“Life’s too short. I’m already 56. Time gets more precious every day. Why waste time sitting still consuming thin information on TV when you can hunt the thick stuff down and eat it up at your own pace, on your own personal screen, or in a book, or on headphones while you excercize?”
There are mistakes and there are mistakes.
Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We’re not going to do that again.
Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:
…the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.
…the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise “improve.”
… it’s a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.
…the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.
–Doc Searls and David Weinberger
“… linky journals. What matters most about them is not where anybody falls on the power curve, but that every writer inhabits a place where anybody can write anything about anything, with a good chance that, if it’s interesting, others will find it, remark upon it, and use it to scaffold a shared understanding of whatever-it-is, and then some.”
“Whatever else I’ve learned from going through boxes of old photographs, it’s clear to me now why people take pictures of people. It isn’t just to capture moments, to record history, to make art, or just to fool around, though it’s all those things and more. It’s to tell stories.”
— Doc Searls
“When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system. When we listen to radio or watch TV, we’re told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables. But the Internet is different. It isn’t wiring. It isn’t a system. And it isn’t a source of programming.”
1. The Internet isn’t complicated
2. The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet’s value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internets three virtues:
– a. No one owns it
– b. Everyone can use it
– c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already
“With (Bill Maher) and Miller gone, what’s left? Letterman’s fangs wore to nubs ten years ago. Leno replaced McMahon, not Carson. News? The Big Three are relics. Decoys. Rather and Jennings are human furniture. CNN is a talking scroll. The only fun at Fox is watching Greta’s old face come back.”
I’m told they have these baseball “camps” where middle aged guys can pay to go hang out with real baseball players. That’s pretty much what Gnomedex was for me. Four hundred really smart, badly dressed, but very nice people (mostly guys). If they could tell by looking at me that I was not a true geek, they were too nice to mention it. We were summoned to the Des Moines Marriott by Chris Pirillo…the Lockergnome. Lockergnome is a person, a newsletter (300,000 readers), a website and an online community (called Gnomies). Chris put together an A-List of speakers that included some of the Big Names in the online world: Steve Gibson; Phillip Kaplan; Mark Thompson; Doc Searls; Evan Williams; and Leo Laporte. None of whom disappointed.
A-List blogger Doc Searls was once a radio guy and is not happy about the state of commercial radio. He makes a strong, clear point I’ve struggled with for 30 years.
“Commercial radio’s customers are its advertisers. It’s consumers are its listeners. Its business is selling air time to advertisers. It raises the value of that air time by attracting the largest possible number of listeners, in the most desirable demographics. How it does that is irrelevant to the business itself.”
He references a story by Jennifer Davies in the San Diego Union-Tribune (Corporate radio has pulled the plug on many a radio personality) that’s depressing –but hardly surprising– to this one-time DJ.
“The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be an almost 8 percent decline in need for broadcasting announcers in both radio and TV because of industry consolidation. In addition, pay for radio announcers is stagnating with the average hourly salary of around $9.”
And as for tomorrow’s listeners?
“Teen-agers no longer take their cues from radio, searching out new music online instead. Since 1998, teen-age males listen to the radio almost 7 percent less a week. Teen-age females’ weekly radio listening is down close to 9 percent. Teen-agers listen to the radio less than any other age group, according to Arbitron.”
“Ben Kirkendoll leaves the records at home in favor of his iPods, Apple Computer’s disk-based music player, which he simply plugs into an audio system’s mixer. He’s part of a small but growing number of DJs who have turned to MP3 music files for their accessibility and convenience.”
Once upon a time it took two of us about an hour to unload and reload all the equipment. [AP by way of Doc Searls]