Alexander the Great is Pissed (Again)

Originally posted to rAVe Pubs on March 14, 2012

We humans produce a lot of information - great gobs of it.  So much information, in fact, that we have deforested large swaths of the earth to record and propagate it. We built great institutions called libraries to make these ideas available to anyone and everyone... 

Or, at least we used to.  

Forget the four horsemen of the the apocalypse, Alexander the Great is pissed and is most likely now assembling an army to retake the largest continents once again. The goal? To reestablish the most basic forms of sharing and documenting human endeavors.  

Alexander the Great, or AG to his friends, was more than a military genius, brutal warrior and the handsomest (*cough*) emperor of the known world- he also built the greatest library in human history. You may think the Library of Congress has a lot of books but they are just peanuts compared to what was stored in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.  

If you are of a certain age group, or just a science junkie you will recall walking through the great library of Alexandria as guided by Carl Sagan via the TV show ‘Cosmos’. This collection of knowledge, Sagan told us, was the greatest repository of human thought in the ancient world, and if the stories are true, is almost unmatched in our modern era. Special envoys were sent out  to any newly conquered lands to seek out all writings, screeds or documents to be brought back to the library where they were copied.  The originals were categorized and filed while the copy was sent back to continue enriching the people who created it.  With such a collection, scholars in 300 B.C. could  directly reference the original text of Elements  or the  complete writings of Homer.  Human philosophy and science flourished until, allegedly, Julius Cesar destroyed it, inadvertently, during a siege of the city. We even lost the knowledge of the ‘flush’ commodes for thousands of years.

Fast forward a handful of millennia and we can now access the Library of Alexandria times ten.  We live in a time when information on anything can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. We even have our own personal Bibliotheca’s to archive our beloved material. Yet so much of our knowledge and history are missing from the this networked repository.  

Yeah, I am looking at you technology manufactures. Just why is it so difficult to find information on products you sold only five years ago?! (Don’t even start to look for something ten years old.) Recently I was tasked with the job of putting some of our pre-owned gear up for sale on our own site. The process of collecting and organizing the gear included trying to find verifiable manufactures' specifications on the units. (Yeah, I know somewhat of an oxymoron there). 

Astonishingly I could not find this information on a good number of the manufactures' sites - not even a support documents link -  (you know, where a lot of companies just pile up scanned documents with product names buried in gobbledygook of ampersands, percentage signs and random letters - nice work unpaid intern!). This seemed to be especially true on professional/theatrical lighting sites. What gives, folks? Is it a question of not wanting the riffraff out there getting information on your products?  Fear that used gear will flood the market and dent your coming year sales?  If not - what then?  

I was forced to find information and documents on used gear sites and suspect forum threads. Not to question these forums' belief that the information is true, but it would be nice to use actual science tenets and have a way to verify the information. In addition to wasting my day, the process has me questioning the trust I can put in these companies - what else are you hiding from me? I know this sounds crazy but next thing you know you’ll start proactively start removing documents from my storage accounts.That could never happen right?

There are extremely important cultural artifacts still missing from the collective cloud from one of a kind academic thesis and pop culture philosophy to early recorded history of American music. It  is not to be suggested that the documentation of one product from a single manufacture should take precedent over the aforementioned, yet how do we know that a product - your product - will not wind up on a future remake of the BBC’s ‘The History of the World in a Hundred Objects

I have an associate who has long scanned and saved documents of any product he purchases onto the company's drives - something I smirked at with a confused bemusement. Now I know just how smart he has been and now view my past expectations with chagrin. Heck, even those in Ptolemy’s era knew that denial is not just a river in Egypt.  

And yes, I DO have that cut sheet and manual circa 1995 scanned and stored.  I will be happy to provide you with a copy, but first a question - how much cash to you have on you right now? 

 

I Say a Dirty Word - Redux- A Plan Into Action

  - Ruminations on a Maker Faire Virgin starting a DIY Podcast 
   (from My AV Nation podcast blog)

 

Hello, my name is George and I am Maker Virgin.   Hello George!

I have spent more of my life as an audio visual installer/ programmer and professional live event person than I have not; yet I am intensely interested in the folks who spend months of their personal time creating ‘extreme Christmas lights’ and the Raymond Scott  like creations of Circuit Benders.

(No, this is not me) 

 I have to admit that my first exposure to the  electronics DIY community was a mix of emotions, it intrigued me but I was of the opinion that it was amateur hour stuff - like the folks at bars on New Years eve. The Christmas lights were cute and sometimes impressive, but I had “real work” to do. 

My opinion reflected that of many in the home  AV business - a look down the nose dismissive shrug - and frankly many took the attitude that the DIY market was either a simple annoyance or a place to find new work fixing/ replacing a failed attempt.   

What I (and many of my associates) failed to see was the quality of work, the dedication and sophisticated ability to create ‘a product’ from building the circuits to synchronizing the sequences.  Many of us missed the rise of the Maker movement - Just how could have we done that?  Well ProSound News did not .

 

When I worked as a technical support manager for a major Manufacturer of home automation systems I found many of the techs were, in fact, huge DIY/ Maker folks- and why wouldn’t they be?  Nearly all AV techs entered the industry because they loved to get their hands on these amazing systems. We love to solder, design and program - we did it prior to our official employment, why would we stop now?

Some would argue that we as a group had access to some of the most advanced home AV and automation gear in the industry and would therefore stop playing with toys.   Ahh but there is a great and natural pleasure with crafting something with your own hands.  The satisfaction of building from the ground up a system that operates how you KNOW it should be and doing things that no other product on the market does, well there is no matching that feeling. 

I wrote a blog post for RAVE Publications on this subject entitled ‘I Say a Dirty Word’ advocating for a more aggressive outreach from the ‘Professional’ community. The response was amazing - a few detractors spoke up but overall the Pro community said ‘yes, yes, yes and yes again’.  

Here we found the genesis for the DIY show on AVNation.tv.  The first episode is posted and you have generated more hits for the show in a single week than any other show we have produced so far.  I am awe struck at the positive reactions from folks at DIYLightAnimation  and Do It Yourself Christmas.com  and at Maker Magazine .  We hope to have fine folks from these forums on the next show, scheduled to post on January 11 (and then second Wednesday of each month afterwards. ). 

We want your voice too!  Are you interested in being a panelist on the DIY show?  contact me here or on the show page!