Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I’ve recently enjoyed the “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” movie.  However there was one particular scene which sticks out.  It was the moment when Indiana yet again avoided his certain death, this time by hiding in the kitchen fridge.  He was supposed to die of a nuclear explosion, but the fridge saved his hat.

Impossible?  Of course.  But there was something more to this.  Something that bothered me for the last few days.  Something that I could not find the words to express.

It turns out, I am not the only one.  There was a hot discussion at IMDB forums, and at other places that have crowds of movie watchers and reviews.  And apparently, a new term was born - “nuke the fridge“.

This is also a nice example to illustrate how the world changes with the Internet.  Lots and lots of people talk about lots and lots of things.  24×7.  Non-stop.  That generates lots of ideas, sub-cultures, products, and services.  And, in tern, lots and lots of money for people who dig it.  Nice.

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch “Iron Man“.  I was a bit worried that it would be based on yet another comic book or something.  But either it wasn’t, or the comic was pretty good.

The movie turned out to be solid entertainment.  It was very much in the style of “Transformers“, but with more style and better special effects.   It was complete even with Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” song in the soundtrack.

Recommended.  7 out of 10.

Before the official closing of The Next Web Conference 2008, we were shown the premier of the new documentary “The Truth According To Wikipedia”. IMDB page suggests that the film is post-production and the director, who was present at the conference and had a few words to say before the premier, noted that he finished editing of the movie just that morning.

Boris, one of the conference organizers, had this to say in one of his recent blog posts:

The video led to heated debate between the maker of the documentary and some of the audience members and even during the party afterwards people where still discussing the video. [...] The questions it raises are far from answered [...]

Note that as organizer Boris has to be nice to people, so that they won’t be too afraid of showing up next year.

I, on the other hand, can say whatever I want and feel like. And here is how I feel about the movie - it sucked. Not to offend organizers for showing it, but they probably haven’t seen it themselves before it was premiered.

Purely from the movie purpose of view - it was boring. It hadn’t much pace or depth and it wasn’t packed with information either, so I was struggling not to fall asleep most of the time. From the documentary point of view it was very weak. The interviews in the movie were vaguely connected, presenting only two view points on the situation. And there weren’t enough numbers and references to support either side. And the whole argument looked like a semi-heated discussion on something somewhat important between a couple of somehow famous guys. Anybody who ever participated in any forum or have been subscribed to any mailing list for longer than three month is familiar with the type of the discussion. Not trolling yet, but pretty close.

Now, to the point of the argument. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia where everyone and anyone can add, edit, or delete content. There is no way to establish credentials of any contributor and there is no way to identify experts. Nobody is responsible for the accuracy of the information. And so on and so forth.

As I said before, there are two sides of the argument in the film. One side suggests that people are good by nature and given some guidelines will improve things constantly. The other side suggests that in order to contribute something, someone should be “an established expert in the field” (whatever that means), and by such the information contributed will be more accurate and trustworthy.

Can you guess which side I am on? You probably can. I am all for wisdom of the crowds. I do believe that wisdom of the crowds is very much like meat - it’s nice and all, but it needs some cooking to taste its best. So, just opening Wikipedia for everyone and everything will degrade its quality. Gladly, as open as Wikipedia is, there is a certain level of control to rule abusers out. I think Wikipedia has just enough.

How do we know if information in Wikipedia is accurate and trustworthy? We don’t. Human history has been through enough discovery iterations to prove that things people believe in change. As do things proven by our own science. As one of our professors in the college used to say: “There are no absolutes. Only vodka.”

Ask any expert out there if they were ever proven wrong. If they say they weren’t, either they lied or they aren’t experts. Now, if you still want to go deeper into this then think about how do you distinguish an expert from a non-expert. Degrees? Certificates? Years of experience in the field? Recommendations of other experts? A combination of these? How well does your criteria apply to different areas of human life? Can you still find experts in such subjects as Philately and Dog training? If so, how many languages do those experts speak? After all, you will need to verify the translations too, won’t you?

Do you want to continue? If so, try to remember a few experts that you talked to. On any subject. One thing that I often come across is that experts are some of the most difficult people to understand. They usually know their subject inside out and can freely manipulate it back and forth and side to side. They also often use plenty of terminology. So if I’d ask an expert to explain me the subject matter, I’d often be better of with a non-expert book which will know how to assume that readers don’t know much just yet. Nice touch to Wikipedia is that experts can actually share the knowledge while less knowledgeable people can edit it into a plainer text, available to the rest of the world’s understanding.

So, yes, I believe that knowledge bases should be as open as possible. Anyone (or almost anyone - minus the abusers) should have full access. People should contribute to knowledge bases as much as they can - be that original, high level knowledge, or editing of the form, or fixing typing mistakes, or providing references and supplementary materials, or anything else. There is no way to know for sure if any article or page or fact is trustworthy. But anyone can establish that for themselves. If you don’t trust a piece of information - don’t use it. If you doubt something - check, double check, and cross check. If you notice an error or just know better - contribute your knowledge. This way we’ll have the most updated, most accurate, most cross-references, and most easily explained knowledge gathered and organized.

Oh, and if you are to make a movie about a popular phenomena, at least do your home work. Study as many different views as possible. Bring in as many people as possible. And look at history, numbers, and trends. That should put you on a right track.

Update: There is also a discussion about the movie over at TechCrunch.

I have watched a few movies recently.  Here is a quick overview, since I don’t feel like writing a complete separate review of each.

• Rambo.  I saw it in the cinema, on the big screen. And I have to say that I was impressed.  Really.  It couldn’t have been better than the “First Blood” by definition, but it was definitely better than the third part, and arguably better than the second part.  One of the scenes reminds the beach take over in “Saving Private Ryan”, while there are a couple of other pretty good fights.  John Rambo is still the same - quiet veteran, who is not so easily pissed off, but when he is, you better be on the other side of the planet.  In short: lots of blood, great body count, and an absolutely “must see” for the fans.
• Inside Man.  I am totally biased here, as someone who enjoys heist movies.  But even if there was no heist, it would have still be an excellent movie.  The story is interesting.  The cast is excellent.  The directing is brilliant. And so is every other part of the film - from music through costumes and make-up to operators.  This is how I think movies should be: a little bit of everything - humor, sadness, food for thought, visual pleasure, and acting.
• Poseidon. It was a good try at a bad movie.  I mean, there was plenty of effort in trying to make this film good.  Some good actors are in.  There are some expensive scenes.  Or at least some of them looked expensive.  There is a little bit of suspense at times.  But this film was bad by idea, not by implementation.  I mean, there is this Titanic story which can be tolled from a thousand perspectives.  And yet, in this film it was told from a perspective of a really cheap “end of the world” flick.  Oh, and the physics really sucked - from beginning to end.  But that is sort of expected in the really cheap “end of the world” flicks.

While reading this post at Techdirt about a starting decline in DVD sales, I was thinking about quality and quantity…

We get more and more music and movies released these days than ever.  But most of them suck.  Most of them suck so badly, that nobody cares about them.  If I’m bored and I have plenty of time on my hands, I’ll watch a movie.  It’ll help me kill a couple of hours.  If that movie sucked or if it didn’t left anything for me to reflect on, I’ll grab the next film from the top of the pile and I’ll watch it.  And then the next.  And then the next.  A couple of years ago I had a period of time when I was watching 4-5 movies a day.  (I had a lot of time on my hands, and I had a friendly DVD rental right next to my apartment).

If in my crusade to burn free time I stumbled upon a good movie, my behavior changed totally.  After watching a good movie, I’d need some time alone to “sink” it into my brain.  To think about it.  Then, I’d go on the web to read more about the movie and people involved.  That can range anywhere from actors biographies and filmographies (most IMDB pages) to movie mitakes and trivia. I’d often feel the need to discuss the movie with other people, read other people’s reviews, blog about it, and, eventually watch the same movie a few more times.  I’d have no problem buying a DVD (bonus materials anyone?).  I’d be more inclined towards investigating and watching films with the same actors, of the same director, producer, screenwriter, etc.  I’ll even go to the movies.

Something similar happens with music.  I’d get an mp3 from the web.  If I didn’t like it particularly, I’d get another one.  If I liked it though, I’d get an album. If the album was any good, I’ll get the discography.  I’ll try to get my hands on live performances.  Videos are very welcome too.  And posters.  And interviews.  And I’ll listen to the music several more times.  Then I’ll learn the lyrics.  Then I’ll listen some more.  If I get a chance to go to the concert, I won’t miss the opportunity.  I’ll blog about it.  I’ll talk about it with people I know…

Now, back to the quantity vs. quality.  Producing a good piece of entertainment, be that music, movie, or anything else, is hard.  Everybody knows that, and I’m not an exception.  It takes time, money, dedication, and talent.  Mass producing crap seems simpler.  However, when applied over huge numbers (think globalization), is it still so?  Is it really easier to keep up with the demand for entertainment by  producing, distributing, and advertising crap?  I don’t know for sure, but I have my doubts.  Why?

Because of two points:

1. Anybody can produce crap.  Seriously, how hard can that be?  Even I can do it.  I know, because I did. (and still do sometimes)
2. The lower goes the quality, the harder it is to see the difference.  How much one crappy movie was worser than another crappy movie?  Nobody cares?  Both of them weren’t worth the time and money the spectator spent on them.  That’s as bad as it can go.

Content is getting easier and cheaper to produce.  Mobile phones had built-in photo cameras for years.  Most of them can record video now too.   And sound.  Semi-professional equipment is getting cheaper too (think camcorders, DSLRs, etc).  Software and hardware is getting more and more powerful, closing up the gap between a personal computer and a rendering cluster.  More and more people are getting connected to the Web.  More and more content sharing web sites are coming up (YouTube, Google Video, Flickr, PBase, etc).

I think the competition in crap producing is getting tougher and tougher because everyone and their brother can do it now.  The quality stuff, on the other hand, is something completely different…