Kendall Whitehouse: On Technology and Media

This past Sunday the Philadelphia Fringe Festival featured the final of three performances of the Gonzales Cantata, a choral rendition of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. (For pictures of the final performance see my earlier post.)

Once you get beyond the bizarre concept (an operatic work with a libretto taken from Senate hearings) and the media hype (with coverage from Fox News to the Rachel Maddow Show) and the quirky advertising (with posters of Senator Arlen Spector wearing earrings and Alberto Gonzales in a tiara) -- once you get past all that, it turns out the Gonzales Cantata is a powerful and moving work. Written by Melissa Dunphy while she was an undergraduate student at West Chester University, the piece is a surprisingly nuanced exploration of personal tragedy and ethical lapses in American politics.

The work switches the genders of the performers and the characters they portray (hence the earrings and tiara in the posters of the male protagonists). This was done, we are told, "in protest of the continued male domination of American politics." Political motivations aside, the gender reversals work well musically, with the central roles of Alberto Gonzales played by soprano Mary Thorne and Senator Patrick Leahy sung by coloratura soprano Jessica Lennick.

The multifaceted tone of the afternoon's performance was established at the outset. Before beginning the cantata, it was announced that we would first hear a performance of "three patriotic songs." Knowing that Dunphy had previously attempted to do an arrangement of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's "Let the Eagle Soar" -- Ashcroft declined Dunphy's request -- I was primed for ironic parodies of American tunes. When countertenor Nicholas Tamagna opened with a tender and beautiful rendition of "America the Beautiful," it was clear the afternoon's entertainment would include unexpected moments. The rousing rendition of Souza's "Stars and Stripes Forever" that followed seemed well suited to the arrangement for countertenor, harpsichord, and piccolo . (For my money, the piccolo part in Souza's classic arrangement has always been the highlight of this song). For the third song, a performance of the unctuously patriotic "God Bless the USA" let us know that irony would not be entirely absent from the afternoon's festivities.

The cantata itself similarly moved between broad humor and poignant reflection. Much of the tone is, indeed, satirical. At times the work is laugh-out-loud funny, such as when soprano Mary Thorne as Gonzales sings "I don't recall" 72 times (as the real Gonzales declared in one session before Congress) while a projector displays the current tally of the denials.

Ultimately, however, the cantata evokes a sense of sadness. Taken in its entirety, Dunphy's work is more tragedy than comedy, as it seeks to uncover a sense of meaning and humanity within this dark moment in American politics.

The overall tone of the piece brings to mind Sam Mendes' 1999 film "America Beauty" based on the screenplay by Alan Ball. While both works are rife with satire, they are also meditations on the emptiness and cynicism of contemporary America.

The venue -- the Rotunda at the edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia -- was a great surprise. I had passed by his old and disheveled building countless times, but had never given it much thought. Inside, its classical architecture (with a dome that vaguely resembles Rome's Pantheon) befits the Senatorial proceedings. The peeling paint and decaying ceiling provide the requisite "crumbling empire" feel. And the fallen chandelier in the middle of the floor (which I don't believe was placed there for effect) adds a certain sense of Phantom-of-the-Opera-esque Grand Guignol to the setting.

Given the rundown appearance of the hall, its acoustics were surprisingly good. The vocals were clear with just a touch of reverb to expand the operatic sound. The performances by vocalists and instrumentalists alike were all first rate (and generally an improvement -- particularly instrumentally -- over those on the recording available on CD and from Dunphy's web site).

The Gonzales Cantata is an eloquent and powerful work. I entered the auditorium expecting a cynical farce. I left with the realization that Dunphy has created a thoughtful and moving musical reflection on recent American history.

For those who missed the three performances this past weekend, an earlier recording of the work is available on Dunphy's Bandcamp page and linked from the Gonzales Cantata web site: http://www.gonzalescantata.com/

This fall Ms. Dunphy begins work on her doctorate in musical composition at the University of Pennsylvania. I can't wait to hear what she does next.

 

 

Photos from yesterday's performance of the Gonzales Cantata at the University of Pennsylvania's Rotunda are in my Flickr photostream.

Composed and conducted by Melissa Dunphy, the piece is a musical rendition of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. By turns both satirically funny and poignantly moving, the operatic work ran for three performances as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

While the photos may capture some of the excitement of the live performance, the work was meant to be heard. You can play or download a previous performance of the Gonzales Cantata on Bandcamp.

For more information on the Gonzales Cantata, see the project's web site:
http://www.gonzalescantata.com/. For news and updates, follow the Gonzales Cantata on Facebook or Twitter.

Adobe senior principal scientist Jim King recently posted an item on his blog introducing a paper he authored titled "On the Evolution of PDF." In that document, King discusses how Adobe Systems has worked to maintain the compatibility of their Portable Document Format (PDF) while continuing to enhance its capabilities.

King describes three types compatibility and how Adobe Systems has addressed these as PDF has evolved:

• Backward-compatibility, the ability of newer products to process older PDF files.
• Forward-compatibility, the ability of older products to "adequately" process newer PDF files (with the meaning of "adequately" subsequently explored).
• Feature-compatibility, the ability of products that purposefully lack support for certain features to adequately process PDF files that contain those features.
  

Features like backward compatibility -- which allows newer versions of the PDF viewers to read the earlier format -- are not surprising (although it is shocking how often software vendors are unable to achieve even this level of compatibility with their products).

More noteworthy is Adobe's attempt to attain forward compatibility in the Acrobat product line -- that is, the ability of the earlier Acrobat products to correctly process later modifications to the PDF format. As one might suspect, forward compatibility is, as King points out, "more difficult" than backward compatibility.

While this level of compatibility is not always attainable, a personal anecdote from the early days of PDF demonstrates that, at times, even this elusive goal can be accomplished.

In May 1994, I was a one of a group of representatives from higher education institutions participating in a series of customer advisory meetings focusing on Adobe's Acrobat products. Acrobat 1.0 had been launched the previous June. At the time of these meetings Acrobat 2.0 was in the works, although its public introduction was still four months away.

By the spring of 1994, the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania were working on an initiative to enable the distribution of PDF documents across campus. As part of this project, Acrobat Reader had been installed on all the computer lab stations and public-access computers across the University. Remember that Acrobat Reader 1.0 was not free. The retail list price was $50 per seat (dropping to $35 for quantities of 500 or more). In 1993, the Wharton School had purchased a number of licenses for Acrobat 1.0 at a substantial discount. Later, in 1994, Penn had struck a deal to deploy Reader University-wide at no additional cost. (For a look back at this project, see the 1994 Penn Printout article, "Acrobatic Network: PennNet, Acrobat, and the Web at Penn.")

This endeavor to make Acrobat a standard across campus was coming to fruition in the spring of 1994 when we met with Adobe Systems in Mountain View, CA for the briefings on Acrobat's future. Adobe representatives unveiled many of the new features that would be available in the Acrobat 2.0 product family, and we were informed that, beginning with Acrobat 2.0, the Reader would be "freely distributable" (although there appeared to be significant internal debate about the details of how this would work).

In addition, Rob Babcock, then Acrobat product manager, told us that the PDF format was changing from an ASCII (plain text) format to one that would, by default, include binary data.

Originally a PDF file was, by definition, a plain text file. On page 8 of the first edition of the Portable Document Format Reference Manual, published June 1993, it states: "A PDF file is a 7-bit ASCII file, which means PDF files use only the printable subset of the ASCII character set to describe documents -- even those with images and special characters." Then, in 1994, we were being told that, although the Acrobat creation tools could still generate the earlier ASCII format, by default the next generation of Acrobat products would save files in the newer binary format.

Upon hearing this, my first thought was, "Oh, no. We've just deployed Reader 1.0 on computers across campus, and now you're switching to a binary file format. We'll have to get all the schools at Penn and all the computer labs across the University to upgrade to Acrobat 2.0 or they won't be able to read the PDF files people will be creating." This was before the widespread adoption of centrally-managed imaging software for computer workstations. Given how decentralized the University was, this would have been a major undertaking.

Babcock calmly explained, "No, you won't have to do that. Acrobat Reader 1.0 will read the new binary format without a problem."

My initial reaction was: No, that can't be true. The earlier product -- which used, by definition, a plain text version of PDF -- could read the later, binary-encoded documents? That couldn't be right.

I had read enough of the PDF Reference Manual to have a basic understanding of the structure of a PDF file. As I pondered Babcock's assertion, my mind raced through what I knew about the internals of PDF. I then realized that Babcock's claim was, indeed, correct.

From its inception, PDF was, at least in part, a self-describing format. It specifies the filters used to encode its own data stream and, from the outset, Adobe's Acrobat viewers were designed to interpret a PDF file through these filters. By changing the filter used to decode its own data, Acrobat was able to switch from a pure ASCII file to binary-encoded format. Acrobat Reader 1.0 could read the binary files created by the forthcoming Acrobat 2.0 products.

This was my "a-ha" moment with PDF, the instant when I realized PDF was more than just its graphical abilities (impressive though these were). PDF was designed as a format that was not only expressive, but also durable. It was intended to be "future proof."

In the intervening years, PDF has held fast to that promise. While not all changes to PDF were able to incorporate this type of forward compatibility, backward compatibility has remained strong. I have PDF documents from circa 1993 that still render flawlessly in the Acrobat 9 viewers. In fact, due to improvements in Acrobat's font rendering technology, they look better than they did in the version of Acrobat with which they were created.

While some later additions to PDF -- such as embedded video and Flash SWF files -- cannot be accurately rendered by the earlier viewers, in most cases the features of a PDF document elegantly degrade in the earlier viewers. And, on some occasions -- like the introduction of binary encoding in 1994 -- Adobe's Acrobat products have even provided forward compatibility.

By and large, as enhancements have been added to PDF, the vision of a durable, robust format has been retained throughout the evolution of the Acrobat product line.

Adobe co-founder Chuck Geschke once observed that your organization's documents are more important than the software used to create them, and they need to outlive the computer platform on which they were generated. Thanks to PDF, they can.

Photos from yesterday's DIY Days Philadelphia are now available in my Flickr photostream (as well as in the 'diydays' photo pool in Flickr).

The conference, sponsored by the Workbook Project and hosted by filmmaker and industry commentator Lance Weiler, included presentations on the production, distribution, and financing of independent cinema and other art forms.

For more information and updates, see the DIY Days website and the conference dashboard.

As the old joke goes, everyone knew the floating crap game was crooked but played anyway -- because it was the only game in town. This came to mind with a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that Sony Pictures has entered into a distribution agreement with kiosk video rental firm Redbox. In addition, according to an earlier report in the Journal, Walt Disney and Lions Gate Entertainment may have made similar deals with Redbox.

To date, most studios have not viewed Redbox as an ally. Universal Pictures sued to force the company to stop distributing its movies. The case is currently awaiting a ruling.

The issue, naturally, is over money. Mass distributors such as Blockbuster and Netflix pay the studios a percentage of their rental fees and, in return, receive bulk shipments of popular DVD titles directly from the studios. Redbox, on the other hand, buys from distributors such as Ingram Entertainment and only pays the purchase price of the DVDs.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the new arrangement with Sony allows Redbox to buy directly from the studio at a lower price than it would receive from distributors. The deal apparently does not include a revenue sharing arrangement. But it does, according to the article, require Redbox to destroy (rather than retain the rights to resell) the DVDs once they are removed from the rental service.

Although the pricing details weren't announced, it's unlikely that Redbox is receiving the same discounted rate as revenue sharing partners such as Blockbuster. Nonetheless, one suspects that companies like Blockbuster and Netflix will look askance at such an arrangement. When the time comes to renegotiate their contracts with Sony, expect these firms to come to the bargaining table with renewed demands.

For its part, Sony is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Despite the lack of revenue sharing, the arrangement with Redbox is an opportunity to eke out a little more profit from the declining DVD market. As revenues from physical media like DVDs continue to erode, deals like this may represent the only game in town.

In "The Hulu Effect at Fox TV? Less is More in TV Advertising" last December, I observed that Fox television appeared to be following the lead of online video services like Hulu in running fewer ads per show. By having shorter commercial breaks -- and communicating at the outset that the program would, for example, "return in 60 seconds" -- the network hoped viewers would sit through the ads rather than changing channels, zapping past the commercials, or just walking away.

Comcast, which along with Time Warner plans to go online with some of its cable programming, apparently has a different view. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast plans to include the same complement of ads online as when the programs are originally broadcast.

Andy Heller, vice chairman of Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, is quoted as saying, "We spend billions of dollars buying and making these programs. And if we give this stuff to consumers for free with limited ads, it'll go away."

Television programs on Hulu, the free alternative to these cable-subscription services, typically contain less advertising than when they are shown on broadcast television. According to Jean-Paul Colaco, senior vice president of advertising at Hulu, the company has no immediate plans to change this scheme. The Journal states that "Mr. Colaco says Hulu's focus is on increasing the effectiveness of ads and the amount of revenue they produce, rather than increasing their number."

The issue, then, is one of quality versus quantity. If online commercials prove to be more effective than their broadcast counterparts, networks can run fewer ads per program. In theory this should be the case. Online ads can be targeted more narrowly and measured more accurately. And, of course, they can't be skipped over as can the ads in recorded TV programs. Because of this, as the Journal piece points out, web ads typically command higher advertising rates per view.

The networks and cable companies are reluctant to leave money on the table, however. They are concerned, in the now famous words of NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker, about "trading analog dollars for digital pennies."

While individual ad spots may command a higher CPM (cost per thousand views), the overall revenue-generating power of online content remains to be demonstrated. Until online programming can prove its ability to generate revenue on a par with conventional distribution methods, expect the traditional media to be reluctant to change the rules of the game as they move their content online.

As the oft-repeated story goes, in the latter half of the 1990s, Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to "a set of poorly debugged device drivers." What he meant, of course, was that software development would move from native operating system applications to the web. The web browser would become the new software platform and the underlying operating system would be relegated to providing basic services like device support.

Although Andreessen may have been overly optimistic about the time frame in which software would move from the desktop to the webtop, announcements this past week -- from two of computing's fiercest competitors -- may indicate we're finally on the verge of Andreessen's vision becoming reality.

On Friday, July 10, Microsoft launched version 3 of its Silverlight platform, Microsoft's answer to Adobe Systems' Flash. Like Flash, Silverlight is a browser-based plug-in for delivering high quality video and rich interactive applications over the web. Silverlight 3 includes, in the words of Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie, "a ton of new ... features" for software application development and enhanced user experience. Included in the list of the new capabilities available with Silverlight 3 is "out of browser support." With Silverlight 3, Microsoft joins Google's Gears, the Mozilla Project's Prism, and Adobe Systems' AIR in moving the web experience beyond the confines of the browser.

Earlier this week, Google announced -- or rather, released a few tantalizing hints about -- the company's planned Chrome Operating System. Although the details are scarce, Google's intent seems to be to revive Andreessen's aspiration of establishing the web browser as the locus of software development.

Despite all the press it generated, the basic architecture of Chrome OS doesn't seem particularly radical. Google's announcement states that the OS will be built on "Google Chrome [the company's web browser] running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel." Since you can already run Google's Chrome browser on the Linux operation system, one might wonder, "What's new here?" Google's answer lies in the next few sentences of the announcement:

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

And there it is. Andreessen's dream: The web is the platform.

The list of partners Google announced as part of its Chrome OS initiative includes computer manufacturers Acer, ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba, along with semiconductor companies Texas Instruments and Freescale. In addition to these hardware vendors, the list of partners also includes Adobe Systems. What the two companies are working on is not stated, but Adobe's AIR currently brings web development to the desktop, and this may indicate how Google's aspirations differ from those of Microsoft.

Google's Gears, Mozilla's Prism and Microsoft's Silverlight are all closely bound to the capabilities of the browser -- adding features such as desktop shortcuts and local data storage to what are, essentially, browser-based applications. In contrast, Adobe's AIR allows developers to use web technologies to develop desktop applications -- with deeper integration with the local computer system -- yet with the ability to run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux operating systems.

The partnership between Adobe and Google may rest on this shared vision of software that is not bound to a particular operating system. When I spoke with Microsoft's Scott Guthrie a little over a year ago, he stated that he saw a clear differentiation between web applications and desktop software, stating: "I do see a sharper cut between what you do inside a browser and what you do inside a dedicated Windows or Mac application shell." Despite Microsoft's newly announced "out of browser" capability of Silverlight, Microsoft wants to maintain a distinction between the desktop and webtop. Adobe and Google, on the other hand, are interested in moving the line that separates the web and the desktop toward increasingly web-based software.

The history of computing is one of progressive abstraction. To program the first computers, you needed to toggle switches to enter programs in machine language. Assemblers eased the task by introducing mnemonic "opcodes." Later came higher level programming languages -- FORTRAN, PL/I, Pascal, and then object-oriented languages, extensive module libraries, and language frameworks. In parallel with these developments, operating systems grew from basic input/output systems to rich sets of application programming interfaces and system capabilities.

And now we may be on the verge of another leap in software abstraction, one which will combine the richness of traditional desktop applications with the ubiquity and platform independence of the web. To what extent this emerging webtop platform will complement traditional desktop software as Microsoft envisions, or begins to replace it as Google and Adobe contemplate, time will tell.

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