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.
It’s a behavior pattern that has emerged in a number of realms and many are taking note. Michael Kimmelman, of the NY Times, noticed it while he sat and sketched in the Louvre. The visitors to the museum weren’t actually engaging with the art work. They either walked blindly through the galleries or were primarily focused on their personal digital machinery. Rather than directly experience the work in front of them, they seemed to be under the impression that paintings and sculptures can be collected in a digital camera for viewing at a later, more convenient time.
There was a time when people making the grand tour of Europe’s cultural treasures would prepare themselves by learning to make pencil sketches. Their sketching and painting were not primitive modes of recording images— they were, and are, modes of seeing and understanding (in the sense of making connections). We are not allowed to touch paintings in a museum; we can’t take our fingers and trace the shapes to feel their relationship to the entire composition. We can, however, accomplish this touching through seeing with a pencil and a sketch pad.
As we wander the world and only act as digital sample (sound/vision) collectors, we are not present in real time. We act today for the future time when we can look back on the present. As McLuhan said, we live our lives in the “rear view mirror.” We mechanically collect the digital artifacts of what might have been our own experience. We exclude ourselves from the real-time moment in favor of standing apart and playing the role of the recording machine operator at the service of the great digital archive (the Simulation).
The tragedy is that many miss the real experience because they’re busy collecting, and then they never even go back to reflect on what was collected. They don’t even bother to look in ‘the rear view mirror.’ They miss the sound and its echo, the image and its afterimage. They’re caught in the shadow between the motion and the act, losing all contact with our life in real time as mortals on this earth.
A ‘real’ transaction must be captured in ink. It must be written down in the form of a contract (or treaty). Then both of the parties must abide by it. The signature seals the oath and represents an authentication of the intentions of the parties. The wet-ink signature serves both as an affirmation of personal identity and a binding agent of the identity to the logical propositions in the document. If we stop for a moment and take a look at our lives, we’ll see that these agreements are rapidly moving from static ‘ink on paper’ documents kept in filing cabinets to dynamic service contracts on the Network.
Imagine the physicality of the myriad of written agreement to which you’re subject— where do they exist? Can you see a series of manila folders containing your documents in filing cabinets, in offices, in buildings, in some number of cities far away? In many cases, the documents conveying the wet-ink signatures have been scanned, and the originals destroyed. To the extent that agreements and transaction records can be represented electronically and digitally they will be. This is a matter of the economics of storage and retrieval rather than the power of networked electronic information.
We see ourselves as a unified whole. I am ‘me,’ wherever I am. Wavy Gravy put it this way:
Always remember, wherever you go there you are, so be here now…
However, more and more, the authorized version of our selves is located in a series of databases networked within the Cloud. That data authorizes us to vote, work, travel, purchase, sell, own property and so on. As our social streams are tied to transactional data items, a much higher definition electronic picture of our ‘identities’ begins to come into focus. These words: vote, work, purchase, own— these activities are our main connectors to our society, our economy and the possibility of a private life. There’s a sense in which our personal identity can be reduced to the set of transactional verbs we’re authorized to use within the Network.
The locus of our authorized identity is shifting to this virtual data constellation. Because we’d like to be whoever we are, wherever we go. We’d like the dots connected and the right bits of data to travel between the stars of the constellation. There are some, like Tim Berners-Lee for example, who imagine a future where authorized software agents will act on behalf of an individual (and their constellation of data) to interact with other sets of structured data distributed around the rest of the Network. These service contracts will be binding for ourselves and our software agents. What is imagined is not just an extension and augmentation of our nervous system to electronic media, but an extension of our will.
We imagine ourselves at the center of this complex set of threads spinning out into and connecting within the Network. Some of the threads are at our command, others—by virtue of various contracts, command us. Imagine if the binding was broken, if you became separated from the digital representation of yourself, which entity would have more authority— which would be considered more ‘real?’ Which has more authority over your identity, your physical body or its electronic representation? Can we really say, on balance, that more of the Network will be at our command when the artifacts of authorization reside within the Network, rather than on our person. This movement of the locus of identity is not a choice we will make, it’s a slow change in the ecology of our environment, an adaptive moment.
The brutality of the online commenter can sometimes be astonishing. The violence of the language is often out of all proportion to its surroundings. Certainly not every commenter resorts to personal attacks, but like spam, it’s something we seem to expect— and for some reason tolerate. What is it about the environment of the Network that allows this kind of behavior to flourish? Initially it was thought to be a function of anonymous comments, but more and more, we see attacks launched from identities based in social networks.
What are we, when we’re in the Network? Marshall McLuhan saw it by looking at the primitives of the new ‘electronic information conditions.’ Well before the internet and social media, he saw this new medium was fundamentally different and would change us utterly. When information moves at electronic speed– and it is information that serves as a trigger for all transactions, our relationship to the space surrounding us becomes transformed and devalued.
“The electronic age…angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software.” — Marshall McLuhan
The annihilation of distance is the state of affairs where everything is ready-to-hand— technology creates a powerful extension of human reach. We can be present at a meeting anywhere around the globe without leaving our chair. We can buy/sell any kind of goods or services, research any topic and access any form of entertainment—as long as we have an access point to the Network. The information economy transforms the worker into pure information (inputs/outputs). The person becomes disembodied, omnipresent, but not omnipotent.
In McLuhan’s book on the Global Village, he talked about the satisfactions that would result from these radical transformations:
Robotism, or right-hemisphere thinking, is a capacity to be a conscious presence in many places at once. It is a right-hemisphere mode— the dominant brain mode of the extended mechanical abilities of our bodies, keyed to one time and one place. Communications media of the future will accentuate the extensions of our nervous systems, which can be disembodied and made totally collective. New population patterns will fuel the shift from smokestack industries to a marketing-information economy…
McLuhan also discussed the dissatisfactions of this new environment:
Robotism is also decentralizing. In an electrically configured society all the critical information necessary to manufacture and distribute, from automobiles to computers, would be available to everyone at the same time. Espionage becomes an art form. Culture becomes organized like an electric circuit: each point in the net is as central as the next.
Electronic man loses touch with the concept of the ruling center as well as the restraints of social rules based on interconnection. Hierarchies constantly devolve and reform.
When we are born into the digital Network, we are formless— our point of origin is obscured. Connections to family, work, organizations, and local community are absent, we enter the Network untethered. Because our identity is unknown, it presents no attack surfaces, no surfaces of any kind. Should we choose to, we can launch attacks into any opening in the Network without fear of reprisal. Disconnected from our earthly connections, we are drawn toward and begin to flock with our mirror images.
When we lose touch with social rules based on interconnection, there are no checks on our behavior— we tend to move toward the extremes. Cass Sunstein in his new book Going to Extremes makes the case that “closed groups of like-minded people, if left to their own devices, will move towards the extreme.” He notes that when people with similar views debate an issue, they end up with more extreme positions than any of them previously held.
As we take root in the Network, some would call it establishing a personal brand, we expose— put forward representations of ourselves. As we produce outputs, we also seek inputs. It’s here where we begin to expose attack surfaces. As with any relationship, it’s the moment that we start to be vulnerable that the possibility of something interesting begins. In most small personal networks the connections occur directly between known entities. When one accepts inputs from the Network in general— there are no limits on who might respond and what they might say. While this relationship opens the door to an unlimited kind of discovery, it also opens the door to an unlimited kind of abuse. Openness of this kind depends on an assumption of civility.
There’s an asymmetry to the configuration of Network inputs and outputs. While the outputs are visible and have a known location, those producing inputs have no location requirement. A comment can literally come from nowhere. And the invulnerable commenter, like the spammer, rarely contributes anything of value. The premise of civility is founded on the idea that a person has something at stake. A person who comments under a personal brand puts that brand value at stake with each comment and so an economic calculation is made concurrently with each comment.
We started with the concept of a two-way web, but began with a publication medium (read only). Writing surfaces have been tacked on to reading material to simulate a two-way interface. I wonder what a symmetrical interface event with two-way visibility and read/write capability would look like? (Twitter? FriendFeed?) It’s the visibility into social connections that begin to exert a civilizing influence. Social connections are perhaps the most valuable thing we have: family, work, marriage, children, friends. Returned to a social context, the disproportionate nature of the violent comment is exposed and its true price is finally visible.
