To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting. -- e.e. cummings

In Defense of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Distribution: An excellent article on P2P distribution, written by Tim O'Reilly that should be required reading for everyone, but especially for Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Hilary, despite your protestations, O'Reilly is right: file-sharing is not piracy, and a balanced accounting of P2P impact on the recording industry would show that. Let's get to reality: the RIAA is desperately trying to hold on to its antiquated distribution channel despite the emergence of a more efficient method that, of course, forces RIAA members to rethink how they do business, as O'Reilly makes clear:

The question before us is not whether technologies such as peer-to-peer file sharing will undermine the role of the creative artist or the publisher, but how creative artists can leverage new technologies to increase the visibility of their work. For publishers, the question is whether they will understand how to perform their role in the new medium before someone else does. Publishing is an ecological niche; new publishers will rush in to fill it if the old ones fail to do so.

Adapt or die! (N.B. I was pointed to this article by the terrific Doc Searles blog, which you should definitely visit regularly, along with John Robb's blog.)

"The street finds its own use for things." -- William Gibson: The P2P stuff led me to an excellent article by Cory Doctorow about innovation and the intended uses of new products. That led me to an article on BBC News online about how the deaf are using cellphones. This is a "clunk me on the forehead" kind of use -- of course text messaging with phones that have a vibrating ring would be useful to the deaf! Ah, the happy circumstance of unintended consequences -- they aren't all bad!