlling access--the work itself does not matter. Open Access has realized this next fight, much as Google has, and is putting itself on the side of information's freedom.




So, I like this Open Access. It's a major step forward, not just for science (the importance of which for humanitarian goals is immediately obvious), but for property theory in general. We are moving towards a new conception of property and labor, and this is a part of it.

That said, I don't think I am ready to contribute any of my work to Open Access, as a writer. A good amount of my writing is available online for free, via CC non-comm (see the bottom footer of the blog, for example). But to let it completely out of my creative control, I'm not quite ready. Then again, this blog has only been in existence for a little over two years, and anything I would consider "publishable" has been written in about the same time period. Maybe once it's aged a bit, I will feel differently. Also, if I had a teaching job paying the bills, I might be totally fine with giving the fruits of my "research" out for free and letting it completely out of my control. Who knows--time will tell.

The one thing I'm sure of, is that standards like Creative Commons and Open Access have definitely helped me move in the direction of a new relationship towards my production and my product, both intellectually, and to its actual physical/digital incarnations.