Chris Anderson writes about the end of the hit era
His Book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” that this article is adapted from will be available 7/11.
Category: history
Companies like AT&T and others that move the bits around on parts of the internet and to clients want more money. They realize that companies like Google or Apple/iTunes make a bug or two on the internet. Now they want in on that action. Since it runs on their wires they think they have a valid angle. Which is highly ridiculous. They get paid what they asked for. Providing internet bandwidth was good business. But now they want to be able to charge more for those ‘precious bits’. Like Apple iTunes. Apple could afford it. The download cost is only a small fraction of the 99 cents they get per song. Same with google ads. However, the precedence is ugly. And, worst of all: Nobody stopped big and old and stupid companies like AT&T to provide services like search or music downloads. Except that they are old and stupid companies. Being big didn’t help either. The outrageous aspect is that AT&T feel that they have a birthright on the value inside of the bits they transfer. That is ridiculous. I don’t think that this would need regulation and legislation. Ideally people would understand what’s going on and tell the big telco’s that they don’t get it. If they try to extort google and Co then those companies should expose this. After all: Think of the internet, and think either google or AT&T has to go away. If you think that we would need AT&T to push a couple of bits around then you have been fooled by their brainwash. There are lots of providers and ample net capacity. The real value is in search. And that drives those old telcos crazy.
1400 music videos from the 80s.
Haven’t counted them. Flash encoded. Which -of course- sucks. Ripped from various source it seems. Hardly legit. Nenne Cherries “Man child” I missed back then. Interesting how motion-control + green screen was enough back then to be concept. It is a shame that it is not MTV that does make this work acessible. I hope they kept copies of things they did broadcast. Probably on “D2” tape. Over the last 30 years society has accumulated a huge amount of so called ‘pop’ culture. That video wasn’t cheap. It is not entirely rubbish either. There is just no way to really access it. I am sure as I write this somebody is deleting unknowingly a rare copy of something that will be missed.
Mark responds to a daring fireball post that was triggered by Mark switching from Apple to linux. Or some other open OS.
I agree with Mark 100%, but don’t have the time or nerve to do something about it: I let my personal data march knowingly into slavery. Be it apple or google. I use them, and now they own what I accumualed.
Yet, going on in gmail. I could get back to the copy on my linux machine, but it would take a while, since the mail file grew unattended and is unfiltered. So that lump of linux mail is a theoretical possibility.
This is probably what all the current corporate frenzy is about: capturing peoples data in propretiary formats and systems. I am sure that’s how Microsoft keeps their user base. Standards change only very little, people seem to change even less. Not a new thing. Smokers stay smokers. Great product! When ads for smoking are legal then they target the young people. To make them start, but mostly to make them start with a specific brand. Certain brand habits never really change in the life cycle of a consumer. I still use ‘Persil’ for my laundry. If only I could get in the US. It’s neither better nor worse then other powders. It actually rocks, but even if it wouldn’t I would not switch to any other brand any more.
The ultimate product association: a fruit
Who wants not to have one?
would be hyperbole but is actually true.
What exactly are media companies thinking?
“stone age”, “bronze age”
these terms align the history of mankind along the materials being used. While these segments are still valid it is also worth noticing that they have been establlished during the ‘steel age’. It was when technology had reached yet another pinnacle in the industrial use of metals.
Hundred fifty years later information technology shares the same fate: It’s frenetic paced development seems to change the world in unprecedented ways. It is only natural to ‘re-segment’ history along the current dominating paradigm of progress. A very broad separation could be:
1. Language
2. Reading/Writing
3. Printing press
4. Internet
It is certainly provocative to put the WWW in one line with those other three steps of human progress. The importance of each step compared to its predecessors is without a doubt declining. Language separates people from animals. Reading/Writing invented societies that are bigger than a couple of hundred people. The printing press established the domination of the european culture over the entire world. And the internet? Nobody knows. Still, I think it’s importance justifies to put it in one list with the three earlier ones. Human history can indeed be interpreted as the acceleration of the means of communication.
1. Language
Language allowed for a completely new and improved social interaction. Complex schemes could be planned and executed. Ask the average sable tooth tiger: he knows all to well how a couple of monkeys can make your life not only hell, but bring it to a sudden end. In parallel to language tools came into existence. Nobody would attempt to kill said tiger with bare hands. The argument can be made that only language allowed for the making of the tools. If you would try to make a weapon out of a couple of stones you would quickly realize that even though you are much stronger than the average ice age joe you will fail. No matter how many stones you have at your disposal, you are not more than lunch that happens to make funny noises. What you are missing is somebody to tell you how to make a weapon out of a stone. Since mankind seemed not to have hit the branches of the stupid tree over the last couple of thousand years, it seems that language is what brought tools into our world and kept them there.
2. Reading/Writing
Being able to ‘unrealtime language’ allowed for the next jump in human development. Without accounting nobody could have build a pyramid. All non tribal mass societies that I can think of have established a system of writing. Written language can travel in room and unidirectional in time. The commands of a ruler far away can be read thousands of miles away. And thoughts can be inherited. They can even outlast their thinkers. As a kid you see some magic in a treasure map or a message in a bottle. This magic is simply the power of reading and writing.
3. Printing press
What one person writes could be read by many, but only the printing press invented real mass communication. It allowed the word to spread. With this infinite multiplication concept ideas became ultimately powerful. The moment a printing press was churning out the first book all oppressive societies were doomed. Burning books became a sign of the desperation of the powerful people to maintain the un-maintable status quo of their rule. China and Europe were more or less on the same level of development in the midst of the last millennium. If there was a difference then China probably had the edge in many areas. Still, three hundred years later the entire world was ruled by a few european nations. The printing press allowed Europe to leap ahead in the global competition.
4. Internet
Since the internet is so new and evolving so quickly I am on the grounds of pure speculation now. Looking at the first three steps of culture technology advances each one spured a gigantic leap in human abilities. The Wright brothers could read about physics and metal technologies in books. Augustus could write laws for his far reaching empire that many people could read and copy. Many people that names we will never know lived a couple of years longer because of a story they have heard.
The internet allows knowledge to be shared in an entirely new ways. Knowledge wants to be shared. Even this text will be read by somebody.
The hype around google and very certainly it’s stock price have reached ridiculous dimensions. However, in the core this almost religious feeling towards an ugly website has a sound core: “Organizing the worlds information and making it accessible” is a pretty good glimpse on the real potential of the internet. We are only at the beginning here. The possibilities can only be guessed.
The accidental hit that is not so accidental. A movie that takes 1 second in your head. From start to finish.
Also a first is that the fan base alters the actual piece. Curious how this one develops.
As the HR article points out: the actual movie website is probably not worth mentioning. I never been there.
The real discussion happens everywhere. Or nowhere. Which also means that you can not buy it.
Of course I am sure there are 20 wannabees “SoaP” clones being pitched: “Spiders in an Elevator”, “Lions on a Boat” wait a minute, “Crocodiles on a Bus”.
An idea sometimes only needs four words. And then there are millions and millions of words around it.
Just copying the original thought and altering randomly by 2%. Till something else hits.
The soundtrack is boring. The editing uninspired. The camera angles lack anything that I would consider to be good work. It’s seven minutes long. It’s about an industrial process.
And still I think it is really really great. I am a geek and I like technology. I spend to much time in airplanes not to care about them. Every new A380 will fly over my house once when it will go from the Factory in Toulouse to the client center in Hamburg where it will get readied for the hand over. I think that clips like this will have a great future. There are fans for all sorts of products. People care where things come from. And most things are being made in a very interesting environments. You think people would watch a clip how an iPod is been made? How workers in a google data center push a shopping cart with replacement servers down an ever ending aisle of computers? Of course we care. Enough people do. If Airbus would have needed to buy 7 minutes TV airtime then they would have not had a success at hand. With those internets that is a different story now. Different technologies have allowed content to develop and take new forms. It takes a surprisingly long time though. For years early movies were nothing else then filmed theatre performances. For years the internet had to cary TV movies and ripped CDs. Only recently people realised that the internet can cary different content than existing / older media. There are hundreds of new genres to be discovered. This clip is a good example for one of them.