If you happen to be passing through Terminal 3 of the San Francisco Airport any time soon, check out: Prototype to Product: 33 Projects from the Bay Area Design Community. Rushing through the Terminal to my gate, I didn’t have enough time to spend with each of the pieces. The exhibit features preliminary sketches, detailed illustrations, models, prototypes and the finished product. Every time I see this kind of approach to design I think that Web design should be done in the same way.
Designers of Web sites need to take the materials, the DOM, the semantic HTML, the CSS, the javascript, the images and links into account when they design something for a person to use for a particular purpose. Industrial designers need to know and understand their materials. Will there be a new generation of Web artists and designers who can paint in code?
Hypertargeting and the Panopticon of Social Networks
The rebellion against hyper-targeting continues. Doc Searls weighs in, as does Jason Calacanis. Targeted marketing always worked with fairly crude tools, and because of this it was tolerable. Marketers looked at demographics and psychographics, made educated guesses about the audiences of particular radio or television programs, and did the best they could. It was more art than science. The direct marketers were the most statistically driven. Marketers dreamed of knowing enough to target perfectly. Now with Facebook and other social networks, they’re starting to get their wish. The user inhabits a panopticon, and the data generated belongs to the system to be rented to the highest bidder.
Will the inmates rebel and demand the authority to selectively release data to the system? Will they be able release none of their data and still participate in the system? Can they withdraw their data, move it and use it to their advantage in another system? When a customer uses her data to her advantage in a system, the system benefits as well.The coarse targeting of marketing has required high frequency bombardment. We’re entering the age of smart bombs, but the frequency seems to be just as high. Shouldn’t smart marketing just be the thing I want, when I’ve indicated I actually want it? Advertising frequency goes down, but the number of transactions probably increases.
Digg, Mixx and Viral Negativity in a Social Network
Arrington writes that some of Digg’s unpaid editors are moving over to Mixx. Since they aren’t compensated for their work, switching costs amount to getting some of their friends to switch too. This is an interesting case study in the value of social networks. If the creators of the “user generated content” decide that the environment has become poisoned with negativity, they may decide to pull up stakes and migrate to another more friendly environment.
One Digg user makes the claim, in Arrington’s article, that:
I think Mixx has a real chance for success…Mixx has a much more positive audience than Digg. It always amazes me that even the most popular and highest quality articles can get so many negative and unnecessarily degrading comments on Digg. So far the users of Mixx have proven to be quite a bit more pleasant, something that I know will be welcomed by most users.�
Negativity can quickly become viral in a social network, especially where some kind of voting takes place. Competitive strategies can overtake collaborative strategies and then the community’s overall output starts to become skewed. To combat the negativity, the owners of the site make rules to curb some forms of competition, and before you know it– it’s not that fun anymore.
It’s interesting to watch the figures of game theory play out before your eyes. Should part of the valuation of a business that depends on social networking and voting be dependent on its ability to enforce and maintain a friendly environment? See Craig Newmark for a lesson in how this can be done.
Kindle: Network Connectivity included in purchase price
Connectivity to the network included in the purchase price of the Kindle. This is the most revolutionary part of the Kindle. It’s a product, a hunk of plastic and electronics that comes in a box with a recharger. The price is a little high for an e-reader, the special sauce is the built in complimentary network connectivity. There’s no meter running.
It’s EVDO, Amazon calls it WhisperNet– but it doesn’t really matter what the technology is or what it’s called. The consumer doesn’t need to think about it. It’s what enables shopping for books and periodicals, and what allows delivery. It will only be noticeable when it’s slow or not working.
I’m not sure how the economics of this work, but if the cost of the network is built in to the cost of the reader and the purchased content, the issue of the price of the network disappears. And with that, a big usability problem and a big uptake issue goes away. The network is assumed. With some mass production, economies of scale and a little time we may get the price down to what a DVD player costs.
I still don’t quite understand Kindle, but I think it’s worth waiting for the street to come up with a use for it. In reading through the overwhelming stream of condemnation, I could only think that something that this many people hate must have something going for it. I’m of two minds: I posted against it, and now I will post something in its favor.
I’ve previously written on what we buy when we buy creative content. We think we’re buying the writing in the book, but we’re actually buying the physical object, a book. We buy the delivery mechanism. Creative content lives in the mind’s eye as it comes in contact with the physical marks that can be purchased. We often moan about having to buy the same music over and over again in different formats. But that’s all there is, there are only formats and the players that decode them. Music and literature don’t inhabit the physical plane.
Kindle is a delivery method, it’s also a toll booth– a means of collecting fees on content that flows through it. It’s a method of publishing into a different format; this format is a machine. For the street to find uses for Kindle, it will have to win users. The offering price is too high, but perhaps it will be reduced, much like the iPhone. Will we buy the same books in yet another format? We have so far, why wouldn’t we do it again?
I unpushed an elevator button, and didn’t stop on the 5th floor
I’d like to be able to unpush an elevator button. How many times have you been in an elevator and pushed the wrong button? How many times have you seen someone else do it? The only remedy is to let the doors open on the errant floor, and then push the “close doors” button.
A double-click on the button could unpush it. Could the elevator biometrically register the identity of the button pusher and then limit unpush privileges to that individual?
Jaron Lanier writes in a New York Times Op-Ed piece that creative types need to get paid for “digital content.” Lanier used to be in the “information wants to be free” camp. Now that information has become content and it seems to adding some value when it grows via spontaneous generation in caves like Facebook or Delicious, Lanier is interested in a piece of the action.
Lanier thought that somewhere down the road the creative people making digital content would find a payday. But the network is what you make it. The network we inhabit isn’t built for collecting tolls, it’s built for billboards along the roadside. There are some closed loop systems like Second Life where payment for digital goods is normal. All that’s required is for the system owner to control the physics of the entire virtual experience. iTunes is an end-to-end experience as well, but it’s an extension of a familiar payment model. These are the kind of models that Lanier is well-known for pioneering.
The question about getting paid is an interesting one. Right now it’s advertising and targeting that pays the bills. Better targeting + big traffic flow = Google.But what if we want an alternative to advertising.
When the work of art is a physical thing or a performance there’s a clear ceremony around collecting payment. The introduction of mechanical reproduction changed the intrinsic value of the work of art, the price, but not the nature of the transaction was affected. Generally the cost of mechanically reproducing art or creative output was still relatively high and required a specialized set of skills. In the age of digital reproduction, the only skill required is “copy” and “paste.” The original and copy are only differentiated by a creation time stamp. The digital is also viral in the network and the packets can be anonymous as they travel through the long series of tubes. When you bought that digital content, which vintage of time stamp is yours? Can we put toll booths on every entry point on the network? Can we implant the toll booth in the user?
This is the point where it would be nice to reveal the magic method by which creators of digital content get paid on an open network. There’s not one answer. Some clues to help us along the road? Philip Greenspun’s book was free and digital before I bought the copy that sits on my bookshelf. The 37 Signals book, Getting Real, was sold first as a PDF download, but is also available to read for free online. Here’s another clue, we pay for the container, not the content. It’s the form of the hardback book, not the text it contains. Think about that in relation to the network. You can see the problem.
Just a note about Pina Bausch’s “Ten Chi.” I attended the performance in Berkeley last night. Sitting in the second row I was drawn into the performance when the great Dominique Mercy asked me (and other audience members) if I knew how to snore. And then asked me to do so. The video above is of Dominique.
The audience was filled with Bay area choreographers coming to find inspiration, and the evening delivered. Bausch’s company is filled with every ethnic group, all ages, every body type and real individual dancers. The performance contains hundreds of small dances, poetry recitals, jokes, skits, visual puns. Often several going on at once, a lyrical dance upstaged by a comic turn or a sexually charged moment. The dancers don’t have that abstract blank stare you see so often in modern dance. These are real people filled with emotion and passion. The dancers talk, tell jokes and scream. It’s rare experience.
Can the book be disrupted? It seems like piling on to write about Amazon’s new e-book device “Kindle.” Universally hated, except for the free EVDO. In general I’m in favor of single purpose network attached devices. For instance, I crave a Chumby. But the Kindle seems doomed to failure. How many attempts have been made in the e-book space? Of course, it’s not really an e-book, it’s an electronic text reader. A book is an entirely different experience.
Would I spend $400 to buy a device that would allow me to spend $10 more to download the text of a book? I think I’d prefer to read news and features on a device like that. If that’s true, how is it better than an iPhone? Perhaps Kindle should be like a razor. Give it away and charge for the razor blades. I don’t know if that model would work, but it’s the only way it could gain wide acceptance.
Although we’re trained not to buy content, we ascribe the emotion of “wanting to be free” to it. Perhaps both the reader and text are free and supported by advertising. Macbeth, brought to you by Dawn dishwashing liquid. It’s tough on dirt, but gentle on your hands.
Sometimes I dream of a digital Chautauqua that crosses over and travels in a tent show around the land. I think about Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble, or the Willoz’s Chautauqua. I haven’t quite figured out how the Chautauqua on the network connects to the Chautauqua in the tent or the barn— but the two should be deeply intertwingled.
As I think about what the next big thing on the Web will be, I can’t help thinking about the next small thing. I imagine it will look like a digital Chautauqua, a unique performance that will exist for just a moment in time. It’s participants will be witnesses. Can I get a witness?
