Better Place is a venture-capital effort to create a vast world-wide network of electrical charging stations and battery-swap locations for electric cars. It attempts to approach the issue by first establishing the network, then distributing cars. Israel, Denmark, Australia, Hawaii and Ontario, Canada are participating in the project, and several hundred million dollars in seed money has been raised.
New York Times technology reporter David Pogue interviewed Better Place chief exec Shai Agassi, a former executive with German enterprise-software company SAP on CBS Sunday Morning. You can watch the episode here. Pogue posted more of the interview in his online NYT column.
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Last week, we were continuing an ongoing conversation with Pierre (who works for the Screen Actor's Guild) about SAG's lack of progress in establishing a new contract for television performers. In the 1950s, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was formed from an older theatrical performing union, and they created contractual relationships with video-based television. SAG considered "film" production the more significant media, and for almost 60 years has represented actors working in film-based shows.
In recent years, the number of narrative productions created on film or video has approached something close to even. There remains an aesthetic and old elitsm for film. More often than not, shows shot in HD video are produced in a manner attempting to emulate the "look and feel" of film. Cost differences between the methods are probably minor compared to other incurred production costs.
Over dinner last week, Pierre said that because of the apparent instability/indecisiveness of SAG, it appears possible that as many as 90 per cent of these dramatic narrative productions will choose to shoot in HD video rather than film, because they can work under an old existing AFTRA contract. Actors who are members of either union (both unions share the same building) are free to work under either kind of contract.
Point is, I've been thinking about the "forces of change" with regard to innovation. Whenever we've discussed the inevitable Death of Film with someone, they often get hung up on the aesthetic or technological implications of film vs. video. I've recognized that - sadly - these kinds of reasons are often insignificant. Though creatives might wish for something to be true, the actual cause for such sea change will unlikely consider their motives.
Having said that, I never imagined that biggest bag of Nails in the Coffin of Film might be actor's union contracts.
Whenever people have walked up to me and said, "why can't we just switch to hydrogen power" (I tend to attract this kind of interaction), I start out with explaining about "building vast infrastructure" and "can you imagine what it would take to replace all the gas stations" rhetoric. It's frankly been hard to imagine how a transition from fossil-fueled vehicles might ever happen, and at best I've only suggested that it would have to start with some small municipality banning or penalizing fossil-fueled vehicles.
That a venture-capitalist with a background in giant systems integration might actually be the way to go makes sense. We'll see.
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