Category Archives: Media & Culture

“Software Is Media”

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As software has moved from running on local machines to running in the browser a number of important things have happened. One of the most important changes is software has become media.

Like other forms of media, software produces an emotional reaction when we use it. Software needs to have a “voice.” It needs to be more than a simple utility. We need to feel something when we use software. The best software does this incredibly well.

Like media, the interfaces that present software to us need to be stylized, designed, and elegant. Software can be beautiful and the best software is beautiful.

And like media, the most important measurement for software today is the number of engaged users. The more engaged users a piece of software has, the more impactful it can be.

Once we’ve begun to treat some of the software in our lives as media, we are going to treat all the software in our lives as media. And the software that is ugly, void of emotion and voice will not work as well for us. So I believe all software is media and will be seen as such by its users.

— Fred Wilson at Business Insider

Some won’t make it to the new world

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Michael Wolff speaking at MediaGuardian’s Changing Media Summit in London:

“The chickens are coming home to roost. Most of the people who run traditional media will not be the people to step in to this new world.

“There is a line and people are not going to get over it. It used to be, up until 18 months ago, ‘there is a line but I hope I get to retirement before I cross that line’. This recession has meant people really understand that they won’t.

“It’s been happening since before the internet – it’s not because of it.

“Every big-city newspaper in the U.S. is either in bankruptcy or will be in bankruptcy in the foreseeable future – that’s 12 months. The newspaper industry in the U.S. is over.

“This has happened again and again and again in every industry – new technology has come along, and you just can’t make the change; it almost inevitably never happens. It’s easier to start with people who have no historical bias.

“If you’ve spent your career in one technology, in one business model, it’s just not efficient to have to undo that.“

I think Mr. Wolff is right and his comments [emphasis mine] remind me of a post by Jay Rosen from 5 years ago.

“An industry that won’t move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don’t have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise.

Revolutions invent and destroy and only go one way

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Seth Godin on the internet revolution:

“The internet is like Ice 9. It changes what it touches, probably forever. We keep discovering firsts, the biggest viral video ever, the most twitter followers ever, the fastest bestseller ever… And we constantly discover nevers as well. There’s never going to be a mass market TV show that rivals the ones that came before. There’s never going to be a worldwide brand built by advertising ever again either. And Michael Jackson’s record deal is the last one of its kind… And there may never be a job like that job you used to have either.

Revolutions are like that. They invent and destroy and they only go one way. It’s like watching a confused person in a revolving door for the first time. They push backwards, try to slow it down, fight the rotation… and then they embrace the process and just walk and it works.”

Know anybody fighting that revolving door? Yeah, me too. And there’s no way to help them. I guess a revolution is good or bad depending on where you are. The Czar and the French aristocrats thought their revolutions sucked. The people on the ramparts had a different view.

“My head is in the cloud”

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Dave Pell (“Tweetage Wasteland”) describes a condition in which more of us are finding ourselves:

“My phone tells me numbers, Facebook reminds me of birthdays, my nav system gives me directions, Google tells me how to spell, my bookmarks remind me of what I’ve read, my inbox tells me who I’m having a conversation with – my mind has been distributed across several devices and services.

My head is in the cloud.

Now, after a few years of this, I realize that when I look up from the screen I know almost nothing. And maybe that would be fine if the absent phone numbers and upcoming dates were freeing space for deeper and more introspective thought. But I sense that my addiction to the realtime stream is only making room for the consumption of a faster stream.”

Yeah, I think about that, too. But I’m not sure I would have remembered all of that stuff without the cloud and my connections to it.

On a somewhat related note… my Facebook “cancellation” takes effect on Sunday. I canceled my account a few weeks ago. FB gave me the option of “deactivation” but I said, no,  please delete my account. Seems FB makes you wait a few weeks, in hopes you will come to your senses.

I wouldn’t normally give such a decision a second thought but Facebook has become The Place (for the time being) and I should probably be there. But I’m not. And don’t expect to be. But I’ve come up with a rationalization:

We have a finite amount of time and attention. It’s impossible to be in every social space. Assuming that everyone on the planet is –or soon will be– on Facebook, taking a pass will protect the little attention I have left.

April Winchell has a better music collection than you

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Paul Winchell was a well known ventriloquist in the mid-1960s, the voice of Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. His daughter is April Winchell has her own accomplishments, including a website where you can find some great music.

There’s a collection of cover versions of Stairway to Heaven, including

AUDIO: The Dixie Power Treo (tuba and banjo)
AUDIO: Dolly Parton.

But my favorite section was Terrifying Christian Recordings.

Then I Start to Yodel by Princess Ramona

Jogging for Jesus

Amazing Grace (Tim Gibson as Donald Duck)

AUDIO: Then I Start to Yodel by Princess Ramona
AUDIO: Jogging for Jesus;
AUDIO: Amazing Grace (Tim Gibson as Donald Duck)

BONUS: Collection (PDF( of Terrifying Christian Recordings

“Information is not a scarcity”

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A few ideas from today’s post Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine blog:

“If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead. Or you’re screwed. Apply this rule to many enterprises: advertising, media, content, information, education, consultation, and to some extent, performance.”

“Relationships. That’s what the business of media must become. In our New Business Models for News, we began — just began — to project the value of the relationship a new media service can have in its community: creating events; educating; gathering and selling data; selling goods directly (as the Telegraph does, quite successfully); running networks to help others succeed; saving money by collaborating.”

“Information is not a scarcity, or at least it isn’t scarce for long. Yes, when I don’t know something, then the answer is scarce. But now it’s much easier to get that answer; Google will have it in .3 seconds and if it doesn’t and if enough of us ask it, then someone at Demand Media will write it for me and the rest of the world for $20. When news is new, its value is scarce (as Thomson Reuters Tom Glocer says, his information has its highest value in its first 3 milliseconds); but then that value deflates.”

Alrighty then.