Tag Archives: Quotable

Online advertising

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“The Tribune Company owns businesses (which) make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.”

— Terry Heaton on Tribune bankruptcy

“This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”

— Clay Shirky

Seth Godin on radio’s future

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Mark Ramsey has posted audio (and partial transcript) of an interview with marketing maven Seth Godin, on the future of radio. This is an update to an earlier interview. These three nuggets sloshed out of my pan:

“So if you’re an advertiser and you have a choice between reaching a ton of people who couldn’t care less, and so you have to talk really fast, yell, and make obscene promises on the radio to get them to show up at your dealership, or reach a smaller group of people about something that they’re very interested in a very connected way, in the long run advertisers are going to come back to the smaller, more tightly knit group.”

“Everything radio has done has been about leveraging a rare piece of spectrum, and the thing we have to acknowledge is that spectrum isn’t rare anymore. So the one asset you built your whole organization on is going away really fast and instead of putting your head in the sand and complaining about that, take advantage of the momentum so that when it does finally disappear, you have something else.”

“Consider the FCC’s ruling recently about the white space spectrum. What white space spectrum is going to mean is that in five years every car sold is going to have an infinite number of radio stations on it. Not 100 or 1,000 but more radio stations than you could listen to in your lifetime, and if that’s true, tell me again why you’re going to win?”

As I ponder these points, I’m listening to the very eclectic music mix on the Coffee Zone iPod. On the way to work, I’ll be live streaming Pandora from the iPhone.

Dave Winer on proposed Big Three Bailout

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“And they have to retire their fleet of corporate jets. And all their execs take pay cuts down to less than $1 million per year. If they choose to quit, so be it and good riddance. And since we’re going to own them, a new rule — no more commuting from Seattle to work in Detroit for the CEOs. We’re bailing them out not because we think they’ve done anything remotely like a good job, we’re doing it so that we don’t have to feed and house their remaining employees and bail out their suppliers when they go bankrupt. We’re doing it to save our country, not to save the auto industry as its currently configured, which is rotten and dangerously short-sighted.”

— Scripting News: 11/20/2008.

Dwight Schrute on how to “deal” with the elderly

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“Unfortunately, humanity seems to lack the backbone to demand that the elderly continue to contribute until they terminate. Instead we both indulge their laziness and demean them, locking them away in retirement homes while they slowly rot in a medicated stupor. The thought seems to be, the elderly, like most minority groups, enjoy being grouped together in a designated living area. But what if we stripped them of their pills and deprived them of their Rascal scooters, perhaps the elderly would stand up and face death like a man: head on, in a battle royal. Win or lose, they’d be more alive than they are now, even if the exertion caused them to cease living.”

Anathem

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“What would motivate someone to sit alone in a one-room apartment reading and thinking? What would have to be true of a person for them to consider that a life well spent?”

“What if the places you went and the things you encountered in your work were more interesting than what was available in the physical world around you?”

“They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.”

“I am tormented, or tantalized, by the sense that I am almost in view of something that is at the limit of my comprehension.” — Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (pg 543)

“All the story had been bled out of their lives.” (pg 414)

“…in the intervening hours, my brain had been changing to fit the new shape of my world. I guess that’s why we can’t do anything when we’re sleeping: it’s when we work hardest.” (pg 366)

“…we do not perceive the physical universe directly, but only through the intermediation of our sensory organs.” (pg 529)

Snow Crash: CIC database

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From Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, published in 1976. 22 years before Google; 29 years before YouTube; 32 years before the Bail Out/Melt Down.

“The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster.

He uploads it to the CIC database — the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word “congress” means. And even the word “library is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old one. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeros. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.

Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. CIC’s clients, mostly large corporations and Sovereigns, rifle through the Library looking for useful information, and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it, Hiro gets paid.”

“Fooled, and used, and a lot of people died.”

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Bush and Paulson say the proposed bailout plan is the only way to save our economy. The only way. Okay, Dave Winer is willing to support the plan on the following conditions:

“Bush and Cheney must resign immediately. No immunity, no pardons. Nancy Pelosi will become President, promising not to run for re-election on November 4. Her term will be one of the shortest in US history, just long enough to enact the provisions of the bill being proposed by the Republican administration. If it really is the best thing for the country and not a trick, then the Republicans, being impressed by the seriousness of it, would have to insist that Bush step aside and let the Democrats execute the plan. The entire Bush cabinet stays in office through January 20, but reports, of course to Pelosi. And that includes Paulson. It’s pretty simple. If they won’t do it, we know they’re bluffing.”

“The whole world is watching”

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“…the thing we should all be worrying about is that this election the whole world can see what assholes we are and how much we lie, and do you think they’re ever going to believe anything we say after the election?”

“Being an American in 2008 is a lot like working at Microsoft in 1994 or so. Netscape is coming soon and after that Google, and while we’ll still be here, the cursor will be somewhere else, and our stock options will be worthless and we’ll be fighting with each other while the rest of the world builds around us.” — Dave Winer

Dave Winer’s list of qualifications for President

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“I think in their hearts Americans know that electing a President who was like the rest of us was a mistake. We need someone who is an over-achiever, not just curious, but a sponge for ideas, information, perspectives. Someone who can’t stop reading and asking other people what they think.”

Dave offers an interesting list of things one should know and have done if they want to lead the country. I’m not qualified and I know it.

Blue pill or red pill

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By accepting what we are told and experience life can be easier. There is the social pressure to ‘fit in’, which is immensely strong in most cultures. Questioning the status quo carries the danger of ostracism, possibly persecution. This aspect has a strong link with politics. People doing well under the current system are not inclined to look favourably on those who question the system. Morpheus says to Neo “You have to understand that many people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

An excerpt from an essay by Dave Aarod