Who is the Man with the Name that Rhymes ?If the name don't rhyme it ain't mine.

Why does everyone say "fail"? That's so fucking gay! -A Concerned citizen

I've been thinking about the fail Internet meme recently. In the past couple of years it has hit a critical mass; you can find it in all kinds of mass media and people's conversations. A friend of mine, new to social media over the net, found the meme's pervasiveness troubling (articulated by the quote above). I was curious about its origins so I embarked on quest for knowledge.

Wikipedia is usually a good starting point, so I went there. Sure enough, you can find an article about failure. Past academic sub topics about failure (what defines failure, taxonomies of failure, etc.), you get to the Internet meme. Demonstrating it's common form of "fail" and "epic fail", the sub topic brings up it's origin possibly rooted as a shortened form of "You fail it", a engrish phrase taken from a Neo Geo game called Blazing Star made in 1998.

For those aren't familiar with it, like I was, here's a clip from the game with the phrase:

Questioning the Origin

Something about this stikes me as wrong. I'm not exactly sure what but there are a few things that seem off this statement. I think I'm pretty well knowledged in both video game and Internet subculture. I wasn't even aware of Blazing Star until I read this article. It's not that I don't believe Blazing Star is the possible origin—the world of video games and the Internet is a big place—I'm just skeptical.

Looking at the citations for this statement, we have 3 sources:

1. "Epic Win" a Slate article from 10/15/08.
2. "How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection" a NYT Magazine article from 8/7/09.
3. "All your FAIL are belong to us" a blog post on The Guardian from 10/17/08.

For the sake of my research, I disregarded 3 as it is mostly commentary that cited 1. Both 1 and 2 are good articles. They're mostly about the state of the meme as it is today. As far as the origin goes, both offer only a paragraph of material. 1, citing a 2003 Doomworld forum post from 2003, suggests Blazing Star's "You Fail It" as a possible origin. 2 suggests this too with out a source. I noted that this article was a year younger than 1 so it could have been its source (see the Fail Timeline below). 2 also cites UrbanDictionary, an informal source of neologisms, in trying to date the meme's origin to as early as July 2003.

I have a problem with these 2 cited pieces evidence. First is the DoomWorld forum post. While the post does indeed mention Blazing Star, it's only in the context of the forum post's proposed question: where does "All your base..." and "You fail it" originate from? Never mentioned is fail in the context as it's used today. Second is the link to the "fail" entry on UrbanDictionary. If you take a look at the "fail" entry on UrbanDictionary, you can see the first post was dated on 7/22/03 and has subsequently generated 89 definitions, none of which reference Blazing Star. However, if you look at the UrbanDictionary entry on "you fail it" you'll see the first post was dated 10/1/2003 and has since generated on 2 entries, one of which mentions Blazing Star.

While hardly an authoritative source, UrbanDictionary is still useful as a zeitgeist of slang usage. The timeline and consistency of these 2 UrbanDictionary entries calls into question the theory that "you fail it" is the origin of the meme . If "fail" originated from "you fail it", why was the "fail" entry started 3 months before "you fail it"? Also, why has the "fail" entry generated so many more definitions as opposed to "you fail it"? Sure you'd expect "fail", with the critical mass it has now, to have many more user definitions, but wouldn't you expect "you fail it" to have generated at least a few more definitions as the meme transformed into just "fail"?

 Using Google to search historical Internet data doesn't help the theory's case. Searching Google Trends for "you fail it" comes back with not enough data to create a trend line. A Google search for "you fail it" between the dates of 1998 and 2003 comes up with only 402 results, none of which use the exact phrase and none of those 402 results mention blazing star. As mentioned in Slate's "Epic Win", fail is just too common a word to generate a useful Google search on the meme. However, Google does seem to indicate the variant "epic failure" started around 2006/2007. This also coincides with the UrbanDictionary post for "epic fail" created on 9/15/06. Through out all of this however, Blazing Star is amazingly absent. Surprisingly, "Blazing Star" doesn't even show up in trend data until 2006.

This doesn't surprise me. The Neo Geo came out in 1990. Technically superior to its contemporaries, the Nintendo SNES and Sega Genesis, it came with a cost of $650. Adjusted for inflation, that's over $1000 for a video game console. Some games, according to the Wikipedia article, were priced over $200. Needless to say, this wasn't a mass market gaming console. Some 8 years later when Blazing Star came out, the potential audience couldn't have been that big. Good luck even trying to find a copy of it out there to buy.

 Today, thanks to wonders of modern technology we have a cornucopia of fail planes, trains, and automobiles (don't forget the boats!), not to mention the countless failure motivational posters. But despite it being the supposed progenitor of fail, there is an absolute dearth of "you fail it" images; all you can expect to find are random images, various aforementioned fail images , or, Blazing Star screen captures; everything but images with the "you fail it" text. Again, I wouldn't expect to see the same volume as "fail" images, but you'd think there would be some images.

Given what we know so far, the story of the fail meme follows something like this. In 1998 a game comes out for a what-would-now-be $1000 game console. Being on a niche console, a few copies might of made its way to the US. It has some bad Engrish on one of it's finish screens. At least 4-5 years later in 2003, around the same time as "All your base..." it gets mentioned on Internet forums and is laughed at by a group of people who are certainly larger that any group that could have originally played the game. Another 3-4 years pass, it has now hit a critical mass with images everywhere on the Internet; large fails are now called epic; large media publications such as the NYT write about the meme.

How Memes Grow

Something is really wrong with this story. There are too many gaps and the popularity growth of the meme just doesn't fit Blazing Star's obscurity. Borrowing from the Wikipedia entry, memes are units of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. For a meme to flourish, it has to be easily transmitted from person to person.  A common language and set of experiences between 2 people is needed for transmitting a meme. For many Internet memes, this facilitated through a reference to a video, song, game, or other piece of media that both people are familiar with. 

For example, say I'm talking with friends when my cell phone rings. I receive a call informing me that I won a large sum of money. Hanging up my phone, I exclaim, "Everything's coming up Shawn!" My friends, or at least ones who watch The Simpsons, might remember this and laugh:

The meme "Everything's coming up _____!" has just been created. It has been transferred easily to the people who remember the particular episode of The Simpsons. Some people may ask where that phrase came from. Some people might make the same joke later to other people and thus the meme will spread. My point here is the more common the experience that the meme is based on, the more likely it will spread. An episode of The Simpsons is watched by millions of people. A meme based on The Simpsons will spread quicker than, say an early 90's sidescrolling video game with bad Engrish cut scenes.

The Internet does help speed the transmission and broadcast of a meme, but that common experience still needs to exist in order for it to transfer to person to person. Take a good example, a LOLCat. Back around 2006ish, someone found a rather silly cat picture on the Internet taken from a Russian cat food company.

Someone decides to throw some text on it describing the cat's, now known as happy cat, thoughts.

Many people laugh; comedy gold is discovered. Take a picture of a cat in some silly situation, place a label describing the cat's thoughts in it, and now you have a recipe for a meme plated with 24 carats of comedic gold. The meme spreads and a endless number of variations on the original meme take place.

The LOLCat meme has spread so vastly thanks to a couple of very common experiences.

1. Almost everyone has seen their pet cat doing something silly.
2. Many people assign their cats human-like thoughts and personalities.

All that's needed is modern technology for the meme to spread: digital cameras, photoshop, and the Internet.

A Failure to Communicate

Coming back from the digression into what makes a meme transfer between people, I come back to the question: how could Blazing Star be the origin of the fail meme. Given that "you fail it" is an obscure reference to an expensive game console game that had limited release, how did it spread so quickly from person to person? If "fail" came from "you fail it" why are there no traces of its transformation in the same manner of the LOLCat meme? Based on the evidence I've seen, "you fail it" has no real solid connection to "fail", "failure", or "epic fail". Both have the word "fail" in them, both seem to have popped up around the same time on the Internet, both seem to be cut from the same Engrish cloth, but that's where the connections end.

My theory lies in another game. Back in 1999, less than a year after Blazing Star was released, Nintendo released Super Smash Brothers for the N64 around the world. In the single player version of the game, you encounter a break-the-targets mini game level. In the mini game, you have to hop around, platform to platform, to break targets before a timer runs out. If you fail to break all the targets, you are presented with this from the announcer:

FAILURE. Note even the emphasis that the announcer places on FAIL. Sounds pretty close to the failure meme doesn't it? You attempt to break the targets, you screw up, FAILURE. A simple logical conclusion stated ever so boldly by the announcer: FAILURE.

While Blazing Star remained in obscurity, Super Smash Brothers would go on to be a smash hit, selling almost 5 million copies. The popular 4-player battle mode enabled by the N64's 4 controller ports (a innovative feature at the time) created many fans of the game. 2 years later, Nintendo would release a sequel, Super Smash Brothers Melee for the GameCube. Like its predecessor, it sports the same break-the-targets mini game, and the same announcement for failing to do so:

Super Smash Brothers Melee would go on to sell over 7 million copies. The seeds of a meme were sown. Millions of young kids, teenagers, and young adults played this game. The many that played the single player mode were presented with a common experience. You have a set goal of breaking the targets, if fail to do so: FAILURE; that can be applied in many places in life. Many years after the release of the game, it was still popular for its multiplayer battle mode. 

At this point this is where things get hazy. Pinpointing where the fail meme started showing up on the Internet is tricky. Without direct historical evidence of people explicitly saying where they got the "fail" meme from, we'll probably be left guessing. There's just no easy way to narrow down the search for this. As more and more people started using the Internet in the early-mid 00's, some where, some one, labeled something as "fail" and it took off. In the last 2-3 years, I would say it has hit a critical mass. The phrase "epic fail" has been coined. I now hear it in conversations. People not even familiar with the original source use the fail meme. 

Social media provides more evidence of Smash Brothers being the origin of the fail meme. Try searching FaceBook. The FaceBook fan page of Blazing Star has 16 fans. Of the many Smash Brothers fan pages, one page has over 9000 fans! Even more pertinent, there's fan page for the announcer saying FAILURE that has almost 10 times the number of fans as Blazing Star.

Smash Brothers is still popular to this day. 2 years ago Nintendo released Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii. It has sold almost 10 million copies and is the 8th best selling Wii game. Again, sporting the same mini game and, of course, an announcer eager to claim failure when he sees it:

And for my German readers:

I don't think this definitively proves it, but this is pretty strong evidence for Smash Brothers being the source of the fail meme. Being that there's no clear link between the transformation between "you fail it" and "fail", it makes much more sense that a game experienced by millions, stating explicitly the key word FAILURE, would be the common experience that fuel the transmission of the meme. 

It's hard to say whether I'll be vindicated. But if I am, you heard it here first.

Fail Timeline

• 2/19/98: Blazing Star is released on the Neo Geo.
• 1/21/99: Super Smash Brothers is released for the N64.
• 11/21/01: Super Smash Brothers Melee is released for the GameCube.
• 7/18/03: DoomWorld Forum User Ichor sites Blazing Star as the origin of "You Fail It" later to be cited in "Epic Win".
• 7/22/03:  The term "fail" is posted to the Urban Dictionary later to be cited by "How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection".
• 10/01/03: The term "you fail it" is posted to the Urban Dictionary.
• 9/15/06: The term "epic fail" is posted to the Urban Dictionary.
• 1/31/08: Super Smash Brothers Brawl is released on the Wii.
• 5/5/08: The fail Internet meme is added to the Wikipedia article on failure.
• 10/15/08: Slate publishes "Epic Win".
• 10/17/08: The Guardian blogs about "Epic Win".
• 10/24/08: KnowYourMeme publish a video about fail.
• 8/7/09: NYT publishes "How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection".

 I love reading. Being so ubiquitous, we take it for granted how useful it is. For English, all we need is less than 40 distinct written symbols for us to convey practically every thought imaginable. We can express our thoughts and feelings, communicate events, describe how our world works just with abstract symbols. Even with all stuff mankind has created, the written language is still one of its top inventions; without it most other great inventions aren't possible.All this shit should be obvious to anyone reading it, but it's worth repeating. Reading is fundamental to any sort of higher learning regardless of topic. 

Immersion into a different world of thoughts and experiences is how I look at reading. Regardless whether the material is a novel, news, a discussion of economics, computer code, text messages, or a facebook post, writing allows you to understand a person's thoughts and insights. Over enough words, you will start to understand not just thoughts but the thought processes that create the words in the first place.

That's where the learning happens. Deeply engrossed in reading, temporarily disassociated with what's going on around you, you're able to not only read and understand the words but also imagine what is being read. Being able to visualize what I'm reading is strong indicator that I'm learning something or at least the information is compelling. If that isn't happening, either the information isn't interesting or there's something I'm missing. That's a important detail I try to remind myself, especially when I'm wanting to understand something. Sometimes that takes discipline and focus, but that is the essence of understanding practically anything when it comes to reading. Although, Quantum Mechanics still throws me for loop when I try to fully understand it.

 My first interest in computers, programming, etc. was video games. It made for an obvious choice when I went into college. A Computer Science curriculum however has much more to do with math than video games. Conceptually there is some overlap, but most of what you learn and do is more like math than anything most people would associate with video games. That is a major weed out factor in would-be CS graduates. You like video games or computers? Great. You like thinking and learning mathematical concepts? No? GTFO.

Lucky for me, I am someone who gets mathematics. It's not my primary interest, but there are some neat things when you look at the bigger picture. It's also a useful way to look at the world. For me, one those neat things about computer science that keeps me interested is the abstraction of it. The concepts of the mathematical operations that computers perform are the same regardless of the physical device you use to represent it.

The first computers were mechanical devices like the abacus, or on the more complex and modern side, the difference engine; the configuration of mechanical parts represented values, and the movement of the mechanical parts represented performing operations on those values. Today we use electronics to do the same thing; various tiny electrical components store electrical or magnetic charges that represent value, and the movement of these charges down electrical circuits represent the operations performed on these values. In future we're going to hit the limit of what we can do with electronic computing. Scientists are working on representing computing using different materials like light, sub atomic particles, or DNA.

In a similar manner, most media (books, newspapers, music, photographs, film) has gone through this same transition from physical to electronic: electronic books replacing printed type, websites replacing newspapers, digital audio files replacing records, digital image files replacing photographs, and digital video replacing film. All of these examples have seen their respective industries shaken up by this in some form: book pricing has dropped to rock-bottom levels, newspapers' business model are no longer viable, the major music studios' clout has been diminished, amateur digital photography has undercut professional photographers, and video rental stores are folding everywhere. These are just a small number of examples of the disruption caused by the transition to digital media.

Naturally, when you start fucking around with people's source of income and they'll start doing something about it. Companies have used all sorts of tools of the law, from suing anyone and everyone suspected of copyright infringement to extending copyright for long past when it should expire to protect their business model. Technology and the underlying impact its having on the economics, moves much faster than any legal action could hope to be. In these cases the problem is a technical/economic one; solving it with legislation and litigation will not work.

Here's an example why. The file above is a copyrighted image; it's Google's logo. I've shrank it to tiny proportions to demonstrate my point. All computer data (images, text, or whatever) are ultimately stored as a number. The data is structured so that a computer can make it usable, but the end file is stored as binary data (the 1's & 0's you hear about in computing). This binary data is essentially a number. Using a simple program I created, we can take this file and see that in binary it looks like:

10001001010100000100111001000111000011010000101000011010000010100000000000000000000000000000110101001001010010000100010001010010000000000000000000000000001010100000000000000000000000000000111100001000000001100000000000000000000000001001001010100010010111011101111000000000000000000000000000000001011100110101001001000111010000100000000010101110110011100001110011101001000000000000000000000000000001000110011101000001010011010100000100000000000000001011000110001111000010111111110001100001000001010000000000000000000000000000100101110000010010000101100101110011000000000000000000001110110001000000000000000000000011101100010000000001100101010010101100001110000110110000000000000000000001001000001101001001010001000100000101010100010010000100101110111101010101010111110101001100010110110101010100010100111111111011110111010111000000100011001011111001110110100100000010110110110010010001000001010000001100110011010000100100011111000100010000100100101100000010110000101010000000100110000101110001011010101100001011111110000100001000110000111010001100100110010101001011001001000111001100011011011011000001001010100011000100011010001101100001001001001001101011100000000010000000100101011001000110001101001101100001000001100111010110011011011011100010111011100010100100000010000011001011000100001010011101011000011000010100101111000111110001101111011100101000110111111001010001000010101000010010110110010100111101101001010110110110111011110111100011011011101100100100001000000011101100101001100110001000111001111001111101110111110011110011100110111111011110111100111001111001101111110111101111101110101110010001110000110001110000011010001001011100111011110000011001101010100110111000110110110000010110001000110000110000000010010001101110010000000100001110001110001101011111011010100111011100001111011111011110111010011111001111111100011010101111111000000111111101011111011111100100001000010101101111100111100011100101111010110000011111111111110011100110000111101111010101000000100010100100011001111001111100110110110100010000000101001001010011011110001001000001000011010111010011000101111001100001001001010010111110111100011110000111110010000101101100100110011010001010100010010100110100101000100111011011001001110100100100101110001110111000001001001110100111101000101110011111111100110111101000101100000001011110111001111001010010110110100010101011111011111101101101010111010001010110011000111100110110000100001011010110011100110110111010011101010010101011010001000110010011011011111000101001110000100000111010011111001111111011001000100110100011100111111000100010110111001001000000001101111010010011000100101111101010110011011000010101010110100110101111001111001001111000001000100010011010011110111111100110111100111101110100111000010011110011100110001010110010101001100001111010111110111001011010101110010100011101010000010000001101111111110011001001011100010010010001011000101000100000001011010000110010101111111100100011011011011110000000011010110001110110000100001111110111101010000001001100110111010100001011100000000001010111100000111011001100110101100111010110110000011000010101100011000011000001010100100111011000000111100101001010111001011000000011110011101100111011100100101111110110100100010000111100010110101010000010000111010010010110111101011111110000111101001110101010101101000010011111100110011000100111001001110110000101100010011000010100100101111111000100110010000010101101101111010000101001001101010111111000001101101000100111101010101100101011010000001001011011111100000000001111100010010000000111000001100010111000001001111000101010111111100001001100001000111101010110001110011111110000111010001000111001000001010001001110000000000111001110101010000100010001110001111001010000110011010010110111101101001111100000101010011110000001100001010001110101101010101011001000001011101001100010100100000110101000001100110111011101100111011001001100000110010001100100011000000011011001101000001100110011010001011100000000001000110001000110101101100011100111111100000011010000101111101101111111110111010011110000100000011000111001110110011101100110011100100010110111011011110110100001011100000110000110110101101011010000101011101010100000101001010000100110111010101010111000110001110110110000100011001101010111000000110100100011101111010110000100101001100101001011100111110011000100110011001001011111011001101101110101100101100110111010000011011101100111110001000101010101110101110000111000101100010111100000100100101011001000010100000101000111100101011001011100110100000011100111110110010011001011001001010000001110110101111110010000111001110101101111001111101001110010011101010011011111110101111110111101011000100110110111111001101110001000001001100111010111010101100101001011001010110110111000100011110111100101010101101010100000010100000100101011101110110010111010011011011000011100010001101101110011011011011001110111110000011111110011110011001100100001010000110110001000100011111000000101100100010100110010010000000110010010111100111000000010000010111001011100100000101100011111001011110000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000000000000000000000000000000000100100101000101010011100100010010101110010000100110000010000010

And when we convert to our standard number system we get:

847832597307642143293186540633128032603498909401480356814716866828694514855234147317877510447722858287974862333350351760604385180085440866655026669331118289660462317187237124577995849840006183410393648427523845669176295432352877713451565201106046407371040724218812417110366356611335061560366670116380100877279050419337203247277533596524782173303272874855081838032015819567340290269692744119195245388543993026662032967014356351292431804484073595441417174419395763556626259792598624683226478022089880504118155159199451030392942189161317889254342608716588332030194493694451895989126095845142683501641558209346389940316709113282296571899306041695876845299567740419540641106246171223021791948546189756870898978163462920581130080799588668026351571535164918106515737847619249021709808931436285724006124976384091979912650878720401841013565865155353137070673569223473770194034890304582328502222342506264201446587946468351525632936652162592929858942517433367763447855497462620087246263559717900276334790788351675822967085011851620796196524702812916543494381741467794447575956499272136597020802638141845076202914025549928831668937299275769891367150395150111445746265468550333070475109757685801914538364081879922426241535416255656537990358871986496958393361972337820910300542281157058873165656210294861005168093702576427133043010178861360353985145050330488802483574094560305209668531081965314516511937367013960461649198629802932351119533399388321474321677888999564101685359535323060858641951160253265898857414693235377283129381887346494917416753790645471237318959560095367677968708010897362345566918863468589182685592472128105591760429142292295444472135967493837968957831587544992574319759675194434997881177509941563164025428432915886567366089356596176061333445686822069129403002327332261612316340466245407907781388909038361517462274342869179907381780200860429186654161541169549039473078370080463887872077101296753912478778017841146191718899801629137332649365739273573434377291672599953472521710631295290256130224384135772832334265405739954101680028863860643433135040162999498235251706935023723785653445087177812894506296694347860538833237488764397303724096156245867252588837930806548043952461530534050364086671433678335368666417326383993903512030677032827352689506034771871828724405882146634242258456452268546687369764761580109937067535394356870039094916191875456499215919443970441917325502087627441867162787843023831519216763026423711412981931767079434934028776468433299532702660018011504571357805738547661801134653794080591125191160591783682430557020136314930880269100085541790544451844077173764539941155100587817122395517323561207741109903183381046321089481815352830712891008114969714032243590431573506099534808838156130296874045316458529113481059813745861596672103122775118577631825139039714762784272906092520650865423389871333450373955692763733468852409168360790616595466988073026898183537090775597999512112183256152184456566915943372242957043787114886515156120862594470042915978977743580744224348190067295406241839339035434739956077102129897603

It certainly is a lot larger than the image above, but its the same data just displayed differently. This is the same for any digital media file that exists out there. From this perspective, trying to claim ownership of a digital file is like trying to claim ownership of number. This isn't what copyright law attempts to do. However, when it comes to enforcing copyright law over a digital representation of a copyrighted work, that is close to what's going on. It sounds absurd.

It gets more absurd. Copying data is a fundamental part of how computers work. With any sort of copyrighted digital media, you can expect it to be copied multiple times just to consume the data. Let me give you a good example. Right now I'm writing this post. The text, being my written work, is copyrighted by me. The data is stored in my web browser memory as write it. When I hit send, it will travel across the Internet, from my ISP to GoDaddy's web servers. This trip will have my copyrighted data copied at least 2 or 3 times as it jumps across various network devices across the Internet. 

Once at GoDaddy's web server, it will be copied to a couple servers that run my website (not to mention whatever backup servers GoDaddy has). Once my copyrighted text is on the web site, Google, FaceBook, other web crawlers, spam bots, etc, will have requested this copyrighted data from my website. Each request will have multiple copies made to traverse to its destination across the Internet. Eventually, depending on your source for this copyrighted data, you will have requested this data off a server where the data will be copied to your own web browser. That number (that represents my copyrighted text) is now in many different places. The Google logo above is probably in millions of places at least.

Here's where the economics comes in. There's a very simple concept in economics called scarcity. Goods have value because they are more or less scarce. The more scarce (less abundant) a good is the more value it has per unit. Vice versa applies as well. The more abundant a good is the less value it will have. With a good that is purely a digital product, scarcity no longer exists; excluding the upfront cost of electricity and computer hardware, it can be copied indefinitely. It terms of economics, when the supply of a good (the ability to copy a digital product indefinitely) is infinitely greater than demand (the time we have to consume media products) the price will go to 0.

Of course the cost of producing that original copyrighted product isn't 0, only the reproduction of the digital representation (that number I talked about above). Writers, musicians, photographers, and so on need to be paid to keep doing what they do, assuming that they don't have any other source of income. Even worse, depending on your perspective, the barrier to entry by any would-be artist is lowered by technological progress (cheaper and better tools to write, record, and film) and abundant digital reproduction. Further competition produces even less scarcity which pushes costs even lower. For professional media, this is where large companies are useful. They can assume the upfront costs (paying everyone involved) and make large purchases on equipment needed for highly professional media (printers, high quality recording and photography equipment).

The burden of recouping those costs falls to those companies. Naturally, you can expect it to do all that is possible to recoup those costs and prevent any losses from piracy. However, suing people isn't profitable and I think it's counterproductive at some point. Whatever money you recoup (after fees to win litigation) won't make up for the negative publicity it generates. Suing organizations or other companies that facility piracy is just as pointless. In the past 10 years Napster, Morpheus, Grokster, Sharman Networks, Limewire, IsoHunt, and The Pirate Bay all have been sued. It has done nothing to stop the availability of pirated media over the Internet in the least. The economics of the situation works too well to stop everyone.

The other major attempt to stem piracy (and thus recoup costs) is a technical one, applying DRM to a digital media file. DRM is a generic term for a technical solution to prevent unauthorized copying. In the example I gave above, DRM takes the number representing that Google image, scrambles it in some fashion that obscures its true value, and places some program in front it. This program ultimately decides who and what gets a copy of the true value. In other words, DRM creates an artificial scarcity with the digital reproduction that would otherwise cost next to nothing.

The problem with this is that the economics still haven't fundamentally changed. It still costs next to nothing to reproduce that number. You've just obfuscated the copying process with your DRM program. All it takes is one person with the technical knowledge, especially one with a strong financial incentive (a counter-fitter, someone with more time than money to buy your product, etc.), to find out a way to subvert your DRM program. Once subverted, that obscured number is no longer obscured; it's out there free to be copied by everyone, or at least everyone who is technically savvy. For the non-technically savvy (i.e. the majority of consumers), they are likely to be hammered by a DRM program that will restrict copying in some form or another. If you've ever had to update a BluRay player before it would play a movie, this is a good example.

The problem isn't digital technology, the problem is the business model. Old business models in the pre-digital world, were built on an assumption of physical scarcity associated with the media. With this no longer the case, new business models must be created that don't rely on physical scarcity. The Economist put a special report on television a few weeks ago that really hit this point well. It remarks on how TV has best adapted to the new digital media world.

The most salient insight taken from the report is that TV has succeeded because of the service & experience it provides, not the digital bits it serves up. TV piracy is just a prevalent as other media, however its timeliness, instance gratification, and ease of use make it worth the cost to consumers. Other media has already started down this route. Witness the rise of Netflix for movies or Steam for video games. Others should take note.

I just finished reading an interesting book called The Logic of Life. Much in the same manner of Freakonomics, the book covers a number of various insights gathered from academics in the field of behavioral economics. The book does a good job of explaining some big concepts in the field without going into too much jargon. Like with Freakonomics and its summary of The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (argues that the significant drop in crime in the 90's was the result of Roe v. Wade), The Logic of Life contains bold and controversial views offered by economists' work over the years. 

Its expansive view attempts to explain many parts of life in terms of behavioral economics: prefrences for different types of sex, poker, marriage, office politics, city neighborhoods, racism in hiring prefrences, the growth of cities, politics, and the development of civilization. It definitely can be said that the book's information is more wide than deep. The author also admits various times that the views explained by behavioral economics are a simplified view the world; the goal is to create a simplied model of the world that can be used to gather data which then can be used to test against hypotheses. 

I liked the book for the interesting perspective it provided. Data in terms of numbers, if gathered correctly and accurately, can provide information that isn't distorted by perspective or bias. In reality, life is never as simple as some math formula; there are just too many things going on at once to make sense of everything. Sometimes we used intuitions to make sense of things. Other times, we can narrow our vision to gain insight on discrete details. It's difference between describing in words how gravity slows down a ball's ascent then forces to the Earth versus a mathematic equation that describes how the ball will move under certain circumstances. Same phenomena, just described differently.

 I saw this the other day and that it was cool. Google in their quest for world domination/organizing information, has possibly bought another company that makes 3D multitouch desktops. Ever since I saw multi-touch demos around 2007, I've figured that was going to be the future of computing. And while I'm pretty skeptical of bringing computer desktops to 3D, that's because I'm a power user. I know that to get the fastest performance out of my computer is to learn how to do with keyboard shortcuts/commands. 

However, for the layman, I think this is a good thing. Someone who is a novice to computing would probably be put off various abstract concepts that have been a long standard in computing: file formats, drive letters, and so on. The problem is that the computer system, in order to be usable, assumes various prerequisites of knowledge that a user might not be familiar with. In this sense, it's help to take existing computing concepts and render them in a way that the real world works. It's giving data tangibility.

Our economy has moved from manufacturing as the basis of growth to a knowledge. Computers are key part of this. They have replaced a lot of jobs, operators are handled IVM's, email has replace mail services, and so on. As we become more dependent on these machines, we need even the rudimentary-level user to be able to easily use these computer systems lest we lock a lot of people out of the knowledge economy.