On this episode of Spark: Regrettable videos, Open Textbooks, and Twittering Taco Trucks
- Timothy Tackett (AKA Mr UNSTABL3) takes a bath in a Burger King sink
- Bill Wasik and Hal Niedzviecki on regrettable online videos, and what to do about them (full interview)
- Hannah Classen wonders what happened to the promise of a flying car
- Eric Frank from Flat World Knowldge publishes open textbooks (full interview)
- Kate Arkless Gray and the BBC’s World Service preserve endangered sounds with Save our Sounds
- Nora mentions Beatles Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and the uncanny valley
- Cyrus Farivar dines at Twittering taco trucks
- Cyrus’s taco blog: californiatacotrucks.com
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Sunset Stroll Into The Wood” by Podington Bear
- “Morning Dream” by Gurdonark
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “Baby” by cdk
- “Grief” by Podington Bear
- cs400 amp.wav by THE_bizniss
- “awakemyfriendandwelcomespring” by _i (not CC, used with permission)
- “Rest (For A While) (Demo)” by The Orchestral Movement of 1932
- “amellifluousdistortion” by _i (not CC, used with permission)
- “I Will” by Podington Bear
- “Tacos, Enchiladas, & Beans” by Sam Donahue And His Orchestra Feat. Shirley Lloyd
Play audio:
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[Original image by pheezy]
Thank you for taking the time out to find out the truth about the BK Bath.
-Mr.UNSTABL3
Hi I would like very much to contact you and do an e-mail interview on my blog Candid Conversations at http://1on1candidconversations.blogspot.com/ please contact me via the blog. I would love to chat about your experiences since this interview you had with Nora.
I can't believe you have to have 2 experts on to explain why people do dumb things. It's very simple. People are just…plain…stupid!
YouTube contains a lot of videos that are just as stupid as the aforementioned video. This may be because the generation of students now in high school have grown up in the culture where with a video camera and an Internet connection, they can show off just how "great" they can be to their peers.
Yes, even in our generation, we have done stupid things, too. (In fact, the movie "Animal House", though it is a comedy, could be considered a "documentary" about college life in the 1960s.) Even with the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari, and the IBM-PC of that day, we did not share what we did as publicly as this generation does.
Sad thing here is that when it comes time for some of them to look for a job, those videos are going to come back and haunt them, especially when it comes to hiring decisions. Employers visit YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and even Google. (This is one reason why I regularly Google myself.) Unfortunately, Mr. Tackett found out the hard way this very fact.
In fact, not only should he not have filmed the act, he should have followed company procedures for asking for time off instead of this. I am not saying this to be mean, I am saying this as advice for the future.
I think it is because it is easy to put videos on You Tube and people watch them. you Tube is changing though, it is not possible to put longer videos on YouTube, You Tube allows for high definition videos and it is possible to make money off of YouTube; these factors especially the later, I think, will lead to more professional programing produced for You Tube and that will lead to it replacing television.
I think your bit on flying cars was off base. There are flying cars they're called helicopter they're just expensive and difficult to operate, still new designs and manufacturing methods may bring down costs. As for displacing congestion this is a complete myth; it is possible to build our way out of congestion anywhere you have privately owned turnpikes this is the case. The problem is that road construction has been too little since the 1970's as roads are funded by gas tax which did not rise sufficiently due to inflation and improved fuel efficiency. HOT lanes with no stop toll collection using RFID allow for a competitive road network and use price to change peoples driving habits, the result is better roads, more roads and less traffic. There were very few roads when cars first came on the market but it was because of people like Vanderbilt the first roadways were built with private money.
It appears we've been going about this whole "flying car" concept backward. The Terrafugia Transition is an airplane that doubles as a car–a "roadable aircraft". While not practical for everyday consumers yet, it's proof-of-concept and definitely has some applications:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/654495
Also, just wanted to point out that the link to the full interview with Wasik and Niedzviecki is … non-existent.
Excellent season premiere!
Thanks, Ben. I've fixed the link. Thanks for pointing it out.
Elizabeth
There are several things which could be done. One is to have shopping centers such as malls adjacent to airfields. There are already homes built next to airfields and it is easy to build an airstrip near a rural home. If personal aircraft were more common I think more people would live in rural areas, that is they will keep the cottage and not bother with the urban home. One problem is that carbon fiber airframes cost over $100 000.oo but this might change in the futre making the price comparable to that of a car.
great show! a fun start to a new season. i like the expanded show, and especially liked the video of the hovercraft (talk about diy!) and the story about flat world knowledge's attempt to find a solution to the "broken" business model we keep hearing about.
curious to hear what's next!
I really want to explore ideas like Flat World more this season. I'm interested in creative responses to disruptive technology. Glad you liked the episode.
Economists such as Milton Friedman and Ludwig Von Mises have argued that copyright and patent laws hurt rather then help economic prosperity. They argue that there is real property, a potato has value and there are only so many potatos so it I buy a potato slice it up and and fry it i add can sell french fries for more money and in doing so i create wealth which I can keep as profit. Ideas are differnt because while my making french fries means you can use the same popato for potato salad I can take ideas to create new ideas and you can take ideas to create new ideas.
This Flat Earth seems to be based on this as it presents the ideas for free but sells books. A book is not an idea or a pdf, it is a paper and binding, it is ink, I can touch it i can read it, I can write on it, i can burn it. I think the genius of Flat Earth is that it sees they aren't selling ideas but physical products.
Few thoughts:
Flying takes more energy to fight gravity than just staying on the ground. In a world that is finally recognizing the need to move to energy efficient transportation, the idea of a personal flying car seems impractical to the point of being silly. We already have flying modes of transportation for larger groups of people (airlines) and where our energies as a society need to go is into more efficient shared rather than personal modes. I want my high-speed hover-train, which is far more practical than either flying or an automobile. Personally, I believe that all personalized modes of transportation that aren't human powered will eventually go the way of the horse-and-buggy.
Flat Earth seems to be focused on the publication/distribution side of the textbook equation. Contrary to the cries from the older economy companies, this isn't where the major disruptions are happening (IE: it isn't about people "sharing" for $free). The most interesting disruptions are on the production side. As a place to start I recommend Yochai Benkler's http://www.benkler.org/ article which is very helpful for understanding what is happening.
Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm
http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html
For many textbooks the authors, editors and proofreaders are already educators who don't receive royalties, but one-time fixed incentives (sometimes as little as some "free" pizza). This is collected by publishers who then extract millions out of educational budgets. It would be far cheaper if our provincial ministries of education directly funded the one-time costs of producing the material using multi-sectoral peer production techniques, and then allowed competition in the lesser-interesting printing/distribution side of things.
Ontario has new curriculum again this year for high-schools, which means new mildly different textbooks — and as is typical, no funding to purchase new textbooks.
i completely disagree Russell, the success of the car is that it takes people where they need to go when they need to go there. There are times that busses are more efficient however most cities over invest in buses and subsidize buses so rather then say shuttles to bring low income people to work they provide 15 min or hourly service to suburbs where everyone has three cars. Cars have been one of the most sustainable means of transit as most people can afford a car and most of the investment in cars is from the owners, while roads are funded by gas tax by contrast trains can only move about 5% of the population; one hundred years ago they moved only the rich today they move about 5% of the population while wasting tax money from the rest of us. Check out ” The Best Laid Plans” by Randal O’Toole.
I'll just say I disagree with your math, and leave it at that.
Gas Subsidy Honesty
http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/
Great first show back Sparklers! I really loved Hannah's piece on flying cars and her DIY hovercraft. Is she going to have a regular feature now?
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, Hannah's doing an ongoing series on tech that was promised that never appeared, and why. Not sure we can count on her to build a new device every time, sadly!
You should do the monorail not because they were never built but no one used them.
I'll suggest it.
If your saying that gas taxes should be lowered I agree with you. In fact I think they should be eliminated altogether and roads funded purely by tolls. New HOT lanes use a no stop toll system with works by tracking drivers with an RFID tag and giving them a bill say $2.00 a km, a camera reads license plates and those cars without a tag, a tourist for example, would pay a higher price say $3.00 per km. It would now be possible to have private companies running roads for profit.. in Paris highways are privately run and these roads are free of congestion, with modern safety features and they even tow broken down cars within 15 minutes. Imagine if the subways of Toronto or New York were converted to highways, they could run busses and taxis and handle lots of car traffic. But now instead of having a tax on fuel use you have a toll which reflects the cost of maintaining the road and the costs of using the road.
Brett, we actually have a similar system in Illinois called the iPass, which is a RFID system used to get around Illinois tollways (namely the TriState Tollway and Interstate 90 from O-Hare to Janesville, Wisconsin). The iPass is paid on a monthly basis, and revenues do contribute to the costs of maintaining the highways.
However, gas taxes , especially in Cook County are among the highest in the nation despite the implementation of the iPass system.
In addition, there may be further increases in taxes if the Olympic Committee chooses Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
What gets taxed to pay for what is different in different places. In Ontario, Canada, the majority of roads are paid for out of municipal taxes that are based on the market value of our homes. I guess the assumption is that people with more expensive houses will drive more?
As much as I disagree with property taxes going to roads (it should be gas taxes and license fees — I believe more in a user pay system), it isn't as bad as putting things like education onto property taxes as is done in some US states. This creates education ghettos as the students that likely need the most help end up in schools that get the least amount of education funding. Education is something that benefits all of us (not just the students or their parents), and thus makes sense to be paid for that come from all of us across many demographics.
As to cars being sustainable: I suspect if automobile drivers were actually paying the costs rather than being subsidized (directly through tax money,and indirectly via cost externalization such as environmental/social/etc impacts), many would switch to alternatives.
Worse is Saskatchewan were municipalities collect tax for school boards and health boards. At least in the states counties collect money for education then run the schools and/or hospitals.
My point however is that cars generate tax income where as trains consume a lot of tax money. Externalizing environmental impacts might make sense but what does do you mean by social impacts. I’m concerned that social impacts means that people do not conform to the prescriptions of planners and that it does not reflect true social problems.
I read your point — it just doesn't coincide with any of the information I have ever been given. I've sat down with politicians at all levels of government and had this type of conversation with them, and taken a look at some of the relevant budgets over the years.
Car owners consume more government financed services than non-car owners who pay similar taxes, so the direction of the subsidy should be fairly obvious. The rail system needs to pay property taxes on the land used by rails that then goes to pay for roads which are used tax-free by truck drivers — again, fairly obvious where the tax subsidy is happening.
The gas tax is nowhere near sufficient to pay for roads — simple calculations done for various years show that the total of the gas tax collected Canada wide doesn't fully pay for the federal contribution to roads in Ontario alone. While I believe that more gas tax money should be going directly to municipalities, it should also be revenue-neutral shifted from property taxes (IE: transfer money that home owners have to pay for roads onto motorists by transferring from municipal property taxes to municipal gas taxes).
We are a bit off topic from the episode, but I think it is still relevant to understanding why we don't have flying cars when motorists aren't even paying the full costs of the already unsustainable private automobile.
Ok rail lines for freight make sense, however there are new technologies which may allow for trucks which travel independently short distances then are formed into trains but human transit is a different thing. Passenger trains have not been profitable since 1929 when Greyhound Bus Lines was founded, and in the 1930′ the exodusters traveled by car not train.
Good point on gas taxes but once again they were sufficient and one time and they are not raised for political reasons. That is precisely why turnpikes would be able to charge tolls which reflect maintenance costs. VIA Rail is a crown corporation so you have the federal government paying municipal taxes, it doesn’t mean VIA is more sustainable. In fact rail lines are often an excuse for municipalities to receive more federal money.
As for flying cars, they would have little need of roads reducing the need for infrastructure and as such they would be more practical than cars.
open textbooks
Having a daughter in university I listened to the piece on open textbooks rather closely. I think the approach is a good one and valid.
An alternative would be to licence the textbook to each course. Every student would have to pay a fixed fee for the content as a part o registration, and then they could choose how to access it. Print on demand or ebook versions would be free while an actual hard copy would sell for the price of short run production. People who would then look to sell the physical copy would be doing just that. Any potential buyer of a used physical product would have already paid a content fee when they registered.
Andrew