September 2007 Archives
Sure we may be losing our memories, but who's to say it's a bad thing?
Mostly I find nostalgia annoying. Complaining about how things used to be only moves one further away from the real issues. In other words: Change happens, deal with it.
Memory, it turns out, is a perfect topic for the nostalgic set. Ever since Plato mentioned it in Phaedrus 300 years before Jesus, people have been bitching about how the kids can't remember anything anymore.
Two recent articles stoked the flames again for me. Though both went in decidedly different directions, in each one I thought I was going to hear a story about how digital technology is killing memory and how it's a BAD thing. The first, an article on Britney Spears' miserable VMA performance from the Times includes this paragraph: "Performance anxiety, heavy drinking and even hair extensions have been variously blamed for these lapses. But why blame the victims? They are just products of a culture that does not enforce the development of memory skills." The second article comes from the always brilliant Clive Thompson and is a lot more insightful. When I started reading his Wired article, I thought I was having deja vu:
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.
Now to be completely fair, I wouldn't call either author nostalgic. In fact, Thompson brings some real nuance to the argument and it makes for quite a good read. But you know there are people who will read each and moan about the state of things: Remembering back to the old days when knowing things was more important than knowing where to find them.
But that's not our world any longer. In the same way calculators made it hard to justify knowing how to do higher order math by hand, computer, and specifically sites like Google and Wikipedia, have made knowing vast amounts of facts seem like a waste of time.
I, happen to think all this change is a good thing. The best ideas come out of connections between disparate things. Our brains are especially well suited for making those connections, as it mirrors how we actually learn (as I understand it, neural pathways form when connections are made). What if we were actually made for a digital world?
Obviously, it's not so cut and dry. But nothing ever is. Whenever someone tells me that IM or text messaging is ruining interpersonal communications I take offense. In fact, I take offense when someone tells me that face-to-face conversation is preferable to email. It's not that I don't enjoy chatting with people in person, but rather that you can't compare media like that. We're not dealing with apples and apples. Face-to-face is great in some contexts, but email can be much better when you don't know someone so well, want evidence of the conversation or just need a quick answer.
When I saw Steven Johnson and Henry Jenkins speak a year ago, one of them (think it was Johnson, but can't remember exactly) gave a nice anecdote on this topic. In response to the violence in video games like Grand Theft Auto, he suggested that there was another very popular tradition amongst teenage boys that encourages violence and often the objectification of women. What's more, high school football is a school sponsored activity.
Nothing is ever cut and dry.
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A few links along with my thoughts about blogging.
Things are still pretty crazy around here and my brain is still a bit scattered . . . Instead of a proper post, here's a few links and some thoughts on blogging. Hope to return to your regularly scheduled programming this week.
Finally, got an email last week from Tina (aka swissmiss) with a few questions about blogging. In absence of other content around here, I asked her if she minded me posting my answers. If anyone else feels like answering them in the comments I'm sure she'd appreciate any additional insight.
What drives me to blog?
I do it for myself. It's a place where I can think out loud. I never start with a conclusion, rather I use writing on my blog as a thinking exercise. It also gives me an excuse for constantly seeking out new things and reading with a critical eye. If I didn't have a blog I don't know that I would underline books and magazines, but having that outlet gives me a reason. I love that stuff.
Who is afraid of what the blogosphere has and will become?
Lots of folks are quite frightened. Big media is scared because they've never had competition from outside their walls. In this day and age I compete with Fox (albeit on a very small scale) for people's attention. Fox, however, is used to a world where they compete with NBC and CBS. In that kind of competition the goal may be to take out another station, but never at the expense of television or the business model attached to it. However, I don't care about their medium or business model. Us bloggers are kind of like the crazy guy in the room, we're scary to fight because we (literally) have nothing to lose (actual dollars earned directly from my blog over three years: $0).
What is its role of blogs as a forum for ideas?
Not sure I understand the question completely . . . so I will just give some thoughts. I absolutely love that I can throw up a half-baked idea and get back responses from a group of absolutely brilliant people. On occasion it feels a bit like opinion outsourcing: I take an idea I haven't fully developed and get feedback and viewpoints I never would have been able to amass before I had this forum. The quality of the comments never cease to amaze me.
Where's the medium going NEXT?
I think blogs are going to move even further into the community realm. At the moment most blog software doesn't have many community features beyond comments, however, I expect we will see that evolution coming soon (Movable Type 4 actually includes some of it). They're the perfect micro-communities: Super-targeted and sharing common interests. On a small level I find myself connecting different blog readers together and wish more of this were built in.
That's it. Happy Monday.
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It's Tuesday morning, it's sunny in NYC and I don't have anything in particular to say.
So once again I've got a kind of crazy week and don't know that I have anything especially exciting to say, so it's going to be another link post. This week I'm off to speak at Promo Live in Chicago on a panel called "Social Media: Evolution to Execution". Herb Sawyer put it together and on the panel with me are David Armano and Rohit Bhargava, both of whom I've met before and have a lot of respect for, so it should be exciting. Sometime later this week I will try to post my slides as I'll be giving a little 10 minute intro to my state of mind . . .
Now onto some randomness . . .
- The PSFK LA Conference is today. It looks great (just as New York was). If you happen to be in LA, reading this today and can make it over, it looks like there are still some tickets available.
- Speaking of conferences, I'll be heading out to San Francisco for the Influx Ideas Conference on October 19th. The Influx crew was kind enough to hook up a blogger ticket for me and it should be a great time. Beyond speakers from all over the place there's going to be a section of the day devoted to five minute presentations from audience members. Plus Gareth and I will be there, so it must be fun, right? You can buy tickets here. (Also, I plan to stay a few extra days, so if you're around San Fran I'd love to meet up.)
- Okay, this cracked me up. The Onion reports that Pitchfork Gives Music a 6.8. Money line: "In the end, though music can be brilliant at times, the whole medium comes off as derivative of Pavement." So good . . . (As a side note, here's my favorite Pitchfork review ever.)
- Speaking of music, I love the song Foundations by Kate Nash.
- I love brunch. It's the best meal in the universe. I won't go into why right now, but here is New York Magazine's picks for the Best Sunday Brunches.
- They've banned smoking in London, just as they've done in other major cities and Seamus McCauley has some insights into what it means from an economics perspective: "So it turns out that banning smoking in pubs has not so much encouraged smokers to quit but instead provided them with a decisive competitive reproductive advantage if they keep puffing away. Drinking outside South London Pacific on Saturday night I came across this amusing demonstration of the law of unintended consequences: smirting, which is of course the practice of flirting while popping outside for a cigarette."
- My friend Michael Surtees has the story of how he ended up in NYC told in Unlimited Magazine. Read the whole article, but here's the shorthand: Michael mentioned on his blog he was coming to NYC and asked for recommendations of things to do. I suggested he buy City Secrets (the best NYC guidebook on the planet -- even for those who live here). We started chatting, he mentioned he was coming down to interview, I said he should come in and check out Renegade and a few weeks later he was driving a Uhaul with all his stuff from Canada.
- As a side note, I have been thinking about starting a site specifically to catalog those success stories. What do you all think?
- Loved this evolution of icons graphic. It shows buttons from Yahoo!, Adobe and Apple from 1996 to now.
- Daring Fireball on why Apple's ringtone move is a bit boneheaded (and why ringtones generally are bullshit).
- Finally, a great article that attempts to answer what Google is thinking about with all this 700mhz wireless spectrum stuff.
Okay, that's it. I'm off to Chicago this afternoon and then Jacksonville tomorrow evening. Will be back Friday in time for likemind, hopefully I'll see some of you there (or at least in pictures from the other 40+ locations around the world).
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After the disaster that was the MTV Video Music Awards, I add my two cents.
Since Sunday night, there has been a seemingly endless string of discussions about how horrendous MTV's VMA awards were. Most of them centered around Britney's performance which has been officially declared a train-wreck by congress.
Anyway, I can't pretend to have watched the whole thing, however, I did see enough that evening and then watch enough on the MTV site the next day to understand what all the buzz was about. After some interesting conversations with friends, I had been considering writing something about it, but I just didn't know where to begin. But then my friend Andy was kind enough to get the ball rolling with an unsolicited email:
Did you watch the MTV VMA's this week? I watched it with my girlfriend, we are both pretty in tune with pop culture, media, youth, etc...and we found it to be unwatchable. I didn't know who 70% of the artists were, the performances and production were terrible, and the nominee announcement editing nearly gave me an epileptic seizure when they showed it before each award.
For the first time in a long time, I really felt disappointed in pop music and in MTV. The decline of MTV has obviously been a long time coming (since the Real World debuted some might say and started the slide from a music videos to content programming model), but it really felt to me, that this VMA's was the tipping point. It's over for MTV. They have just completely lost the audience that grew up with them.
So how do they save themselves? Do they? Can they? Should they? Would anyone care if they did? Do they even need saving, or is it just the evolution of the brand and the business and I am now officially out of the demographic?
At 29, I grew up with music based MTV and just can't get down with new MTV...but the 15 year olds of today, they have grown up with Real World and reality based MTV and this super polished, pre-packaged "here is your pop music and here are your manufactured pop stars" on a plate...so maybe I am another near 30 year old shaking my fist at these kids and their crazy rap music. Who knows.
I sometimes forget that everyone doesnt consume media like you or I might, with Last.fm and the like...maybe most people don't care that Comcast, and News Corp, and Viacom, etc all tell them what to listen to and what to like. Maybe the average person is fine with having their media wrapped up nicely and left on their doorstep. Maybe we're the crazy ones.
I took the bait and added my two cents (I also added a few thoughts as I was writing this time):
I was having a conversation about just this the other day. The VMAs were a trainwreck, that seems indisputable. However, the question in my mind is why MTV didn't do anything about it. Surely someone must have noticed the thing sucked and mentioned it. Actually, from the minute I turned it on I noticed how the camera work seemed odd. In a way I felt like I was watching a reality show (like Laguna Beach or the Hills), not an awards show with a million dollar budget. Eventually it led me to wonder whether MTV had actually done this on purpose as a way to get people (like us) talking about them. [Seth seems in on this conspiracy theory as well.]
As for MTV, clearly the model has changed (no new news there). Music videos (and music generally) lives in the digital realm. With that said, music videos, I would argue, are more popular than ever before. What's more, three minute short-form content is no longer just an idea, it's a reality. MTV, in many ways, was about 25 years too early. The question, then, is how did they lose their way? Why are they not able to tap into current musical attitudes?
What's more, the thing that really struck me was the cruelty of the whole thing. Shelly Palmer nailed it with his entry about Britney's performance: "Tonight, I was profoundly sad for a star that is about to implode while others profit from her misfortune." It was so clearly a performance made to humiliate. Sarah Silverman had her monologue all ready to rip Britney down. It's almost as if MTV has taken on the personalities it asks of its faux-ality show stars: Shallow, backstabbing and cruel.
It's all quite odd. I think the big question is why MTV would let this happen? Sure "there's no such thing as bad publicity" and I may watch next year to see if it's even worse, however, my desire to turn on MTV at any other moment is non-existent. Sure I'm not the target and it's entirely possible that I am just being an old fart, but MTV seems to be struggling generally (outside The Hills).
So I think that's it. Sorry I couldn't add more insight Andy, hopefully some commenters can fill in the holes. Anyone?
Update (9/12/07): Andy has thrown up a poll on Quibblo: Has MTV Lost Its Appeal?
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Publishers are addicted to the stuff and it's doing them no good.
For some time I've been trying to find a good opportunity to write about online display advertising. It's not that I haven't had lots to say in the past, but I just haven't had a particularly good context. That was until Adblock Plus came around and started getting some press. Adblock Plus, you see, is a Firefox extension that (not surprisingly) blocks advertising on the web. Instead of seeing an ad in the right column of a New York Times article, for instance, there is just an empty white space. (To be honest, I think it's kind of cool looking.)
Noam Cohen described it like this in the Times:
The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.
From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter.
It's that last sentence I find especially interesting. Click-through rates are abysmal and we've known for quite sometime that people are banner blind, yet the industry just keeps pushing along. To me it's always been a lack of creativity: Publishers who came from a world of traditional media were completely uninterested in imagining a new model. Then, as new online-only publishers entered the arena, they didn't have the marketing savvy to understand that there may be another way to survive.
I think I've said it before, but online CPM (cost-per-thousand) advertising is like crack. Publishers know it's no good and won't last, but they are addicted and can't ween themselves off the stuff. The issues with it are numerous:
- They still assume reach is the ultimate measure. Problem is, reach is a number born out of a medium (television) where there was a limited spectrum. As a result, people were forced to watch one of a small number of stations. The internet doesn't live by the same rules, as the digital spectrum is infinite. As an advertiser you can extract much more value by offering a specific message to small group than a general message to a large one. Therefore, the real value on the internet becomes the ability to target, rather than the ability to reach massive numbers. (The issue with this, of course, is that the more targeted you are the less efficient you can be -- unless you're Google of course, in which case you can sell people's intentions rather than their eyeballs.)
- As I mentioned before, people are banner blind. Seriously, when's the last time you noticed a banner ad?
- As Umair mentions: "Ads are nothing but nuisance costs to most consumers." That, of course, is a larger advertising issue, but it's especially important in a medium where people are in far more control of what they read/watch/see.
All of this is to say I don't feel the slightest bit sorry about Adblock Plus. If people don't want to see ads they shouldn't have to. Publishers shouldn't complain about something like this, rather, they should take the hint and start finding new revenue streams. Take job boards, for instance, many bloggers are figuring out that this is a viable revenue stream that taps into the targeted nature of their small(ish) audience. I've been a strong proponent of this for a while, as I think it's the most simple example of a new media revenue stream that actually provides value for advertisers, publishers and users. The problem is, there aren't a ton of others out there (at least that I know of). As I wrote in July:
But what is a site with few visitors to do? Is it less valuable? The answer is no: It's actually more valuable to advertisers, but less valuable to the publisher (from a purely monetary standpoint). Being able to efficiently target an audience is worth a lot of money, however, if a site or other niche property doesn't have big numbers it may not be able to survive the CPM game. Instead of thinking about other ways to add value, however, most just end up folding. That's sad. While I don't have a definite answer for how to fix it (Google figured out one way, job boards are another interesting one), it's clear that Scott Karp is right when he says page views and CPMs are suppressing online advertising.
So there you have it. Pageviews/CPMs are the easy way out and Adblock Plus, while it may not ever become huge, is certainly another signal that publishers need to get more creative and stop relying on a model created for print and television.
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How musical lines are blurring.
After a totally insane weekend at Electric Picnic, I am back and ready to write again. I've got three entries in my head at the moment, so hopefully that means there will be a bit more real substance around here and a bit less randomness. Just so people can hold me to it, the entries are: "the death of the middle" (how the middle was never efficient, but it's a worse time than ever to try and compete in that space), another entry I can't remember at this very moment (damnit!) and "the blurriness of music today" (which is what you're going to read now).
I first start thinking about the idea of no more musical genres as I was sitting at Live Earth at the Meadowlands. The lineup included Keith Urban, AFI, Akon, Fallout Boy, John Mayer, Alicia Keys, Melissa Ethridge, Dave Matthews, Kanye West, Smashing Pumpkins, Bon Jovi, Roger Waters and the Police. There is very little all those bands have in common except for the fact they all sell a lot of records and they all played in New Jersey that day. I don't know that this is necessarily a new idea, but it really struck me that musical genres really seem to be disintegrating before our very eyes. We all know hip-hop is mainstream, but how about Kanye West sampling French electronic band Daft Punk in his newest single?
This weekend the same thing struck me. The mix of music at Electric Picnic was eclectic to say the least as bands like Iggy Pop, Bjork, Primal Scream, Polyphonic Spree, LCD Soundsystem and Chemical Brothers shared billing on the main stage and Beastie Boys, !!!, Nouvelle Vague and The Go! Team pulled huge crowds at side stages. Once again, these bands have incredibly little in common other than the fact they showed up on the program together, yet everyone seemed to enjoy every one. Sure there were enough people at both Live Earth and Electric Picnic to support different groups seeing different genres, however, I don't suspect that's actually what happened. Rather, people's musical tastes and music in general seems to be blurring to a point that finding the lines between genres is nearly impossible. It seems that everything is just "pop".
So how did we get here? Well, as I'm sure you expect me to say, I believe it has much to do with digital access to music. People are listening to more music than ever before (as the never-ending sea of white headphones attests to) and I expect this includes artists as well. In addition, the speed at which a band can reach popularity at this point is astounding. One review on Pitchfork for Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah! turned them into indie darlings overnight. Then, thanks to access to their music on MP3 blogs and the like, the buzz built to a level that eventually led to a mention in Rolling Stone as a hot new band for 2005 (an amazing feat if you consider that Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah! is one of the oddest bands on the planet and fronted by a lead singer who puts the "ine" in "whine").
Anyway, the point of all this is to say that the world is blurring and music is probably a great case study in how and why.
Update (9/5/07): Just remembered another entry I've been meaning to write: "What Google Gears is all about" (another "it's only a matter of time before Google takes over the universe" post)
Update (9/5/07): In going through my feeds I ran across this entry from Rob Walker comparing Kanye/Justin to Prince/Michael (or disputing that comparison, rather). Two sentences that relate to this entry: "I don’t know whether it’s a permanent change or just a slump, but pop music is just not the center of pop culture to the degree it was in the Prince/Jackson era, and surely West must be aware of this." and "Meanwhile, who is really the new Michael Jackson? The iPhone of course." My first reaction to the first quote was to say that pop music is still at the center, it's just that the definition has become much blurrier. However, while I do think pop's definition has changed, Walker has a point about the iPhone. I'd even take it further to say that nothing competes with Michael/Prince in their heyday because there's just more of everything competing for attention. Therefore, even the most popular things get a smaller percentage. (I know that's not incredibly insightful, but hey.)
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Hi, I'm 