Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.11.2010, Síða 24

24
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2010 Christopher Peterka was a panellist at YAIC 2010, and he made
some damn fine points!
your Emotions | Ask The Doctor The Internets | Creative Use
The Internets | Online Music
Winter has already arrived,
and winter occasionally
brings SAD. SAD, or Sea-
sonal Affective Disorder, is a
type of depression that is triggered by
the seasons of the year. The most com-
mon type of SAD is the winter-onset
depression, sometimes called winter
depression or winter blues. Even though
there is no specific diagnostic test for
the disorder, the common symptoms
of seasonal affective disorder include
depression, low energy, fatigue, crying
spells, irritability, trouble concentrating,
loss of sex drive, changes in sleeping
habits, overeating (especially of carbo-
hydrates) and weight gain.
SAD appears to develop from the
lack of bright light during the winter
months. Exactly how this happens it is
not known but research has found that
bright light changes the chemicals in the
brain and factors like low vitamin D lev-
els in the body are found to be associ-
ated with the disorder.
Light therapy, or phototherapy, is one
option for treating SAD, since increased
light exposure has shown to improve
symptoms. There are also light gadgets,
like lamps and light visors that are sold
in drugstores that claim to treat the dis-
order. Additionally, psychotherapy and
increased social support can also help
people who suffer from seasonal affec-
tive disorder. And if you have some extra
money and time, a trip to the Caribbean
might save you the embarrassment of
wearing light visors in the office.
Here are your dilemmas and my an-
swers to them:
I feel stressed all the time. I’ve tried
yoga as you suggested but I still feel
overwhelmed. do you have any oth-
er advice on how to manage stress?
The high cost of living, overdue bills,
unemployment, uncertainty, family trou-
bles and modern life annoyances can
leave us feeling exhausted and stressed.
We all seem to manage stress differ-
ently and what represents overwhelm-
ing stress for some people may not be
perceived as stress by others. Stress is
a normal part of our lives and for some
people it seems to be commonplace. It is
a normal reaction to events that trouble
us or make us feel endangered, and a
way for our body to defend us from the
possibility of threat. Stress is not al-
ways bad and it can help us stay alert
and active, and in some situations it can
even save our lives by giving us the ex-
tra strength to defend ourselves or the
extra focus to react quickly to threaten-
ing situations. Stress releases power-
ful neurochemicals and hormones that
prepare us for action but prolonged,
continuous and uncontrollable stress
can damage our physical and/or mental
health.
The body does not seem to differen-
tiate between physical and psychologi-
cal threats. When we are stressed over
an argument with a family member, los-
ing our jobs, deadlines, or a ton of bills,
our body reacts just as powerfully as if
we were facing a life-or-death situa-
tion. If we have a lot of responsibilities or
worries, our emergency stress response
may be turned on most of the time, and
the more this response is activated the
harder it might be to shut off.
Poorly managed stress can mani-
fest itself in a variety of emotional, be-
havioural, and even physical symptoms
that vary among different individuals.
Common physical symptoms of excess
stress include sleep difficulties, muscle
tension, headaches, stomach problems,
and fatigue. Emotional and behaviour
symptoms include nervousness, anxiety,
changes in eating habits, mood chang-
es, excessive cigarette smoking and
even drug and/or alcohol abuse.
Stress might seem overwhelming at
times, but there are several things that
can be done to manage it. Regular ex-
ercise hinders the production of stress
hormones and associated neurochemi-
cals and can even help us combat anxi-
ety and depression. Meditation, yoga,
and relaxation can also help us control
our levels of stress by activating the
body’s relaxation response and when
practiced regularly can increase our
ability to stay calm and composed under
pressure. Eliminating drug use or drink-
ing in moderation can also help us cope
with or eliminate stress. Creating struc-
ture and routine can also help us reduce
stress by generating predictability in our
lives and diminishing the unexpected.
Last but not least, a strong support net-
work of friends and family can also be a
source of strength to help us cope with
stress.
Winter SADness And Stress
Facebook Is Not Enough
Making Online Music Services Less Taxing
Psychologist Paola Cardenas answers your dilemmas
Ideas for creatives connecting with the world beyond the digital revolution
pAOLA CARdENAS
A few weeks after attending
the ‘You Are In Control’ con-
ference in Reykjavík, I am
once again sitting in an air-
plane. As we descend into the airspace of
Europe’s neutral island of Switzerland, I
am looking out of the window and down
on the Alps’ snow-covered mountain
tops, recalling all the open questions,
worries, and hopes uttered by the cre-
ative minds that had gathered from all
over the world at the “Bay of Smoke”.
Reykjavík, it seems in year three after
the downfall of Iceland’s financial econ-
omy, is coming along famously against
all odds, if we consider the enormous
socio-economic tensions and dramatic
changes it is going through. A comedian
rules the world’s most Northern capital,
and the percentage of creative economy
within national economy is higher than
in any other European country. The
pressure to change does not stem from
a few intellectuals’ efforts, but from the
whole populace!
Once again I had the impression
that Iceland is where the central lab for
researching a new society of Western
parameters is situated. The questions
posed at the YAIC only seemed to deal
with the special interests of a small mi-
nority of “creatives”—that have become
a dangerously hyped species after all,
not the least through the popular claims
of a Richard Florida. No, this is not
about the better film editing software or
the new IT typography. It’s about the big
questions that concern people standing
on the very pillars of their own service
and information society, discovering
creativity as the central driving force of
individual and above all collective suc-
cess in a global world. They’re asking
themselves and they’re asking us: How
do we plan to grow and develop, if we
never learn to seriously honour a defeat
as an important requisite for success—
for real, not just for a bohemian sense of
pleasure? How can collaboration models
lead us faster to smarter and more effec-
tive solutions? What kind of politics—
beyond empty promises and appeasing
rhetoric—does it take to avoid being con-
trolled by corporations?
The answers obviously lie in the
hands of a young American. With Face-
book, Mark Zuckerberg made those
people possessing the privilege of their
own internet access an offer they could
not refuse. A privilege, by the way, that
ought to be declared a human right at
once! Since it is so technically accessible,
so easy to use and so evident a means of
communicating, there are more people
on Facebook today than there are people
in the whole of Europe. In 2011, Face-
book will statistically be the most popu-
lated country in the world. The answers
and solutions to almost all open ques-
tions are negotiated on Facebook. It is
time for us to understand about the se-
rious impact this probably most power-
ful instrument of democracy possesses
these days. Pictures from a birthday
party are one thing, but open debate,
transparent crowd sourcing, and the re-
sulting representation of interests are a
remarkably different issue.
But let us go back from grey theory to
its colourful practise. Just as the causal
relation between a strategic use of com-
municative possibilities on Facebook
and other social networks as demon-
strated by The Best Party during the
municipal elections in Reykjavík has
become obvious and has made the con-
nection of the digital and the analogue
world, of new political experiments and
the well-established administrative rule
systems so clearly observable, it is now
for all creative minds to understand that
just being part of it won’t be enough.
Facebook is an instrument. Only
those who play it and while playing it
think of all their co-players—who them-
selves can be listeners or voters, com-
mentators or collaborators, as well as all
of the above, co-players who don’t con-
sist just of digital profiles, who are more
than brains in a tank, who are taking
part vigorously and with all their senses
in a creative exchange at work, in cafés
or on the couch—only those will realise
the huge potential of our contemporary
creative society.
At the beginning of October
there was an article in Fré-
ttablaðið, a free Icelandic
daily newspaper, on the sub-
ject of a surcharge on Internet connec-
tions, which had been proposed by the
Icelandic copyright bureau STEF and
a new association of performing art-
ists called FHH. The idea behind the
surcharge was to compensate for lost
revenues from illegal downloading and
streaming of artists’ music by collect-
ing a fee from every internet connection
in Iceland, which would be distributed
among songwriters and copyright hold-
ers according to some metric. Taxing
people to compensate for theft is not
a new idea and an internet search for
“tax” and “theft” will result in plenty
of arguments that treat the concepts as
interchangeable. In Iceland, a surcharge
has been placed on the sale of every-
thing from cassette recorders to blank
CDs using much the same logic.
The resulting debate from the pro-
posal of this tax has been very positive
even if the idea itself is f lawed. Few
would disagree that artists, composers
and other music professionals should be
paid fairly for the sale and distribution
of their music online.
However, a dangerous notion has
taken hold when people discuss the
music consumer in this equation. From
stories about the music industry suing
grandmothers for downloading Metal-
lica albums on Napster to proposals
like this tax that seem to punish the
consumer and assume wrongdoing, the
music fan is increasingly being treated
as a mindless criminal who is incapable
of behaving on the internet. This notion
disregards the social aspect of musical
culture and shifts attention away from
the real failure here, which is the failure
of the creative industries to provide the
right services and adapt to the changes
that the internet has brought to their
business. Music fans want to pay fairly
if they are able to do so, and they will
participate in other ways that benefit the
artists if they are enabled to do so. The
internet is a new way of communication
and has the potential to bring music
makers and the people listening closer
together. Taxing it to redistribute wealth
according to pre-existing monopolies is
the old way of thinking.
Charging a tax on internet connec-
tions is unfair first and foremost to
people who use legal music services. It
is also unfair to the other creative in-
dustries (such as the film industry and
computer game industry) that are also
affected by people downloading their
intellectual property. We must find
creative ways to solve this problem that
do not involve taxing people or forcing
them to act in a certain way on the inter-
net. For example, I think that the recent
proposal by the French government to
subsidise music cards for younger mu-
sic purchasers is an excellent idea. This
is a government that previously pushed
for the three-strike rule (whereby you
lose your internet access if you break
copyright law), so proving that progress
can be made in the most unlikely cor-
ners.
We should concentrate on provid-
ing excellent legal music services that
make the issue of piracy irrelevant. It’s
worth mentioning (and considered by
some in the music business as heresy)
that elements of piracy are used to great
advantage by artists at all levels of their
careers. Music services can learn a lot
about how to create the service side from
defunct services like oink.cd. All that
remains is how to make a sustainable
business that gives music lovers what
they want while being responsible to the
artists and labels that provide the music.
There are several Icelandic music ser-
vices that are trying to do exactly that,
such as gogoyoko.com, Tonlist.is and
Grapewire.
We should also concentrate on edu-
cating people about the existence of
these music services and especially
those that pay artists fairly. We should
encourage people to use these services
when listening to music or buying it on-
line. It will be good for Icelandic busi-
nesses, beneficial to Icelandic artists,
and it will strengthen the development
of creative culture in this country. Peo-
ple will act well on the Internet if they
are given the opportunity to do so.
Alex MacNeil is the managing director of
gogoyoko, a music service open all over the world
that supports free streaming of all music on the
site with a clever business model. He also plays
guitar in kimono.
CHRISTOpHER pATRICK pETERKA
ALEX MACNEIL
“Charging a tax on
internet connections is
unfair first and foremost
to people who use legal
music services. It is
also unfair to the other
creative industries”