This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on
and cling to every day,
is like the swan,
when he nervously lets himself down into the water,
which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan,
unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried,
each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.
Imagining the future in literature in some way creates a space for technology to advance. It’s not so much the mechanics of the technology, but a vision of what we desire the technology to accomplish. The production of desire precedes the will to create a technology. Pushing technology to the edges of its capability reveals the gap between what is possible and what is desired. From portable teleputers to rocket ships, we imagine our future states of desire. Bridging that gap is the business of new technology.
Books like ‘1984‘ and films like ‘2001‘ have been exceeded by the calendar, but the quality of their vision remains relevant. An interesting kind of disturbance happens when one of these literary visions begins to synchronize and emerge through contemporary society. The recent resurrection of Philip K. Dick is related to the ways in which his dystopian visions of the future are beginning to manifest in our daily life. The commercial, legal and political decisions that confront us as the Network becomes more developed stare at us from the pages of Dick’s novels. These decisions are akin to the moral issues created by the reorganization of society caused by the industrial revolution.
This train of thought was engendered by a recent reading of Dick’s novel ‘Ubik.’ In this novel, Dick lays out a world where ‘Pre-Cogs‘ can predict what will happen next. And to some extent, that knowledge creates the possibility of influencing what will happen next. We do this today with propensity modeling and choice architecture.
Our “search” engines tell us that if only they knew a little more about us, had access to a personal profile (identity), in addition to the complete record of our search history, they could use that context to provide more “relevant” results. In Dick’s world of “Ubik,” this process of propensity modeling is enhanced by the use of people with telepathic powers; a kind of joining of search technology and pre-cogs through a mechanical turk service.
Ubik also extends the concept of micropayments to its extreme. Every aspect of living has been “monetized” through the micropayments infrastructure. Opening the front door to your apartment requires the payment of five cents. Using the sink in the bathroom will cost you fifty cents. And the door and the sink know all about your payment history and if your credit is any good.
Things taken to their extreme create the desire for a balancing force, and in Ubik, this takes the form of the “prudence organization:”
“Ads over TV and in the homeopapes by the various anti-psi prudence establishments had shrilly squawked their harangues of late. Defend your privacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Terminate anxiety; contacting your nearest prudence organization will tell you if in fact you are the victim of unauthorized intrusions, and then, on your instructions, nullify these intrusions— at a moderate cost to you.”
– from Ubik, by Philip K. Dick
The inferential extension of a person’s trajectory and velocity allows for the sale of road signs on the path not yet traveled. (Except in Vermont where billboards aren’t allowed.) This power is currently held by a small number of corporate citizens of the Network. But as all new technology tends to travel the path from the leading edge to commodity, it will be dispersed to players of all shapes and sizes. One can easily imagine the regulations that will result from its abuse.
The business of removing the target from our backs started in a simple way with the national do not call list. However, the refinement of the targeting of an individual person’s desires based on harvesting real-time attention and gesture data on the Network continues at a ferocious pace. The anti-targeting forces are few and far between. The Attention Trust and the Gesture Bank imagined that we could take ownership of, and eventually barter, using that data. These ideas, and to some extent, the idea of vendor relationship management, attempt to turn the equation around. The individual captures their own value, or their micro-community’s value, and ultimately has the responsibility for determining what will happen with it. The option of complete invisibility or anonymity on the Network seems only to be practiced by black hat hackers.
There’s a set of data that can purchased about an individual today— tomorrow it will include your trajectory and velocity. Will there also be a service that makes you invisible to the tracking services? Is their a future in Prudence?
The razor and the blade have taken on largely metaphorical meanings in the era of “Free.” Products and services are bundles of threads, some free, some advertising supported and others with a variable or fixed price. The razor itself is free or low cost, and the consumer pays for disposable blades which subsidizes the cost of the handle. Cellular phones use this pricing model. Chris Anderson posits that this model will become dominant, with a digital component naturally tending toward a price of zero.
If we take a moment, and look—not at the metaphor, but at actual razors and blades, we’ll learn a great deal about how the “Free” business model will develop. The Holy Grail of the shaving world is the “close shave.” And, of course, the close shave imbues the shaver with extraordinary attractiveness and social power. It becomes the almost unattainable object of desire. The companies that make shaving equipment have brought together the world’s best scientists and storytellers to create a compelling narrative. The road to a closer shave can only be achieved through multiple blades and high-level engineering. The five-blade razor has emerged as the pinnacle of shaving science.
The simple razor and blade have been transformed into a technology experience beyond the understanding of the average Joe looking to rid himself of five o’clock shadow. Along side the production of the physical product is the production of desire. The act of shaving requires ever greater efforts, continual progress— we’ll pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of the close shave.
The world of shavers has been tightly wrapped in the dream narrative of the progress of shaving and its technology. It turns out the “Free” part of the product is not the critical factor, it’s the production of desire. The essential ingredient is the creation of a strong narrative beyond which the consumer cannot see or imagine.
Every extreme engenders a backlash, and the five-bladed razor may have tipped the scales. Step outside the dream of the technology of the “close shave” for a moment and consider a double-edged single razor blade that performs better than the latest five-bladed technology. Could “one” be superior to “five?”
Of course, we need our dreams, our goals, our destinations— the humble razor and blade provide an excellent example not just of the economics of a business model, but of how the production of desire influences the engineering of the product. “Free” is the taste, the invitation to the dream.
I first became aware of Nancy Sinatra when her song “These Boots Were Made For Walkin'” climbed up the charts in the 60s. The song was written by Lee Hazelwood, and I had the sense that it was a kind of novelty rather than being representative of a body of work. The song was released in February of 1966, and featured a back-up band known as the “wrecking crew“— they were made up of first call session players in Los Angeles.
Ms. Sinatra caught my attention again recently with her editorial in the New York Times regarding the inequity of payments for songs played on the radio. Composers and publishers receive payment each time a song is played, but performers get nothing. The presumption is that the performing artists receive promotion when their songs are played and that serves as their compensation. Ms. Sinatra notes that the practice of mentioning the title and artist of a song just played is no longer common practice. And she reveals that ten years ago Clear Channel was asking $24k per title, to mention a song’s meta-data. A radio mention is meant to serve as a kind of link to a commerce service point.
Just as the telecom industry is coming to terms with the fact that voice is indistinguishable from any other kind of bits traveling through the series of tubes, the radio/music business is learning that there’s no such thing as a ‘sound only’ Network. Recorded music needs an extensible interface, sound is only one of the channels. Video, text, images and commerce are some of the channels that need to be included in the digital bundle. When you ‘right-click’ on a tune, what options will you see? If you look closely, you can see the distinction between the player and the thing played is beginning to disappear.
The music industry has responded to this opening with the CMX file format. As currently defined the format will allow playback and viewing of multiple media types, transactional capabilities have not been mentioned. Apple has rejected CMX in favor of its own format called Cocktail. Early rumors are that the Cocktail format will be playable on a new generation iTunes player, although it may also work as standalone software with an incorporated runtime.
Rolling up the various media files associated with a music release into a single new format will create a new container that can be sold to the music buying masses. If all goes according the plans of the record labels, the public will be thrilled to restock their music libraries with new containers of the same music. After all, the public has done it a number of times before. Presumably, the new format will also feature stronger DRM as an attempt to re-establish the old sales model. The most intriguing part of Apple’s Cocktail format is the rumored integration of a social media layer into iTunes.
Some think the record business was destroyed by the MP3 file format. Because an MP3 is simple to digitally copy, the theory is that sales suffered as the listening audience simply distributed free copies of music over the Network. While there’s a grain of truth to this, ventures like the iTunes music store could not have been successful if it were the dominant behavior pattern. The real threat to the music industry was the return of the single and the rise of the playlist.
The record album became the standard unit of sale for music some time after the Beatles managed to fill their offerings with hits from the first track to the last. Once the public stopped buying singles and started buying albums, the goldrush was on for the record companies. The album also served as a kind of filter, bands that couldn’t sustain a level of quality over an entire record didn’t last long. The album became a canvas, a programmed static playlist of music that eventually lead, for better or worse, to the concept album.
The high cost of recording music combined with the album format resulted in a batch production mode for music—also known as the recording session. Batch mode production is closely related to the kind of production done in factories. A special environment is created, set away from ordinary life. Real life is what you return to when you’ve finished your shift working in the factory. With the cost of recorded music production plummeting, the batch mode becomes less and less necessary. Real-time production occurs in-line with real life, the process might look more like the basement of Big Pink instead of the specialized and fully-equipped recording studio.
A bundle of static files wrapped up in a new format is an attempt to get some additional mileage out of the album format. There’s a sense in which this is a duplication of the shrink-wrapped software model. The music industry should look to the recent strategic shifts made by the king of shrink-wrapped software: Microsoft. Microsoft has shifted to a software + services model that includes the full interoperability and the integration of public social media streams. Some of their product will be free, some ad supported and others will be fully paid. And just as the batch mode of software production has been deprecated in favor of real-time, in-line code updates over the Network, music (and all digital media) will eventually move toward this new model.
The battle that Nancy Sinatra is waging on behalf of the performer will not be won in the landscape of radio. That playing field is receding, becoming a small piece of the puzzle, rather than whole ballgame. The new canvas for the digital performer and recording artist is starting to emerge and the examples provided by Microsoft, Google and Apple will lead the way.
