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Sunday, May 12, 2002
Toward a theory of applied gonzology 
| | Often times good ideas are presented with such fervency they strike the very people they most need to influence as primarily anti-authoritarian thought. And that perception colors the underlying idea. But if it comes from bottom-up within their own organization, or is couched in familiar and non-threatening terminology, it will have greatly increased mileage |
| | I would add that the best results will probably be gained in organizations that don't look or act like pyramids. But even in ones that do, shit can happen. Witness Linux in IBM. What happened there, from what I can tell, is that the company took advantage of a fait accompli already achieved by Linux-adopting engineers inside the compay. Evolutionary, yes. But a serious mutation, none the less. |
| | Semi-context: in his latest (related to the above, back there somewhere) Chris Locke (Gonzo Marketing author, for those who don't know) explains that he's "more of a zinester than a blogger." Could be. I just think he's more of a writer than anything else. In fact, I think what's going on for all of us is more about nature than medium or message. |
| | By the way, the best cinematic exploration of personal nature, for my money, was The Crying Game. In the first half of that movie (a whole movie by itself), a British soldier learns over time why his IRA captor won't kill him. "It's not in your nature," the soldier tells the captor. |
| | All blogs do is give our writing natures a much bigger habitat. |
Tragedy of the uncommons
| | Last night when I brought my laptop to the star party behind the museum, several of the people who were blown away by my planetarium-like copy of Voyager III asked me how it was possible that I could be on the Internet. |
| | "I'm not," I said. "This is just a program. I have a copy on CD that I bought last year, but this one I downloaded off the Net today because it has some new stuff." |
| | "You're not on the Net right now?" |
| | "Nope. But I was hoping the museum had a wireness Net connection I could access out here." |
| | "Really? Why would they have that?" |
| | "Lots of places do. Offices. Airports. Starbucks. Walk down State Street and I'll bet you pick up more than a few signals." |
| | "Wow. I had no idea. What does it cost to set up?" |
| | "Not much. I have a couple base units in my house. Only spent a few hundred bucks. You can do it for a lot less." |
| | "Cox High Speed Internet. It comes on cable. Incredibly fast, too." |
| | "And they let you do that?" |
| | "They don't care. I pay for one Ethernet connection. What I do with it is mostly up to me. We have two base stations and two wireless laptops, plus several other computers hard-wired to a couple Ethernet hubs that get to the Net through a router next to the cable modem." |
| | "Damn. I've gotta look into that." |
| | This is an interesting thought experiment - will the success of the 2.4GHz spectrum (and any other uinlicensed spectrum) fail due to its own success? Will illegal amplifiers turn the spectrum into another Citizen's Band? Even without illegal amps, is it doomed to failure because the density of devices will increase too quickly? |
| | Dave gives a good answer, and a concrete suggestion for the FCC. |
| | My 4¢ worth: the problem with wi-fi is that it's too easy to regulate, and the FCC has historically proven more likely to restrict spectrum use, and to sell whole hunks of spectrum off, than to rope off and protect a significant chunk of it because some libertarian weenies want to call it a "commons." Even with the relatively regulation-averse Michael Powell in charge, I'm not highly hopeful. But if use keeps proliferating, and the wi-fi using public starts looking like a voting bloc, the chances start looking a lot better. |
Free bleach
| | You know where we're headed, don't you? It's that place where there are no stars, and, more importantly, no star salaries — where ball games will be five bucks again, where music will just be good stuff played by good musicians, and where movies will be movies rather than Star Vehicles with the gravity-defying heft of those flying saucers from Independence Day. |
| | The headline in Wednesday's paper shot me full of cold, jangly fear: "TV can't supply enough stars." There was a picture of Phil Donahue, just to underscore the point. Apparently the nation's star larders are bare; new ones flame out fast, and all that's left in the firmament of fabulousness are Red Giants (Phil) and White Dwarfs (Larry King.) |
| | I'd been noticing the same thing. Stars will always have pull, but we're rapidly approaching the point where we get tired of them even before we've heard of them. |
| | The Big Media are diffusing, while The People are off talking to themselves. Sometime in the last quarter-century, commercial TV replaced authority with authority figures, and the quality of news degraded to the point where its base purpose — to fill time bewween advertisements — became fully exposed. Now even the least critical consumers of Major Media see the only news that doesn't insult their intelligence is about sports, weather and other stuff that's hard to fake up. |
| | Local L.A. network news programming now consists of soft features (rock climbing, sushi making) between hard news stories of accidents, shootings and sad disappearances. As a news assignment, a car chase trumps just every event other than a celebrity arrest for murder (OJ was a two-fer), because it serves what has now become the prime commercial TV news purpose: filling time with a more appealing form of Nothing than the next channel. "The stolen van has crossed over to westbound on the 105, Bob," the reporter in the helicopter says. Like it fucking matters. Like the driver doesn't think towing a formation of news helicopters like a bunch of kites would make a perfect claim to that fifteen minutes of fame that now seems every Angelino's birthright. |
| | Anyway, here's the point I'm noodling around with. |
| | Sooner or later it will dawn on the big advertisers that there are more efficient ways to reach and keep customers than by bathing couch potatotes in fertilizer. |
| | It will also dawn on the networks and stations that the principles of LOP (Least Objectionable Programming) no longer apply. The days when a few big channels and networks could trap and hold audiences are going away. In 1965, TV stations and networks only had a handful of competitors on the viewer's TV dial. All they needed to show was something marginally less unappealing than the next several channels. |
| | My L.A. network stations don't come in on channels 2-13. They're on satellite channels 244-249. My satellite receiver dial runs from channels 101 to 9940. It can take half an hour to surf from one end to the other. The ony show my wife and I bother to watch on an irregular basis is Six Feet Under on HBO. We don't know, or even care to know, the names of any of the stars. They're good actors, but we've got other things to care about. We might be a bit unusual that way, but I'm not so sure. |
| | Stars only shine out of darkness. Now, thanks to dozens of stations on cable, hundreds on satellite and millions on the Web, there's too much light. The sky is nothing but stars. |
| | At some point, that light will dawn in Big Advertisers' heads. And the old game will be over. |
Life on the ink/pixel frontier
| | James Lileks' latest Bleat: Most of the time my wirelessness works perfectly. Most of the time it meets my needs. On deadline, it gives me the rusty rectal auger every time. |
| | Alas, James' blog, The Bleat (same ink as above), seems to lack permalinks. But it's been going since '97. He writes it in GoLive (since then? possibly). The good news: he's a newspaper columnist (for the Star Tribune) and they actually let him use whatever software he likes. |
And if you're from the 6th or the 44th World, the message isn't for you.
Heavens
| | If you have a broadband connection, download the demo. It fucking rocks. A bunch of people at the party (including some hardened astronomers) stood watching with their jaws on the ground while I demo'd the thing. It's just amazing. |
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