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Category: value

Permission To Go Live: Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

Published October 6, 2008 by cgerrish

There are some recordings by Bob Dylan that I’ve played over and over again. Each time I play them they’re exactly the same. The quality of the sound differs, but the intention is that a recording offers an identical experience. I’ve listened to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” so many times I’m able to reproduce a facsimile of it in my mind at will.

This morning during my Sunday morning trip to the newsstand, I picked up a copy of UNCUT magazine with Bob Dylan on the cover. I was interested in reading about the latest release in the Bootleg Series called “Tell Tale Signs.” There’s a quote at the top of the article that goes like this:

“Have I ever played any song
twice exactly the same?”

“No, Bob, No”

“See? I don’t do that.”

So while I have a fixed idea of what a particular Dylan song sounds like, Dylan doesn’t think of his songs– or any songs as working that way. He never takes the play out of playing a song. I read somewhere that he never listens to his recordings; the song he carries with him is way on down the road from that day it was mixed down to a master.

In a world of scarcity– there’s only room for one version of a song- the one that will make the record company money. That’s the old model. In a world of abundance, each time we revisit a song, it’s never the same. The trap of the digital is that it only makes identical copies. The freeing potential of the digital is that every version of every page of Wikipedia is available. We now have an economic framework that can support releasing every version. Buy a single instance, or access to all versions– access to the version control system.

This set of ideas can’t be contained in one area of culture or commerce.

Doc Searls writes about the new way that writing is produced:

Traditional journalism is static. Its basic units are the article, the story, the piece. The new journalism is live. It doesn’t have a basic unit any more than a river or a storm have a basic unit. It’s process, not product. Even these things we call posts, texts, tweets and wikis are less unitary than contributory. They add to a flow, which in turn adds to what we know.

Steve Gillmor writes about the way the companies communicate, through official static planned releases of information or with live conversations through the Network.

Real work gets done in these conversations, and typically this work is being performed in the “open� because the participants realize (and have been given “permission� to work at this live level) that they have little to fear from competition because their access to participation trumps others who by definition have to react after the fact. Not only has the value moved on to the next set of conversations, but the product of this work is now being marketed to the audience most likely to buy it.

In both culture and commerce we’re looking for permission to go live, to sing the song a different way every time. But we also need to hear the song differently every time and start a conversation about it. Now, not everyone will want to go down that road. When faced with Bob Dylan in concert, some will be angered by a song sung in a new way. And when we get to that crossroads— most likely you’ll go your way, and I’ll go mine.

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A Vendor Squeaks at an Unconference

Published September 10, 2008 by cgerrish

Tom Waits sums it up nicely “What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.” Vendors like to say things like “we’re users too.” But when they speak as vendors first and users second, they aren’t engaging in the real conversation. No matter how cool the rhythm track and the doubled sax, the words tell the story.

Waits does a formidable impression, and remember, no salesmen will visit your home.

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The Party Line Revisited

Published September 9, 2008 by cgerrish

Rotary Telephone

The phrase “Time out of mind” refers to the distant past beyond memory. While we think of computer networks as laying the foundation of electronic social networks, it’s the telephone that first connected the country. And the user interface challenges and the viral qualities of that once new medium have slipped beyond the horizon of our living memory.

We assume that the user interface for the telephone is known and has always been known. But there was a time when people had to be taught to use the phone. What’s a dial tone? What’s a busy signal? Where do you find a number for a particular person or business? How do you dial a rotary phone? Why do you need to wait until the dial returns to its starting position before inputting the next number? What’s that ringing sound mean?

Why should anyone understand these interface elements? The film above was shown in movie theaters to help people with the change from operator assisted to direct dial calls.

We think of the party line as quaint artifact of the past, but like certain modern online services, it was used as a source of entertainment and gossip, as well as a means of quickly alerting entire neighbourhoods in case of emergencies such as fires.

In 20th century telephone systems, a party line (also multiparty line or Shared Service Line) is an arrangement in which two or more customers are connected directly to the same local loop. Prior to World War II in the United States, party lines were the primary way residential subscribers acquired local phone service.

Sometimes pundits like to make the argument that microblogging services like Twitter or Identi.ca are too difficult or obscure for “most ordinary people” to learn. Compare using Twitter to learning how to direct dial a telephone. If there’s value returned, people are will to invest the time and learn enough to profit.

There are other interesting comparisons between the phone network and the internet. The dystopian visions about The Phone Company match our current fears about the harvesting of our personal and attention data. Once we’ve internalized a user interface like the telephone’s, we begin to fear that it will be literally internalized into our bodies. The 1967 film The President’s Analyst envisioned the Cerebrum Communicator, a device that is located in, and power by, our brains. It also showed us a technology company secretly at the center of political power.

The telphone has become the mobile computer, and voice is now one of many data types transmitted through the Network. But the basic pattern of relating through an electronic network remains the same. The telephone still has a lot to teach us about the meaning of electronic social networks.

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Passing the Hat through the Network

Published August 31, 2008 by cgerrish

Passing the hat

I recently heard Doc Searls talk about his interest in developing a method to send money to musicians, radio progams and other forms of streaming entertainment. If you like something, you should be able to show it by putting your money where your mouth is. It’s a thought provoking idea that challenges the underlying fundamentals and economics of a well established industry.

Presumably some kind of name space would need to be developed for the recipients of payments– a URI that could be addressed from a distributed set of listening contexts. The basic idea is that the listener can set the terms of the transaction, in some ways it’s like the traditional tip jar or passing the hat. I’m not clear if the intention is to link to existing micro-payment systems or to develop new ones, but presumably there would be more than one transaction mechanism.

Much like Wikipedia and other social projects, the idea of creating a real economics for musicians based on voluntary payment has been met with skepticism. Kevin Kelly draws the boundaries of the economic system in his post 1,000 true fans. The gist of the contention is:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A “true fan” is someone who will buy everything an artist produces. Obviously to yield 1,000 true fans an artist may need ten or twenty times as many regular fans. Kelly’s post attracted a number of responses, including one Kelly noted from Jaron Lanier:

Jaron claims that he has not found a single musician that meets this definition. In other words, he claims that there are no musicians who have risen to a successful livelihood within the new media environment. None. No musician who is succeeding solely on the generatives I outline in Better Than Free. No musician born digital, and making a living in the new media.

Kelly followed up with two posts: The Case Against 1,000 True Fans and The Reality of Depending on True Fans.

Doc Searl’s proposal would shift the responsibility of developing payment modes from the artist to a payment system. This is a key friction point for artists, they’re good at making music not managing micro-payment systems. But for me, another question emerges: if I like the song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” what are my payment options?

  • The Beatles
  • George Harrison
  • Eric Clapton, for that guitar solo
  • George Martin, as producer
  • Prince, for that guitar solo (RRHOF version)

Who owns which part of a performance? Can they be addressed separately? What about multiple versions of the same tune? What about cover versions? Can a performance be addressed as a complex network? Can we make it easy to pull that one thread from the cloth? Is there a viable Buddhist Economics that can emerge from this confluence of efforts?

The framing of a performance contributes to its total value. This would be true of a performance encountered somewhere on a distributed Network as well. Virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell recently played unannounced in a subway station. That venue, as opposed to a concert hall, altered the audience’s perception of the value of his performance.

Joshua Bell made $32.17 as a busker. He commented:

“Actually,” Bell said with a laugh, “that’s not so bad, considering. That’s 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn’t have to pay an agent.”

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