I remember a joke I heard back then (which unfortunately I don't know whom to attribute it to) that went, "The people who think America Online is the Internet are the same people who think Taco Bell is fine Mexican cuisine." The point of the joke was that there were all these people who interacted online within the narrow spaces provided by their services, thinking they were accessing the entire world, when in reality they were experiencing just a tiny sliver of the online universe.

I don't necessarily think corporate intermediaries are a problem. I've heard others cite the examples of people turning to anti-virus software companies to protect them from viruses and spam filtering companies to relieve them of spam, and I don't think there's anything inherently problematic about them, as long as their products are employed at the user's whim and discretion. Like a busy executive who employs an assistant to read his mail, if someone wants to outsource some of their online life to another company to manage that should be their choice.

Where it is a problem, however, is when users are not able to make knowing and informed decisions about such things. Even the executive risks missing out on a piece of mail he'd like to see when he relies on his assistant's judgment to filter it, but at least he's in a position to vet that judgment. Such was not the case, for instance, when I discovered my email provider was filtering my email, not only without my consent but also without my knowledge (and, moreover, it was filtering it badly). Any force, legal or corporate, that strips me of my autonomous choices with regard to my online life is inherently suspect. Because we aren't just talking about my online life: my online life is an extension and enabler of my offline life. To restrict the former is to restrict the latter, and that's not ok.

That said, the trickier question is whether it might still be a problem when people choose to use these corporate intermediaries to define their online lives. I am all about choice and autonomy; I cannot get behind a paternalistic policy that tells people what they should or should not do with their online lives. But at the same time, I worry about network effects that force others to use certain proprietary technologies they weren't otherwise inclined to (e.g., the only reason I joined Facebook was because an organization I wanted to be involved with insisted it was the only way they'd communicate with me), and I worry that people, like the early AOL users, are mistaking what these companies are offering as any sort of reasonable substitute for the unlimited potential the Internet as a whole can offer them.

In the end I think it's ok to use these intermediaries as long as they are treated as discrete tools. Like a virus or a spam filter, a corporately-provided zone, like a social networking site, is a tool. Some of these tools are more useful than others. For example, I like LinkedIn, although I haven't used it much thus far, but Facebook drives me crazy, being completely unusable as a tool for anything I might be inclined to use it for. And MySpace just makes my internal information architect want to cry.

But I can see an upside to even something like MySpace, just like I can see why some people use Blogspot and Typepad as blogging providers. While the sky is the limit in terms of what everyone can host on their own personally-controlled web domain, it may take more time, money, or energy to be able to wrangle what one would want on their own site from scratch. Whereas MySpace can offer some free and easy tools for at least getting some sort of presence on the web. But while financially free it still come at a price: some other company, in this case News Corp., gets to profit from and in many ways control your online presence. You can only do what it lets you do.

It's the amazing level of comfort so many seem to have about that which makes me wonder if we're not seeing the mid-1990s repeated. Because even back then users were often a bit like contented sheep, happy to remain penned into these proprietary worlds, unaware that the gate had been opened to allow them access to the wider world. If these sites really and truly fully meet one's own recognized and defined online needs, then fine, but when people confuse these mini-worlds for the entire Internet world, then they are not employing them at their whim and discretion, and when that happens I think that's a problem for everyone, including those who would remain outside their grasp.

But I do now have a new post, only it's over at the old Great Change blog. I realize that I still have a few things to add to that story, things which I don't really want to mix up with what I'm trying to create over here. (Well, when I can get to it...)

One of the pool's classes will wrap up in about two weeks though (the other's will in June) so hopefully by then I'll have more time for posting, which will be opportune since on May 20th I'll be attending the third Bay Area Blawgers event. This time it'll be held at Berkeley, co-sponsored by the Santa Clara High Tech Law Institute and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Details as posted on organizer Eric Goldman's website:

When: May 20, 6-8 pm
Where: Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley Law School. Directions and parking.
Who: Everyone is welcome, but this event principally will cater to active legal bloggers. Bloggers and friends who have said they plan to attend include: Tsan Abrahamson, Jerry Bame, Robert Barr, Larry Downes, Eli Edwards, Bob Eisenbach, Cathy Gellis, Eric Goldman, Beth Grimm, Greg Haverkamp, Cathy Kirkman, Kimberly A. Kralowec, Ethan Leib, Cathy Moran, Joe Mullin, Deborah Neville, David Newdorf, Dana Nguyen, Aaron Perzanowski, Elizabeth Pianca, Mark Radcliffe, Colin Samuels, Jason Schultz, Tim Stanley, Stacy Stern, John Steele, Kevin Underhill, Fred von Lohmann, J. Craig Williams and Cicely Wilson. (This list will be updated as new blawgers and friends RSVP).

As in the past, the first hour will be a structured round-table discussion and the second will be for shmoozing. I really enjoyed the previous events, and if you are in the Bay Area and either like reading legal blogs (you're reading this one, right?) or writing them you probably will too... RSVP to Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com) if you're interested in attending.

It's also good for an hour of general CLE credit, which I find particularly exciting, seeing how although this will be my third Bay Area Blawgers event, it will be the first where I've been eligible to earn it...

HLN were over there this month, touring with Chicago. They did six dates, including three in the Tokyo/Yokohama area this past weekend, which I just got back from seeing.

Hence the light blogging here, because I was actually doing something resembling blogging over on the HLN fan board, filling other fans in on what it was like to be over there and see the shows. Although it's written largely with that audience in mind, it still reads like my normal travelogues. Have a look (There's about four days' worth of significant posts, so keep scrolling among the comments to see it all).

By the way, I don't mean the Disney "Small World" song -- HLN have an entire album called Small World, which includes this title track. A track, it might interest the jazz fans among you to know, that Stan Getz played on. And if neither HLN nor Stan Getz are your cup of tea, how about the Foo Fighters? Huey recently joined them onstage at their show in Osaka...

It's a reasonable position: China sees its hosting of the games as an enormous boon, so why positively reward a country that's acting in negative ways?

But I find myself disagreeing with the calls for a boycott. For one thing, it would unfairly punish the athletes more than anyone else. It doesn't seem particularly constructive to use them as political pawns, particularly when it's things such as games that help unite peoples when there is so much else trying to divide them. Availing yourself of opportunities to better understand people you don't agree with doesn't mean you're sanctioning their position. On the contrary, by better understanding the context from which it emerges you can instead end up in a better position to persuade against it.

And in this particular instance I think it is of critical importance that people in the west come to better understand China. Though it's been opening up tremendously within recent years, what's known about it is still based on anecdote and supposition. The more people who can meet it up close and personal to get a more accurate measure, the better. In fact it's particularly important in terms of figuring out how our own interests suggest we should choose to deal with it going forward. Because when it comes down to it, I think on further inspection we may be surprised to discover what we *thought* we wanted from China may not quite turn out to be what we actually should.

I have a very vivid memory of my 2006 trip to China, of riding the bus into town from the Harbin airport and driving down an avenue lined with gleaming auto dealerships selling cars from every western car company imaginable, including plenty from America. But as we sat in choked traffic, inching our way toward the city center, I was struck with the question: should we really want Ford to succeed here?

Ford of course is but one example of the American ventures reaching into China. But it's a salient example, because as the US auto industry falters, its salvation -- and many people's jobs -- may depend on the company tapping into these new markets. So from that particular viewpoint, of course we want China to buy our cars.

But from a larger view, taking into account to the impact of what it means for all these people to own cars, I don't think we can reach the same conclusion. Never mind the vehicular congestion; China is devastating itself with pollution. I'm not asthmatic nor do I have any other respiratory problem, but when I visited Beijing that August, I could barely breathe.

In fact, this is why I think it's important for the world to attend the Olympics as planned, to see firsthand what it means to treat China as an insatiable market for our western products. Because it cannot possibly be.

I read somewhere that if the Chinese developed an appetite for seafood like the Japanese have our oceans would quickly be depleted of fish, and if they owned cars the way Americans do, we'd soon run out of steel. Already we can feel the effects on our own economy that China's capitalistic development has had on the price of resources. Need to build a public works project? That steel is going to cost you a lot more than it used to.

Of course, there is a question of fairness that arises here. Why should it be ok for Americans to enjoy all the goods of a modern market economy but not the Chinese? The answer, of course, is that it's not. But that doesn't mean that China should necessarily get to consume *more* as much as it means that Americans should probably consume *less*. Americans are notoriously wasteful, consuming far more resources per capita than even other developed nations. True, like China we're an enormous country. Maybe personal vehicles make more sense on the American terrain than they might in more centrally developed nations like those in Europe. But then again, maybe we've just made bad choices in our development, foolishly encouraging people to live as spread out as possible when it may have been better to have developed more geographically efficiently. And maybe we also failed by not building and maintaining more effective mass transit systems, thus effectively requiring more people to have cars, regardless of the financial strain it put on them or our public infrastructure.

While our developmental horses may largely already be out of their proverbial barns and this is the landscape we're left to contend with, by now we should certainly know better than to develop the way we used to. In fact, so should everyone, meaning that there's really no excuse for China to be repeating what have clearly been shown to be our past mistakes.

In Shanghai Pudong is a brand new area of development, with well-paved, well-marked multi-lane streets -- and absolutely no space for bicycles and only limited accommodation for pedestrians. It's like Los Angeles. The neighborhood has all been designed, within just the past few years, for fossil-fuel driven vehicles. Yes, there is one subway line that serves it and also some busses, but the busses have to sit in the car-caused traffic too. I really liked visiting Pudong in that it was very shiny, new, and comfortable, but it also made me want to cry, seeing how every lesson capitalist countries have had to so painfully learn in the latter half of the 20th century about how to design cities China has managed to forget.

We've had to learn how expensive it is to both our economies and our societies to design cities unable to handle the teeming humanity that needs to use them, how our own social unrest is exacerbated by these structural flaws, and how healing those rifts may also require healing our cities and overall resource allocation. The irony, then, for westerners who stomp up and down and self-righteously insist that China do things our way is that they fail to recognize that China already actually *is*. They aren't just buying our cars, they are buying our idea of why they should own our cars. They aren't just buying our fast food, they're buying our desire for it. These consequences (the pollution, the gaps between the haves and have-nots, the effects on public health, etc.) will be painful for everyone, not only in China but everywhere that a billion-person footprint can reach, just as they already have been for us locally. But out-of-sight, out-of-mind, this potential impact is practically unimaginable, and we won't really be able to understand the extent of this potential for harm unless we get to see it for ourselves.

So even for the most noble humanitarian I don't think it's a good idea to call for a boycott of the Olympics. In the big picture it's just not nearly as effective as letting the world see just what is already afoot in China, so that we can then make better decisions about what we think our own role there really should be.

Still, I think it's important to tell his story not only because he deserves whatever positive exposure I can give him, but because his stands as an important example of how an up-and-coming artist can forge a successful career without the aid or interference of a major record label.

Paul's a fantastic storyteller, whose lyrics are uncomplicated tales of humor and poignancy, a southern bard whose Mississippi drawl sings about everything from star-crossed love in trailer parks to heart-wrenching odes of longing to uplifting triumphs over adversity and pathos. Depending on the song his style can be traced to blues, rock, folk and gospel, or some combination thereof. While his singing voice has a solid blues raspiness his musical voice overall, whether solo or with his excellent and extremely tight band, is always clear and straightforward. One can't hear more than a measure before being swept up and away by the performance. Consequently everywhere he goes he picks up fans, becoming everyone's worst-kept secret as word of his talent is whispered from one convert to another. But lately that secret's been spreading increasingly quickly.

He and his "entourage," including musical partner Billy Maddox and bandmates Jeffery Perkins (drums), Doug Kahan (bass), Michael "Dr. Love" Graham (keyboards), and Bill Hinds (guitar and webmaster), have always taken advantage of technology to connect with their growing fanbase, through the use of Yahoo groups and email newsletters, online forums and now blogs and RSS. And they aren't afraid to try other outlets, like yesterday, when they performed a concert in virtual reality through Videoranch (simultaneously broadcast on KPIG, an early Paul Thorn-convert radio station out of Santa Cruz).

Of course, nothing replaces hard work, and every bit of success they may have today or tomorrow is due entirely to the enormous dedication and years-long effort they've put into it in the past. But because they've never been dependent on a mainstream record label, who could either promote or whither his future on a whim, he's kept his enormous song repertoire on homegrown Perpetual Obscurity Records, building up an increasingly enormous catalog he is able to control. Which is not to say there's no role for more established media outlets -- national distribution deals, for instance, are very helpful for getting his records into more retailers' hands. And then there's network television. Last week he made his national musical debut on Conan O'Brien (follow this link and click on March 19 to view his performance), and on April 22 he'll be on Jimmy Kimmel.

The effect of this exposure has already clearly been evident. A few times a year he tends to pass through a local Marin County music venue, Rancho Nicasio (owned by his manager, Bob Brown). In the past I could always get a seat even by calling in for a reservation that day, but those days are over, as even days before Wednesday night's concert they were so full up they had to turn people away.

But if ever there were someone whose talent and personality deserved success it would be Paul Thorn. The son of a Pentecostal preacher he traces his roots as an entertainer to standing in front of his father's congregation, perched on the altar with a tambourine in his hand, singing gospel songs with his little three year-old voice. Even though today the stories in his lyrics run the gamut from the sacred to the profane, with some songs about strippers and sex and others about heartfelt love and mercy, he always carries with him a basic ethic of goodness.

The other night at Nicasio he was talking about all the people who came up to him after appearing on the Conan O'Brien show to ask if next he'd try to be on American Idol. To me the very suggestion seems like an implicit insult, erroneously supposing that he would even need such a commercial construct to thrust him into the kind of fame and success his own talent and effort are more and more legitimately earning him, but what gives him pause is how the success of shows like that seems entirely dependent on the gratuitously brutal slaying of their contestants' dreams. "I want to be a champion for the people," he recently wrote on his blog in a post thanking those who have supported him. "I want to help steer the world away from mean spirited bullshit and start a love chain."

If you aren't familiar with his unique voice that statement might sound either a bit self-righteous or flippant, but in reality it's neither. As someone with a keen eye for observation and an even keener sense of humor, he's unafraid to find the candid language he needs to describe the world as he sees it. Willing to be self-deprecating, yet able to recognize his own strength, he intuitively understands that keeping people entertained does not mean he can't also keep them inspired.

Over the years that I've been privileged to know him, as I was building up my career parallel to him building up his, he's always been a voice of support to me, cheering me on as I passed through law school, graduation, and what felt like eons of bar exams. I'm happy to return the favor and cheer him on however I can.

After all, when he sings the song from his recent release, A Long Way from Tupelo, "What have you done to lift somebody up?" it's always good to be able to have something to say.