[Update:Scott Karp’s response to this post is available as a comment and is worth reading.]
A recent post by Scott Karp reminded me of the communication gap that sometimes characterizes debates about the future of media. While Scott raises some good points in “Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media”, I think he misses or dismisses some important ones by setting up an “idealistic blogger” straw man and then tearing it down.
There is so much wrong with the blogger view that the monoliths of old media will be brought down and consumers will bask in the glory of infinite media choice — discussing, creating, tagging, rating (meta-ing) each other’s content in one big solipsistic frenzy. Everyone can create media. Everyone controls their own media. Everyone is media. Everything is conversation. Complete entropy. Complete harmony.
Please. Technology has brought about radical change, but the one thing that can and never will change is human nature — that’s the wild card that the digital cognoscenti are forgetting…This is so completely out of touch with the average person’s media consumption habits, and with basic human nature…It assumes that the average person knows exactly what they want and when they want it, and that they use Google to hone in on it, like a seagull diving at the ocean to snag a fish. But the truth is that most people are drowning in an ocean of infinite media (the blogosphere being the perfect storm). Even the bloggers are drowning… It’s not the democratic web. It’s the anarchic web.
Scott asserts that “If the Old Media brands don’t survive, a new hegemony will take it’s place.” His use of the word “hegemony” suggests a form of dominance and the “illusion of choice” rather than a genuine empowerment of choice from among an expanded array of options and content creators. But he doesn’t back up his prediction with much more than a claim that it’s based on “human nature.”
Scott sets up the argument by positing an “absolutist” Media 2.0 straw man, which allows him to pretty much ignore the more widespread and reasonable view of Media 2.0, which envisions, advocates and tries to enable increasingly democratized media choice and creation. The main points he makes are that: 1) a part of human nature is to avoid chronic mental overload and; 2) the current state of Media 2.0 tools sometime leads to increased mental overload. He seems to ignore the reality that these same tools do often empower consumer choice (and I’d argue) are increasingly able to also reduce mental overload.
The reality, it seems to me, is that we’re in the midst of an evolutionary trend that brings with it a mix of benefits and problems. That’s the way it’s always been with new technology, whether it be the printing press, the automobile, TVs, VCRs, the microprocessor, or whatever. Black & white arguments shed little light on these evolutionary trends, especially when we’re still in the midst of them.
Scott goes on to say:
Let’s say I’m the average person who wants to see what blogs are all about. I’m interested in health and wellness. Where do I go to find the best blogs on this topic? Technorati? Even in the very unlikely event I’ve heard of Technorati (the name is so off putting), a search of Health and Wellness produces a list of random blog posts, including many in Asian languages. (Did you know there is an entire blog about thrush?) I’m going to give up Prevention magazine for this?
To make the point that Technorati’s functionality remains relatively crude for some purposes is only to acknowledge that we’re still early in the evolution of web service functionality. And let’s remember that Google’s popularity first took hold among Stanford’s technical intelligentsia before it moved into and came to dominate mainstream web searching. And while Scott’s point about brand names may be a valid one with regard to Technorati, this seems to me not very relevant to the larger point he tries to make. And, while I’m no expert in branding, it seems that one could have made similar arguments about the Google and Tivo names, even though both have become extremely well known brands representing functionality that has dramatically changed the way millions of people use media, even as one (Google) has become an economic powerhouse, while the other (Tivo) struggles to develop a sustainable business model.
Scott also takes his shots at RSS:
How long has RSS been around? Three years? Five years? And still the adoption rate is only about 5%. For the average person, the ability to subscribe to an infinite number of content sources is not a panacea. It’s punishment.
Again, to make the point that the extension of choice often pushes ahead of user-friendliness in the world of web services begs the larger question of where we are eventually headed. And, to be fair to RSS and other web services, it seems that, when considering their relative pace of development, we should keep in mind that they are often rolled out in relatively crude and user-unfriendly alpha and beta modes, often for extended periods of time. So, to have an apples-to-apples comparison with a mass market product, say, like DVD players, we might want to include the time the latter spent in technical and market-research R&D when comparing its market acceptance curve to that of web services like RSS.
I start to agree, though only partly, with Scott when he says:
People want a filter. They want someone to tell them what’s important, what matters. They don’t have the energy or the time or the wherewithal to figure it out themselves. People are willing to sacrifice some freedom to live (what they perceive to be) a comfortable existence. (How else could Bush have gotten reelected?) “Walled gardens” online may well be at risk, as Bill Burnham argues, but consumers may not be ready to exit Eden — at least there’s the illusion that you can trust what you find.
Mark Pinkus makes a similar point in a post arguing that Fred Wilson [is] “drinking too much web 2.0-laide” when Fred advises television executives to “take [their] content, microchunk it, put a couple calls to a video ad server in the middle of it, and let it go wherever it wants to go, safe in the knowledge that whenever the show is viewed, [you’ll] get to run a couple 15 second spots in the middle of it (which [you] could change whenever [you] wanted to and which [you] could measure).” According to Fred, [t]his is where media is going and its not going to be stopped.” (posts by Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo and Richard MacManus help explain how Fred’s advice might be implemented).
Mark’s response to Fred’s post is:
[I] will posit that the future of media is found in the past. the advent of every new form of video delivery has started in the same place - p*rn. this is followed by a lot of failing attempts to get people to pay for marginal crap, which is finally followed by a few ballsy guys like the rupert murdochs who place huge bets on super high value content like box office movies (HBO)…this leads to my biggest lesson in consumer media - past, future, present - and that’s that it’s all about brand. in a world of 500 channels all you can hope for is a brand.
A commenter agrees with Mark while also making a point that raises possibilities beyond Mark’s vision of p*rn-powered early-adopters followed by the emergence of a handful of dominant brands like HBO.
right on, Mark! it’s about brands — which are simultaneously aggregators, filterers, AND creators of content.
This comment and Mark’s about brand, and Scott’s references to Prevention magazine, Walled Gardens and trust, raise important points about strong tendencies in human behavior. They suggest that the functional power of media-related brands is their ability to aggregate, filter and create content and, by doing so effectively and reliably, to garner trust, attention, revenue, market power and relatively high margins.
But this does not mean that new “media functionality” and “content” brands and even a much-expanded mix of brands can’t emerge, as new tools enable more effective and customized aggregation and filtering of content in ways that empower users without overloading them with too many hard-to-understand-and-compare choice. I’d suggest that this goal of “empowering without overloading” is what the developments some of us refer to as Web 2.0, Television 2.0 and Media 2.0 are all about. I’d also argue that these goals are achievable and are already being partially achieved.
Sure, Technorati and other new services have yet to achieve mass market status, but others, like Google, Tivo and the iTunes/iPod combo, are already having major impacts on media use. Today, if my wife and I want to find out about something—whether it’s a travel destination, a health issue, or just some obscure subject that came up over dinner—our first step is often to “Google” it. And, while my octogenarian parents spend a lot less time on the web (they don’t have broadband, for one thing) even they have adopted a new form of “media aggregation and filtering.” It’s called Tivo. It’s become the way they watch TV, and when I visit them, I almost never see them scrolling through the channels to “see what’s on.” The media brands they relate to are specific programs, not the channels that carry them or the companies that develop and deliver them. That’s a primitive form of the “microchunking” Fred and others are talking about.
The combination of iPod and iTunes is another case of a new technology platform having a rapid and powerful impact on media use. And again, its about combining user empowerment and choice with sufficient ease-of-use (in terms of both hardware and software), not to mention a healthy dose of style and hipness.
The proliferation among younger people of iPods, next-generation cell phones that play music and video, instant messaging, and “multimedia/community” web sites like MySpace, are a testament to the fact that younger generations are less burdened by technology learning curves, which might be more accurately described as “habit unlearning” curves.
This suggests that we need to be careful in how broadly we interpret Scott’s point about “basic human nature.” Yes, even these younger folks are likely to be uncomfortable with too much mental overload and to look to trusted sources for guidance. But what may be overloading for my parents or for me won’t necessarily be so for those in their twenties and teens. And the particular brands (and the way they create and package content and functionality) that garner loyalty from younger generations may be very different from those that did so for older generations. And, while Scott predicts future brand “hegemony,” there’s no clear evidence that the understandable desire for market power by companies and for trusted sources by consumers will necessarily translate into hegemony rather than an expanded array of more specialized “trusted sources,” none of which can claim broad hegemony in the provision of content and services.
One last point about “basic human nature.” I think Scott’s blanket statement that it’s “one thing that can and never will change” clouds the real issues. Human nature is a very complex thing, with incredible variation from person to person and even from moment to moment for the same person. Most of us, at different points in time, have manifested both the worst and best of this “nature,” depending upon the specifics of a situation and what part of our “nature” that situation most pointedly triggered.
I’d suggest that the manifestation of human nature’s varied elements is heavily influenced by a mix of individual and collective history and environmental factors, and that this history is most accurately viewed as a complex interaction of billions of individual choices and actions made virtually every moment of every day…something even Google or the NSA don’t have the analytical horsepower to predict very well.
I’d cast the question as “are we, as individual and collective human beings, evolving, and can we develop tools that help us do so,” not (as Scott seems to do) whether everyone will “create and control their own media” and live in “complete harmony.”
I think the answer to my question is yes. And while this evolution sometimes happens so gradually and haltingly as to be indiscernable, at other times it moves in noticeable and even dramatic steps (the founding of American democracy and the rise of the Internet being two noteable examples).
Of course, there are pushes and pulls in this process—signs of devolution amidst the evolution. But I’d argue that, overall, there’s a measurable trend toward the latter. If not, we may all be in trouble. For example, if we dismiss the potential for evolution, it seems reasonable to look back at history and conclude that humankind will eventually use the most powerful weapons at its disposal to deal with disagreements among nations. But maybe an equally justifiable case can be made that humanity is instead travelling an evolutionary road—albeit a bumpy and sometimes circuitous one—toward increased freedom, democracy and creation of tools and systems to support this evolution.
None of us can predict which of these two hypotheses about the future will prove to be more true. But, what I think the “bloggers” Scott stereotypes are really saying (at least this one), is that we individually and collectively have a significant degree of choice as to which road we travel, and that much of the power of the Internet, web services and other new technologies is that they allow those choosing similar roads to connect, cooperate, collaborate and co-create. Where it all will lead, none of us can know. But that doesn’t mean its not worth using these new tools in an effort to move the human evolution forward, even if the impact of our efforts must begin—and may even end—within a small circle of influence. And so we blog, develop web services, and launch ventures we hope will thrive economically while inching the evolution forward.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 9:37 PM | Print | Comments (1)
In the New York Times, Randall Stross echoes some points made by Larry Lessig about network neutrality. And, like Lessig, he cites unfavorable comparisons between U.S. broadband speeds and prices and those found in other developed economies, including Japan (100 Mbps for $25/mo.) and Stockholm (1 Gbps for $120/mo.).
Today, the network carrier has a minor, entirely neutral role in this system — providing the pipe for the bits that move the last miles to the home. It has no say about where those bits happened to have originated. Any proposed change in its role should be examined carefully, especially if the change entails expanding the carrier’s power to pick and choose where bits come from — a power that has the potential to abrogate network neutrality. This should be taken into account when Baby Bells say they need to extract more revenue from their networks in order to finance service improvements.
Consumers will pay one way or the other, whether directly, as Internet access fees, or indirectly, as charges when a content company opts for special delivery and passes along its increased costs to its customers. It would be better for the network carriers to continue to do as they have, by charging higher rates for higher bandwidth.
Stross’ last point strikes me as very important. If pipe owners start charging both end users and independent web service providers for use of their access networks, it seems they’ll have strong economic incentives to reduce the price of access, while increasing the fees charged to service providers that compete with services they provide themselves.
And, since we’re assuming they won’t be required to charge their own service units these same fees, the logical extension of this pricing system is that pipe-owners will have powerful leverage to squeeze the profit out of any competing service provider’s business model, by simply lower the price of end-user access and bumping up the fees charged to service providers. This seems all the more likely when we have a duopoly in access networks. Its pretty much what has happened in the broadband ISP business.
Understandably, cable and telephone companies would rather have only each other to compete with. From a duopolist’s perspective, that’s smart business strategy. But the question we need to ask as a society, is it a smart strategy for creating the next-generation Internet?
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:15 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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