How is Netflix Changing the Way We View Film?

            This past month I have been thinking a lot about the kinds of content and resources I am being exposed to. When it comes to media today I am becoming increasingly convinced that popular culture in America is moving further and further away from promoting an intellectual life and instead focusing on what is easy and convenient. I find this very problematic.

            To explore this idea I looked at Netflix’s movie streaming service. A couple years ago I was given a Netflix account as a gift. I found their distribution service to be fast and they had a great selection of films. At that point their business model was to offer three different options that allowed their customer’s to have 1 – 3 discs in process. With the 1 or 2 disc options the most movies a customer could watch was 2 or 3 movies a week while with 3 discs a customer could view 5 or 6. Either way the customer could choose between newly released blockbusters, classic films and even art house films and no matter the title there was little difference about the amount of time it took to receive the film in the mail.

            Today Netflix has completely changed their business model from mail-focused distribution to online streaming. Their subscription options begin with a streaming-only option and then for $2 more you can add the mail service. The problem with this is that Netflix does not offer many high quality films to stream. They offer a handful of decent films and then supplement that collection with films of a lesser quality.

            As a quick disclaimer I will acknowledge the fact that Netflix is not always responsible for the movies they are allowed to stream. I’m sure Netflix wants to offer all of their titles for instant streaming and that it is the studios who are getting in the way. Eventually all of the details and negations for allowing a movie to get viewed through a subscription based service will get worked out but until then I cannot fault Netflix for not streaming more movies. However, my problem with Netflix lies in the fact that they promote themselves now as a comprehensive movie streaming service, which they are far from.

            To not come across as a complete film snob, I chose to evaluate their streaming collection against the top 250 films according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). I chose to use this list as it is compiled through user rankings and it also contains films from many different genres and time periods. Of these 250 films only 65 of them can be streamed. This means that only 26% of the films can be streamed. Of the top 100 only 22 can be streamed and of the top 25 only 4. Honestly, these numbers are higher then what I originally thought I would find.

            Looking closer at the films that can be streamed I found some interesting trends. First, I found that Netflix only streams the theatrical release for Fellowship of the Ring. While I have not seen this film yet I have seen that most people who own this movie own the Extended Edition, which you cannot stream. Second, five of the films, Fellowship of the Ring, Toy Story 3, Aliens, Die Hard and Terminator, are films where only part of the franchise can be streamed. This is especially problematic for Toy Story 3 and Aliens where the prequels cannot be streamed. Finally, the films Seven Samurai, M, The Third Man, Rashomon, Yojimbo, Wild Strawberries, Ikiru, Diabolique, 8 ½, The Battle of Algiers, The 400 Blows, The Killing, The Passion of Joan of Arc and Fanny and Alexander are all films that are (or soon will be) licensed through The Criterion Collection which seems to be one of the larger supporters of streaming film. These films make up 20% of the list of 65 mentioned above. What all of this data tells me is that only a small percentage of films that people consider high quality are available to be streamed.

            Another aspect to keep in mind is that Netflix streams the films only. For the most part the features included on a DVD are not really all that great but some features and commentaries add a lot of interesting information about film and film history that cannot be accessed elsewhere. Once again I imagine this has to do more with influences outside of Netflix who are trying to keep a separation between the DVD experience and the streaming experience.

            So what does this all mean? My concern is that Netflix no longer cares about the quality of the films they stream, which seems like a total change in their business plan. By promoting themselves as a streaming service first and mail service second they are decreasing the number of quality films available to their customers. Not every film on the IMDb list is for everyone and I do believe that part of watching some movies should be escapism, but it is problematic if the movies we now get to choose from do not stimulate our intellectual side.

            It seems to be a new trend in American business to gravitate only to the business practices that allow for quick money to be made. Netflix is at an advantage here because their brand is already a household name. Through Netflix’s streaming service we are only being exposed to a low number of quality films while being over exposed to poorly made cinema. We cannot allow this to be what we expect as normal because it will lead to decreased standards.

            I’m not calling for a boycott against Netflix. Instead, I just want to kindly remind everyone to explore quality films. Netflix is making it easy to forget about the process of critically examining films. Do not settle for what is conveniently placed in front of you but instead take the time to explore films. There are many great films that are not available to stream on Netflix. Be sure to look into those films as well.

[This study was done during the middle of June. Both the IMDb list and the films Netflix streams are constantly changing. It is possible that the numbers would look a bit different if this study was repeated at a later date.]

My Overly Ambitious Summer Reading Plan

American Jesus

1)   Prothero, Stephen R. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

Freethinkers

2)    Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.

Everyware

3)   Greenfield, Adam. Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2006.

Scott Pilgrim

4)   O'Malley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim the Complete Series. Portland, Or.: Oni Press, 2010.

The Wordy Shipmates

5)   Vowell, Sarah. The Wordy Shipmates. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

Unfamiliar Fishes

6)   Vowell, Sarah. Unfamiliar Fishes. New York: Riverhead Books, 2011.

I’ll be writing reviews for some of these books on my LibraryThing page and will also dialogue with them here on this blog.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have read any of these or if you want to leave a list of your own.

Big Data: A Quick Introduction

On June 23rd 2009 at 11:44am, according to iTunes, I was listening to the Decemberists’ album The Hazards of Love. What were you doing on that day?

As everyday tasks are merging with computing technology a sort of “digital residue” is left behind. Through the help of social network sites (SNS) and other forms of Web 2.0, we are quickly becoming a self-documenting society. So what do we do with this digital residue?

The iTunes example used above will help to give a simple definition for both Big Data and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). These are terms that those using SNSs or a Smartphone should be aware of. Before I go further I must disclose that a) I am not a tech person but instead am more interested in how people engage with information and data and b) do not see these terms as threats to your personal security (but more on that later).

So what exactly is Big Data? The main task of iTunes is to play digital music but what happens in the process is that the music file gets time stamped, placed into a timeline and receives a play count. As this process continues over time you, as well as the iTunes program, can better understand your relationship with your music. You can know what songs you listen to the most, what songs you have not listened to in a while and what songs you have never listened to. This is vastly different then the way we used to listen to music on CD players. Not only are we able to carry our entire music collection around on a small portable device but also we are able to carry our entire music history as well.

An understanding of Big Data takes this process a step further by looking at the larger picture, that being that millions of people are generating this kind of data. Software can then be written to help make sense of the data. The basic assumption here is that meaning can be extracted from the patterns that are found in the data. However, as far as I know, iTunes does not publish your data so this works best as an example of self-generating data.

Big Data becomes even more interesting when computing gets moved online. With smartphones and GPS enabled devices the movement from offline to online is often blurred. Smartphone applications (apps) are used for specific tasks but as you do the task data is generated. For instance you may use an app like Runkeeper to keep track of fitness routines like running or biking. After a run you can analyze the data and know where you went, how far you went and how long it took you to finish the run. If you perform the same run again the next day you can then compare the two runs. These are the basic functions of the app. However, because all of this data is stored on Runkeeper’s servers you potentially have the ability to find people in your neighborhood who have similar data. The benefit here is that people could meet up who are trying to achieve similar goals and running similar distances at a similar pace. This data can also be moved to a much larger scale as city planners can look at it and determine where people prefer to run and perhaps even try to evaluate why people are not running in a certain area.

The question that I am sure is lurking in your minds now concerns personal safety and privacy. Do we want people knowing where and when we are running? Amber Case, the developer of the appGeoloqi (which I highly recommend), stated that this sort of computing is helping humans become more human. Big Data and ubicomp is pushing us towards a more highly connected society and also helping us better understand ourselves. It is making data that has always existed more visible.

This post just barely begins to expose the much larger picture of Big Data and ubicomp. My goal here is to present a basic understanding of a concept that I will come back to often. It will be interesting to see how computing changes as more and more of this data becomes machine readable. One aspect that is already in the media concerns who will end up being able to access this data and what that means for personal privacy. Amber Case helps explain this by comparing it to buying food at the supermarket. Club card savings at supermarkets require customers to enter their unique ID# or a phone number to receive discounts. Maybe people are concerned about leaving this information with the store because of what the store will do with their info. However, these stores really do not care what the individual person is buying but are concerned with the much larger picture by finding patterns in the way people shop.

Still, the data you you are creating, either consciously or not, should be yours to control. Al Franken is currently taking on some of the larger tech businesses that are creating ways to get at all of this data. I agree that you should be able to control what you broadcast and what gets collected and what does not. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in the end. Computing as you now know it will be changing drastically in the next couple of years. The most savvy users will be those who are aware of the changes and are able to take full advantage of them. Many of my future posts will give glimpses of how the Internet will be used in the future.

New Blog, New Name

I was playing around with a new blog on Wordpress for a bit but found their interface to be awful so I'm back to Blogger! I'm renaming the blog but keeping the address so my previous postings will all be kept together. If you missed my introduction to my Wordpress blog here it is! I promises this will be the last move. I'll be here to stay for a while and plan to update regularly so you will be safe to add this blog to your RSS feed.


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I will be developing this blog around the understanding of the “self”. My posts will be explorations of what it means to be human in the created world we now find ourselves in. I believe that there are three “selves” we can explore: the physical, the spiritual and the digital.

Posts will discuss topics from popular culture to religion to social networks. My hope is that they will be written in a way that encourages both engagement and dialogue. If ever there is a topic you wish I would address please do not hesitate to contact me.

Have New Technologies Helped Us Learn More About Ourselves?

As I was walking to the bus stop today I began thinking about all the ways recent technologies have impacted my peripheral knowledge. Simply by making media digital we now have access to a huge amount of information. I remember when I got my first iPod 6 years ago. I was blown away by the fact that I no longer needed to carry CDs around with me. Now in one device I could carry around my entire music collection. This new technology brought stress as I no longer only had 10 albums to pick from but instead could pick from thousands. Today this is no longer a problem because I have found ways to adapt to what these new technologies have made available.

In the above paragraph I used the term ‘peripheral knowledge’ and I must explain what I mean. 15 years ago, before music went completely digital I had a rack of CDs that would sit in my room next to my stereo. These albums did not do anything unless I applied some sort of force to them (i.e. picked one up, took out the CD and placed it in the CD player). Today all of our albums are now on our computer and are constantly interacting with each other and telling me about my listening habits. For example I can create a list in iTunes that consists of songs I have listened to 7 times. Never before was this possible unless you kept a post-it note on your CDs and checked it each time you listened to an album. iTunes can also tell me if there are songs I have not yet listened to. iTunes can also tell me when the last time I listened to an album was by telling me the exact date and time I last listened to it.

Now you might be wondering who cares but there is a lot of significance in being about to track this information. If we were to move our iTunes account onto a cloud network and let our accounts interact with other people’s accounts we could ultimately use that information to find people who have similar listening styles. We could also use that information to find music we may never have listened to before. As technology progresses this information will become more and more precise.

Netflix already uses this technology to help me find movies they think I would want to watch. By tracking my movie watching practices Netflix can match me up with the practices of other users and make suggestions based on these results and often times it is very accurate.

If you think about this another way we already do this with the social groups we interact with. How many of us have ever looked someone up on Facebook after meeting them for the first time? Our Facebook profiles are huge resources of information just waiting to be accessed. The amount of surveillance possible on Facebook is incredible. If I am invited to a party through an invite on Facebook I can determine if I want to attend based on whom else will be there. If there is someone on the list I do not know I can look at there profile and figure out what they are into and consider, before even meeting them, if they are someone I would want to talk to. Considering if this is productive social behavior will need to wait for another post.

As more of our actions are being cataloged in these arbitrary databases the more we can learn about our actions and ourselves. We can keep track of what we have done and when we did it unlike ever in history before now. The question we must now ask ourselves is how we will use this information.             

Lex Luthor: A Librarian's Superhero

I just re-watched Superman: The Movie (1978) and something new stood out for me. I do not claim to be an expert when it comes to comic books or comic book characters, in fact all I really know about Superman comes from the 1978 film. What stood out is Lex Luther's ability to find information to support his evil plans. He is a librarian's superhero. His office is full of books and he knows how to use them. I guess you could say his super power is collocation.

Book Banning in Seattle

I have been studying intellectual freedom for the last couple of months at the University of Hawaii. One of our textbooks for the class is 120 Banned Books. You can probably guess from the title what this book is about. Just last week we were discussing cultural reasons why books were banned or challenged. The very next morning I read in the Seattle Times that the book Brave New World was being challenged at Nathan Hale High School in the Seattle School District.

I believe in and advocate for an open and free marketplace of ideas. Does this mean that the topic of book banning should be off the table and that every books is free to sit on the shelf of any library? I am still struggling with that questions and its implications for children's libraries. However, for High School and public libraries, there is not a book I would challenge nor a resource I would ban.

I must say though, that this particular book challenge is an interesting position. First, I should note that the person who is challenging the book is the mother of an upset student who read the book last year. I am curious why is has taken the challenge so long to get to the school board. My hope is that it is because the mother took the time to read the book. A reoccurring theme of book challenges are conservative parents who have never taken the time to read the books which ultimately results in challenges in order to push a particular moral slant.

Another interesting point, this particular challenge seems to be less about the content of the book and more about the ability of High School students to grasp the larger meaning of the story. This could be stating another way, the teacher's inability to fully engage the students. I do not know the teacher nor do I intend to pass blame into the hands of an educator. This is a major issue within the Seattle school board concerning the appropriate response concerning situations like this. Instead of improving a teachers ability to teach a subject the subject is taken away all together. This is problematic. The solution to the challenge should be paid professional development on how to engage students when teaching controversial books. I realize my argument here is way too simplistic as it does not take into account the complexity of student/teacher relationships and the individual responsibility of the students. The point here is that the removal of the book from the classroom does not need to be the solution and it doesn't seem to address the problem.

Finally, I found the motivation for the banning to be particularly intriguing. Typically when Brave New World is being challenged it is because of sexual explicitness. However, in this particular case it was because the parent believes that Native Americans are inappropriately represented in the novel. Compare this reason to a challenge of the exact same book earlier this month in Maryland because of sexual vulgarity. While I do not approve either reason for banning the book, I do sympathize with the mother from Seattle. Especially because Native Americans are probably the most under-represented group in American.

At the point when I write this the only decision that has been made is to remove the book from the reading list at Nathan Hale High School. As far as I know this means the book will still be available in the library. The challenger has stated that she would like to have the book removed from all reading lists in the entire district. To those who champion reading and intellectual freedom, I do not expect this book will get removed from the libraries. There will probably not be a formal banning of the book. I encourage everyone to write an e-mail to the School Board if you are not happy with their decisions or to go to a library and talk to a librarian about what you can do to support the freedom to read. This will be an important issue for us all to keep an eye on as the outcome has the potential to set precedent for future challenges.

Links:

The NPR article on the issue

The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom

ALA Bill of Rights