Yesterday I woke up around noon, and went upstairs for my customary cup of coffee. My mom was in the kitchen, and said to me that Kari (a friend of the family) was in Maui recently on vacation. OK, that’s not unusual. And?

Turns out that Kari and her husband stopped in at Cheesburger In Paradise on Maui and saw someone that looked familiar. This person looked familiar to Kari as well. They talk, put 2 and 2 together, and come to find out that they do indeed know each other.

It was Cindy, my ex. Cindy, my last girlfriend. That gal from 5 years ago. The girl I dated for over four years, lived with, loved, and everything.

Cindy is married, living in Maui, and working at said establishment. Well I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised. Shocked even. Married?

I said to my mom, “Well good for her, I hope she’s found happiness. I was worried about Cindy for awhile.” And I left it at that. I wish I could have left it at that.

Since that moment I’ve been thinking about Cindy. Married. Why do I keep thinking about this? Cindy was so yesteryear, five years ago, an old and forgotten chapter in the life of Tom Bissell. Why does the fact that she’s now married affect me in any way?

I lay awake in bed last night running through all the possibliities. I felt a bit like Paul Giamatti’s character in Sideways. You know, when he freaks out about his ex getting married. Why should I care about Cindy at all, or what’s happened in her life? I haven’t seen or talked or heard anything about Cindy in a good four years. But now I can’t get her out of my mind.

Moving to Maui and having a job and getting married are all measures of success, I reckon. I admire her for leaving her lifelong home of California to live in paradise. But all that stuff matters not to me, when you remove marriage from the equation. Marriage?

Cindy always told me that she never wanted to be married. She didn’t believe in it. That was always fine with me, I have never had any desire to be married and I still don’t. So why do I care if SHE is married?

Unable to sleep, unable to shake the thoughts from my mind I tried to numb my thoughts with various activities. I tried in vain to think about something else. Why does it still bother me so?

Then today I had an epiphany. I realized something. Cindy wasn’t saying to me that she didn’t ever want to get married. What she was really saying was “I don’t want to marry you.”

I guess. I think. I mean, a lot can happen in five years. My life has changed dramatically since then. She could have met the right guy and changed her mind. Married?

I’m not hurt. I’m not feeling nostalgic. I say I’m happy for her, but am I? It continues to dominate my thoughts. I know I shouldn’t care, that it shouldn’t affect me, but it does. Perhaps a blow to my ego? How foolish to think that she’d carry a torch for me to her grave.

It took a while for me to get over the breakup, five years ago. It wasn’t until a year later that I felt OK again, whole again, an individual, and free. It was another year after that, that I felt fine and stopped thinking about her at all. Three years have passed and I have rarely thought about her. And now I can’t stop thinking about all the things that might have brought her to her current situation.

At first, when mom told me the news, I thought, “Ah hell. This will probably be on my mind for the next couple days. This morning I thought it might be a week or so.” Now I’m not so sure.

How ridiculous this all is. Life sure is a funny thing.

We’re insomniacs.
No way. We aren’t trying to get to sleep.

We’re unhappy.
Only when we’re not allowed to follow our natural schedule.

We have a medical problem.
We’re as healthy as most, and more than some. For instance, you won’t find us getting skin cancer from too much sunbathing.

We’re wierd.
Who’s calling who wierd?

The Bozo Boss Misconception: We’re lazy, dishonest, and trying to fool everyone because we want credit for working at night but we don’t actually do it.
This is an evil misconception. It doesn’t just show a lack of respect for our natural body rhythms, it says we’re liars, frauds… Employers always seem to feel this way, even when we’re doing the kind of work that can be measured somehow. All I can say to these people is: Have you ever observed a Night Person at work during his or her peak time? After you’ve sat up with one of us and seen how productive we are, say that again.

We think we’re vampires or have some other kind of odd self image.
Do you think you’re the sun god Amon-Ra just because you’re a Day Person?

We’re criminals who use the excuse of staying up late to cover our crimes.
Sure, and all the people who are up in the daytime are law-abiding citizens. Crimes are ONLY committed at night.

We’re hooked on caffeine.
It doesn’t take coffee and coke to keep US up!

The only reason we stay up late is to go to bars, cavort, and party.
Sure, we like it as much as the next guy, but don’t blame us just because we’re always the last to leave!

We’re delinquents and degenerates.
How do you know? Do you follow delinquents and degenerates around at night? If you do, what’s YOUR problem?

–from the Night People resource

I’ve been watching DRM (Digital Rights Management) type stuff with a careful eye these days. DRM has a lot to do with the music industry, but more and more it will be about movies, TV, and video games too. In fact, the future of all media and information will be all about DRM.

Technologies such as BitTorrent have let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Traditional methods of distribution—music CD’s, DVD’s, television, radio, etc.—will one day be extinct. You see, BitTorrent allows many people to download over the Internet and share movies, music, and software at a much faster and easier rate than ever before. Because downloaders are forced to upload as well, the technology works very effectively.

Remember Napster? Well, it’s back. In its first incarnation,Napster allowed people to download and share music in mp3 format. You could search for a single song, an album, or by artist. You could then download, for free, any music you found. It wasn’t long before the music industry caught wind of this and sued Napster’s ass, effectively shutting them down. I won’t go into the technical reasons why the recording industry had a case. What’s important is that out of Napster was born several new types of networks and programs much like Napster that the music industry is unable to stop.

BitTorrent is just the latest and greatest thingy that lets people do what Napster once did and much more. Future versions of BitTorrent promise to be even more protected from the Hollywood types. Personally, I love BitTorrent. I use it just about every day. I can get movies, music, games, TV shows, software, audiobooks—anything that can be transferred to a digital form can be shared on BitTorrent. Couple this with the ever increasing bandwidth in user’s homes and you’ve got a crisis—that is, if you’re in the media biz.

Because it’s so easy to find digital media, because it’s so fast to download it, because it’s virtually unstoppable, we will soon reach a boiling point. Radio listenership is down because of Podcasts and personal mp3 players. TV viewership is down because our favorite shows are available commercial-free on the Internet—and because we can watch things whenever or however we want. Attendance in movie theaters is way down, partly because movies are released to DVD so quickly and because it’s so easy to find a movie still in theaters on the Internet (in fact, it’s often possible to find movies on the Internet before they have been released in the theater—like the latest Star Wars movie).

The Hollywood types are not deaf to this phenomenon; they hear it loud and clear. Sadly they are not smart enough (yet) to embrace these changes to the world. Instead, they are trying to stop it. You’ve heard about the RIAA suing grandmothers for thousands of dollars I’m sure (because the grandkids come over and download songs, and end up sharing them without her knowledge). Congress recently made it a crime punishable by hefty fines and jail time if a person is caught downloading/using/sharing an illegal copy of a movie. If you’ve been to a movie theater recently you’ve no doubt seen the PSA’s describing how movie piracy only hurts the little guys in the biz. The fact is that these tactics have done very little to reduce digital piracy.

Hollywood needs to wake up. They need to adapt to the times and embrace the new technologies. Some have suggested that the studiois could offer high quality TV shows on their website for a very low fee and distribute them through BitTorrent technology. Since BitTorrent tech uses other user’s bandwidth, the Hollywood types save a ton on Internet usage fees. Now this is where DRM comes in.

DRM determines who can use the digital medium, and on which devices. Say I spend $5 for a season pass for the next season of CSI. I go to their website each week and download the new episode. Now let’s say that I own a computer, a DVR, and a handheld digital medium player. DRM determines which device I can play my stuff on, how many times, all that jazz. There is a special code inside the digital file that plays nice with the special code on my handheld, for example.

Keep in mind that this will not stop the pirates, however. Internet piracy is here to stay. DRM will always be cracked within hours. When the new Napster came it, it offered all-you-can-eat type downloads for a monthly fee. Stop paying, and the DRM on your downloaded music expires and you can’t listen anymore. This DRM tech was cracked within hours, and the pirates could download all the music the new Napster offered for free. Piracy is inevitable.

So the only way for the Hollywood types to make money in the future, however, is to do several things.
1. Make it super cheap. If you charge too much for your product, it won’t sell. Today’s generation is too used to getting everything for free on the ‘Net. Apple’s iTunes sells songs for $0.99 for example, and this has worked very well for them.
2. You have to package the product with services. For example, in addition to my $5 season pass to CSI, I might get access to a special area of the website for members only that includes behind the scenes exclusive interviews with the crew, actors, director, etc.
3. Make it incredibly easy to play by the rules. Everything has to be so user friendly and easy to use a computer novice could get what they want in seconds. This is partly why BitTorrent is so successful—it’s stupid easy to use.

So there is hope for the Hollywood types, but they have to adapt to a new business model. I think there is so much resistance on their part because they know that with this change means a LOT less money. Their world is going to shrink drastically in the future.

And now, some predictions…

Almost all of the music industry execs are going to lose their jobs; in the future they will be obsolete. Artists will release their music on their websites, or they will form small conglomerates and sell them together. The Internet and the digital age make it very fast and easy for them to get their music and their message out there. The big companies will no longer be of any use.

TV is going to change dramatically. With all the personal digital video recorders (like TIVO) out there, consumers are fast forwarding through all the commercials. Eventually there will be no more 30 second commercials on TV, as it will no longer be a viable way for those in the biz to make money. Instead, we will see more and more product placements in our favorite shows. Expect to see our favorite actors sporting brand name clothing, and dropping specific product names during the show. Also, you know that little station ID icon in the bottom corner of the screen just about every show uses now? You know, the CBS or HBO thingy? We can expect that, in the future, to be replaced by the SBC and 3Com logos.

The video game industry is going to move to a model that distributes games over the Internet, and we’re going to see more and more games require a monthly fee to play. Part of the reason MMORPG’s are a dime a dozen these days is because the industry realizes that a million people paying $50 for the game and $15 a month to play is a shit-ton of money.

The movie industry won’t change too much. I think we’ll see less movie theaters, since people are much more comfortable in their homes, on the couch, with their 50 inch hi-def TVs and 5.1 surround sound systems. We might soon watch the latest releases in our homes, not in the theater.

And finally, I think actors and musicians are going to be making less money. Because consumers are less willing to pay for traditional delivery of the media, Hollywood is going to have to take a pay cut.

And one last prediction—video game developers are going to be the new rock stars. Already the video game industry makes more money than the music AND movie industries combined. With the super mega Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 coming out, more consumers than ever will be playing games. Indeed, video games offer much longer storylines. And because we get to play a part in it, it’s more engaging, and therefore it is more entertaining than a movie or TV show.

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