Building a #NewStart for the Australian Creative Sector.

First Draft

In an addresses the National Press Club in Australia last year, Russel Howcroft made a presentation on the topic ‘The Creative Economy Deficit’.

Source: facebook

In an age where our Australian Government has so clearly set-out the objectives to engender economically an ‘innovation led’, ‘knowledge nation’, the mechanisms transferring these ‘ideas’ to practicalities, has a long way to go. Whilst many people in Australia are active in forms of creative work few are paid to do so, and even fewer still are paid well by local means to show a meaningful association between the practice of creative works, and the means to live as part of the middle class in society. Experience tells me, it does not matter how successful a person is, as may be considered by other measures; the relationship between the success of works formed by means of creative output of (a) person(s); and income, is poor to muddling at best.

As a consequence, the legacy media infrastructure that has been established across Australia over the past hundred years; is now outmoded and as a consequence — made redundant. I have personally experienced the way the traditional media sector itself; seeks to cannibalise the ideas of others as raw creative resources for its own personnel, in a declining market; where our present reality now demonstrates how they’ve failed, and how international giants now pave the way for innovators to create and deliver works online.

From Myspace to YouTube and the proliferation of soundcloud, facebook and Netflix, amongst the many others — there are now widespread socioeconomic consequences that have been brought about due to the failures of dinosaurs.

If a creative industry is operated by tactically employing activities of moral poverty, then the fact in reality is — that others world-wide can do the same.

It’s now two decades into a new era of media infrastructure implementations, whereby deals have been made and infrastructure delivered; that is built into our telecommunications and media industry platforms, with causal outcomes.

Is it now time to consider how we might ‘cut our losses’, and re-consider the merits of what it is we most need, even if it is at the sacrifice of our Free TV.

From 2000 my works towards the development of a Human Centric Web led me to foster subject matter expertise in the field of Rich Media distribution. At around 2001 i found Distream, a provider of a solution made by them that could deliver at the time a near-dvd stream at 1Mbps; and New Mexico Software, who had a solution to encode digibetas (and make them searchable) for distribution to cableTV head-ends as MPEG-2. In 2006, i was provided the opportunity to be instrumentally involved in the delivery of the first IPTV over ADSL2 system. In 2007, i reviewed some of my old models and acted upon an evolved belief that we needed to form an international solution for Hybrid TV (end-to-end) which led to works that related to the UK initiative Project Kangaroo (bankrolled via Macquarie Bank; and later, the HbbTV standards. In Australia the use of HbbTV standards is known to consumers as Freeview, and my work on it started early 2007 as a consequence of identifying the TV-Anytime CRID specification (Freeview UK), which led me to contact experts in Europe; whilst forming ‘a team’ in Australia. Around that time Freeview was registered as a trademark in Australia; and whilst i have great references, it didn’t work out so well for me; and so, i became the first non-director consultant for the project team responsible for delivering DCI solutions for the independent cinema industry.

The first Cinema NOC — My workstation; curating digital cinema works in Australia

From 2007–8, i also gained the opportunity to work with experts such as Chris Dimopoulos on infrastructure ideas that sought to build online transcoding and dynamic muxing infrastructure; and was supported by IPStar and Activ8Me alongside others, to deliver some of the first live webcasts via IP satellite; of sporting events, as part of my work demonstrating opportunities.

Later, in 2012, this satellite infrastructure was revisited as a means to produce Dynamic CIR circuits, supported by VoIP & SDN solutions; as to bring about improved opportunities for TeleHealth, with a solutions focus on mental health services being made more accessible for the benefit of kids in country areas. Whilst i had conversations with Telstra at the time, prior to the emergence of ‘Telstra health’ i was advised that they weren’t interested.

In 2014, when speaking at the Australian IGF (a now defunct local constituent for otherwise important international ‘internet policy’ works)

whilst i was speaking with respect to my W3C works, building at W3C in earlier stages the W3C ecosystem solutions required for a ‘human centric web’; I was asked about Community TV. What was occurring at the time was that Government was trying to rationalise the future of the media sector and how that related to the use of spectrum. Malcolm Turnbull made the presentation RadComms 2014: Spectrum in the Age of Digital Innovation and was seemingly trying to get the Communty TV Sector to start innovating online.

‘commit to community tv’ campaign image. Source: Joy.org.au

The Community TV sector responded by launching a website ‘commit to community tv’ featuring a colour scheme more traditionally related to the opposing political (labour) party, as the campaigned to retain the ‘status quo’.

Some years earlier the defunct ‘project kangaroo’ had been sold to Arqiva, a company owned by a consortium of investors led by CPP (Canada Pension Plan) and the Australian investment house Macquarie Bank who also at the time owned local group Broadcast Australia, who had in-turn purchased a company called hostworks. After some enquiry (that i was involved in at the time) the CTV sector cut a deal with hostworks; which later, in-turn collapsed leaving the CTV sector looking around for new opportunities to fix the mess.

During this time i also tried to help NIRS, which was a leading social enterprise working to support indigenous media services across the country. Yet with a minuscule budget to build technology, this was made infeasible.

So fast-forward to today; and the situation is only getting worse. Whilst some of my other ideas have been very well demonstrated through the means others have had to (in an entirely independent and seperate manner) implement solutions that show the merits of some of my former works and related ideas; the problem seems to be a complete lack of accessible, money.

~2011: mansfield media hub concept

As has been brought about in the shire of Noosa, the Peregian Digital Hub very well articulates the benefits of social infrastructure for our hyper-media age.

At the time, part of my thinking related to (aus)civics as part of a broader ‘leadership’ opportunity…

Back then, i took on a project called AusCivics which sought to teach kids about our system of democracy. Whilst this project had already spent millions, it had run out of money and i wanted to help make it work. The man who’d spent the millions, Peter Rancie, had formed the AusCivics project building upon his former genealogical works, via Australian Civics and Heritage Foundation and had produced an extraordinary platform through a partnership with CEFA. There were an array of online curricula assets, and a video library alongside an idea of a concept called ‘yaba’ that i engaged Education Services Australia about, and regardless of the fact that i didn’t hear back — it eventually got made.

To get a sense of what i saw and felt was an important part of how hypermedia might stimulate local (creative) media, checkout the pre-roll to the film-packaged for students with the film Broken Hill.

At the time, there was no ‘civics curricula’ in schools, and if a community media hub was to be produced — kids aren’t the best custodians of professional media equipment purposefully obtained for community use (including theirs); noting the cost of this infrastructure is hundreds of thousands in total, as an entire ‘kit’ that could be used for any production.

So i went about producing the means to produce a ‘heritage digitisation’ strategy, seeking to help seniors gain computer skills; and engage with young people, with the hope of producing a means to teach civics, via core curricula.

To supplement this consideration; were others, about how the work discussed on medium elsewhere, could be used to support local solutions; incorporating what i was later instrumentally involving, in the W3C Standardisation works.

In consideration therein; I’ve had a fair bit of experience and consider it reasonable for me to state that my experiences reasonably provide me a basis upon which i now make the fairly (un)clear statement; that i think it’s time we consider the potential benefits of cutting our losses, acknowledging the tactical strategies employed by ‘leadership dinosaurs’ of the time failed, and figure out what we can QUICKLY do, to remedy the situation.

As such; the fastest method i can think of — is to bring about a TV license.

The UK system, which is generally used to resource to copy how things have first been made to work there (and has consequently led to experts from the UK getting many of the ‘good jobs’ here); has always had a TV license.

As a consequence of this economic system, there’s a great deal more money flowing into the creative sectors involved in producing content & technology.

IF we were to do something similar to that here; then say, it’s a $10 per household per month thing; or $120 per year. If we assume there’s a market of 10m licensees, then that’s about 1.2Bn dollars, that could be made available as additional revenue to fund those who work as creatives in Australia.

Add to this; that probability that the way much of the creative sectors works here in Australia; are now funded, is likely all ‘mixed up’ with social security costs; then there’s an additional, effective revenue that can be brought about.

Today it is the case that (unintended) systemically accepted, yet exploitative and organised business & government practices between the producers of creative work and the beneficial user of those works. Whilst i have illustrated an array of ways to attend to these problems; our current systems, as forms part of our present reality — is that todays systems do not associate well enough, work creators and the economic beneficiaries of those works .

Its not as though, companies no matter their stakeholder structure, who take useful creative works of others for commercial exploitation are taxed the costs incurred by government for having paid the underlying cost of keeping those people alive.

The subsequent rationale that is most commonly used by people who are forced to acknowledge these sorts of issues, is something along the lines of ‘oh, we don’t have enough money to solve that problem’ and that, it should be considered acceptable that they employ such tactics as part of their core business practices.

This is in-turn provided supportive reinforcement by the fact that there is no ‘legal aid’ for “commercial disputes” poorly impacting, the poor.

Is it time to take into consideration the cost on Australia, born by bad behaviours locally that now lead to a virtually exclusively internationally owned, solutions for creative makers — media market.

In the Australian media sector; people who are not otherwise able to find the economic support reasonably required by creatives to sustain their basic needs are now consequentially, increasingly supported by the means for a healthy mind to focus on more socially productive opportunities. This basic economic tools to support human dignity of creative work(ers) today, more often find significant benefit for their own lives, by trusting solutions provided internationally, whilst living in a local market who are shown to be careless of our needs.

Whether it be Uber or AirBnB; or YouTube, Vimeo, Medium or Amazon, creative work today — best be funded via international ‘gigs’; and made available to others, via international channels governed by international law.

There is more to this creative economy cycle, than the importance of charging GST.

Good journalism, and the means to ensure ‘sense making’ about local issues, events, shops, news and ideas; when published locally, leads to ‘paywalls’ demanding big sums — more than netflix; to simply read an article, from one vendor. As their revenues decline, the age of PR dressed as news drives policy, but it’s not about the representation of issues that are important to the community; PR’s only really brought about, by an agent who has a marketing and advertising budget to spend, as a cost of sale for some sort of activity.

Without News companies, how do good journalists get the protection they need when covering important issues of inconvenience to others?

Whilst, in truth, i think the answer is actually far more complex than merely copying a policy from the UK that was first defined in 1946; yet the problem as i see it, is that media has trained decision makers to consider anything other than some ‘click bait’ one-liner to be considered, all too complicated.

So, bringing about a national conversation about our creative future; and the future role and value put upon the means for our people to produce good art,

Is perhaps best now raised to the leadership dinosaurs ‘looking for a way out’, as to form an approach that now first suggests a TV license to fund the cost of creative works by Australians, as a very simple way to solve some important real-world issues that are experienced by many, whilst causing impacts to us all.

Perhaps all people will find means via hyper-media to create as well as consume; but if there’s no equitable value put upon the truth &reality, then it is reasonably considered known, that the costs of a ‘do nothing’ policy, will only continue to worsen the poorly considered impacts, upon us all.

There is no opportunity to make an ‘innovation’ or ‘knowledge’ nation, if we cannot figure out how to honestly support the socioeconomic needs of those who do the work. Good work, should find value & reward, ideally via local means; failing that, those overseas who are better supported will deliver.

And it’ll be built into the cost-structures for how our nation exists, long-term.

On the program QandA Monday night, a senior spoke of her subsistence making best attempts to live with some sense of dignity (that would reasonably be made worse by her appearance on TV); about the issues she faces in her life, and how ‘have a go, get a go’ statements by our prime-minister are so difficult for her to hear. Without the means to survive, the ability to bring about changes to fix big issues, is made entirely mute.

As jobs now rarely last long periods of time and are often not ‘full time’, in addition to the burdens of finding employment which once might have been found by walking down a street; and now involve complex and costly processes involving recruitment businesses and related HR processes; the means to ‘get a job’, as experienced by an uber driver is something they now do many times a day.

How do job figures take into account this changing structure of employment?

The means to address our ‘employment market’, as to stimnulate more economically gainful opportunities for people to benefit from their work, is something that needs government to be intrinsically involved in producing.

The circumstances of those who are unpaid for their work or are looking for an opportunity, is not the same situation lived by others, such as those who form part of our governmental leadership.

Government, with a balance sheet that is trending continually into the red, are seemingly struggling to make economic ends meet. The stated position of supporting a policy based on the principle objective to support ‘A fair go for those who have a go’ requires, in-turn an array of important socio-economic changes; that are likely, uncomfortable for many and likely needs more examples. Yet this creative work, would today — likely be mostly unpaid.

If Australia provides no means for gainful income for work; if policies seek to maintain previously engineering solutions that suggest government funded volunteering programs; are part of suggested better methods, that articulate the real-world cost of human labour provided freely, to social-security statistics; then why do they say it’s now being used, to improving economic frameworks.

In my article on Micropayments Standards: An Economic Imperative for the Knowledge Age clearly describes an array of related issues; but the objection that’s most likely to be raised — is about how to ‘fund’ the cost to fix anything.

If a TV license were brought about, that’s about 1.2bn as an opportunity.

Whilst this could stimulate growth of nation-building infrastructure, such as permissive commons, if the approach seeks to employ the cultural methodology i’ve more simply illustrated in my article on Engineering Einstein, then the reality must be understood to not understand or value creativity. There are an array of brilliant, local thought leaders who could figure out what in terms of a more sophisticated approach, a solution could well look like; but their efforts, should reasonably be provided funding.

If the instrumental and unique value of creativity is too hard to understand, i recommend watching the film ‘The Creative Brain’ on Netflix; or, review my notes about the theoretical relationship between quantum mechanics, consciousness & social informatics which amongst other referenced materials, includes this one about “What is Consciousness ? - Three Stages of Consciousness” with Michio Kaku…

Which kinda infers that any policies undermining a societies means to value creativity; may actually acts by some means that is devolutionary in its effect.

The thing that makes us homo sapiens, is instrumentally related to creativity. Without those qualities, all of our jobs & value is easy to replace with robots, and if we let the creative works by our people be considered valueless, through social-systems that consider ‘provenance’ to be ‘out of scope’, then our means to define anything about our lives will be functionally, outsourced.

There is no scarcity of jobs to do, there’s a scarcity of ways to get paid to do jobs that produce useful derivatives for others. A fast fix is a TV license.

Yet my considerations ‘in good faith’ lead me to suggest, this may just be a means to support the creation of some important conversations that were needed yesterday, but still need to be started today. If we value the activities of creating new things more than we value the consumption of them…

We might be better placed, to drive a series of policies that deliver better results; perhaps as others have intended, but needed a reality check, to better figure out. The dinosaurs are dead. It’s good to see them in a museum, but there’s little point asking them to help us figure out how to operated a world with AI, IoT and knowledge assets world-wide; when they so clearly made a mess of our, shared bed. Let the idiocies of the past retire with them.

Whilst we might loose our FreeTV, reality is, that battle was lost, years ago.

In reality; Australia is not the only country struggling with these sorts of issues. If we do sort out ‘our backyard’, then there are many big opportunities to be a trusted solutions provider and exporter of creative works, worldwide.