Find Me A Place to Begin

Flying High with doubleTwist

In the last decade, a few men changed the landscape of media. In 1997, Justin Frankel wrote WinAmp. In 1999, Shawn Fanning wrote Napster. In the same year, Jon Lech Johansen, and two others, wrote a program to decrypt commercial DVD’s. In 2001, Bram Cohen wrote BitTorrent.

Together, these disruptive technologies left Old Media flummoxed, as if raided by a foreign ship flying a black flag. They were humiliated. So they reacted by using the channels they created and controlled to compare those who pillage real stuff to those who make copies of digital stuff. But this is about more than money. And the Internet understands this.

This is about the liberation of media from gatekeepers. This is about undoing the dysfunction in our culture caused by neoclassical capitalism. This is about the opportunity we have through digital media to thwart the domination of our content and culture for the generations after us. 

Jon Lech Johansen was arrested twice for his program that decrypted commercial DVD’s. Both times he was acquitted because it is not against the law to decrypt a DVD that you bought and paid for. He just wasn’t able to watch the movie on his Linux computer, so he made a program that allowed him to do so. But to do so, he had to bypass the security on the film that prevented it from being played on just any media player. 

Today, Johansen is expanding on that simple idea of allowing your media to be on your device, whatever it may be, through doubleTwist. It may seem inconsequential compared to the epic battle against Old Media, but don’t be fooled. The digital landscape is premature. What seem like tremors now will have world changing affects tomorrow. 

What got me interesting in this topic is my meeting Sebastian de With, a top notch Dutch designer I met during WWDC. Those in the know might be familiar with the handle Cocoia, which is the name of his blog. Interestingly enough, we were talking about how we saw ourselves — modern designers, Interaction Designers — as pirates, sailing the seas freely, working for the highest bidder if we so choose. Shortly thereafter he got aboard doubleTwist after more than a dozen interviews with the top Silicon Valley companies. He seemed to vibe best with doubleTwist and I can’t help but wonder if it had something to do with a greater mission to stare down giants. 

Keep an eye out for these guys. 

Sources:

1. The Men Who Stole the World. Time Magazine. Nov, 24, 2010
2. Steal This Film & Steal This Film II Aug. 2007 and Dec. 2008
3. Plot Twist. Sofa gets acquired by Facebook and Cocoia sets sail with doubleTwist.
4. That image of course was ripped straight from Cocoia’s blog… I’m ashamed…