Tag Archives: Early Net Culture

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.

“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.

Leaving the Information Age

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http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2007/09/22/leaving-the-information-age/
Leaving the Information Age
I missed the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age but have been pretty much in the thick of the Information Age, so I was a little startled to learn that it was over. Or nearly so.
David Wienberger pointed to an essay by Joe Andrieu titled “Leaving the Information Age,” written in September of 2007. It makes a compelling case for the the idea that we’re nearing the end of the Information Age:
As cable television and the Internet invaded our homes, we began to find that we could satisfy many of our wants and desires through Information rather than physical goods. It was liberating, intoxicating, and led to one of the most outrageous economic bubbles since the heyday of the Industrial Age triggered the Great Depression.
Similarly, the Information Age is, (surpise!), defined by MORE information. More channels. More telephones. More email. More websites. More advertising. More media.
And in a (perhaps) surprisingly short period, we now find ourselves echoing a new version of the mantra that ended the Industrial Age: “Enough! We don’t need so much Information!”
Mr. Andrieu makes the topic much more interesting than your junior high history teacher.

I missed the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age but have been pretty much in the thick of the Information Age, so I was a little startled to learn that it was over. Or nearly so.

David Wienberger pointed to an essay by Joe Andrieu titled “Leaving the Information Age,” written in September of 2007. It makes a compelling case for the the idea that we’re nearing the end of the Information Age:

“As cable television and the Internet invaded our homes, we began to find that we could satisfy many of our wants and desires through Information rather than physical goods. It was liberating, intoxicating, and led to one of the most outrageous economic bubbles since the heyday of the Industrial Age triggered the Great Depression.

Similarly, the Information Age is, (surpise!), defined by MORE information. More channels. More telephones. More email. More websites. More advertising. More media.

And in a (perhaps) surprisingly short period, we now find ourselves echoing a new version of the mantra that ended the Industrial Age: “Enough! We don’t need so much Information!”

Mr. Andrieu makes the subject of “ages” much more interesting than your junior high history teacher. Well worth the read.

“The revolution will be Twittered”

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“As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message. Here’s the Twitter from a Moussavi supporter:

ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.” — Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish

Video fastest-growing media platform in history

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So says a new report from social media research consultancy Trendstream and research firm Lightspeed. From story at MediaPost.com:

“In one week in January, 97 million Americans viewed a streaming clip online — as many as are tuning into any major broadcast network — according to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. active Web users ages 16-65. What’s more, with 72% of U.S. Web users watching clips online, Web video outstrips both blogging and social networking, and is now the leading “social-media platform.”

The “broadcast mode is dead,” said Tom Smith, managing director of Trendstream. “Now is the time for co-creation, user distribution and a true democratization of video content.”

And the new video-ready iPhone will just accelerate this trend. (via @malloryglosier)

11,000 channel “radio”

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“The VTech IS9181 is a Wi-Fi music streaming device, designed to make accessing the near-infinte variety of Internet radio as easy as traditional radio.”

“The IS9181 connects to any wireless network (802.11 b & g) and lets you access more than 11,000 free Internet radio stations worldwide. It also lets you access audio files (MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, Real) stored on you Wi-Fi-enabled computer (PC or Mac). The IS9181 also offers localized weather (based on zip code).” (via Podcasting News)

My first thought was, “If I’m running a radio station, it better be one of the 11,000.” My next thought was, “It better be one of the ‘best’ of the 11,000.”

“If we don’t teach our children about Barney Fife and Jack Tripper, who will?”

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“Every day, 350,00 babies are born at risk of not knowing that Bob Barker was the host of The Price is Right. Pop Literate is dedicated to doing something about that.

This is a place for you to find parenting tools you need to turn out healthy, well-adjusted children. Children who won’t be shunned by their peers because they believe David Copperfield is only a Charles Dickens character.”

The blog died long ago, alas. A good idea.

“A prideful Luddite is the worst kind”

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Tony Messenger (@tonymess) tweets us to this lament by St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan who confesses to being “proud of knowing nothing about the Internet.”

“But all around me the Others, with their secret knowledge, are gaining power. I got another e-mail today about optimizing search engines. Also, a note that an editor will be helping us refine our blogging, social networking and sub-channel pages.

Like a student who feels an increasing sense of panic as he hears the teacher talk in gibberish about an upcoming test, I realize that none of the terms mean anything to me.”

I know quite a few people who share Mr. McClellan’s views/pain. Most seem to resent being expected to know how to use the Internet and computers and such. I’m grateful I’m not in a position of “forcing” anyone to learn these skills and happy that I am able to help those who want to.

Mayor’s blog

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Let’s say you’re the mayor of a medium sized town in the midwest and you’re excited about work getting started on a new federal courthouse project in your city. You send a little press release to the local radio and TV stations and the daily newspaper, hoping they might shoot some video or stills of the big cranes or have you on the morning show to talk about what this means for the community.

You might get a mention but not much more. Let’s face it, your new courthouse has limited interest. So you take your Flip video camera out to the site and put a couple of minutes on your blog. And you do this for anything you think the people in your town might care about. How long before your blog becomes a regular stop for those interested in local news? Cost? Virtually zero.

I helped my friend John get started blogging but he’s figuring out the video and YouTube thing. And in all fairness, the local media might have done stories on this. But I can understand if they didn’t. I made similar decisions back in the day. After all, there was only 24 hours of airtime. You had to go with what appealed to the largest number of people. Now you can appeal to literally everybody.

You could have a local government page; a local sports page; a local church news page; a local education page… you get the idea. Provide the hosting; tools and training and use your medium to promote them all.

This is happening all over the country and it will continue. Because people like John have news they want to share and there’s just no more friction.