Debating Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet” 06/20/2011
Posted by Derek Belt in Musings.Tags: Clay Shirky, cluetrain manifesto, communication, digital media, internet, Jonathan Zittrain, media, web economics, Yochai Benkler
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Jonathan Zittrain’s crystal ball does not paint a pretty picture. In The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It, the author and professor of law at Harvard Law School explores a world ripe with possibilities yet riddled with controversy. Where the Internet succeeded in changing the way we communicate, Zittrain says it no longer functions as originally intended. It’s far too easily taken advantage of, he says, and the risks are beginning to outweigh the rewards. The “future” he is trying to stop is not merely one of open source ideals and generative technology, but of regulation, legislation and reform. “The solution,” he says, “is not to conscript intermediaries to become the Net police,” (Zittrain, p. 195). But what is the solution? Zittrain, who co-founded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, does not fully explore possible solutions in The Future of the Internet. Instead, he wrestles with the possibility of a closed-network society that willingly sacrifices the freedom to innovate for security and peace of mind.
Though the generative qualities of the Internet initially gave way to stunning insight and earth-shaking innovation, it also spawned viruses, spam, hackers and worse. According to Zittrain, the government and/or corporate intermediaries—both of which loosely regulate the Internet nowadays—will move to strengthen the Net’s regulability and, thus, wield more control over it. This, he says, will destroy the generative Net as we know it. An “appliancized network” is a term Zittrain uses to describe technologies or networks that discourage or disallow tinkering. Generative technology, on the other hand, invites or allows modification. The latter, Zittrain says, is what makes the Internet function. He believes in the Net’s openness and feels we can preserve its generativity if we simply act fast.
To solve the problem, Zittrain proposes a “latter-day Manhattan Project, not to build a bomb but to design the tools and conventions by which to continuously diffuse one,” (Zittrain, p. 173). Essentially, he wants to make subtle changes to the Net’s so-called operating agreement and hold those accountable who would use it for ill intent. But it may be too late, as Zittrain himself points out at various points throughout the book. “Any comprehensive redesign of the Internet at this late stage,” he says, “would draw the attention of regulators and other parties who will push for ways to prevent abuse before it can even happen,” (Zittrain, p. 245). If governments and corporations enact legislation to preemptively stop bad things from happening, it will lead to a closed network and less innovation on the part of end users. This is not the future Zittrain wants to see.
Chris Anderson – “The Long Tail” 03/26/2011
Posted by Derek Belt in Reviews.Tags: business, Chris Anderson, communication, digital media, digital technology, long tail, marketing, web economics
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Chris Anderson – The Long Tail
Reaching Millions
The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can’t do the opposite–bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well. (Anderson, p. 5)
One Size Doesn’t Fit AllThe era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes. (Anderson, p. 5)
What Consumers Want
Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service–from DVDs at the rental-by-mail firm Netflix to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives). (Anderson, p. 16)
Hits And Niches
For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. (Anderson, p. 24)
The Nature Of Markets
When you can dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. (Anderson, p. 26)
Kristina Halvorson – “Content Strategy for the Web” 12/22/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in References.Tags: communication, content strategy, digital media, marketing, social media
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Kristina Halvorson – Content Strategy for the Web
It’s All About the Text, Baby
Text is everywhere. Today, most of the content on the web is text. We search for it in articles, blog posts, product descriptions, reviews, and more. We depend on it to tell us which video we’re about to watch, or where to click in order to complete our purchase. We create it ourselves using social media channels, blogs, wikis, and more. Text instructs, guides, informs, confirms, communicates, connects. (Halvorson, p. x)
A Whole Lot Less
Online, when it comes to informational, marketing, or promotional content, more is almost never more. Instead of going for “critical mass,” think about striving for “a whole lot less.” (Halvorson, p. 7)
We Need a Website
In the mid-1990s, we all woke up one morning to discover that, suddenly, we were expected to establish an online presence for our organization right now. No one asked for it. No one planned for it. But almost overnight, if we wanted to build or maintain credibility as a viable, trustworthy organization, we needed a website. Period. (Halvorson, p. 21)
No Shortcuts
Content should be your first thought. Not an afterthought. There are no shortcuts. No matter what you’ve read, no matter what the “experts” are telling you, aggregation doesn’t equal differentiation, users will not magically generate your content for you, [and] you can’t buy effective content on the cheap. (Halvorson, p. 23)
The People Behind the Content
Quality, relevant content can’t be spotted by an algorithm. You can’t subscribe to it. You need people—actual human beings—to create or curate it. (Halvorson, p. 24)
Preparing Your Content
Content on the web is a living, breathing thing. It’s ever-changing, ever-evolving, constantly shaped and reshaped by curators, creators, reviewers, and users. Prepare your content carefully, and it will live a longer, happier life online. (Halvorson, p. 111)
What Readers Want
Amber Simmons (AListApart.com) eloquently defends the need for better writing online: Content fills a real need: it establishes emotional connections between people. The writing has heart and spirit; it has something to say and the wherewithal to stand up and say it. Content is the stuff readers want to read…. It hooks the reader and draws him in, encouraging him to click this link or that, to venture further into a website. It delivers what it promises and delights the attentive reader. (Halvorson, p. 129)
Social Media Rules the Day
More than any media channel the world has ever seen, social media needs maintenance. Care and feeding. Upkeep. All. The. Time. (Halvorson, p. 141)
Bibliography
Halvorson, Kristina. Content Strategy for the Web. New Riders, 2010.
Clay Shirky – “Here Comes Everybody” 10/03/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in References.Tags: Clay Shirky, communication, digital media, digital technology, social media
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Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody
We Change Society
When we change the way we communicate, we change society. (Shirky, p. 17)
Sharing is Caring
We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations. (Shirky, p. 20)
Breaking Down Walls
Most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done. (Shirky, p. 22)
When Will the Change Happen?
Group action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole. This change will not be limited to any particular set of institutions or functions. For any given organization, the important questions are “When will the change happen?” and “What will change?” The only to answers we can rule out are never, and nothing. (Shirky, p. 23)
Business As Usual
Anyone who has worked in an organization with more than a dozen employees recognizes institutional costs. Anytime you are faced with too many meetings, too much paperwork, or too many layers of approval … everyone complains about institutional overhead, without much hope of changing things. In that world (the world we lived in until recently), if you wanted to take on a task of any significance, managerial oversight was just one of the costs of doing business. (Shirky, p. 45)
Everybody Get Together
The collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together—so much easier, in fact, that it is changing the world. (Shirky, p. 48)
Rungs on the Ladder
You can think of group undertaking as a kind of ladder of activities, activities that are enabled or improved by social tools. The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action. (Shirky, p. 49)
Bibliography
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Group, 2008.
It’s not a revolution, it’s a change in scope and perspective 10/01/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in Reflections.Tags: Charlene Li, Clay Shirky, communication, digital media, Malcom Gladwell, social media
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A lot of what we’re grappling with here is scope and perspective. Scope being the general impact of the communications shift we’re seeing across the globe. We are moving away from a shout-it-out-loud, top-down marketing approach thrust upon us by big firms and mega media conglomerates, to a Summer of Love-style, let’s-talk-about-the-issues form of social communication. This change is huge-big as Kathy Gill likes to says. Perspective, of course, is what Charlene Li addresses in Open Leadership. With all of these new tools at our disposal, are we being diligent and asking the tough questions? For example, “Is this good for me?” Every company is different, every organization unique. We have to look at what matters most. Is it money? Is it engagement? Is it customer satisfaction?
There is a place for all of this in business and communications. But as professionals, we are responsible for sifting through the hype and determining which tactics are best for our companies, be it a one-person startup or a Fortune 500. I like the everyman that Clay Shirky portrays as the champion of social media in Here Comes Everybody. But I respect Malcom Gladwell’s take on “weak ties” being exactly that: weak. Is this a revolution? Or is it simply a shift in scope and perspective? Gladwell takes on Shirky in this fantastic article from The New Yorker.
Open Leadership has many case studies of social media success. These tools work for certain companies in certain situations. That’s the exciting part. What’s difficult is being on the inside with all of it at your fingertips and having the guts to say, “We actually don’t need to be on Twitter.” The opposite is true just as much: having the confidence to convince your boss that a company blog is a good idea. Scope and perspective. What does it mean to you?
Bottom line, learn as much as you can and make informed decisions. We’ve never had so many options. Understanding what’s out there is where the real power lies.
Brian Solis – “Engage!” 08/23/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in References.Tags: digital media, digital technology, social media
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Brian Solis – Engage!
The Art of Attention
That’s the trick of all this. It’s the art of garnering attention and then capturing and holding it now and henceforward. Everything requires promotion through the consistent and vigorous acts of connecting profiles and pages to those who will enjoy them. With increasing visibility by willfully sharing your presences within their social graph. Participation is key to growing the community and ensuring its integrity and associated activity. (Solis, p. 77)
Anthroplogy 101
Altogether, this is not unlike the fieldwork and observational studies performed by anthropologists and sociologists. Typically, we view the connections established within social networks as symbolizing relationships between people. Therefore we look at the number of friends and followers as a metric for authority and popularity. However, we’ve learned that in social media the pattern for forging connection is migrating towards orbiting objects over the criteria usually associated with establishing traditional friendships and acquaintances. (Solis, p. 105)
How We React
As the Social Web and new services continue to migrate into and permeate everything we do online, we’re faced with an increasingly thinning state of continuous partial attention. It’s affecting how and what we consume, when, and more importantly, how we react, participate, and share. That “something” is forever vying for our attention and relentlessly pushing us to do more with less, driven by the omnipresent fear of missing out on what’s next. (Solis, p. 112)
Information Will Find You
Now and in the future, information will find you. And it will be spread through the vision and words of our peers and other citizen reporters who are compelled to leverage their networks of influence to unite people, if for a but moment, around information that captures the heart, mind, and soul. (Solik, p. 142) (more…)
David Weinberger – “Everything is Miscellaneous” 04/23/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in References.Tags: communication, digital media, digital technology, long tail, social media, web economics
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David Weinberger – Everything is Miscellaneous
Information Wants to Be Miscellaneous
As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge freed from physical constraints, information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous. (Weinberger, p. 7)
The Limitations of Atoms
The problems with the first two orders of order go back to the fact that they arrange atoms. There are laws about how atoms work. Things made of atoms tend to be unstable over time—paper yellows and disintegrates, negatives turn to soup—so we have to take measures to sway nature from its course. Atoms take up room, so collections of photos can get so large that we have to build card catalogs to remind us of where each photo is. And things made of atoms can be in only ones spot at a time, so we have to decide whether a photo of a soldier eating should go in the Civil War folder or the Outdoor Meals folder. But now we have bits. Content is digitized into bits, and the information about that content consists of bits as well. This is the third order of order and it’s hitting us—to use a completely inappropriate metaphor—like a ton of bricks. The third order removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information. (Weinberger, p. 19
The Digital Revolution
The digital revolution in organization sweeps beyond how we find odd photos and beyond how we organize our businesses’ information assets. In fact, the third-order practices that make a company’s existing assets more profitable, increase customer loyalty, and seriously reduce costs are the Trojan horse of the information age. As wel all get used to them, third-order practices undermine some of our most deeply ingrained ways of thinking about the world and our knowledge of it. (Weinberger, p. 22)
Who Has the Authority To Tell Us So
We have entire industries and institutions built on the fact that the paper order severly limits how things can be organized. Museums, educational curricula, newspapers, the travel industry, and television schedules are all based on the assumption that in the second-order world, we need experts to go through information, ideas, and knowledge and put them neatly away. But now we—the customers, the employees, anyone—can route around the second order. We can confront the miscellaneous directly in all its unfulfilled glory. We can do it ourselves and, more significantly, we can do it together, figuring out the arrangements that make sense for us now and the new arrangements that make sense a minute later. Not only can we find what we need faster, but traditional authorities cannot maintain themselves by insisting that we have to go to them. The miscellaneous order is not transforming only business. It is changing how we think thw world itself is organized and—perhaps more important—who we think has the authority to tell us so. (Weinberger, p. 22-23) (more…)
Steve Krug – “Don’t Make Me Think” 03/28/2010
Posted by Derek Belt in References.Tags: digital media, marketing, web design, web economics
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Steve Krug – Don’t Make Me Think
Web Design Isn’t Great Literature
When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click. What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at. We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles per hour.” (Krug, p. 21)
We Don’t Read What’s On the Web, We Scan
One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye. Why do we scan? We’re usually in a hurry. Much of our Web use is motivated by the desire to save time. As a result, Web users tend to act like sharks: they have to keep moving, or they’ll die. We just don’t have the time to read any more than necessary. We know we don’t need to read everything. On most pages, we’re really only interested in a fraction of what’s on the page. We’re just looking for the bits that match our interest or the task at hand, and the rest of it is irrelevant. Scanning is how we find the relevant bits. We’re good at it. We’ve been scanning newspapers, magazines, and books all our lives to find the parts we’re interested in, and we know that it works. (Krug, p. 23) (more…)
