Prediction: Europeans and Asians take over rap

SF Chronicle on jazz fans complaining about too few African American jazz players, although people of African descent pioneered the genre -- in America.

The same will happen to rap and hip-hop. In a generation the vast majority of rappers will be of European, Asian, or mixed descent, and there will be similar complaints.

The big question is this: What is the next big mainstream genre? Will it be pioneered by African Americans? Kitchen Linker has no idea what the next big genre is, but suspects it will be pioneered by Africans or Indians not living in America -- or perhaps Brazilians.

America is too rich, complacent, and stifled by copyright to be the wellspring of the next big musical-cultural shift. "America" includes African Americans.

Taxing Avatars

Tim Bray writes about calculations that say an avatar in an online world consumes as much electricity as an average Brazilian. Kitchen Linker thinks this is a little exaggerated, as a human uses many other forms of energy. But those who run server farms could use some additional incentive to become more efficient. Yes, that's right, time to trot out the Pigouvian energy tax yet again. That might not be bad for Sun, Tim's employer, which apparently sells efficient servers and has an enviroguru.

Besides, aren't politicos looking for a way to tax virtual worlds anyway? An energy tax is a way to do it non-intrusively.

But long term virtual worlds are all good for the environment. They can allow us to cut back on car and plane trips. As Kitchen Linked before, IT is an efficiency-enabler.