Streaming video over the internet is inherently a minority and exclusive technology and will be no match for more traditional media for the foreseeable future. The bottle neck is the central server and bandwidth cost. After being personally involved in streaming for the last 4 years, its limitations and lack of any focus on actual social change is all too apparent. I can't help but be left feeling that all current streaming projects are a waste of time in terms of their democratic social change value. Though this may change with the growth and maturing of peer-peer networks, but that is a different subject - be weary of the next "techy solution".

What is appropriate technology? - State of the art is not appropriate technology for social change in any democratic sense. More important is "What is best for the purpose".... What reaches out and empowers rather than satisfies the fashion-driven self?

At the moment the many different implementations of MPG4 are making broadband progressive downloading and streaming video a more realistic experience. But MPG4 video is not "appropriate technology" for many activist needs as it has a much higher minimum hardware speck than MPG1 and there is no universal install. It may be smaller in file size but is not always better quality as its compression has embodied in it a main-stream template of framing and editing. Which much, if not most activist video does not embody. It works by picking out what it thinks is important in the video frame and highlights that; the rest is compressed into a "smudge". With activist wobbly cam sometimes it seriously doesn't get this right.

MPG4 is not universally supported. It needs up-to-date hardware which many activists, and certainly people in the poorer parts of the world do not have. And in many cases doesn't look any better than the older universally supported MPG1 standard.

DVD (based on MPG2) is not an appropriate technology for the next year or longer as DVD writers are expensive and aren't as universally available as the older CD-burners. Its superior visual quality is unimportant if you just want to get a watch-able image. Up on a 5 meter screen MPG1 being similar to VHS is good enough for communication.

 

The humble CD-ROM and MPG1 (74 min of VHS video) is a much more appropriate technology than broadband and MPG4 at the moment. This will change but the question must be asked "are we interested in social change or pushing new technology?" If we don't need it why use it - there will be a time when it's "obsolete" to the prevailing system, then we might be interested. It's called fashion when we abandon something that works perfectly well to use something we don't need.

An example of an appropriate alt-media project is the Undercurrents Ruffcuts Video CD-ROMS. (www.undercurrents.org/ruffcuts/)

 

This "blagable" alt-media system is designed to put activist images into the public domain. This is a physical project to give the widest range of people the tools to distribute their own media. It is physical in the sense that it brings real people to gather in real spaces for real interaction through the use of public screenings. It is a "disorganized" network of free groups and individuals where anyone with a small amount of technological knowledge (or the help of a geek friend) can be both a screener and a distributor.

The project uses "appropriate technology" - that is technology that is both easy to use and very wildly available. The humble CD-ROM, HTML and native MPG1 format (VCD) video. Each of these very simple elements are packaged together in a "stupidly simple" format - the ruff cuts CD-ROM. This is distributed under a copy left licence.

The video plays very well projected from a computer or laptop. The picture is watchable and the sound is excellent. The discs are simple to copy on a standard CD-burner - it takes around 5 min to make a single copy and costs less than half a euro. Each disc is a master disc, and an hours work will get you 10 copies. When somebody organizes a screening, she makes 10 copies and gives them to people who are interested in making more copies - each disc is a perfect master - if one of these is inspired to organize a screening, then this person makes 10 copies - in this way we have a self-sustaining/non-centralized production/screening/distribution system.

There have been around 9,000 Ruffcuts CD's (around 20 different editions) distributed in over 13 countries, and we have no idea how many have been copied - though we do hear about screenings in places that we haven't sent videos to - we have e-mailed them and asked them how they got the film, the reply comes back on CD.

The Ruffcuts CD's are probably going to be the largest distribution of activist video media to date. Undercurrents, one of the most successful video Newsreals, only distributed around 1000 of each issue on VHS at an unsustainable centralised cost. With CD's the distribution is unlimited in terms of access and cost.

If cost is not an issue then VHS is appropriate for a centralized distribution strategy, however because of the need for master tapes it doesn't function well as a distributed system. DVD is not yet a "free technology" from the point of view of non centralized distribution because of expensive and slow burners. The web works but is technically difficult and the screening experience is individualized thus there is no opportunity for conversation and the resulting fermentation to action of a community screening - it's inherently one way tool for video.

We need to look at what works, especially in terms of technology as people are easily led into dead ends again and again by the latest thing. For tactical media we need to think about appropriate technology.

Further information

Undercurrents
http://www.undercurrents.org/

Oxford Indymedia
http://www.oxford.indymedia.org