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Tuesday, January 3, 2006
What happens when car ads quit propping up traditional media 
Attention Vegas geek visitors
Congrats
Credit where overdue
| | In the shower a few minutes ago, I was thinking a bit more about what I wrote earlier this morning, in response to what Dave Rogers wrote here. And I realized I had overlooked a very significant influence on my life. |
| | Before Phil hired me to write for Linux Journal in early 1999, my last full-time job as a journalist was at a little newspaper in New Jersey, in 1971. I'd done some writing on the side off and on after that; but nothing ever reached airspeed on the runway. |
| | I edited a small magazine called Theta for a brief while. And I was a regular early contributor to The Sun (a great magazine then and a better one now). Sy Safransky, whon I met when he was hawking The Sun on the streets of Chapel Hill in 1974, was the best editor I've ever had. But The Sun paid little and was a labor of love, mostly. |
| | In 1978, a parody piece I wrote about parapsychology (the field that Theta served) was spotted by The Amazing Randi and found its way into OMNI Magazine, which was just getting started then. That earned me $800. Then I wrote another humorous piece for another $800, and thought maybe this was my ticket. So I got an agent, wrote some spec humor for National Lampoon and "Saturday Night Live", and got smacked down hard by both of them. Lorne Michaels' rejection letter was such a door-slam that I still remember every word of it. The agent also pissed off OMNI somehow; so that door closed as quickly as it opened. I put my nose back to the grindstone for the next twelve years, growing a successful advertising and PR agency, first in North Carolina and then in Silicon Valley. |
| | Some journalistic encouragement came in the early-mid-90s somewhere, when I was approached by eWeek to write a column. I wrote four spec pieces, which I was told were very good, but not what they wanted. When I could start writing for the Web, I put those up in Reality 2.0. They're still there. |
| | A few more pieces got out after that. Some book reviews for the Globe & Mail. A piece on PR for Upside (which was leveraged seven years later in Cluetrain). Not a lot, considering my output level today. |
| | Then Phil asked me to start writing stuff for a new publication of his called Websmith. Some of that is still out there, too. |
| | Finally, in 1998 Phil told me I needed to get back into journalism and should start writing for Linux Journal. Which I've been doing, gratefully, ever since. |
| | So, a New Year's toast to Phil. We'd hoped to go down to Nicaragua this weekend to help him celebrate his recent marriage, but my wife and I are both working (in my case, for Phil). Still, we plan to get down to visit him sometime this year. And I'm forward to making that toast in person. |
On the continuing end of journalism as usual
| | [pundit name] observes that [Internet site] fails to account for [fact of life] |
Hyperlinks ______________ (you decide)
| | Doc, for the umpteenth time, hyperlinks to do not subvert hierarchy. In fact, they help establish their own hierarchies. They may help overturn existing hierarchies, they may increase the rate of "churn," but as should be abundantly clear by now, human beings are all about competing for rank in a hierarchy and hyperlinks are merely another tool. Technology changes how we do things, it doesn't change what we do. |
| | As usual, Dave makes a strong case. Here's one of his many points: |
| | Instead, Doc calls the web "an open marketplace." Fair enough. But a marketplace is all about competition, it's not about people interacting with one another for the social rewards attendant to that interaction. The web isn't "the cure," it merely spreads "the disease," chiefly through the vector of marketers with visions of non-stop, unlimited, competition through marketing, where the social is to be exploited strictly for its utility in promoting and transmitting marketing messages, not valued for the rewards and challenges of shared human experience. And success is measured, ranked and publicized so the "successful" may be exploited, not the least by those who do the ranking and publicizing, by currying favor and otherwise sucking up, or by being attacked (as this post might reasonably be perceived as doing). |
| | What I object to is this mischaracterization of what is simply a technological artifact as possessing some virtue, not just advantage, but virtue, not resident in any previous technology. That somehow these wires and chips and programs make us all magically into better people. That's just warm smoke being blown up our collective asses by marketers who, by profession and by inclination, make a living blowing warm smoke up someone's ass to sell something, to make a net transfer of authority or wealth from one entity to another. To "subscribe" means to "sign up" for something, literally to lend your authority to something by appending your name to it. Well, I don't subscribe to this notion. |
| | I guess it comes down to experience. Earlier in the post, Dave says, |
| | this morning I read another brief post from Doc called "Lesson" where Doc asserts again, "this isn't high school here. It's the cure for high school: an open marketplace for ideas and everything else." I just can't let this slide. |
| | So presumably "high school" was something that required a "cure," and "this" (presumably "the web") is it. |
| | Except it seems to me that what most made high school an unenjoyable experience (something that might require a "cure") was its competitive nature, where figuring out who we were and how we mattered seemed to rely on just "where" we "fit" in the grand scheme of things, that chiefly being a hierarchy. There was also the issue of trying to be ourselves within the confines of an established authority structure that had expectations of their own of how we were supposed to "be." Not like that isn't happening right here on the ol' blogosphere. If you don't have RSS, Scoble would fire you! Don't have full feeds? Unsubscribed! Shape up, people! |
| | My unenjoyable experience of high school was not about the hells of failure in competition or submission to hierarchy (though I had plenty of those), but rather of being boxed into a system over which I had no control and for which there were no appealing alternatives. And seeing that system stretch out to the horizons of my life. |
| | Does the blogosphere really have a caste system, with Scoble as a BMOC? Only if others insist on seeing it that way. I don't, because here if you want to bust Scoble for whatever, you can. And if it makes sense, others link to it, and there are good ways for everybody to work their way to conclusions, more disagreements or whatever. It may not be ideal, but but it does have accountability and response mechanisms that are anything but high school. |
| | As for the venalities of marketing, I think Dave and I may never agree on that one. He sees marketing as a persistent pernicious force; I see it failing everywhere markets are networked and customers can communicate both with companies and with each other. Obviously, much of the world still isn't networked, and (judging from the persistent popularity of television) a large percentage of the civilized world would still rather consume messages than produce their own. Still, mute consumption has little leverage for individuals while talky participation (which blogging is) has plenty. Apply the laws of Darwin and place your bets. Anyway, this is looking to me like a half-empty vs. half-full argument. And one worth having. |
| | I know Doc's a nice guy, I like him and everybody else does too, but he's bought into something and now he's trying to sell it. That's what marketers do. I'm just not buying, and I don't think anyone else should either. |
| | If we want a better world, a "cure" for high school, we don't require better technology, we need to work on being better people. And to do that, it seems to me, we need to understand who we are and what we do and why we do it. Focusing on our toys and tools, and feeling proud and pleased with ourselves doesn't leave much time for that sort of introspection. But because we're so competitive, we have all of our attention focused externally, looking for advantages, opportunities, risks and threats. Which pretty much ensures the world remains the same, even if the scenery changes. |
| | I know what selling is. I've done far too much of that in my life too. I'm not selling the Web. I'm trying to understand it, and to vet that understanding. Also, I've said before, most of what I say here, about this kind of stuff, is provisional. Scaffolding, not finished architecture. I'm not saying "take it or leave it", but "here's something I think that might be interesting". |
| | I don't experience that as competition, or looking for advantages, or responding to risks or threats or opportunities. It's just something I do. I'm thrilled that there's a here I can do it in, because for most of my life there wasn't. And without it I'd probably just be another old marketing guy, picking up a few extra bucks by writing on the side. |
Stripping down
Lesson
| | Rankings are interesting, but this isn't high school here. It's the cure for high school: an open marketplace for ideas and everything else. |
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