I went to the Apps and Affect conference at Western University in London, Ontario (Canada), from October 18-20 with two primary goals in mind: 1) to spark my thoughts for a new research project on App Culture and the history of the software commodity I’m about to undertake and 2) to not succumb to the too-easy and too-obvious urge to blurt out “There’s an app for that” at every turn. In a conference full of papers and researchers exploring the strange, fascinating, social, scary, and emerging world of apps, no simple pun would suffice. To add further creativity constraints, “There’s no app for that” was also disallowed. Although both those phrases were mentioned ironically and knowingly throughout the weekend by others, I managed to get away unscathed. Well, almost. Saturday afternoon, in a moment of fatigue, I wondered aloud if there was a nap for that.

I was tired for a reason. The conference boasted an impressive roster of keynotes including Jodi Dean, Alexander Galloway, Patricia Clough, Mark Andrejevic, Melissa Gregg, Ed Keller and Paul Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky, a.k.a That Subliminal Kid who Skyped in from New York after having had his passport stolen the night before). Beyond that, panel after panel showcased the work of emerging and established scholars on topics such as locative media, gamification, surveillance and tracking, the labour circuits behind digital devices and app production, and the commodification of culture and affect. The conference had an excellent mix of new media theory – often drawing on insights from platform studies, affect theory, and object oriented ontology – and grounded case studies of specific apps – such as Sarah Swain’s paper on Apps for Apes, Michael Palm’s work on Transactional apps, or Allison Hearn’s research on Klout, influence, and social scoring. There was, incidentally, a panel entitled “Apps for That” which featured a paper of the same name (and which looked highly interesting). Due to my previous commitment to not using that branded turn of phrase, however, I had to recuse myself.

Skillfully organized by The Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, and hosted by the London Museum, the event also featured an art exhibit called the Imaginary App curated by Paul Miller and Svitlana Matviyenko. Wrestling with the question “What’s the most desirable, terrifying, smart, ridiculous or necessary app that has not been and, possibly, will never be released?”, the exhibit – soon to be accompanied by a book on MIT press – shows puzzling and fascinating cover icons for non-existent apps, accompanied with pithy descriptions of imaginary features and functions. Sad Hour, for example, reacts against the abundance of happy hour apps and argues that sometimes a little depression and introspection is good for you. The app “sits you down and makes you damn miserable” by allowing you to find happy hours in your area with the “highest percentage of drunks with broken dreams”. The Ultimate App, on the other hand, is even more direct in its functionality. Once you launch the app, it immediately initiates an in-app payment session and then promptly closes itself. “No fuss, no muss” it’s an “app that performs its own finitude quicker than most” boiling app usage down to its simplest and most essential function, the transaction.

Imaginary or not, apps are, as Jodi Dean noted, both fascinating and fastening. Using affect to both enthrall and manipulate, playful games like Candy Crush or gorgeously designed productivity apps like Any.Do are as aesthetically enjoyable as they are addictive. Our continued and continuous use of various apps, as Mark Andrejevic argued, turns smartphones into surveillance and sensing devices, representing a kind of drone-ification of personal technologies.

The latest figures I’ve seen suggest that global revenue from apps is expected to rise 62% this year to $25 billion, a booming industry that seems far from imaginary. In this light, Apple’s marketing slogan – the sentence I vowed not to speak aloud – is not just a self-congratulatory tagline, it’s a comment on how thoroughly infused apps have become in the everyday activities of many users. While apps are merely the latest instantiation of the software commodity, they have broadened the market and use for software. Their increasing integration into leisure, commercial, educational, interpersonal and other casual spheres of everyday life signals an emerging “app culture”; a culture that was under scrutiny at the conference and that I’ll be tracking in my series of posts here.

from zoomar's flickr page, under a creative commons license

The new media sheen has worn off of podcasting. At the height of its trendiness, “podcast” was selected as the word of the year in the New Oxford American Dictionary (2005), and academics like Richard Berry or yours truly (along with a rowdy band of co-authors) were trying to think about what this new creative audio practice meant for our understanding of both traditional broadcast radio and new media more generally. Fast forward to 2012 and podcasts are no longer the novelty they once were. They are not solely an audio affair either, since video podcasts seem to have joined vlogs and webisodes as names that apply to short, serialized video instalments. Many corporate and public broadcasters now offer their most popular shows via podcast, in addition to their regular radio programs. Podcasting has its own celebrity star system that overlaps with other fields of media stardom. Many podcasts are available for free, though some of them require a subscription or other forms of payment. There are still, of course, armies of independent DIY podcasters out there with their handheld mics and home studios, toiling away out of pure passion (and usually, in relative obscurity), but these co-exist with rather than replace or threaten traditional broadcasting practices and infrastructure.

Despite their seamless incorporation into the traditional broadcasting landscape, podcasts are still tricky objects of media analysis, since they can refer to the thing you listen to (i.e. the actual audio show itself), the way in which it was made (i.e. in someone’s basement, garage, or semi-professional studio), the means by which you receive it (i.e. usually through a podcast aggregating RSS feed, your media player, or directly from a podcasting app), or where you play it (i.e. commuting, at the gym) and through which device (usually an mp3 player, or a computer). Podcasts are related formally to radio (and in the case of video podcasts, television), though the degree of relatedness varies greatly depending on the program. They are also highly bound up in urban life and the creation of personal soundscapes, as Michael Bull’s work on portable music players suggests. While our media have always had their own rituals, with podcasts our rituals can have their own media.

Given these multiple meanings, podcasts might better fall under Jonathan Sterne’s recent definition of format. The term format, he argues, encourages us to separate our conceptions of media from their manifestations (i.e. TV from televisions, Radio from radios, Telephony from telephones), to help us think about media experiences in light of convergence and the dilution of individual media across various screens and devices. Borrowing from Lisa Gitelman, Sterne reminds us that “the mediality of the medium lies not simply in the hardware, but in its articulation with particular practices, ways of doing things, institutions and even in some cases belief systems.” Format thus becomes a potentially useful concept for exploring the meeting point of aesthetics, storage, transmission, and display.

And this is what still remains exciting about podcasting, at least when we look beyond the top podcasts lists on iTunes and the podcasts that are simply direct re-packagings of already existing broadcast programs: the format has prompted a reconsideration of what we can expect from radio. I mean this both in the consumer-ly sense of vast amounts of content, more flexible delivery, and greater portability, and also in a producer-ly sense. The practice of podcasting has, like college radio stations, become a training ground for cultural enthusiasts to experiment with technology, performance, and audience/relationship building. Even though there is no .pod file specification (podcasts come as MP3s, AACs, M4vs, OGGs, etc.), podcasts contribute to a re-formatting of broadcasting to a practice that is far more accessible and generative for everyday users than it has previously been.

I realize these last few points beg further explanation, but since I’m already running long on words, I’ll save it for a follow-up post. There, I’ll focus on a few specific podcasts and work through some of their most salient features.

Almost 10 years after launching the first (now seemingly brick-like) iPod, Apple has unveiled another version of the music player’s most successful descendant, the iPhone 4S. But while the tech press salivates over an even thinner, even speedier device on which to play Angry Birds, the more significant news at Tuesday’s press conference was the official launch of Apple’s iCloud service (available Oct. 12).

Cloud computing is all the rage in the tech and media industries right now, even though the term itself dates back to the 1960s. While the era of the personal computer fostered a reliance on our own gadgets for our computing needs, today’s current cloud services encourage us to shop pieces of our daily computing activities out to the servers of various tech companies.

Popular cloud–based e–mail programs (like Yahoo or Gmail) and other online document tools (like Google Docs or Dropbox) have crept into our online activities so gradually that most users barely realize much of their data are already in the cloud. A recent Pew Internet study shows over 69 percent of Americans have used some kind of cloud service, even though many of them were not aware of the term “cloud computing” or what it meant. In other words, it’s not that what Apple announced Tuesday was particularly new. But, as with the iPod and music, Apple’s foray into the cloud will be a significant step in mainstreaming the idea and the practice of cloud computing, particularly with respect to personal media like music and photos.

At the heart of the push towards cloud computing lies a powerful metaphor. Clouds, on bright summer days, are big white fluffy things that fill the sky. It’s no wonder the metaphor is popular. The cloud is an idealized portrait of what we expect from our information: it should be always there, wherever we are.  However, the cloud metaphor conceals as much as it reveals. One of the most critical distinctions of cloud computing is that software programs and data no longer necessarily reside on our personal machines. They exist out there, in the cloud. For the case of music, this raises obvious comparisons to radio, cable television, movie rentals, or other commodity arrangements that rely on broadcasting, subscription, or rental rather than outright ownership. So why should we be concerned?

Streaming, subscription, and other cloud services enter their users into service agreements that rent music out for a certain fee or under certain conditions. Compared to previous modes of accessing music, music in the cloud allows other entities remote control over a user’s library and makes music dependent on the service in question. While music has always relied on the technologies of its production, distribution and consumption, music in the cloud is a highly technologized vision of music. It is a specific snapshot of music as a cultural commodity, one that sees music as indelibly networked to certain providers and technologies.

Tom McCourt and Patrick Burkart (2006) argue the shift towards music in the cloud is part of a concerted effort towards organized technocratic control over digital music. They worry major record labels and technology companies are creating a “celestial jukebox” that will ultimately put “new and enduring constraints on music’s viability as a cultural practice protected from pure market functionality”. Music via the cloud becomes what Jonathan Zittrain (2008) calls “contingent”, where goods and devices “are rented rather than owned, and subject to instantaneous revisions” that are often beyond the control of consumers. Music in the cloud, in some ways, is a threat to music’s very status as a socio–cultural good.

There are also curatorial implications. Part of the appeal of a music collection, or any collection (at least from the point of view of a media scholar), are the traces the collector leaves behind as they make decisions about the nature of their library. Questions about what music to keep, what to get rid of, what to show off, what to hide, how much to keep, in what format, etc. all reveal something about the collector. Even in the case of music downloaded from file–sharing networks, users still need to invest time and effort into their collections, be it by tagging songs, organizing them within folders, etc. and this provides much of the source for the cultural ownership they feel over their libraries. In the cloud, many of these activities disappear, or the service provides them for users. Music collections are instant and pre–selected. They are not compiled and tended to over time. Users are either part of a service or not. Digital collections in the cloud are digital in the purest sense. They are a one or a zero, an on/off switch rather than an individually selected expression of one’s own personal relationship with music.

As in the past, Apple will carefully nudge users towards its vision of the future by reminding them of the past. From what we know of iCloud so far, songs, photos and other media will still reside on your computer or your device as well as in the cloud. This will permit (supposedly) seamless syncing across all your media devices, but you’ll still “own” a digital copy of the media you’re consuming. This may reduce contingency and may still afford a desired level of curatorial control over your collection, but whether or not we’re ready for this new kind of relationship with our media, well, that’s still a bit cloudy.

In the U.S., Amazon has had a patent on this one-click purchasing system since the late 90s. It’s called “Method And System For Placing A Purchase Order Via A Communications Network”. It’s a special class of patent known as a “business method patent”, since it covers a particular way of doing business. Most patents cover specific gadgets, like a new broom or a better mousetrap. Patent-holders get a 20-year right to prevent others from making a similar invention and profiting from it. Business method patents grant ownership over technologies and the ways those technologies are put to use.

Relatively rare before the 1990s, the U.S. patent office started handing out business method patents more regularly with the rise of computers and online retail services. There are now patents on methods of running online auctions, the use of electronic shopping carts and even the selling of audio and video downloads over the Internet. Since the mid-90s, applications for business method patents in the U.S. have skyrocketed from hundreds to tens of thousands per year.

Here where I am in Canada, we haven’t experienced the same surge, mostly because the wording of our Patent Act seemingly excludes business methods. But that may be changing. Amazon’s quest to patent the one-click system here is currently at the Federal Court of Appeal, after 13 years of rejections, appeals, and reversals.

Business method patents are troubling because they grant a monopoly not just over a particular technology but ultimately over ways of doing – over ways of interacting with technology. They allow patent holders to stake a claim in what is, in essence, human behaviour. (Apple, for example, has patents covering certain gestures for interacting with their touch-sensitive gizmos).

The absurdity of business method patents is highlighted by Amazon’s use of their 1-click patent in the U.S. In 1998, the company used their 1-click patent to sue rival Barnes & Noble, alleging the “Express Lane” feature on B&N’s website was infringement. B&N had to alter their site so that purchases involved two clicks instead of one. Amazon essentially argued that its patent on a specific use of web browser “cookie” technology also gave it control over an entire method of buying digital stuff.

Business method patents create a blanket of legal hurdles and licensing fees that smother inventors’ ability to innovate. For example, a recent study by James Bessen and Michael Meurer suggests there are upwards of 4,319 patents an entrepreneur could be violating just by selling merchandise online. This patent “thicket” makes developing new gadgets and software more expensive – costs that consumers experience in the form of higher prices.

As more e-commerce moves to mobile phones and other portable devices, these platforms will face a similar land run. In fact, a recent investigative report on This American Life and NPR (“When Patents Attack!) showed how business method and software patents are increasingly causing headaches for big and small tech companies alike. Companies without actual products (non-practicing entities in biz-speak) are amassing huge portfolios of patents and using them to attack actual developers and hardware makers, trying to force them to pay stifling licensing fees.

Companies like Lodsys (one of the shell companies This American Life affiliates with Intellectual Ventures). Earlier this summer, the company sent out infringement notices to half a dozen developers who make applications for Apple’s iPods and iPhones. These are small developers – makers of calculator apps and twitter clients – who allow users to buy upgrades to their programs from within the applications themselves. Lodsys, a company that doesn’t make any competing apps, claims it has a patent on in-app purchasing. They are demanding a licensing fee of 0.575% for all U.S. sales of the apps until their patent expires. While Google, RIM, or Apple have the legal and financial resources to deal with such demands, smaller developers often don’t.

So next time you click once to buy, ask yourself whether the process is so unique and novel that Amazon should have a 20-year monopoly to it. The basic properties of the Internet (e.g. many-to-many communication, hyperlinks, etc.) opened up new ways for users and companies to interact. These qualities are just as responsible for new ways of doing business as any specific business method. If patents are supposed to spur innovation by sharing discoveries while also protecting inventors’ ability to profit from their ideas, we need to ask whether they are meeting this goal, or whether they simply act as quiet quests for control over information and cultural practices.