April 2006 Archives
Behavioral economics helps explain why deregulation of media is a problem.
On the plane to San Francisco on Monday morning I finally got around to reading "The Marketplace of Perceptions" from Harvard Magazine. It's all about behavioral economics, a field I can't help but be fascinated by. It's basically the place that economics/finance meets my marketing/cultural studies world. The big point of it is that "the ways in which alternatives are framed -- not simply their relative value -- heavily influence the decisions people make." Of course they do. Seems obvious, but in a world where it was long believed that people acted in their best interest at all times, this must have been, and still is, a hard one to swallow.
What was most interesting about the article, however, wasn't overly finance-centric. Rather, it discussed the political implications of the idea of framing.
We have had 30 years of deregulation in the United States, freeing up markets to work their magic. “Is that generally welfare-enhancing, or not?â€? Wanner asks. “Framing can call that into question. Everyone agrees that there’s informational asymmetryâ€â€so we have laws that ensure drugs are tested, and truth-in-advertising laws. Still, there are subtle things about framing choices that are deceptive, though not inaccurate. We have the power of markets, but they are places where naive participants lose money. How do we manage markets so that the framing problem can be acknowledged and controlled? It’s an essential question in a time of rising inequality, when the well-educated are doing better and the poorly educated doing worse.â€?
I think that's a really big point. I tried a couple times to explain why, but it wasn't coming out right so I decided to just throw the quote out there and see if anyone else bites.
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Finally have enough fodder again for one of my patented weekly wrapups.
It's been a busy week in the links world for me. Lots of great reading out there that I've finally had time to get to. Before I send you to the far reaches of the internet, though, let me give you a quick roundup of what's going on around here.
- I redesigned the site. If you are an RSS reader, click over and take a look.
- I'm headed to DC this weekend. I won't have much time, but if you're around, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up.
- I'm headed to San Fran next week. Looking forward to trying to catching up with a few people. If you're around, please let me know.
- While I'm at it, if you're ever around New York, please let me know.
Alright, now onto what you all came here for: 10x link love.
- Aaron Swartz on what it means to be an intellectual. Aaron puts it well: "I enjoy deep discussions of punctuation and other trivialities. I could try to justify this taste -- some argument that we should think about everything we do so that we don't do everything we think about -- but why bother? Do I have to justify enjoying certain television shows as well? At some point, isn't pure enjoyment just enough? After all, time isn't fungible." Tell me about it, I don't know what I'd do without serious conversations about seemingly trivial matters.
- Over at the AIGA Design Forum Steven Heller discusses the co-option of the term 'intelligent design'.
- It seems like every time George Siemens posts something, I like to it. This time he writes about learning in an unstructured way. "I wonder if we couldn't extend that value of learning slightly if we didn't equate it so strongly with structure. I think we can achieve intended outcomes, even if the learning isn't structured or sequenced in a particular manner," writes Siemens. The perfect example of this is kids learning to play video games. They don't read instruction manuals, they just start punching buttons until they figure out what to do. The manual is a reference if needed, but certainly not required reading.
- Scott Berkun lists the ten things VPs never say, with gems like: "It's my fault" and "If we ship on time, we’ll party at my house."
- Seed Magazine has a great collection of infographics on the state of the planet.
- A few weeks ago Design Observer pointed to a 1995 story about a flaw in the engineering of the Citicorp building and how it was dealt with. It's an amazing read.
- Speaking of Design Observer, they have a great interview with the symbol for man that adorns restroom signs across the country.
- According to Influx Insights, the new trend in design is character.
- Finally, Douglas Rushkoff has a great piece titled TV After Advertising (and Advertising After TV) that explores, amongst other things, the ultimate issue that advertising is often trying to cover up: shitty products.
Alright, so I only got to nine. Sue me.
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It seems like Movable Type's dynamic publishing isn't performing with the upgrade.
A lot of things stopped working around here today. Haven't completely nailed the problem, but I believe it's because of PHP 5.1.2. If anyone's got any info about why Movable Type 3.2 dynamic publishing and PHP 5.1.2 might not play so well together, please let me know.
Essentially what was happening was that container tags were only looping through once. Actually, if you pop over to the archives, you can see the problem in action. Monthly archives only display one entry
Anyway, forgive the problems around here for the mean time. I'll try to get everything fixed.
Update (4/20/06): I fixed it! Turns out that PHP 5.12 doesn't play nice with the version of Smarty that comes with Movable Type 3.2. For those of you having this problem, all you need to do is go into the folder you installed Movable Type and open up the Smarty folder (php/extlib/smarty). There you should install Smarty 2.6.13 (older versions may work, this is what I installed). When you're all done, just go do a rebuild and everything should be back to normal.
Since I had a hell of a lot of trouble finding anyone else who had written about this problem, here are some Google keywords to help potential troubleshooters: dynamic publishing, movable type, mt, php 5.1.2, 5.1.2, error, problem, smarty, 3.2. Anyway, hope this helps someone out.
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Thinking about what comes after everyone's doing "user generated content"
[Editor's Note: This is in response to a question my boss asked me and heavily influenced by these three posts. Also, just to make it clear, when I refer to "user generated content" in this piece, I'm mostly referring to the trend within the marketing/advertising industry. If you're not familiar with this, check out this New York Times article about Chevy's attempt. ]
"User generated content" is an obvious step for companies. Essentially its a free way to get publicity and content. The problem is, in the not too distant future all these users generating content will start to ask themselves why they're not getting paid. Eventually leading to, "What the hell am I getting out of giving this company my content?"
The obvious answer is distribution. They're providing you the audience you didn't have. But if every company has user generated content then all the differentiation starts to diminish and it becomes a distribution channel just as filled with crap as the rest of them.
At that point we're back to square one: A medium in need of better filtering. The parallels between "user generated content" and blogging seem appropriate. They're both ways for 'regular Joe's' to get their voice heard. What we're finding out in the blog world, is that when you have millions of voices, you need a good way to filter the signal from the noise. Things will be no different in the world of user generated content. After all, we only have a limited amount of attention and if we spend it all trying to find good content we won't have any left when we finally get there.
That's where we're headed: The branding opportunities of the future lie in the filtering and repackaging of content. Companies that figure out how to actually help people spend their attention more effectively will be richly rewarded. Think about it, less and less onus is being placed on who created the content, while more and more is placed on where you found it. Just ask YouTube: It's a destination, a repackager of content. Part of their magic is that they allow anyone to put a YouTube video on their own site. As a result their branding seed is spread far and wide.
By tapping into the virality of video content online and adding value as an easy way to distribute they have made their own name viral. Isn't the dream of every brand to have their name plastered far and wide?
Update (4/18/06): Added an extra note to narrow my focus in the editor's note.
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This site has now moved to its third design in three years. Here are some reasons why.
So everything on my 3rd redesign is starting to come together and I just wanted to give a quick explanation for the changes.
Over the last year or so I have been tweaking the design to make it work, but I've still been kind of upset about the overall usability. The archives sucked and there was just a lot of room for improvement. So when I started out I wrote down these as my goals:
- Fix the archives: Make them easier to browse.
- Make the search work better: The old version had links on top and entries beneath instead of having them split up.
- Make it not hurt my eyes: How come no one ever told me it hurts your eyes when you look at it on a real monitor (not a laptop).
- Bubble up categories: There was no mention of categories on the homepage of the old site. I wanted that to change.
Here's how I addressed those issues:
- I made the archives revolve around categories now, since I think they're far more important than dates. If someone is looking for a date they're most likely looking for something specific that they can use the search for. Categories are much better for browsing. I also added a way to browse categories by the number of entries in the category. This required a bit of PHP, but I think it's a very logical way to browse. I'm also in the process of paring down the categories and adding descriptions for each. That will take a bit of time, though.
- I split the search to display entries on the left and sidenotes on the right. Now you can see them side-by-side rather than having to wade through a bunch of links when you're looking for an entry.
- By adding some more contrast and changing the link color to a darker green it shouldn't be as painful on the eyes. If it is, let me know.
- The importance of categories as a browsing tool I already mentioned. I wanted a way to see the category of an entry on the homepage. That's what the little last five table does. (I used a table, blasphemous, huh?)
There are some other little changes you'll discover (changed the comment form, added previous/next entry links). There are also a few things that aren't done (haven't quite figured out what's going in the lower right box on an entry).
Otherwise, though, I'm very happy with the way it's working. I think that I've improved not only the look, but also the experience of the site. Let me know what you think (and if anything is wrong).
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I'm about 40% done changing the look and feel of the site.
For those of you seeing this at NoahBrier.com rather than in an aggregator, you'll notice things look a little different. Since it's really late right now I don't really feel like getting into everything, but this is the beginning of a realignment. There's still lots more work to do, but feel free to poke around and let me know what you think/what doesn't work. The archives still need lots of work (which is ironic since that's the main reason I wanted a change). If you visit them, though, you'll start to see some of my plans. My goal is to make this site as user friendly as possible (which includes a little more readable). Why didn't anyone ever tell me the bright green on a regular monitor hurts your eyes?
Lots of pages still have the old design, so you can get a last look at it.
Anyway, I'll give the full rundown when I get a chance to finish up the changes. Until then here's to hoping everything's working that needs to. For now, I'm going to bed, I've been staring at this thing for about seven hours.
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We're moving towards a world of filters. So, what's new?
Hear me out on this one.
The other day I was sitting at lunch having a conversation about the mediation of information with a friend of mine and eventually stumbled onto something I hadn't really considered before: While we all praise the internet as unmediated, we are constantly trying to create filters to help mediate.
Now I don't think this is a problem, just an interesting fact. Filters are the most important thing going on in the internet world right now. That's what all this attention stuff, unbundled stuff and all the other things people are talking about eventually lead to. So what's a filter?
In the science world it's "A porous material through which a liquid or gas is passed in order to separate the fluid from suspended particulate matter." In computer terms its a program that sorts data based on some determined criteria. A newspaper or television station is a kind of filter in that it makes a decision about what it shows and what it doesn't.
One of the arguments against the personalization/filterization of the web is that it will close us off from everything but that which we're interested in. How can you trust it? What if it misses something? The thing is, the conscious decision to purchase a particular newspaper has the exact same results. Both are filters, only difference is one has an editor at the helm. Yes, the editor may make decisions that wouldn't fit into the rules of your 'filtered homepage,' but you can't deny that by purchasing the New York Times you are making a decision about what kind of news you will and won't be reading.
This is the great thing about the web. It can make people understand that everything is mediated. Damn straight you shouldn't just trust your personalized homepage to give you all the information you might need, but you also shouldn't trust your newspaper. Your personalized homepage may favor computer stories over human interest, but what's wrong with favoring? Fox News seems to get away with it just fine. The big problem jumps out when people believe they are seeing the whole picture.
This conversation eventually led me to thinking about 'consumption cycles.' In the internet age can we label the intermediaries between information and myself? Does it follow any kind of pattern? I'll save that for next time . . .
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Things I've been doing lately that have caused the decline in entries.
I've been pretty bad about writing her for awhile now. It's nothing personal, I've just been incredibly busy lately doing things like:
- Working. Like crazy. Should calm down at the end of the month, but it'll be pretty insane until then. Haven't really even had time to check email, so please don't take it personally. Also, I will be out in San Francisco for a few days at the end of April, I'll be very busy, but if anyone wants to try and meet up, drop me a line.
- Playing with Wordpress. I've mentioned that I've been thinking about a redesign, well in addition I've been considering moving to Wordpress (I currently use Movable Type. So far I've found some good stuff and some bad stuff.
Good Stuff: Everything builds on the fly. So much better than having to rebuild entries all the time. Also means you can access just about anything at just about any time.< br/>
Bad Stuff: I hate how the default is for it to format tags for you. For instance, it automatically spits out a list of categories as an unordered list. Kind of pisses me off. Luckily it's not too hard to go into the functions and change that stuff.
- Not reading. As if there was any question that there's a correlation between how much you read and how much you think, this proves it. I've read very little lately, and hence have had few things worth writing about. I need that input to get my mind working.
- Drinking coffee. Writing this one is really just an excuse to tell you all that Dunkin' Donuts has a whole wheat donut. Now I get the carb conscious thing (though I don't completely agree with it), but doesn't a donut defeat the purpose? The thing is covered in sugar! Who cares if it's whole wheat?
That's it for now. Hopefully there will be more coming soon . . . Oh, and if anyone's got any Wordpress tips, feel free to throw them my way.
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To understand both media and design you must understand that the medium is the message.
Last night over drinks I got into a fairly interesting discussion about my feelings on design. I don't really feel like going into the whole thing because it sat on the edge of the "art vs. design" debate as well as the "what is design" question. But I did come to one conclusion that I found very interesting.
Eventually the conversation led to The Huffington Post and specifically the blog entry George Clooney posted, that turned out to actually be a bunch of quotes of his stuck together by Huffington. When people got upset, Huffington responded that "the medium isn't the message; the message is the message." Obviously I completely disagree with this and, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she later backed down from the statement and apologized.
In the case of Clooney's fake blog entry, you can't separate the content from the context. Yes, everything in the entry was really said by him, but not at once, not in a blog entry and not on the Huffington Post. All of that matters. Clooney saw the distinction, saying, "These are not my writings, they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference."
The reason there's a huge difference is because the medium is the message. The context around the information is equally important to the information it conveys. That's why I think I'm so drawn to design. It's the same idea. You are providing the context for the content and in the best case scenario, the two live together in a way that cannot be undone.
I don't think design is theoretical, I'm not all that interested in designers perspectives. Design, to me, is all about the user/reader/viewer/whateverer. Whatever they walk away with is what's been designed. If it's successful they walk away with your message and more. If it's not, they leave with a different impression than the one you may have hoped for. Neither content or context holds more weight at that point, all that matters is what's inside that person's head.
Does that make sense?
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Hi, I'm 